September 1959 — Vol. 40, No. 7 —
About Trying
Experiments
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The history of the world, like the story
of individuals, is the record of experiments. At times, beneficial
advances were made; at others, as is usual in experimentation,
rather ghastly mistakes were the outcome. But without experiment
there would have been no advance at all from the first—man
stage of human development.
Experimentation is not so widely written about as are imagination,
analysis and creativity.
What do these words mean? You imagine a thing when you see
it in your mind's eye; you analyse a thing when you take it
apart to see of what it is made; you invent a thing when you
put together bits and pieces according to lessons learned
in your analysis so as to come close to what you imagined.
Experimentation is to try a thing out to see if it will work.
Truth about any phenomenon, from the cause of a common cold
to the reason for a slump on the stock market, can be established
only by experimental means. Men of science and business learn
every day from experiments. By trying things out they constantly
correct their ideas, revise their theories, improve their
methods, and so come nearer and nearer to what is best.
We may go farther. Experimentation is more than a means
to verify the results of inventive processes. An experiment
can be the stone cast into the pool deliberately to start
ripples.
Speculation versus experiment
Contrast the idea of windy speculation with the idea of
finding out by experimentation. In the first, we exhaust our
ideas in talk; in the second we assemble our ideas and put
them to work. Using our knowledge of things as they are, we
apply thought to their improvement.
Claude Bernard, whose book An Introduction to the Study
of Experimental Medicine has been in print for nearly
a century and is still a text—book, found more dominating
facts about medicine in twenty years than all the other physiologists
in the world.
The essence of Bernard's belief is this: by simply noting
facts or piling up observations, we shall be none the wiser.
We must reason about what we have observed, compare the facts,
judge them by other facts used as controls, and put the outcome
to the test by experiment. That is the only way to obtain
proof of one's beliefs.
Nothing is easier than to design on paper and put together
a contraption made up of wheels, magnets, ratchets and pulleys,
but only turning on the power will prove whether it will work
and accomplish what is wanted of it.
What one needs is to have an idea, put forward a hypothesis,
and then test it.
In practical work in office, factory or the multitudinous
facets of everyday living, we may trace our development of
something new in this way: we sense a problem and develop
a desire to solve it; we gather accurate facts; we mull over
our data, incubating an idea; we reach the moment of illumination,
when a possible solution comes to us; we test the proposed
solution.
Scope of experimentation
Experimentation is not confined to development of glamorous
new gadgets, or the uncovering of laws in physics and chemistry.
It may be applied effectively in business, for example to
reduce waste.
Suppose a business man to say to himself: any work that
does not add value to material, does not plan or calculate,
does not give or receive essential information, is reducible
waste.
He will observe, collect facts, analyse and write down what
he finds. He will choose a possibly rewarding spot at which
to start, and prepare a hypothesis about what would happen
if he did so and so. Then he will try out his plan, testing
every step.
In any job, a person can show himself conscious of methods
improvement by asking repeatedly: "How can I do the job more
quickly or more easily?" If top management is alert to the
possibility of advancement it will give supervisors freedom
to fail, provided the experiment shows promise of betterment.
Here are some points by which to check the probable value
of a change: will it increase production, improve quality,
add safety, prevent waste, provide better working conditions,
reduce cost or eliminate unnecessary work? The tests given
the new system or machine will show whether it is sound, workable
and practicable, and whether it has advantages which outweigh
its disadvantages.
There is yet another factor to be considered: the human
element. Before embarking upon an experiment involving human
beings - as in rearranging a factory, redistributing work
in an office, or introducing new methods - write down the
possible effect the change will have in the life of everyone
concerned with it. Take into account the probable reactions,
good and bad. You may find that the success of the experiment
technically would be the ruin of more valuable things.
Challenge the obvious
Any person of spirit will find it thrilling to challenge
the obvious, to question the accepted way of doing things,
and to experiment with new ways. You have a "hunch"; you think
up alternatives; you dream up ways and devices by which to
test your guesses - as Leonardo da Vinci did when he pierced
a small hole in a window blind and saw an image of the outside
world reproduced in miniature on the wall of his room, thus
foreshadowing photography.
Great music is the final result of inspiration followed
by rewriting and trying again. Great art is preserved to us
because men made experiments with drying oils. Poets reached
immortality by experimenting with verse form. The columns
raised by the Greeks, and still acknowledged as perfect architectural
examples, were the result of experiment which widened them
in the centre to eliminate the illusion of narrowness.
Experiment is not confined to universities and industrial
laboratories. Every person in Canada can be a research worker,
experimenting so as to find better ways of doing things. Robert
P. Crawford remarked in The Techniques of Creative Thinking:
"The tragedy of life is not lack of brain power or education
but doing so little with what we have."
The incandescent lamp was not the invention of a lampmaker,
but of a former telegraph worker who continued his experiments
even after the learned men of his time quoted two fundamental
laws of physics to prove that he couldn't succeed. The first
ground handful of nitre, sulphur and charcoal drove a monk's
pestle through the ceiling - Roger Bacon had found gunpowder.
His motto was: "Take nothing for granted; use your own eyes
and test all new theories with your own hands.
How to start
One way to start is by prodding your imagination. Sit down
with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper and think of experiments
you can make: candle—wax instead of "elbow grease" on
that so—hard—to—raise window; a loose—leaf
book of numbered form letters so that you answer routine mail
by writing a figure in the corner, a figure which your secretary
translates into a letter ready for your signature; a jig that
will eliminate time—consuming measurements on the production
line. Pencils, set in motion by imagination, can act as crowbars
in moving our minds.
Note the classic simplicity of this formula. You become
aware that there is something that may be done, some problem
to solve, some improvement to be made. You make a proposal
to yourself of some solution; you clarify the problem and
the solution as far as you can; you decide upon a plan of
action; you try out your plan.
In the ordinary course of life you will not wish to try
an experiment until you feel the need for a change. Nevertheless,
there are occasions when it is advantageous to experiment
for the sake of experiment. This is so for two reasons: you
may find that a change in detail or form or method or location
will improve what you have accepted as being satisfactory;
and you will benefit by the mental shaking up that experimentation
gives you.
You take a walk, as it were, on the borders of your business,
and pursue what happens to present itself to your attention.
Ideas may show themselves when you are looking for them, but
they are just as likely to be seen out of the corner of your
eye when you are looking at something else.
This is where the widely—read or widely—experienced
person has the advantage over those with less broad knowledge:
he has a background of material to which to relate new thoughts.
This background comes from observation, but we must guard
against the fallacy of thinking that to observe is enough.
An observer gathers data as nature and environment offer them;
an experimenter applies investigation so as to vary the outcome
or to make something new of it.
Nevertheless, observation is a vital step in experimentation.
Dr. Alexander Fleming set aside a culture of bacteria one
day, and observed when he examined it hours later that it
was spoiled. The culture grew on only half the plate; the
other half was spotted with a blue—green mold. He wrote
in his note—book: "1 was sufficiently interested in the
anti—bacterial substance produced by the mold to pursue
the subject," and so he discovered penicillen.
Get the facts straight
In planning and carrying out an experiment of any sort you
must never lose sight of the facts. From the first tentative
step toward an objective until the final test of validity,
experimentation deals with facts. If a fact be ignored or
if it be erroneous the whole structure will crumble.
The quantity of facts needed will vary. Edward Hodnett illustrates
this neatly in The Art of Problem Solving where he
says that if you were buying rope for a clothes—line
you might be content to examine ten samples, but if you were
buying rope for parachutes you would likely wish to test hundreds
of pieces to judge their strength.
The minute precision of the facts needed will also differ.
If you are experimenting with concrete it is enough to know
that one part cement, two parts sand and three parts gravel
will provide concrete with such and such qualities. If you
are working with bacteria you will need to collect your facts
with an instrument like that used in the Institute of Biology
at the University of Montreal: it can measure to a one—hundred—thousandth
of a degree of temperature.
Facts are neither great nor small in themselves, but relatively
so. The proportions of concrete are just as important in the
foundation of a building as is the temperature of bacteria
in the research laboratory.
Having collected the facts with which to start experimenting,
we must clarify them, throw them into some sort of order,
and isolate the essentials. The logic of experiment consists
in the weighing of probabilities, discarding details judged
to be irrelevant, ascertaining the general rules that govern
cause and effect in what we are doing, and trying out our
hypothesis by controlled tests.
What is a hypothesis? It can be thought of as an informed
guess. We use the knowledge we already have to make a preliminary
conjecture about what will happen if we take another step.
Even when an experiment shows our hypothesis to be mistaken,
we have gained something. The alchemists founded chemistry
by pursuing theories that turned out to be false. Modern scientists,
says Dr. Hans Selye, look upon any hypothesis as expendable:
it is a launching platform for testing ideas. He summed it
up in this way in an article in Maclean's magazine
in mid—August: "No count has ever been made, but it is
quite certain that for every series of experiments that ends
in a 'useful' result like insulin, some thousands of series
are completed that are apparently useless."
Your fruitless experiment has not been useless. It has eliminated
one possible way of doing something, reducing the confusion
of choices: and truth is more easily evolved from error than
from confusion.
Nevertheless, the man who embarks upon something new must
school himself to face unpleasant facts: the fact that a cherished
idea turns out to be unsound, that the wrong road has been
taken and must be retraced. He must be skeptical, questioning
his results rigorously if he is to be certain, at the end,
that he has a true solution and the best product.
Keeping records
What are the sins marked in red in the experimenter's rule
book? To be dishonest or careless in setting up the elements
of the experiment; to be neglectful in keeping a record of
everything done; to fail to take into account every small
part of the ingredients and every action of the apparatus.
Without records, successes cannot be repeated and failures
have taught no lesson.
There is a bonus value in keeping complete records: the
mere act of putting down on paper the what, where, when, why
and how of any piece of work will, of itself, generate ideas
of how the work can be done in an improved manner.
Notes help us to avoid the fallacy of attributing effects
to wrong causes. They enable us to see that not everything
that follows something is caused by it. They give us the data
from which to find whether there is a third influence, not
taken into account in our experiment, which is influencing
the result.
Trying new ways
There are several lines to follow in trying to improve a
product, a service or a system.
Originality may be, but is not always, a matter of impulse
or intuition. Most of us can find it if we seek it diligently,
and no one can ever become a genius except by stepping out,
by experimenting. Intuition solves only problems about which
we already know a lot.
One way to hasten the development of something new is to
experiment with our material in various combinations. The
composer of music works with combinations of notes, moving
them around on the scale into pleasing harmonies, trying them
out on the keyboard of his piano; the inventor works with
combinations of substances and mechanisms; the office manager
works with combinations of people and records and machines,
tuning up his organization by trying this and that change
of duty or partnership of workers.
Another way is by variation, by putting the shoe on the
other foot. We ask ourselves what would happen if we placed
the flies in the centre of the office instead of along the
wall; if we curved this assembly line instead of having it
straight; if we changed the colour of the package in which
we sell our goods. We can vary things so as to make them bigger
or smaller, heavier or lighter, thicker or thinner. In its
new form the article may serve its purpose more efficiently
or more cheaply, or it may adapt itself to an altogether different
purpose.
Experiment of this sort is, in its way, deliberate creativeness.
It demands that we have expectant, supple and receptive minds;
that we set goals and get going toward them. The experimental
mind, which is a mind that retains its youth, has a tendency
to move of itself instead of waiting at the dock for a tug.
Ballast exists everywhere: all the pebbles of the harbour,
all the sand on the beach will serve for it; but men to steer
the ship on a voyage of exploration are rare. The ability
to originate is typical of the executive—minded man.
A clerk keeps records; the executive grounds himself on the
clerk's collected facts; he goes on to imagine new combinations
of facts, and he experiments in search of new results. He
sails into new territory.
Initiative
Experiment quite often entails nothing more or less than
initiative - "Let's try it now". The inner driving force of
imagination and conception should not be kept waiting for
a more favourable time or for a flash of inspiration. That
is how great ideas are lost.
The way to progress is by cultivating qualities of venturesomeness.
A person may score 100 per cent in a written examination and
yet make nothing of his life because he fears to apply what
knowledge he has in an experimental way.
Initiative requires the courage to face the consequences
of trying new things. Horatio Hornblower says in one of C.
S. Forester's stories: "I'd rather be in trouble for having
done something than for not having done anything." In its
highest form this courage displays itself in personal experiment
by medical research workers: like the German doctor who inoculated
himself with a fungus he suspected of causing ringworm; the
British doctor who gave himself malaria to prove that a mosquito,
not climate, spreads the disease; and the Scottish doctor,
James Young Simpson, sniffing chloroform to test its effect
as an anaesthetic.
Another quality needed is persistence, or stick—to—itiveness.
One may have the desire and the ability to create, to change
beneficially, but there are difficulties galore in doing any
new thing. Experimentation is not a slot machine into which
you slip a coin and get the answer on a printed card.
There would never have been an improvement of any kind at
any time if the person with a new idea had been stopped by
the first "It can't be done" or "It won't work."
To experiment you must determine to work creatively despite
frustrations, rebuffs and failures. You have to challenge
sacred cows. To experiment is to get lost and err, but nonetheless
to acquire knowledge. You have to learn to fail intelligently,
making use of errors to find certainty. After failing in 700
experiments Edison said: "Now we know 700 things that won't
work". The one time we must not fail is the last time we try.
Second—hand materials
The person with an urge to improve things is often like
the person arriving late at a department store sale: he has
to take goods which others have seen and not taken. Leonardo
da Vinci wrote in his note—book: "the men who have come
before me have taken for their own all useful and necessary
themes." Picking up their leavings, he experimented with the
elements, mechanics, flying machines, art, tanks, explosives,
and a machine to sharpen 40,000 needles per hour, probably
the first mass—production machine in history.
Time and again throughout the advance of science and commerce
the consequence of following up or not following up the work
of others has been very great. Originality does not consist
merely in thinking of some basic principle first, but in seeing
some opportunity to apply it at a point in time when it can
be pursued with profit.
We should not hesitate to start from where other people
left off. Ideas grow and pass from mind to mind. The engineering
and technology of the present are the accumulated heritage
of the past, the combined experiments of hundreds of generations.
George Stephenson put this with clarity and modesty when he
said, at the height of his fame: "the steam locomotive was
not the invention of any one man, but of a nation of mechanical
engineers."
The experimenter will never rely upon chance. "Chance" is
a word we invented to express the known effect of unknown
causes. He will persist in his endeavour to bring about desired
effects by manipulation of means. He will reach for the stars,
and though he may not get one he will enjoy trying.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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