156 CONCLUSIONS 



student is obliged to read, assimilate and remember a vast amount 

 of factual information on the quite false assumption that know- 

 ledge is the accumulation of facts. There seems so much to be 

 learnt that the only consolation the student has is that those who 

 come after him will have even more to learn, for more will be 

 known. But this is not really so ; much of what we learn today are 

 only half truths or less and the students of tomorrow will not be 

 bothered by many of the phlogistons that now torment our brains. 

 It is in the interpretation and understanding of the factual 

 information and not the factual information itself that the true 

 interest lies. Information must precede interpretation, and it is 

 often difficult to see the factual data in perspective. If one reads 

 an account of the history of biology such as that presented by 

 Nordenskiold (1920) or Singer (1950) it sometimes appears that 

 our predecessors had a much easier task to discover things than we 

 do today. All that they had to do was realise, say, that oxygen 

 was necessary for respiration, or that bacteria could cause 

 septicaemia or that the pancreas was a ductless gland that secreted 

 insulin. The ideas were simple; they just required the thought 

 and the experimental evidence ! Let us have no doubt in our minds 

 that in twenty years or so time, we shall look back on many of 

 today's problems and make similar observations. Everything will 

 seem simple and straightforward once it has been explained. Why 

 then cannot we see some of these solutions now? There are many 

 partial answers to this question. One is that often an incorrect 

 idea or fact is accepted and takes the place of the correct one. An 

 incorrect view can in this way successfully displace the correct 

 view for many years and it requires very careful analysis and much 

 experimental data to overthrow an accepted but incorrect theory. 

 Most students become acquainted with many of the current 

 concepts in biology whilst still at school and at an age when most 

 people are, on the whole, uncritical. Then when they come to 

 study the subject in more detail, they have in their minds several 

 half truths and misconceptions which tend to prevent them from 

 coming to a fresh appraisal of the situation. In addition, with a 

 uniform pattern of education most students tend to have the same 

 sort of educational background and so in conversation and dis- 

 cussion they accept common fallacies and agree on matters based 

 on these fallacies. 



