58 Introduction 



carried through. No one scholar is competent or has time enough to 

 make them all. For every period, for every science or branch of 

 science, for every country or cultural group, there is plenty of work left 

 for many generations of scholars. This does not matter so much as long 

 as we are fully aware of the imperfections of our knowledge; more 

 work for our successors means also more joy for them. 



It is hard and tantalizing to cover the whole field in, say, a series of 

 130 to 150 lectures. What would be the fate of a teacher who was ex- 

 pected to cover it in 60 lectures or 40 or even less? There is a way out, 

 however, and that is simply not to attempt to cover the whole of it. 

 After all, if any teacher finds that the subject is too vast, he can always, 

 to some extent, restrict it. As the most interesting part of the history 

 of science for young men of science of today is naturally modern science, 

 a teacher could hardly leave that out; he could focus his lectures on 

 modern science or rather on particular topics to which the very progress 

 of science is giving a new significance. 



Indeed, the history of nineteenth and twentieth century science is so 

 enormous that it can only be dealt with in a given course in one of two 

 ways. Either the instructor may attempt to cover the whole of it, and 

 that will oblige him to give a catalogue of facts so bare as to lose mean- 

 ing,^^ or he will select only a few examples and treat them as fully as 

 possible.^^ The second solution is undoubtedly the better one, and it 

 implies the teacher's salvation. The samples should be selected in dif- 

 ferent parts of the field in order to give of it as comprehensive a view as 

 possible. Yet the teacher will be guided, to some extent, by his own 

 merits and shortcomings. It would be fair for himself and the students 

 to select the subjects which he knows best, and, which is more impor- 

 tant, to leave out the subjects that he does not feel competent to deal 

 with. The main thing is that the students be made to realize the com- 

 plexity and wealth, the diversity of methods, the social implications of 

 modern science. 



As to the more distant past (however you define that), it may pos- 

 sibly be sacrificed. It is, in fact, what most teachers do. They either 

 leave it completely out or reach the sixteenth century in a few gigantic 

 jumps. That is deplorable, but if the teacher is assigned the task of 



°^ A good example of highly compressed history is that given by Siegmund 

 GiJNTHER (1848-1923): Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften {2nd ed., 2 Uttle vols, 

 of the Philipp Reclams Universal-Bibliothek which were seUing at 20 Pf. each, 136 

 p., 290 p., ill., Leipzig 1909). The limit in that direction was attained in the Hand- 

 buch zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik, edited by Ludwig 

 Darmstaedter (1846-1927) (2nd edition, 1273 p., Berhn 1908); this is simply a 

 list of discoveries and inventions in chronological order from 3500 B.C. to 1908 A.D., 

 a very useful work which ought to be improved and continued (Isis 26, 56-58, 

 1936). 



™ This was done very well by James B. Conant: On understanding science. An 

 historical approach ( 162 p., 10 figs., Terry Lectures, New Haven, Yale Press 1947; 

 Isis 38, 125-27). 



