III. IS IT POSSIBLE TO TEACH 

 THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE? 



The first two lectures have considered the question "Is it worthwhile 

 to teach the history of science?", and I trust have prompted you to an- 

 swer it in the affirmative. The writer is not naive enough to imagine 

 that such a decision will be universal, or even general. Much hostility 

 or inertia will stop our advance or slow it up. Let me briefly reiterate 

 the main sources of opposition and indifference. 



There are, in the first place, those who would reject the whole past. 

 The past is finished, irremediable, permanent; there is nothing we can 

 do about it, and hence it is better not to worry about it. In the second 

 place, some men of science will admit interest in history and realize its 

 importance and difficulties, but they are not interested in the history of 

 science. Science, they would say, need not concern itself with its own 

 past; artists may study the history of art, because the art of the past is, 

 or may be, as up-to-date, as new, as their own; the science of the past, 

 on the contrary, is definitely inferior to our own and has been superseded 

 by it. Our new scientific books contain all that is worthwhile in the 

 old, less the rubbish. The very perfectibility of science causes its past 

 efforts to be negligible. 



There is no hope of overcoming the animosity of these two groups; 

 they are historically blind. Let us now introduce a third group, not of 

 enemies but of ignorant and dangerous friends. You may remember 

 Voltaire's saying "God help me against my friends. I can take care 

 of my enemies." That "cri du coeur" has often been repeated, I am 

 sure, with less impertinence but with equal poignancy. There is a large 

 group of men of science, perhaps a majority, who are interested in the 

 history of science, nay, enthusiastic about it, but hardly see the necessity 

 of studying it. "It is all so simple and so easy, hardly a man's job." 

 They know well enough scientific [their own] difficulties but have no 

 idea whatsoever of historical methods and pitfalls. History is easy to 

 read, but it does not follow that it is easy to write. Indeed, it is very 

 difficult to find the truth in historical matters, and having found it, to 

 express it clearly. How difficult is it? Is it more difficult than, say, the 

 theory of functions or spectral analysis? Is it more difficult to walk on 

 a tight rope than to play the violin? Foolish questions all. Each of 

 these things is not only difficult but impossible for those who are not 

 sufficiently prepared for it by nature and training. Historical investiga- 

 tions remain difficult even for those who have received the best prepara- 

 tion; the absence of difficulties is apparent only to those who are unpre- 

 pared and ignorant. Many of our friends, distinguished men of science, 

 well-meaning but injudicious when the past is concerned, love the history 

 of science so much that they accept as good any book on the subject 



