Co-operation in Research throughout the British Empire

Abstract

ONE of the most useful discussions at the Congress of the Universities of the Empire held at Cambridge last year, the official Report¹ of which has been published, was on “Co-operation in Research throughout the Empire.” The subject is so attractive and appropriate to the times in which we are living that one may be pardoned for overlooking how modern is the idea of co-operation in the field of scientific research. Diogenes living in his tub, and asking nothing of the kings and satraps of the world except to get out of the sunlight, represents the traditional conception of a philosopher. Newman, in the preface to his “Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education,” insists on the necessary solitude of the scientific investigator. “The common sense of mankind,” he says, “has associated the search after truth with seclusion and quiet.” The greatest thinkers are men of absent minds and idiosyncratic habits. Pythagoras lived for a time in a cave; Thales refused the invitation of princes. Friar Bacon lived in his tower upon the Isis; Newton in an intense severity of meditation which almost shook his reason. Who among his contemporaries, we may well ask, could claim to share the labours