How to Become a Scientist — High School Years 87 



mastered only by gigantic feats of memory. Species follow 

 species, each with an awkward new name to be remembered. 

 Furthermore, each species exhibits important variations in 

 the structure of its digestive, circulatory, respiratory, skele- 

 tal, glandular, and nervous systems. All these must often be 

 learned before the student has gained much of a notion of 

 what any of these systems does and how it does it. But it is 

 just these latter questions which make the subject interest- 

 ing to most students. Far too many, however, become so 

 bored with phylogeny that they abandon biology long be- 

 fore they can find out how interesting it can be. 



Finally we come to our point. Biological function can be 

 understood only in terms of physics and chemistry. "The 

 heart works like a mechanical pump and develops a pres- 

 sure as a result of the viscosity of the blood and the resist- 

 ance imposed by the smaller blood vessels." What meaning 

 can such a statement have to somebody who does not under- 

 stand elementary hydraulics? "The kidney helps to main- 

 tain the osmotic pressure of the blood, as well as the proper 

 pattern of the positive and negative ions, especially the all- 

 important hydrogen ion concentration." What does this 

 mean to someone who has had neither physics nor chem- 

 istry? These are only the most elementary sort of examples 

 of the way in which modern biology depends on physics and 

 chemistry. It hardly seems necessary to go any further in 

 defending our recommended order for the science courses. 



Nevertheless, one should not be rigid in interpreting the 

 foregoing suggestion. Circumstances do alter cases. Too 

 much advice to students is given in terms of subject con- 

 tent, curriculum design, and so on; too little attention is 

 paid to the quality of the teacher. It is always uncomfort- 

 able to draw distinctions between people, and of course it 

 is impossible to do so when the person in question is not 

 known to the person giving the advice. It thus turns out 



