clements] RE LA TION OF NA TU RE- STUD Y AND SCIENCE 4 1 



By F. L. CLEMENTS 

 Professor of Botany in the University of Minnesota 



In turning away from the work that has done so much to 

 bring nature-study into disrepute, we must take care not to go too 

 far in the opposite direction. We see clearly that there have been 

 too many trifling and unrelated facts; and no method, or a mis- 

 taken one, in presenting them. It is but natural to conclude 

 that method must be emphasized and facts deprecated, and the 

 point is soon reached where method becomes supreme. Pro- 

 fessor Hodge has just shown us that, if he were called upon to 

 choose between the possession of truth and the struggle to attain 

 it, he would unhesitatingly choose the latter. Fortunately, a 

 choice between the two is both unnecessary and undesirable. 

 True science involves both the seeking for truth and the finding 

 it. It is an endless circle in which the seeker finds truth only to 

 recognize that the latter makes possible further and deeper 

 search and this in turn new truths. Let us not think then that 

 the mental disciplining of the child is the one object of nature- 

 studv. It is no more important, no more fundamental than the 

 acquiring of those facts which put him in touch and keep him in 

 sympathv with the natural world about him. 



Questions of what nature-study is and how it should be taught 

 have been much befogged by the view that nature-study and 

 elementary science are totally different things. A careful ex- 

 amination of this point shows that this is a mistaken idea. 

 The method of independent observation at first hand is as vital 

 to the one as to the other. The material to be used is the same, 

 and to give the best results in either case it must be used in some 

 definite sequence. In both nature-study and science, there is 

 one best method and others less good. There is the best material, 

 that which touches the student closely and every day on all sides, 

 and the poorest, in which the points of contact are artificial or 

 infrequent. In neither should the material be merely an incident. 

 The single difference between the two is merely one of degree, or 

 better, one of time. Nature-study is science for the child, science 

 is nature-study for the "grown-up." They are the two parts of a 

 life-long search for truth ; they make up the continuous task of 

 "problem-solving," in which the problems must be graded 

 according to the age of the student. 



