Picture a beautiful May afternoon here in Ireland, when the sun shines, all the hedgerows are in bloom, and the blackbirds and the thrushes fill the air with song. Then allow a cold scientific mind to dissect this scene, and the warmth and the glow of the evening quickly disappears. He will explain the sunshine as electromagnetic radiation, the varied tints of the flowers as due to the partial absorption of the light’s rays, the flowers themselves as collections of atoms (...) and molecules, and the singing of the birds as vibration of the air-molecules. It is a repelling, denuded description of the scene, and we instinctively shrink from it. (shrink)

Research in a scientific subject is an art as well as a science, for success depends on many things which can never be learned by rule, such as intuitions, openness of the mind to new and original ideas, the intellectual observation which is quick to recognize unsuspected relationships between apparently unconnected phenomena. While all this is certainly true, still there is a discipline of mind and method which no research worker can afford to neglect during his studies. This discipline is (...) for the most part used, without their adverting to it, by successful researchers, and the aim of this book is to formulate these rules and guiding principles. (shrink)