A typical scientific paper has never pretended to be more than another little piece in a larger jigsaw

A regular journal carries from one research worker to another the various... observations which are of common interest.... A typical scientific paper has never pretended to be more than another little piece in a larger jigsaw-not significant in itself but as an element in a grander scheme. This technique, of soliciting many modest contributions to the store of human knowledge, has been the secret of Western science since the seventeenth century, for it achieves a corporate, collective power that is far greater than one individual can exert

J.M. Ziman, cited in L. Thomas, 'On societies as organisms', The Lives of a Cell (1974), 15