A History of Science — Volume 5Williams, Henry Smith
History
A History of Science — Volume 5
Williams, Henry Smith
Science -- History
As to the exact methods of study employed by the individual workers
here, little need be said. In this regard, as in regard to instrumental
equipment, one biological laboratory is necessarily much like another,
and the general conditions of original scientific experiment are pretty
much the same everywhere. What is needed is, first, an appreciation of
the logical bearings of the problem to be solved; and, secondly, the
skill and patience to carry out long lines of experiments, many of which
necessarily lead to no tangible result. The selection of material for
the experiments planned, the watching and cultivating of the living
forms in the laboratory tanks, the cutting of numberless filmy sections
for microscopical examination--these things, variously modified for each
case, make up the work of the laboratory student of general biology.
And just in proportion as the experiments are logically planned and
carefully executed will the results be valuable, even though they be but
negative. Just in proportion as the worker, by inclusion and exclusion,
attains authentic results--results that will bear the test of
repetition--does his reputation as a dependable working biologist become
established.
The subjects attacked in the marine laboratory first and last are
practically coextensive with the range of general biology, bacteriology
excepted. Naturally enough, the life histories of marine forms of
animals and plants have come in for a full share of attention. But, as I
have already intimated, this zoological work forms only a small part of
the investigations undertaken here, for in the main the workers prefer
to attack those general biological problems which in their broader
outlines apply to all forms of living beings, from highest to lowest.
For example, Dr. Driesch, the well-known Leipzig biologist, spends
several months of each year at the laboratory, and has made here most of
those studies of cell activities with which his name is associated.
The past season he has studied an interesting and important problem of
heredity, endeavoring to ascertain the respective shares of the male and
female parents in the development of the offspring. The subjects of his
experiments have been various species of sea-urchins, but the principles
discovered will doubtless be found to apply to most, or perhaps all,
forms of vertebrate life as well.
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