For many years Dr. Rosenblueth and I had shared the convic-tion that the most fruitful areas for the growth of the sciences werethose which had been neglected as a no-man's land between thevarious established fields. Since Leibniz there has perhaps been noman who ha.s had a full command of all the intellectual activity of hisday. Since that time， science has been increasiiigly the task ofSDecialists， in fields which show a tendency to grow Drogressivelynarrower. A century ago there rnay'have been no Leibniz， but therewas a Gauss， a Faraday， and a Darwin.
　　Today there are few scholarswho can call themselves mathematicians or physicists or biologistswithout restriction. A man may be a topologist or aii acoustician ora coleopterist. He will be filled with the jargon of his field， and willknow all its literature and all its ramitications， but， more frequentlythan not， he -will regard the next subject as something belonging tohis colleague three doors down the corridor， and will consider anyinterest in it on his own part as an unwarrantable breach of privacy. These specialized fields are continually growing and invading newterritory.
　　The result is like what occurred when the Oregoii countrywas being invaded simultaneously by the United States settlers， theBritish， the Mexicans， and the Russians-an inextricable tangle ofexploration， nomenclature， and laws. There are fields of scientificwork， as we shall see in the body of this book， which have beenexplored from the different sides of pure mathematic8， statistics，electrical engineering， and neurophysiology; in which every singlenotion receives a separate name from each group， and in whichimportant work has been t，riplicated or quadruplicated， while stillother important work is delayed by the unavailability in one field ofresults that may have already become classical in the next field. It is these boundary regions of science which offer the richestODportunities to the qualified investigator. They are at the sametime the most refractory to the accepted techniques of mass attack and the division oflabor.
　　If the difhculty of a physiological problem is mathematical in essence， ten physiologists ignorant of mathematicswill get precisely as far as one physiologist ignorant of mathematics，and no further. If a physiologist who knows no mat.hematics workstogether with a mathematician ivho knows no physiology， the one will be unable to state his problem in terms that the other can manip-ulate， and the second will be unable to put the answers in any formthat the first can understand. Dr. Rosenblueth has always insistedthat a proper exploration of these blank spaces on the map of sciencecould only be made by a team of scientists， each a specialist in lusown field but each possessing a thoroughly sound and trainedacquaintance with the fields of his neighbors; allin the habit of work-ing together， of knowing one another's intellectual customs， and ofrecognizing the significance of a colleague's new suggestion before ithas taken on a full formal expression. The mathematician need not have the skill to conduct a physiological experiment， but he must havethe skill to understand one， to crit/cize one， and to suggc8t one.
　　Thephysiologist need not be able to prove a certain mathematicaltheorem， but he must be able to grasp its physiological significanceand to tell the mathematician for what he should look.
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