Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

  • Sidney Webb
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    investigator, in becoming a discoverer of new truth, to bring about an alteration of the categories and classifications which his predecessors, in the long evolution of man and his knowledge, have devised. Not that we wish to deny that there may be some value in the firm holding of a fixed impression as to the most fruitful line of investigation to be pursued relentlessly in face of every discouragement. Some of Edison’s inventions seem to have resulted from a seemingly unreasonable determination to try one substance after another until he found one that gave the desired result. Dr. Ehrlich tested no fewer than 605 separate drugs before discovering the remedy for syphilis which, after noting it merely as No. 606, he named salvarsan. Faraday’s note-book records numerically, in the order in which they were tried, several thousands of experiments, many of them representing the untiring pursuit of apparently use¬ less lines of investigation for which he had a fancy. That way lies infatuation (which is, after all, com¬ mon to all who fall in love!); the very effective but dangerous social force of fanaticism; the idee fixe, and various recognised forms of insanity. It is hard to draw sharp lines of division between such affec¬ tions of the mind. One practical maxim to the in¬ vestigator is to beware of egotism, to be careful to check undue self-complacency, self-esteem, and amour jpro'pre. A useful expedient is intellectual dis¬ cussion with the investigator’s intellectual equals or superiors; and a deliberate open-mindedness to criti-