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20 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



spring up within us somehow to disturb our peace of mind. In other 

 words, scientific problems, and therefore science, originate in either the 

 external situations of concrete experience, or in our ideals, or in both, 

 and hence these latter and not the former are the real source of prog- 

 ress. Thus progress is simply a process of self-realization of society, 

 and science is a powerful tool for the successful carrying on of the 

 process. 



The other important conclusion applies to the teaching of science, 

 and it is too patent to need more than statement. It is this: Science 

 in the individual child arises, as it has in society, from either the outer 

 surroundings or the inner purposes of the child. Unless the problem 

 whose partial solution we wish to teach the child spring up within him 

 from either outer or inner necessity, the problem is not his own prob- 

 lem, it is not real to him, and, therefore, its solution is not real to him 

 and so makes no impression. Hence the skill in teaching science is a 

 skill in presenting facts in such a way that the problems whose solutions 

 we wish to teach become the child's own problems. It is thus a skill in 

 causing problems to become defined in the child's mind. The science 

 of the child, like the science of humanity, consists, then, in his own 

 solving of problems that seem to him to arise naturally, either out of 

 his own practical necessities of his own social and economic life, or out 

 of his own purposes, ideals or aspirations that seem to him to have 

 sprung up spontaneously within him. This sort of teaching is quite 

 a different matter from that which generally passes under the name of 

 science teaching, namely, learning the laws and principles of science 

 from a book by memory, with some laboratory and lecture experiments 

 thrown in gratis by way of illustration. 



V. So much for the light thrown on present conditions by the study 

 of the origin of scientific problems. But one other example will be 

 added to show the sort of interpretations that may be reached through 

 a study of the way in which various peoples have used their creative 

 imaginations in solving their problems after they had once become 

 defined. For this purpose a problem in applied science will be more 

 illuminating, so we will take this : How was the problem of satisfying 

 the human need of worship solved by the Greeks and by the people of 

 the middle ages? Both expressed their solutions in concrete form in 

 buildings, which still stand as permanent expressions of the workings 

 of their respective creative imaginations. 



The Greek temple was a larger and somewhat idealized man's dwell- 

 ing — a home for deified men and women. It was limited in design to 

 straight lines, since the idea of a curved arch had not yet been achieved 

 in practise. Yet it was a perfect realization of the conception which 

 it was intended to embody — a limited conception, since the idea of deity 

 which makes God to consist of heroic or idealized men and women must 



