BICiELOW, 



NATURE-STUDY AND SCIENCE TEACHING 3 5 



the close of the paper I shall express agreement with Professor 

 Mann and other science teachers who, in recent years, have begun 

 to question whether the point of view of science in the strict 

 sense should control introductory science courses in high schools, 

 or perhaps even in colleges. 



What then do we understand by the term science? Is it 

 merely study of nature? Is a boy chasing butterflies engaged in 

 studying the science of zoology ? Is a child testing the wonders of 

 a magnet studying the science of physics? Or is the cook who 

 observes the reaction between water and baking powder nec- 

 essarilv a student of chemistry? Obviously, "study of nature" 

 is not sufficient to define our conception of modern science. 

 But here is a definition which has proved satisfactory: "Science 

 is organized knowledge concerning nature." Classification of 

 facts and organization into principles or generalizations — this is 

 the characteristic, the spirit and the aim of all modern science. 1 



One of the striking proofs of this is the fact that so many 

 times during the reading of scientific papers in the meetings 

 of the last few days we have seen that the interest manifested by 

 the members of the scientific societies has largely depended 

 upon whether the author of a paper succeeded in organizing his 

 own results and connecting them with the established principles 

 of science. 



Organization, then, is the great central thought in modern 

 scientific research and advanced study. It was organization 

 which led from the old alchemy to the modern chemistry with 

 its center in the atomic theory; and it was organization, be- 

 ginning with the facts within the domains of anatomy, taxonomy, 

 paleontology and physiology, that finally culminated in the great 

 central evolution theory that transformed the old natural history, 

 which literally claimed lo be nothing more than a record of 

 observed facts, into the modern science of zoology. Likewise 

 the history of all modern science is a continuous story of known 

 facts being organized into generalizations which in turn have 

 stimulated the search for more facts leading to more organization. 



Now thus far we have looked at science from the scientist's 

 point of view. But what shall be the teacher's point of view? 



'See this journal, Vol. i, No. i, Jan. 1905, p. 14. Also note in the 

 preceding paper by Dr. Mann, and approved by Dr. Hodge, the definition 

 of science teaching given is based on what it should be ("problem 

 solving"), not on what it usually is. 



