TILE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 315 



productions of the creative imagination, and therefore the study of 

 its history, when properly conducted, should shed immediate light on 

 the problem of determining the nature of the psychic condition of a 

 people at any epoch, i. e., the character of the culture epoch, and of 

 discovering the mechanism of the change from that epoch to the next. 



II. But, supposing this to have been accomplished — which has not 

 vet by any means been done — what good will result ? Why should we 

 care to gain an insight into the psychic development of a nation ? 



One immediate consequence of this sort of historical study would 

 be the much-desired humanizing of science; for we should be compelled 

 to recognize the various ways in which science has cooperated with the 

 other phases of human activity in bringing us into our present condi- 

 tion. Still another fruitful consequence would be the gradual extinc- 

 tion of the pernicious notion that scientific conclusions are final — that 

 the ipse dixit of science permanently settles all controversy. Other 

 specific benefits might be mentioned : but in this case also all roads lead 

 to Borne, since the central idea of all the reasons for the study of the 

 sort of history that has just been defined is the idea of the analogy or 

 correspondence which exists between the development of a nation and 

 that of each individual of that nation. It is the idea expressed in the 

 Gliedganzes of Froebel, in the parallelism between the ontogenetic and 

 the phylogenetic series of Baldwin, etc. It is the idea expressed by 

 Lamprecht when he says : " History in itself is nothing more than ap- 

 plied psychology." 1 * According to this idea we must study the past 

 evolution of science in a people or in a type of civilization in order to 

 understand the evolution of science in the present individuals of that 

 people or of that type of civilization: and conversely, the psychological 

 study of the growth of scientific concepts in the individual sheds light 

 on the scientific growth of the nation. 



The meaning and the importance of this idea, not only to teachers 

 of science but to teachers generally, have not yet become fully apparent. 

 Some go so far as to ridicule it. Thus in a very able address on the 

 " Order and Development of Studies suited to Each Stage," Superin- 

 tendent Wm. E. Chancellor, of Washington, I). C, reaches the follow- 

 ing conclusion : x 



In this presentation. I have absolutely rejected two familiar theories; that 

 the child must pass through the history of the race, and that he must be pre- 

 pared directly for participation in the affairs of the modern world. . . . And I 

 have said in terms as unequivocal as they are brief that, to my thinking, as I 

 view the external world of reality and the real world of the soul, we shall find 

 our solution in a genetic psychology that reveals the processes and stages, the 

 functions and the interests, the motives and the ideals, and the principles of the 

 soul as it journeys and sojourns from birth to death. 



1 Report of the Department of Superintendence, 1907, p. 80. 

 ,a " What is History?" p. 29. 



