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PARTISAN REVIEW
performing an experiment, by simultaneously dropping two unequal
weights in order to find out what happens.
Science suggests a fruitful analogy to nature, applying to the scientific
enterprise what is perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of Darwin's
thinking about species, what Ernst Mayr has called "population thinking."
Basically, Darwin laid tremendous stress on the significance of variation,
on the fact that individuals of any given species are generally not exactly
alike in all their heritable characteristics. Darwin, accordingly, focused his
attention on individual differences within a species rather than on gross
similarities among all members of the species.
Applying this principle to science itself, we are directed to study the
many distinctive ways in which different scientists have pursued their
studies. That is, if we adopt a Darwinian point of view and look for ele–
ments of variation, we cannot help but note the degree to which scientists
greatly differ among themselves, with regard to the kinds of discoveries
that different types of scientific innovators make. On the simplest level,
no variation seems as pronounced as that which divides scientists into two
major groups. One includes, for instance, Michael Faraday, Louis Pasteur,
Charles Darwin, and Niels Bohr - all of whom continued to make varie–
ties of discoveries over many years. Such scientists continually open up
new subjects, they exhibit a quality of individual genius in being able to
ask fruitful questions. How is it, we are led to ask, that some scientists
seem to have some special kind of instinct or insight that enables them
again and again to identify fundamental problems and then to move ahead
in devising suitable means to effective solutions?
The opposite group would include another type of scientists, such as
Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen (discoverer of X-rays),
J. J.
Thompson
(discoverer of the electron), and Alfred Russell Wallace (co-discoverer
with Darwin of the principle of natural selection). All of them are hon–
ored in the annals of science but are remembered for having made but
one significant discovery. Quite evidently, as these examples show, there
is a human factor in the pursuit of science that seems to transcend the
mere application of method or the standardization of procedures. This is a
factor of human creativity that defines a Darwinian type of variation.
It
is,
we may take note, a feature that links science to the humanities, to other
expressions of the creative human spirit - art, music, philosophy, and lit–
erature. Of course, from a purely reductionist point of view, one may
hope that some day these features of differential human creativity will be
understood in terms of a supposed mechanism of the brain. Here, I must
confess I see my role to be that of an historian and not a prophet.
Let me now address a second Darwinian aspect of the discussion of
the scientific enterprise. One of Darwin's original ideas was related to the
