To Teach the History of Science? 57 



ber of my students have no classical education whatsoever, and except 

 w^hen they are of Greek descent, have no knowledge of Greek. My 

 course on ancient science is sometimes their classical initiation; in such 

 cases, it is utterly insufficient, yet I hope that even then it may possibly 

 awaken a dormant interest, not only in science but also in ancient 

 wisdom. 



I need not discuss mediaeval science, because I have already spoken 

 of it in my second lecture, but it is worthwhile to insist once more upon 

 my attitude concerning oriental science. Arabic science must be dealt 

 with some fulness, because it is an intrinsic part of our own traditions. 

 As to Hindu and Chinese science, important as they undoubtedly are, 

 there is no time to discuss them in the usual courses, for anv such dis- 

 cussion would be a digression taking us too far away from the main 

 tracks. It is well, however, to speak sometimes of India and China, if 

 only by way of contrast and comparison and to make the students realize 

 the coexistence of scientific efforts which, insofar as they reached a part 

 of the truth, converged with the western efforts. The men of science of 

 India and China were trying to solve problems which were essentially 

 the same as ours; their solutions were sometimes the same as ours, some- 

 times curiously different; the differences are as instructive as the resem- 

 blances. I only wish such comparisons might be made more often and 

 more thoroughly, but then our courses would be incomplete in other 

 respects or altogether disjointed. 



It all comes down to this, that even a course like mine extending to 

 140 lectures is barely sufficient to give the student a bird's-eye view of 

 science. And yet, I am told that many teachers are expected to cover 

 the whole field in half that time, or even in a third or a quarter of it. 

 What happens then? 



We shall come back to that presently, but I must first complete the 

 account of my experience with a sad confession. I have never given 

 a lecture which satisfied me, because I have hardly ever had that feeling 

 of security and happiness, which is a scholar's best reward when he has 

 finally succeeded in checking every statement down to its ultimate 

 sources. This failure is due to the fact that I had to deal not with one 

 separate subject which I would have leisure to study thoroughly but with 

 hundreds of subjects jostling each other. It was also due to the imma- 

 turity of our studies. The situation is vastly different in older fields, 

 such as English history, or English literature, in which elaborate mono- 

 graphs are available for every point of importance. On the contrary, 

 if an expert opens any "history of science," wherein everything seems 

 to be neatly explained, he recognizes unwarranted statements on almost 

 every page. If he be honest, he will do his best to trace those statements 

 to their sources, to prove them or disprove them, and finally to present 

 a new statement nearer to the truth. He can do that to his satisfaction 

 in some instances, but if he be a teacher of the history of science in 

 general, he is soon obliged to move on. In other words, thousands of 

 investigations remain to be made, and the writing of the history of 

 science will improve gradually in proportion as those investigations are 



