Helmholtz, Planck, and Lister

In the study of the history andsociology of science, there has beena relative lack of attention to one ofthe interesting aspects of the socialprocess of discovery-the resistance onthe part of scientists themselves toscientific discovery. General and spe-cialized histories of science andbiographies and autobiographies ofscientists, as well as intensive discus-sions of the processes by which dis-coveries are made and accepted, alltend to make, at the most, passingreference to this subject. In two sys-tematic analyses of the social processof scientific discovery and invention,for example-analyses which tried tobe as inclusive of empirical fact andtheoretical problem as possible-thereis only passing reference to such re-sistance in the one instance and noneat all in the second (1). This neglectis all the more notable in view ofthe close scrutiny that scholars havegiven the subject of resistance toscientific discovery by social groupsother than scientists. There has been agreat deal of attention paid to re-sistance on the part of economic,technological, religious, and ideologicalelements and groups outside scienceitself (1-3). Indeed, the tendency ofsuch elements to resist seems some-times to be emphasized disproportion-ately as against the support which theyalso give to science. In the matter ofreligion, for example, are we not alla little too much aware that religionhas resisted scientific discovery, notenough aware of the large support ithas given to Western science? (4, 5).The mere assertion that scientists

The author is professor of sociology at Bar-nard College, Columbia University, New York,N.Y. This is the text of a lecture delivered 28December 1960 at the New York meeting oftLhe AAAS.

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themselves sometimes resist scientificdiscovery clashes, of course, with thesterotype of the scientist as "theopen-minded man." The norm ofopen-mindedness is one of the strong-est of the scientist's values. As PhilippFrank has recently put it, "Every influ-ence of moral, religious, or politicalconsiderations upon the acceptance ofa theory is regarded as 'illegitimate' bythe so-called 'community of scien-tists." " And Robert Oppenheimer em-phasizes the "importance" of "theopen mind,"' in a- book by that title,as a value not only for science but forsociety as a whole (6). But valuesalone, and especially one value by it-self, cannot be a sufficient basis forexplaining human behavior. Howeverstrong a value is, however large itsactual influence on behavior, it usuallyexerts this influence only in conjunc-tion with a number of other culturaland social elements, which sometimesreinforce it, sometimes give it limits.

This article is an investigation ofthe elements within science whichlimit the norm and practice of "open-mindedness." My purpose is to drawa more accurate picture of the actualprocess of scientific discovery, to seeresistance by scientists themselves asa constant phenomenon with specifi-able cultural and social sources. Thispurpose, moreover, implies a practicalconsequence. For if we learn moreabout resistance to scientific discovery,we shall know more also about thesources of acceptance, just as we knowmore about health when we success-fully study disease. By knowing moreabout both resistance and acceptancein scientific discovery, we may be ableto reduce the former by a little bitand thereby increase the latter in thesame measure.

Although the resistance by scientiststhemselves to scientific discovery hasbeen neglected in systematic analysis,it would be surprising indeed if it hadnever been noted at all. If nowhere else,we should find it in the writings ofthose scientists who have suffered fromresistance on the part of other scien-tists. Helmholtz, for example, madeaware of such resistance by his ownexperience, commiserated with Fara-day on "the fact that the greatest bene-factors of mankind usually do not ob-tain a full reward during their life-time,and that new ideas need the more timefor gaining general assent the morereally original they are" (7-9). MaxPlanck is another who noticed resist-ance in general because he had experi-enced it himself, in regard to somenew ideas on the second law of thermo-dynamics which he worked out in hisdoctoral dissertation submitted to theUniversity of Munich in 1879. Ironical-ly, one of those who resisted the ideasproposed in Planck's paper, accordingto his account, was Helmholtz: "Noneof my professors at the University hadany understanding for its contents,"says Planck. "I found no interest, letalone approval, even among the veryphysicists who were closely connectedwith the topic. Helmholtz probably didnot even read my paper at all. Kirch-hoff expressly disapproved . . . I didnot succeed in reaching Clausius. Hedid not answer my letters, and I did notfind him at home when I tried to seehim in person at Bonn. I carried on acorrespondence with Carl Neumann, ofLeipzig, but it remained totally fruit-less" (10, p. 18). And Lister, in a grad-uation address to medical students,warned them all against blindness tonew ideas in science, blindness such ashe had encountered in advancing histheory of antisepsis.

Scientists Are Also Human

Too often, unfortunately, where re-sistance by scientists has been noted, ithas been merely noted, merely alleged,without detailed substantiation andwithout attempt at explanation. Some-times, when explanations are offered,they are notably vague and all-inclusive,thus proving too little by trying toprove too much. One such explanationis contained in the frequently repeatedphrase, "After all, scientists are also

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Resistance by Scientiststo Scientific Discovery

This source of resistance has yet to be given thescrutiny accorded religious and ideological sources.

Bernard Barber

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human beings," a phrase implying thatscientists are more human when theyerr than when they are right (11). Othersuch vague explanations can be foundin phrases such as "Zeitgeist," "humannature," "lack of progressive spirit,""fear of novelty," and "climate ofopinion."As one of these phrases, "fear of

novelty," may indicate, there has alsobeen a tendency, where some explana-tion of the sources of resistance isoffered, to express a psychologistic bias-that is, to attribute resistance exclu-sively to inherent and ineradicable traitsor instincts of the human personality.Thus, Wilfred Trotter, in discussing theresponse to scientific discovery, assertsthat "the mind delights in a static en-vironment," that "change from without. . . seems in its very essence to berepulsive and an object of fear," andthat "a little self-examination tells uspretty easily how deeply rooted in themind is the fear of the new" (12). AndBeveridge, in The Art of Scientific In-vestigation, says, "there is in all of usa psychological tendency to resist newideas" (13). A full understanding of re-sistance will, of course, have to includethe psychological dimension-the fac-tor of individual personality. But itmust also include the cultural and so-cial dimensions-those shared and pat-terned idea-systems and those patternsof social interaction that also contributeto resistance. It is these cultural andsocial elements that I shall discuss here,but with full awareness that psycho-logical elements are contributory causesof resistance.

Because resistance by scientists hasbeen largely neglected as a subject forsystematic investigation, we find thatthere is sometimes a tendency, whensuch resistance is noted, to exaggeratethe extent to which it occurs. Thus,Murray says that the discoverer mustalways expect to meet with oppositionfrom his fellow scientists. And Trottergoes overboard in the same way: "thereception of new ideas tends always tobe grudging or hostile. . . . Apart fromthe happy few whose work has alreadygreat prestige or lies in fields that arebeing actively expanded at the moment,discoverers of new truths always findtheir ideas resisted" (12, p. 26). Suchexaggerations can be eliminated bymore systematic and objective study.

Finally, in the absence of such sys-tematic and objective study, many ofthose who have noted resistance havebeen excessively embittered and moral-1 SEPTEMBER 1961

istic. Oliver Heaviside is reported tohave exclaimed bitterly, when his im-portant contributions to mathematicalphysics were ignored for 25 years,"Even men who are not Cambridgemathematicians deserve justice" (14).And Planck's reaction to the resistancehe experienced was similar. "This ex-perience," he said, "gave me also anopportunity to learn a new fact-a re-markable one, in my opinion: A newscientific truth does not triumph byconvincing its opponents and makingthem see the light, but rather becauseits opponents eventually die, and a newgeneration grows up that is familiarwith it" (10). Such bitterness is nottempered by objective understanding ofresistance as a constant phenomenonin science, a pattern in which all sci-entists may sometimes and perhaps of-ten participate, now on the side of theresisters, now on that of the resisted.Instead, such bitterness takes the mor-alistic view that resistance is due to"human vanities," to "little minds andignoble minds." Such views impede theobjective analysis that is required.

In his discussion of the Idols-idolsof the tribe, of the cave, of the market-place, and of the theatre-Francis Ba-con long ago suggested that a varietyof preconceived ideak, general and par-ticular, affect the thinking of all men,especially in the face of innovation.Similarly, more recent sociological the-ory has shown that while the varietyof idea-systems that make up a givenculture are functionally necessary, onthe whole, for man to carry on his lifein society and in the natural environ-ment, these several idea-systems mayalso have their dysfunctional or nega-tive effects. Just because the establishedculture defines the situation for man,usually helpfully, it also, sometimesharmfully, blinds him to other ways ofconceiving that situation. Culturalblinders are one of the constant sourcesof resistance to innovations of all kinds.And scientists, for all the methods theyhave invented to strip away their dis-torting idols, or cultural blinders, andfor all the training they receive in evad-ing the negative effects of such blind-ers, are still as other men, though surelyin considerably lesser measure becauseof these methods and this special train-ing. Scientists suffer, along with therest of us, from the ironies that evilsometimes comes from good, that onenoble vision may exclude another, andthat good scientific ideas occasionallyobstruct the introduction of better ones.

Substantive Concepts

Several different kinds of cultural re-sistance to discovery may be distin-guished. We may turn first to the wayin which the substantive concepts andtheories held by scientists at any giventime become a source of resistance tonew ideas. And our illustrations beginwith the very origins of modern science.In his magisterial discussion of theCopernican revolution, Kuhn (3) tellsus not only about the nonscientific op-position to the heliocentric theory butalso about the resistance from the as-tronomer-scientists of the time. Evenafter the publication of De Revolution-ibus, the belief of most astronomers inthe stability of the earth was unshaken.The idea of the earth's motion waseither ignored or dismissed as absurd.Even the great astronomer-observerBrahe remained a life-long opponentof Copernicanism; he was unable tobreak with the traditional patterns ofthought about the earth's lack of mo-tion. And his immense prestige helpedto postpone the conversion of other as-tronomers to the new theory. Of course,religious, philosophical, and ideologicalconceptions were closely interwovenwith substantive scientific theories inthe culture of the scientists of that time,but it seems clear that the latter as wellas the former played their part in theresistance to the Copernican discoveries.

Moving to the early 19th century, welearn that the scientists of the day re-sisted Thomas Young's wave theory oflight because they were, as Gillispiesays, faithful to a corpuscular model(15). By the end of the century, whenscientists had swung over to the wavetheory, the validity of Young's earlierdiscovery was recognized. Substantivescientific theory was also one of thesources of resistance to Pasteur's dis-covery of the biological character offermentation processes. The establishedtheory that these processes are whollychemical was held to by many scien-tists, including Liebig, for a long time(16). The same preconceptions werealso the source of the resistance toLister's germ theory of disease, althoughin this case, as in that of Pasteur, var-ious other factors were important.

Because it illustrates a variety ofsources of scientific resistance to dis-covery, I shall return several times tothe case of Mendel's theory of geneticinheritance. For the present, I mentionit only in connection with the source ofresistance under discussion, substantive

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scientific theories themselves. Mendel-ian theory, it seems clear, was resistedfrom the time of its announcement, in1865, until the end of the century, be-cause Mendel's conception of the sepa-

rate inheritance of characteristics ran

counter to the predominant conceptionof joint and total inheritance of biolog-ical characteristics (17, 18). It was notuntil botany changed its conceptions andconcentrated its research on the sepa-

rate inheritance of unit characteristicsthat Mendel's theory and Mendel him-self were independently rediscovered byde Vries, a Dutchman, by Carl Correns,working in Tiubingen, and by ErichTschermak, a Viennese, all in the same

year, 1900.New conceptions about the electronic

constitution of the atom were also re-

sisted by scientists when fundamentaldiscoveries in this field were being madeat the end of the 19th century. Theestablished scientific notion was that ofthe absolute physical irreducibility ofthe atom. When Arrhenius publishedhis theory of electrolytic dissociation,his ideas met with resistance for a time,though eventually, thanks in part toOstwald, the theory was accepted andArrhenius was given the Nobel prizefor it (19). Similarly, Lord Kelvin re-

garded the announcement of R6ntgen'sdiscovery of x-rays as a hoax, and as

late as 1907 he was still resisting thediscovery, by Ramsay and Soddy, thathelium could be produced from radium,and resisting Rutherford's theory of theelectronic composition of the atom, one

of the fundamental discoveries of mod-ern physics. Throughout his long anddistinguished life in science Kelvin never

discarded the concept that the atom isan indivisible unit (20).

Let us take one final illustration,from contemporary science. In a recentcase history of the role of chance inscientific discovery it was reported thattwo able scientists, who observed, in-dependently and by chance, the phe-nomenon of floppiness in rabbits' ears

after the injection of the enzyme pa-

pain, both missed making a discoverybecause they shared the establishedscientific view that cartilage is a rela-tively inert and uninteresting type oftissue (21). Eventually one of the sci-entists did go on to make a discoverywhich altered the established view ofcartilage, but for a long time even hehad been blinded by his scientific pre-

conceptions. This case is especially in-teresting because it shows how resist-ance occurs not only between two or

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more scientists but also within an in-dividual scientist. Because of their sub-stantive conceptions and theories, sci-entists sometimes miss discoveries thatare literally right before their eyes.

Methodological Conceptions

The methodological conceptions sci-entists entertain at any given time con-stitute a second cultural source of re-sistance to scientific discovery and areas important as substantive ideas indetermining response to innovations.Some scientists, for example, tend to beantitheoretical, resisting, on that meth-odological ground, certain discoveries."In Baconian science," says Gillispie,"the bird-watcher comes into his ownwhile genius, ever theorizing in farplaces, is suspect. And this is why Ba-con would have none of Kepler orCopernicus or Gilbert or anyone whowould extend a few ideas or calcula-tions into a system of the world" (15).Goethe too, as Helmholtz pointed outin his discussion of Goethe's scientificresearches, was antitheoretical (22). Amore recent discussion of Gothe's sci-entific work also finds him antianalyt-ical and antiabstract (15). PerhapsHelmholtz had been made aware ofGoethe's antitheoretical bias because hisown discovery of the conservation ofenergy had been resisted as being tootheoretical, not sufficiently experimen-tal. German physicists were probablyantitheoretical in Helmholtz's day be-cause they feared a revival of the spec-ulations of the Hegelian "nature-philos-ophy" against which they had foughtso long, and eventually successfully.Viewed in another way, Goethe's

antitheoretical bias took the form of apositive preference for scientific workbased on intuition and the direct evid-ence of the senses. "We must look uponhis theory of colour as a forlorn hope,"says Helmholtz, "as a desperate at-tempt to rescue from the attacks ofscience the belief in the direct truth ofour sensations" (22). Goethe felt pas-sionately that Newton was wrong inanalyzing color into its quantitativecomponents by means of prisms andtheories. Color, for him, was a qualita-tive essence projected onto the physicalworld by the innate biological characterand functioning of the human being.

Later scientists also have resisteddiscovery because of their preferencefor the evidence of the senses. OttoHahn, noted for his discoveries in radio-

activity, who received the Nobel prizefor his splitting of the uranium atomin 1939, reports the following case:"Emil Fischer was also one of thosewho found it difficult to grasp the factthat it is also possible by radioactivemethods of measurement to detect, andto recognize from their chemical prop-erties, substances in quantities quitebeyond the world of the weighable; asis the case, for example, with the activedeposits of radium, thorium, and ac-tinium. At my inaugural lecture in thespring of 1907, Fischer declared thatsomehow he could not believe thosethings. For certain substances the mostdelicate test was afforded by the senseof smell and no more delicate testcould be found than that!" (23).

Another methodological source ofresistance is the tendency of scientiststo think in terms of established models,indeed to reject propositions just be-cause they cannot be put in the formof some model. This seems to havebeen a reason for resistance to discov-eries in the theory of electromagnetismduring the 19th century. Ampere'stheory of magnetic currents, for ex-ample, was resisted by Joseph Henryand others because they did not see howit could be fitted into the Newtonianmechanical model (24). They refusedto accept Ampere's view that the atomsof the Newtonian model had electricalproperties which caused magnetic phe-nomena. And Lord Kelvin's resistanceto Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetictheory of light was due, says Kelvin'sbiographer (20), to the fact that Kelvinfound himself unable to translate intoa dynamical model the abstract equa-tions of Maxwell's theory. Kelvin him-self, in the lectures he had given inBaltimore in 1884, had said, "I neversatisfy myself until I can make a me-chanical model of a thing. If I canmake a mechanical model I can under-stand it. As long as I cannot make amechanical model all the way throughI cannot understand; and that is why Icannot get the electromagnetic theory"(20). Thus, models, while usually ex-tremely helpful in science, can also bea source of blindness.

Scientists' positions on the usefulnessof mathematics is a last methodologicalsource of resistance to discovery. Somescientists are excessively partial tomathematics, others excessively hostile.Thus, when Faraday made his experi-mental discoveries on electromagnetism,Gillispie tells us, few mathematicalphysicists gave them, any serious atten-

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tion. The discoveries were regardedwith indulgence or a touch of scorn asanother example of the mathematicalincapacity of the British, their bar-barous emphasis on experiment, andtheir theoretical immaturity (15). ClerkMaxwell, however, resolved that he"would be Faraday's mathematicus"-that is, put Faraday's experimental dis-coveries into more mathematical, gen-eral, and theoretical a form. Initial re-sistance was thus overcome. Long agoAugustus De Morgan commented onthe antimathematical prejudice of Eng-lish astronomers of his time. In 1845,he pointed out, the Englishman Adamshad, on the basis of mathematical cal-culations, communicated his discoveryof the planet Neptune to his Englishcolleagues. Because they distrustedmathematics, his discovery was not pub-lished, and eight months later theFrenchman Leverrier announced andpublished his simultaneous discoveryof the planet, once again on the basisof mathematical calculations. Becausethe French admired mathematics, Le-verrier's discovery was published first,and thus he gained a kind of priorityover Adams (25).

Mendel was another scientist whoseideas were resisted because of the anti-mathematical preconceptions of thebotany of his time. "It must be ad-mitted, however," says his biographer,Iltis, "that the attention of most of thehearers [when he read his classic mono-graph, "Experiments in Plant-Hybridi-zation," before the Brunn Society forthe Study of Natural Science in 1865]was inclined to wander when the lec-turer was engaged in rather difficultmathematical deductions; and probablynot a soul among them really under-stood what Mendel was driving at....Many of Mendel's auditors must havebeen repelled by the strange linking ofbotany with mathematics, which mayhave reminded some of the less expertamong them of the mystical numbersof the Pythagoreans...." (18). Notethat the alleged "difficult mathematicaldeductions" are what we should nowconsider very simple statistics. And itwas not just the audience in Briinnthat had no interest in or knowledge ofmathematics. Mendel's other biogra-pher, Krumbiegel, tells us that even themore sophisticated group of scientistsat the Vienna Zoological-Botanical So-ciety would have given Mendel's theoryas poor a reception, and for the samereasons.

In some quarters the antimathemat-1 SEPTEMBER 1961

ical prejudice persisted in biology for along time after Mendel's discovery,indeed until after he had been redis-covered. In his biography of Galton,Karl Pearson reports that he sent apaper to the Royal Society in October1900, eventually published in Novem-ber 1901, containing statistics in appli-cation to a biological problem (26).Before the paper was published, hesays, "a resolution of the Council [ofthe Royal Society] was conveyed to me,requesting that in future papers mathe-matics should be kept apart from bio-logical applications." As a result of this,Pearson wrote to Galton, "I want toask your opinion about resigning myfellowship of the Royal Society." Gal-ton advised against resigning, but hedid help Pearson to found the journalBiometrika, so that there would be aplace in which mathematics in biologywould be explicitly encouraged. Galtonwrote an article for the first issue ofthe new journal, explaining the needfor this new agency of "mutual en-couragement and support" for mathe-matics in biology and saying that "anew science cannot depend on a wel-come from the followers of the olderones, and [therefore] . . . it is advisableto establish a special Journal for Biom-etry" (27). It seems strange to us nowthat prejudice against mathematicsshould have been a source of resistanceto innovation in biology only 60 yearsago.

Religious Ideas

Although we have heard more of theway in which religious forces outsidescience have hindered its progress, thereligious ideas of scientists themselvesconstitute, after substantive and meth-odological conceptions, a third cul-tural source of resistance to scientificinnovation. Such internal resistancegoes back to the beginning of modernscience. We have seen that the astron-omer colleagues of Copernicus resistedhis ideas in part because of their re-ligious beliefs, and we know that Leib-niz, for example, criticized Newton "forfailing to make providential destinypart of physics" (15). Scientists them-selves felt that science should justifyGod and His world. Gradually, ofcourse, physics and religion were ac-commodated one to the other, certainlyamong scientists themselves. But allduring the first half of the 19th centuryresistance to discovery in geology per-

sisted among scientists for religious rea-sons. The difficulty, as Gillispie has putit on the basis of his classic analysis ofgeology during this period, "appearsto be one of religion (in a crude sense)in science rather than one of religionversus scientists." The most embarrass-ing obstacles faced by the new scienceswere cast up by the curious providentialmaterialism of the scientists themselves(5). When, in the 1840's, RobertChambers published his Vestiges ofCreation, declaring a developmentalview of the universe, the theory ofdevelopment was so at variance withthe religious views which all scientistsaccepted that "they all spoke out: Her-schel, Whewell, Forbes, Owen, Prich-ard, Huxley, Lyell, Sedgwick, Murchi-son, Buckland, Agassiz, Miller, andothers" (5, p. 133; 28, 29).

Religious resistance continued andwas manifested against Darwin, ofcourse, although many of the scientistswho had resisted earlier versions of de-velopmentalism accepted Darwin's evo-

lutionary theory, Huxley being not theleast among them. In England, RichardOwen offered the greatest resistance onscientific grounds, while in Americaand, in fact, internationally, LouisAgassiz was the leading critic of Dar-winism on religious grounds (5, 29, 30).

In more recent times, biology, likephysics before it, has been successfullyaccommodated to religious ideas, andreligious convictions are no longer asource of resistance to innovation inthese fields. Resistance to discoveriesin the psychological and social sciencesthat stems from religious convictions isperhaps another story, but one thatdoes not concern us here.

In addition to shared idea-systems,the patterns of social interaction amongscientists also become sources of re-sistance to discovery. Here again weare dealing with elements that, on thewhole, probably serve to advance sci-ence but that occasionally produce neg-ative, or dysfunctional, effects.

Professional Standing

The first of these social sources ofresistance is the relative professionalstanding of the discoverer. In general,higher professional standing in scienceis achieved by the more competent,those who have demonstrated their ca-pacity for being creative in their ownright and for judging the discoveries ofothers. But sometimes, when discov-

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eries are made by scientists of lowerstanding, they are resisted by scientistsof higher standing partly because of theauthority the higher position provides.Huxley commented on this social sourceof resistance in a letter he wrote in1852: "For instance, I know that thepaper I have just sent in is very orig-inal and of some importance, and I amequally sure that if it is referred to thejudgment of my 'particular' friend thatit will not be published. He won't beable to say a word against it, but hewill pooh-pooh it to a dead certainty.You will ask with wonderment, Why?Because for the last twenty years [ .... 1has been regarded as the great author-ity in these matters, and has had noone tread on his heels, until, at last, Ithink, he has come to look upon theNatural World as his special preserve,and 'no poachers allowed.' So I mustmanoeuvre a little to get my poormemoir kept out of his hands" (8,p. 367).

Niels Henrik Abel, early in the 19thcentury, made important discoveries ona classical mathematical problem, equa-tions of the fifth degree (31). Not onlywas Abel himself unknown but therewas no one of any considerable pro-fessional standing in his own country,Norway (then part of Denmark), tosponsor his work. He sent his paper tovarious foreign mathematicians, thegreat Gauss among them. But Gaussmerely filed the leaflet away unread,and it was found uncut after his death,among his papers. Ohm was anotherwhose work, in this case experimental,was ignored partly because he was oflow professional standing. The re-searches of an obscure teacher ofmathematics at the Jesuit Gymnasiumin Cologne made little impression uponthe more noted scientists of the Germanuniversities.

Perhaps the classical instance of lowprofessional standing helping to createresistance to a scientist's discoveries isthat of Mendel. The notion that Men-del was "obscure," in the sense thathis work did not come to the attentionof competent and noted professionalsin his field, can no longer be accepted.First of all, the proceedings volume ofthe Brunn society in which his mono-graph was printed was exchanged withproceedings volumes of more than 120other societies, universities, and acad-emies at home and abroad. Copies ofhis monograph went to Vienna andBerlin, to London and Petersburg, toRome and Upsala (18). In London, ac-

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cording to Bateson, the monograph was

received by the Royal Society and theLinnaean Society (32). Moreover, we

know from the extensive correspond-ence between them-correspondencewhich was later published by Mendel'srediscoverer, Correns-that Mendel senthis paper to one of the distinguishedbotanists of his time, Carl von Naigeliof Munich (15, 17, 18). Von Niigeliresisted Mendel's theories for a numberof reasons: because his own substantivetheories about inheritance were differ-ent and because he was unsympatheticto Mendel's use of mathematics, butalso because he looked down, from hisposition of atuthority, upon the unim-portant monk from Brunn. Mendel hadwritten deferentially to von Niigeli, inletters that amounted to small mono-

graphs. In these letters, Mendel ad-dressed von Naigeli most respectfully,as an acknowledged master of the sub-ject in which they were both interested.But von Niigeli was the victim of hisown position as a scientific pundit.Mendel seemed to him a mere amateurexpressing fantastic notions, or at leastnotions contrary to his own. VonNageli's letters to Mendel seem undulycritical to present readers, more than a

little supercilious. Nevertheless, themodest Mendel was delighted that thegreat man had even deigned to replyand sent cordial thanks for the gift ofvon Niigeli's monograph. On both sides,von Naigeli was defined as the greatauthority, Mendel as the inferior askingfor consideration his position did notwarrant. Ironically, Mendel took von

Nageli's advice, to change from experi-ments on peas to work on hawkweed,a plant not at all suitable at that timefor the study of inheritance of separatecharacteristics. The result was thatMendel labored in a blind alley for therest of his scientific life.Nor was von Naigeli unique. Others,

such as W. 0. Focke, Hermann Hoff-man, and Kerner von Marilaun, alsodismissed Mendel's work because heseemed "an insignificant provincial" tothem. Focke did list Mendel's mono-

graph in his own treatise, Die Pflanzen-mischlinge, but only for the sake ofcompleteness. Focke paid much more

attention to those botanists who hadproduced quantitatively large and ap-parently more important contributions-men such as Kolreuter, Gartner,Wichura, and Wiegmann, of higher pro-

fessional standing (33). Certainly, inthis case, quantity of publication was

inadequate as a measure of professional

worth. Focke's listing of Mendel servedonly to bring his work, directly and in-directly, to the attention of Correns,de Vries, and von Tschermak after theyhad independently rediscovered theMendelian principle of inheritance.

Mendel met with resistance from theauthorities in his field after his dis-covery was published. But sometimesmen of higher professional standing sitin judgment on lesser figures beforepublication and prevent a discovery'sgetting into print. This can be illus-trated by an incident in the life of LordRayleigh. For the British Associationmeeting at Birmingham in 1886, Ray-leigh submitted a paper under the title,"An Experiment to show that a DividedElectric Current may be greater in bothBranches than in the Mains." "Hisname," says his son and biographer,"was either omitted or accidentally de-tached, and the Committee 'turned itdown' as the work of one of thosecurious persons called paradoxers. How-ever, when the authorship was dis-covered, the paper was found to havemerits after all. It would seem that evenin the late 19th century, and in spiteof all that had been written by theapostles of free discussion, authoritycould prevail when argument hadfailed!" (34). So says the fourth BaronRayleigh, and we may wonder whetherhis remark does not still apply, some75 years later.

Professional Specialization

Another social source of resistanceis the pattern of specialization that pre-vails in science at any given time. Onthe whole, of course, as with any socialor other type of system, such specializa-tion is efficient for internal and environ-mental purposes. Specialization con-centrates and focuses the requisiteknowledge and skill where they areneeded. But occasionally the negativeaspect of specialization shows itself, andinnovative "outsiders" to a field ofspecialization are resisted by the "in-siders." Thus, when Helmholtz an-nounced his theory of the conservationof energy, it met with resistance partlybecause he was not a specialist in whatwe now think of as physics. Referringin the later years of his life to the op-position of the acknowledged experts,Helmholtz said he met with such a re-mark as this from some of the oldermen: "This has already been well knownto us; what does this young medical

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man imagine when he thinks it neces-sary to explain so minutely all this tous?" (8, p. 97). To be sure, on the otherside, medical specialists have a longhistory of resisting scientific innovationsfrom what they define as "the outside."Pasteur met with violent resistance fromthe medical men of his time when headvanced his germ theory. He regrettedthat he was not a medical specialist, forthe medical men thought of him as amere chemist poaching on their scien-tific preserves, not worthy of their at-tention. In France, even before Pasteur,Magendie had met with resistance forattempting to introduce chemistry intomedicine (35). If medicine now listensmore respectfully to nonmedical sci-ence and its discoveries, it is partly be-cause many nonmedical scientists havethemselves become experts in a varietyof medical-science specialties and soare no longer "outsiders."

Societies, "Schools," and Seniority

Scientific organizations, as we maysafely infer from their large numberand their historical persistence, serve avariety of useful purposes for theirmembers. And of course scientific pub-lications are indispensable for communi-cation in science. But occasionally, whenorganizations or publications are incom-petently staffed and run, they may serveas another social source of resistance toinnovation in science. There have beenno scholarly investigations into the truehistory of our scientific organizationsand publications, but something isknown and points in the direction I havesuggested. In the early 19th century, forexample, even the Royal Society fell onbad days. Lyons tells us that a contem-porary, Granville, "severely criticizedthe shortcomings of the Society" duringthat period (36). Granville gave numer-ous instances in which the selection orrejection of papers by the Committee ofPapers was the result of bad judgment.Sometimes the paper had not been readby any Fellow who was an authorityon the subject with which it dealt. Inother cases, none of the members ofthe committee who made the judg-ment could have had any expert opinionin the matter. It was such an incom-petent committee, for example, thatresisted Waterston's new moleculartheory of gases when he submitted apaper making this contribution. Thereferee of the Royal Society who re-jected the paper wrote on it, "The1 SEPTEMBER 1961

paper is nothing but nonsense." As aresult, Waterston's work lay in utteroblivion until rescued by Rayleigh some45 years later (12, p. 26). Many pres-ent-day misjudgments of this kind prob-ably occur, although the multiplicityof publication outlets now providesmore than one chance for a significantpaper ignored by the incompetent toappear in print.The rivalries of what are called

"schools" are frequently alleged to beanother social source of resistance inscience. Huxley, for example, is re-ported to have said, two years beforehis death, " 'Authorities,' 'disciples,' and'schools' are the curse of science; and domore to interfere with the work of thescientific spirit than all its enemies" (37).Murray suggests that the supposedwarfare between science and theologyis equaled only by the warfare amongrival schools in each of the scientificspecialties. Unfortunately, just what theterm school means is usually left un-clear, and no empirical evidence of any-thing but the most meager and un-systematic character is ever offered byway of illustration (38). No doubt someharmful resistance to discovery, as wellas some useful competition, comes outof the rivalry of "schools" in science,but until the concept itself is clarified,with definite indicators specified, anduntil research is carried out on thismore adequate basis, we can only feelthat "there is something there" thatdeserves a scholarly treatment it hasnot yet received.

That the older resist the younger inscience is another pattern that has oftenbeen noted by scientists themselves andby those who study science as a socialphenomenon. "I do not," said Lavoisierin the closing sentences of his memoirReflections on Phlogiston (read beforethe Academy of Sciences in 1785),"expect my ideas to be adopted all atonce. The human mind gets creasedinto a way of seeing things. Those whohave envisaged nature according to acertain point of view during much oftheir career, rise only with difficulty tonew ideas. It is the passage of time,therefore, which must confirm or de-stroy the opinions I have presented.Meanwhile, I observe with great satis-faction that the young people are be-ginning to study the science withoutprejudice. . . ." (15). Or again, HansZinsser remarks in his autobiography,"That academies and learned societies-commonly dominated by the olderfoofoos of any profession-are slow to

react to new ideas is in the nature ofthings. For, as Bacon says, scientiainflat, and the dignitaries who hold highhonors for past accomplishment do notusually like to see the current of prog-ress rush too rapidly out of theirreach" (39).Now of course the older workers in

science do not always resist the youngerin their innovations, nor can it be physi-cal aging in itself that is the source ofsuch resistance as does occur. If wescrutinize carefully the two commentsI have just quoted and examine other,similar ones with equal care, we can seethat aging is an omnibus term whichactually covers a variety of culturaland social sources of resistance. Indeed,we may put it this way, that as scientistsget older they are more likely to besubject to one or another of the severalcultural and social sources of resistanceI have analyzed here. As a scientist getsolder he is more likely to be restrictedin his response to innovation by his sub-stantive and methodological precon-ceptions and by his other cultural ac-cumulations; he is more likely to havehigh professional standing, to havespecialized interests, to be a member orofficial of an established organization,and to be associated with a "school."The likelihood of all these things in-creases with the passage of time, andso the older scientist, just by livinglonger, is more likely to acquire a cul-tural and social incubus. But this is notalways so, and the older workers inscience are often the most ardent cham-pions of innovation.

After this long recital of the culturaland social sources of resistance, byscientists, to scientific discovery, I needto emphasize a point I have alreadymade. That some resistance occurs, thatit has specifiable sources in culture andsocial interaction, that it may be insome measure inevitable, is not proofeither that there is more resistance thanacceptance in science or that scientistsare no more open-minded than othermen. On the contrary, the powerfulnorm of open-mindedness in science,the objective tests by which conceptsand theories often can be validated, andthe social mechanisms for ensuringcompetition among ideas new and old-all these make up a social system inwhich objectivity is greater than it is inother social areas, resistance less. Thedevelopment of modern science demon-strates this ever so clearly. Nevertheless,some resistance remains, and it is thiswe seek to understand and thus perhaps

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to reduce. If "the edge of objectivity"in science, as Charles Gillispie has re-cently pointed out, requires us to takephysical and biological nature as it. is,without projecting our wishes upon it,so also we have to take man's socialnature, or his behavior in society, as itis. As men in society, scientists aresometimes the agents, sometimes theobjects, of resistance to their own dis-coveries (40).

References and Notes

1. S. C. Gilfillan, The Sociology of Invention(Follet, Chicago, 1935); B. Barber, Scienceand the Social Order (Free Press, Glencoe,Ill., 1952), chap. 9.

2. P. G. Frank, in The Validation of Scien-tific Theories, P. G. Frank, Ed. (BeaconPress, Boston, 1957); J. Rossman, ThePsychology of the Inventor (Inventors Pub-lishing Co., Washington, D.C., 1931), chap.11; R. H. Shryock, The Development ofModern Medicine (Univ. of PennsylvaniaPress, Philadelphia, 1936), chap. 3; B. J.Stern, in Technological Trends and NationalPolicy (Government Printing Office, Wash-ington, D.C., 1937); V. H. Whitney, Am.J. Sociol. 56, 247 (1950); J. Stamp, TheScience of Social Adjustment (Macmillan,London, 1937), pp. 34 ff.; A. C. Ivy,Science 108, 1 (1948).

3. T. S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution(Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass.,1957).

4. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the ModernWorld (Macmillan, New York, 1947), chap.1; R. K. Merton, Osiris 4, pt. 2 (1938).

5. C. C. Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (Har-vard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1951).

6. R. Oppenheimer, The Open Mind (Simonand Schuster, New York, 1955).

7. Quoted from von Helmholtz's Vortrage undReden in R. H. Murray (8).

8. R. H. Murray, Science and Scientists in the

Nineteenth Centwry (Sheldon, London,1825).

9. Lord Kelvin also commented on the "re-sistance" to Faraday. In his article on"Heat" for the 9th edition of the Ency--clopaedia Britannica he made a commenton the circumstance "that fifty years passedbefore the scientific world was convertedby the experiments of Davy and Rumfordto the rational conclusion as to the non-materiality of heat: 'a remarkable instanceof the tremendous inefficiency of bad logicin confounding public opinion and ob-structing true philosophic thought.' " [S. P.Thompson, The Life of William Thomson.Baron Kelvin of Largs (Macmillan, London,1910)l.

10. M. Planck, Scientific Autobiography, F.Gaynor, trans. (Philosophical Library, NewYork, 1949).

11. See D. L. Watson, Scientists are Human(Watts, London, 1938).

12. W. Trotter, Collected Papers (HumphreyMilford, London, 1941).

13. W. I. B. Beveridge, The Art of ScientificInvestigation (Random House, New York,rev. ed., 1959),

14. H. Levy, Universe of Science (Century,New York, 1933), p. 197.

15. C. C. Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity(Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, N.J.,1960).

16. R. Vallery-Radot, The Life of Pasteur, R.L. Devonshire, trans. (Garden City Pub-lishing Co., New York, 1926), pp. 175,215.

17. I. Krumbiegel, Gregor Mendel und dasSchicksal Seiner Entdeckung (Wissen-schaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart,1957).

18. H. Iltis, Life of Mendel, E. Paul and C.Paul, trans. (W. W. Norton, New York,1932).

19. 3. J. Thomson, Recollections and Reflections(Bell, London, 1936), p. 390.

20. S. P. Thompson, The Life of WiUiam Thom-son: Baron Kelvin of Largs (Macmillan,London, 1910).

21. B.- Barber and R. C. Fox, Am. J. Sociol. 64,128 (1958).

22. H. von HelmhoLz, Popular Scientific Lec-tures (Appleton, New York, 1873).

23. 0. Hahn, New Atoms, Progress and SomeMemories (Elsevier, New York, 1950), pp.154-155. -

24. T. Coulson, Joseph Henry: His Life andWork (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton,NJ., 1950), P. 36.

25. S. E. De Morgan, Memoir of Augustus DeMorgan (Longmans, Green, London, 1882).

26. K. Pearson, The Life, Letters and Laboursof Francis Galton (Cambridge Univ. Press,Cambridge, England, 1924), vol. 3, pp. 100,282-283.

27. Biometrika 1, 7 (1901-02).28. That scientists were religious also, and in

the same way, in America can be seen inA. H. Dupree (29).

29. A. H. Dupree, Asa Gray (Harvard Univ.Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1959).

30. E. Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science(Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1960).

31. 0. Ore, Niels Henrik Abel: MathematicianExtraordinary (Univ. of Minnesota Press,Minneapolis, 1957).

32. R. A. Fisher, Ann. Sci. 1, 116 (1933).33. H. F. Roberts, Plant Hybridization Before

Mendel (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton,N.J., 1929), pp. 210-211.

34. R. J. Strutt, John William Strutt, ThirdBaron Rayleigh (Arnold, London, 1924), p.228.

35. J. M. D. Olmstead, FranCols Magendie,Pioneer in Experimental Physiology andScientific Medicine in the 19th Century(Schuman, New York, 1944), pp. 173-175.

36. H. Lyons, The Royal Society, 1661-1940(Cambridge Univ. Press, C4mbridge, Eng-land, 1944), p. 254.

37. C. Bibby, T. H. Huxley: Scientist, Human-ist, and Educator (Horizon, New York,1959), p. 18.

38. For the best available sociological essay,see F. Znaniecki, The Social Role of cthMan of Knowledge (Columbia Univ. Press,New York, 1940), chap. 3.

39. H. Zinsser, As I Remember Him: TheBiography of R. S. (Little, Brown, Boston,1940), p. 105.

40. For invaluable aid in the preparation ofthis -article I A-am tIndebted to Dr. ElinorG. Barber. The Council for Atomic AgeStudies of Columbia University assisted witha grant for typing expenses.

Science and the News

Grand Strategy: The AdministrationHas -a Problem .That It WouldRather Not Deal With in Public

The Administration, as noted herelast week, faces an interesting and deli-cate problem in dealing with the rela-tionship between elements in the De-fense Department and three closelytied organizations which advocate an

unrelentingly aggressive prosecution ofthe Cold War in terms which take on a

coherent meaning only in a context ofpreparing for a surprise nuclear attackon Russia sometime within the current

602

decade. The basis for this interpretationof the "Forward Strategy" put forth bythe Foreign Policy Research Institute ofthe University of Pennsylvania was re-

ported in this space last week. TheResearch Institute has been financedprimarily by a tax-free educationalfoundation, the Richardson Foundation,whose director df research, Frank Bar-nett, is also director of research for theInstitute for American Strategy, anothereducational foundation, which is de-voted to influencing the public to sup-

port the overt aspects of the ForwardStrategy.

Public notice has been. attracted tothe relationships of these organizationswith t.he Defense Department throughan article by Gene M. Lyons and LouisMorton, of Dartmouth, published in theMarch 1961 issue of the Bulletin of theAtomic Scientists, and by Senator Ful-bright's memorandum on right-wingactivities by the military.

"The activities of the institute,"Lyons and Morton wrote, "began toexpand with the series of strategyseminars it has sponsored during thepast 2 years. This program started withthe National Strategy Seminar, spon-sored jointly by the institute and theReserve Officers Association in the sum-mer of 1959. It was repeated in 1960and both acted as catalysts for regionalseminars held in different parts of thecountry. What is particularly strikingabout the National Strategy Seminarsis that through the authorization of theJoint Chiefs of Staff, the Institute forAmerican Strategy in effect took overthe responsibility of training reserveofficers on active duty, even though the

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