Science and the Library 1

By MARSTON MORSE

Dr. Morse is Professor, the Institute the use made of the stacks of the Harvard for Advanced Study, Princeton University. library by a former graduate student, now a distinguished professor. Among the other HE KINDLY, humorous and learned graduate students using the stacks was a T words with which Dr. Chalmers has particularly beautiful Radcliffe student, and characterized some of the mathematicians my friend made the stacks the scene of a o£ the past strengthen a resolution which successful courtship of this young woman. I have long entertained, to seek an alliance After they were married the firstborn was with humanists of his type on behalf of appropriately named Widener. Here there those scientists who are against the growing was a felicitous use of the library in the scientific materialism of the present day. pursuit of beauty. However, this illustra I his description of the intellectual ~ccept tion seemed to me to be lacking in univer agility and formidable severity of some of sality, so that I felt co~pelled to drop it. the historic figures in my profession, and Then it occurred to me that a library recall the story of Euler and Diderot at was indispensable in laying the foundations the court of Catherine the Great. Ac of knowledge. This idea was brought cording to this legend Diderot had fin home by my two-year-old Peter, who em ished his supposed proof before the as ployed my books as building blocks. The sembled court, of the non-existence of God, trouble with this illustration was that the and it was Euler's duty to reply. Knowing edifices which he laboriously constructed well that Diderot was weak in mathematics always toppled over ; besides, the choice of Euler turned to Diderot and declared with the books was not discerning, so that this great solemnity and perfect conviction: "Sir lead had to be abandoned along with the a+ bn first. -- = x, In the meanwhile, if we may believe the n psychologists, my subconscious mind had hence God exists; reply!" The helpless been working, and a serious idea came to Diderot retired in confusion. The nice the surface. It was that a library is an question as to whether the end justifies the integral part of life, and that the philoso means arises here. phy of its use must flow from a general When your librarian, Mr. Parker, first philosophy of life. My convictions as to asked me to speak on science and the li the nature of values in science were definite, brary, I was a bit puzzled as to what to and it at o.nce appeared that these concepts say. One takes a library for granted to of value had the most intimate connection such an extent that reflection was required. with the problem of the growth, use, and The first idea that came to me concerned meaning of a library. How then to convey an accurate con 1 An address given at the Library Supper, Kenyon College, June 13, 1948. ception of a rriore or less individualistic

APRIL, 1949 151 philosophy in a few moments? I could state-controlled scientific materialism as it resort to terms: I could say that I was a exists in Russia and the idealism historically realist, and be mistaken perhaps for an associated with science, but a contrast be empiricist or a Republican; or I could say tween scientific materialism and confusion. that I was an idealist, and be mistaken for To this confusion there is added a generally a conceptualist or a Democrat. In spite of unrecognized, and increasing determina the obvious dangers in my course I shall tion of the sense of scientific values by the nevertheless begin with a label. events of the day, as interpreted by the Seriously, with some hesitation, and with press, radio, and screen. It matters little more pretension than I like I shall call if science is valued more highly, if it is myself a scientist-humanist-theist. To drop valued more highly for specious and for any term in this trilogy would mar the tuitous reasons. The fact that today's his synthesis I have in mind. That humanism tory is fateful, that life and deajth are at and theism are sometimes regarded as con stake, explains in part an increasing per tradictory everyone knows, but I doubt the version of scientific values; but there can presence of anyone in this audience who be no real justification of a failure to more feels this contradiction. To say that true perfectly relate values in science to the humanism denies theism in the Christian inner life and to the dignity and serenity sense is to .deny the fatherhood of God. I of man .. am a scientist by inclination, a humanist by Our age has substituted the idea of con experience, and a theist by the light of trol of things and of men for the ideal of reason and. a great need. wisdom and. understanding. The size of a In all that I have seriously to say I am man's laboratory and the number of dollars assuming that the attitude of my listeners is in his budget have become the measure of one that belongs to a liberal arts college. his value. Let us begin education with un If I deplore certain new tendencies toward derstanding and never forsake this ideal. scientific materialism, it is not implied that The library is a symbol of this ancient such tendencies exist here. I hope that objective and a principal instrument in its what I shall say may reinforce your con pursuit. The young student in science (in victions and make you realize a little more cluding mathematics) must be intellectually keenly the great dangers immanent in the aroused and properly led. For these ends impetuous evolution of the present day. there has never been any one book thor The library of a college, whether small oughly adequate. A student can approach or large, is the symbol of the continuity science in many ways; he can approach and universality of our civilization. There mathematics, for example, by way of alge has never been an age more in need of the bra, or geometry. By taste or aptitude he wisdom of the past, or a country more likely may find one of fhese ways more natural to suffer from scientific or philosophic pro than the other. This variability of aptitude vincialism, than our own. Activity for in . algebra and geometry is found even in activity's sake, computation without under the greatest mathematicians. I have in mind standing, statistics as an end, g~dgetry in the case of the leading geometer in Oxford stead of science-these things are marks at the present day. As a student he was of today. regarded as uninspired by his teacher, the In the world at large confusion about greatest mathematician in . England. A value and significance in science is wide mathematician from this country who was spread. The contrast is not one between for one year an exchange professor at Ox-

152 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES ford discovered other tastes and talents pated by the logic of Poincare. From these in this student with a resulting transforma records it i.s clear that advance in science tion, first in enthusiasm, and second in is inevitable, but that the path is as for attainment, so that this student is now a tuitous and as variable as the genius of the famous scholar. men involved. It is the library which In the library then, there must be the makes this discovery possible. books which inspire, and those which lay There is a very practical sense in which a enduring foundations. Such books vary college must recognize the dependence of a with the subject and the age; their suita theoretical scientist on the library. The bility depends upon the student. Even the demand for competent scientists on the foundations of logic change from age to part of industry and the research agencies age. Only the most skilful educator can of the government has been augmented to properly apportion the emphasis on logic such an extent in these last years that col or intuition which is appropriate for a leges and universities are finding it ex given student. The books for the under tremely difficult to retain their staffs. This graduate can be small in number if wisely has been brought home to me very vividly chosen. by the experience of two of my former In following the democratic ideal of students. One has had his salary tripled primarily serving the undergraduate stu in the last three years and has moved three dents, American colleges uphold our tradi times. The other has refused a salary twice tion and fill our greatest needs. However, his present salary, because his university in too exclusively following this path some has recognized his scholarly interests and American institutions of learning have has made the circumstances surrounding wellnigh lost sight of the great objectives his work most favorable. The conclusion of medieval universities. As avowed in the present connection is that the exist carriers and custodians of the knowledge ence of an adequate (but not necessarily and culture of the past, the ancient uni large) reference library in a theoretical versities-Paris, Pisa, Oxford-regarded science . is indispensable to retain any young themselves as belonging to all time ~nd scholar worth retaining. At one time it ages. We can abandon this old concept of a used to be the case that a scholar could go university only at our peril. The underlying through life as a teacher on the momentum ideals are in the heart of every true scholar, of his doctor's thesis. With the pace of , and are fortified by every good library. advance what it is now, I doubt whether When, for example, a mathematician has this point of view is tenable any longer. done what he can to understand relativity, Young meQ, 'know that to keep alive intel he may turn back to Newton. If he reads lectually they must write and create. It is carefully he will be surprised to find that thus clear that an improvement in the quali Newton, like Einstein, doubted the con ties of a library is one of the best ways to stancy of mass, something that seems to reward the young scholars in any college. have been unrecognized for several cen The opportunity of obtaining a journal turies. Or if he turns to the Comptes Ren by loan from another library is not an dus around 1908 he may find Einstein, adequate substitute for having the journal Lorentz and Poincare in a discussion of at hand in the home library. I have gone the antecedents of modern physics. One to the library as late as ten o'clock in the sees how the intuitions of Einstein and evening in order to resolve an uncertainty Lorentz could be shaped and in part antici- that might leave me sleepless that night.

APRIL~ 1949 153 Waiting several weeks for a book would rapprochement between science and reli necessitate a choice between various alterna gion, a mutual adjustment of language, a tives, all undesirable-trying to duplicate removal of ambiguity, a sober and just the research already in print, being frus recognition by natural science and theology trat~d for a month, or breaking the con of their common boundaries-not less tinuity of the research program. faith, but more faith, with less doubt as to For the scholar at work today there is what is reason and what pretense to reason. another reason why the library is indispen The thoughts of St. Augustine must be sable. The world is divided-almost but retraced in their dependence on Plato, and not wholly. We still get journals from those of St. Thomas with his preference Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and we for Aristotle. With a science and logic know that in science the intellectual activity now available far beyond that of Aristotle, in these countries is intense. The receipt of there should be a comparable advance in their journals is one of the effective realities the form of presentation of religion in its of the present day preventing us from un relation to science, and the way in which derestimating these separated nations. It is reason may lead to belief. the slender thread of a common interest For some this may not be necessary; by which must someday grow into a proper un~ many others it will not be understood. For ' derstanding. The scholar of course cannot the few, the future scientists and philoso afford to ignore the research behind the phers-the potential Whiteheads, Toynbees iron curtain. He penetrates the iron cur and Maritains-such a clarification is over tain not by bullets but via the library. due. For these there is no other approach I have spoken of the conventional needs so consistent with the tenderness, severity of the student and the scholar for a good and integrity of their minds, or the decisive library. A word may be added for the role which they are destined to play. In value of th~ library for the few, for those some quiet library with its treasures of the who are seeking to reformulate the philoso past and its record of the present, with its phy of history and culture, of science and air of otherworldiiness, if you please, but religion. For these the library is indispen with its very real concern with what is to sable. They must go beyond the platitude be, the student of today and the scholar of that there is no conflict between science the future may one day bring these things and religion. What is needed is an active to pass.

Instruction in Library Use (Continued from page 144) concentrate on one (here considering ob and to adopt more effective methods of jectives one and two as a unit) funda study. This concern should, however, take mental, realizable aim is likely to result in the form of exerting pressures where they riding off in all directions at once. The will do the most good. If, as seems prob course should eschew anything but the able, this instruction has not enjoyed the severely practical. Secondly, it is unwise to fullest success on the elementary and attempt to accomplish what is better and secondary school levels, it is also true that more easily accomplished elsewhere. It is there has been only a qualified success on entirely fitting that librarians wish stu the collegiate. This has been due partly to dents to make more use of the library the lack of definite objectives.

154 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES