To Teach the History of Science? 61 



mi^ht be borrowed from a technical museum or else the old instruments 

 might be replaced by new copies, less impressive perhaps than the origi- 

 nals but just as good for the sake of demonstration. 



The main qualification of a teacher, it is worthwhile repeating it, is 

 a sufficient familiarity with the scientific problems and methods of today, 

 a familiarity which no one can acquire except in the laboratory, the 

 observatory or the hospital. The necessity of that qualification is ob- 

 vious enough when the teacher must deal with modern or contemporary 

 science, which is the general case, but it exists in every case. A good 

 and broad scientific training is needed to explain properly the history 

 not only of modern science but also of ancient and mediaeval science. 



That qualification is necessary but far from sufficient. The time is 

 past when courses on the history or philosophy of science were organ- 

 ized to satisfy the historical dilettantism of a distinguished man of 

 science. The teacher should be historically minded and should have 

 a sufficient grasp of historical methods. He should be philosophically 

 minded and sufficiently polyglot. Moreover, his value, like that of any 

 other teacher, is partly measured by his own investigations and his 

 ability to train other investigators (not the ability of a parrot to train 

 other parrots). It becomes clear that a professor of the history of 

 science should be selected on the same basis as, say, a professor of Greek 

 or a professor of botany. Their qualifications are proved by their pub- 

 lications in their respective fields. There are, of course, many ways of 

 distinguishing oneself as a botanist but the prospective teacher must 

 have distinguished himself in at least one of these ways. No other kind 

 of distinction will be acceptable as a substitute. His main qualifications 

 are his botanical publications and his ability to advance botanical knowl- 

 edge and to inspire and guide his students. 



Impromptu lectures on the basis of one or a few incomplete text- 

 books, there are no others, will not do any longer. The scholar who is 

 privileged to teach the history of science must be prepared to speak 

 from the abundance of his knowledge and experience. His teaching 

 must be a kind of overflow or otherwise it is not worth having. He is 

 obliged to simplify a great deal, because the subject is so large, the time 

 so short, and the students have many other things to study. I believe 

 his teaching should be as simple as -possible, but a simplification without 

 an adequate knowledge of a multitude of unmentioned details is spuri- 

 ous and misleading. Teaching is like paper money which is worth 

 nothing without a gold reserve or other guarantee, hidden but sub- 

 stantial. 



It may be objected that the qualifications which have been enumer- 

 ated are so heavy that few candidates will be found. There will be 

 few candidates at the beginning, but the jobs are equally few; as these 

 increase in number, more candidates will have obtained the necessary 

 training and will become available. With regard to the purely scien- 

 tific qualifications, I would say that as the technicalities of science in- 

 crease there will be more and more men whose technical ability and 

 interest will not be equal to their love of science and to whom the work 



