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A Comparison of Greek and Modern Scientific Methods.

A Comparison of Greek and Modern Scientific Methods The contrast between the scientific contribution of today with that of the ancient Greeks is a striking one. The Greek writers, as Singer1 has recently pointed out in a scholarly essay, set down only their conclusions. Their methods of work, and even their verificatory observations, are not published. But consider the contributions to modern scientific literature. “The author begins,” says Singer, “by pointing out a gap in knowledge ... Having stated his problem, he reviews the efforts made by others to illumine this dark place in knowledge. He points out some of their errors or decides to accept their work and base his own upon it. Perhaps he distrusts their experiments or would like to reinterpret their results. Having summarized their labors, he details his own experiments and observations. But he is not able to tell us all of these. ... Space will not permit him to tell us how he embarked on many different lines of work and abandoned them as unprofitable or too difficult, nor anything of the months or years spent in merely repeating the experience of others. He says no word of how he acquired and improved his experimental skill and technical experience. He tells merely of those developments of his work that have yielded him results. ... When by gradual steps he had at last reached, or perhaps with the instinct of genius had more quickly discerned, a profitable direction for his investigations, he reached after a time those conclusions which his final line of work has verified and rendered more exact. It is this final process of verification that he mainly describes in his article, and it is the details of this that occupy the bulk, perhaps nineteen twentieths or more, of all that he has to say. Then, having described these verificatory experiments, he summarizes his conclusions in a short paragraph of a few lines.” Those acquainted with the history of biology will admit that more rapid strides have been made within the past century than in the previous thousands of years of which record is available. Where lies the reason? The Greek mind was brilliant; the Roman mind was logical; the Arabian and Semitic minds were searching and keen. “It is the constant solicitude for the exact mode of investigation,” says Singer, “a solicitude characteristic of our own science, that we so often seek in vain among the Greeks.” The method of modern scientific research is before all things and above all things a process of verification, a process slow, tedious, often difficult and dull. “Credulity,” he continues, “is the Pandora of Science, promising everything, yielding nothing ... It is true that the great Greek minds were singularly free from that baser credulity that we call superstition—from that they were preserved by their conviction that order reigned in Nature—but few indeed were the Greeks who showed an adequate scientific skepticism. The Greek often accepted data without scrutiny, induction without proof. His very brilliance was a source of weakness, and he was often led to believe that the order of phenomena must perforce correspond to his own admirably clear conceptions.” The striking contrast which Dr. Singer so brilliantly elucidates is a much needed emphasis on factors to which the attention of the medical profession cannot be called too frequently. The gradually changing qualifications for entrance into medical schools and for a diploma in medical science have continued to lay more and more stress on training in the biologic and fundamental sciences. The value of such training admittedly lies not so much in the knowledge itself but in the teaching and elucidation of the scientific method. More than one leader in medical science has urged the cultivation of a strong and vigorous skepticism as the most valuable attribute of a scientist. Never was there a time when such skepticism was needed more than at present. Unfortunately, as the student departs from the laboratories of his alma mater and proceeds farther and farther into a world populated by a credulous public, his habits of mind change and he drifts with the current of loose thought and easy going credulity. “If you trust before you try, you may repent before you die, is as good a maxim in scientific as in human relationships,” says Dr. Singer. The lesson is an excellent one, founded on keen observation and a magnificent historical perspective. But let us not stop with this. Dr. Singer, we fear, too greatly flatters our modern contributors to scientific literature. The article which he has so ably outlined, with its introduction, its analysis of previous efforts, its statement of a problem, its presentation of useful methods employed, its statements of results and finally its succinct conclusions, appears, it is true, fairly frequently in our literature. But far more frequently appears the prolix report of trial and error, of non-essentials and of useless statistics, of repetition of much published “cases in the literature,” and finally, no results and no conclusions, because, after all, there are none.