Fuller • The Role of Botany in a Liberal Education 15 



Stick of social utility; 2. We should that plants poison the air at night, 

 emphasize the value of opening the that oaks, poplars, willows, and wal- 

 minds of students to entirely new facts, nuts do not have flowers, that one may 

 ideas, and experiences and we should distinguish between edible and poison- 

 do what we can to enhance the individ- ous mushrooms by placing a silver coin 

 ual intellectual pleasure and under- against a fresh slice of the sporophore 

 standing which a student may gain and observing the color change), com- 

 from his contemplation of these en- monly leads to a kind of intellectual 

 tirely new vistas. To create a new need pleasure, the delight of being "in on the 

 in students, the need to know ever more, know." 



is more desirable than to cater merely 3. Understanding the interdepend- 

 to those needs which students possess ence of living organisms, as this may be 

 before they enter our classes. appreciated through the study of the 

 Now the question of what specific carbon and nitrogen cycles, of the 

 contributions botany can make to lib- relationships between flowers and pol- 

 eral education; these relate largely, I linating insects, of parasitism and sym- 

 believe, to the pleasure and intellectual biosis, of nutritional checks and bal- 

 stimulation which come from "being in ances, of ecological phenomena. Such 

 on the know": study will broaden and deepen a stu- 



1. Recognition and appreciation of dent's conception of the operations of 

 beauty in the plant world, not as a nature, will create or reinforce the idea 

 separate kind of unit, but rather as de- of order and of symmetry in the world, 

 rivative of studving plant structure: 4. Demonstration that the scien- 

 Spirogyra, diatoms, microscopic sec- tific method is not an esoteric tech- 

 tions of woods, cleistothecia of pow- nique peculiar to white-coated gents 

 der)' mildews, flowers, for example. It testing mouthwashes or adding num- 

 is an entirely legitimate and a desirable bers to toothpastes, but that it is 

 activity of scientists to emphasize basically the method of common sense, 

 beauty wherever it may be found in Such demonstration may be achieved 

 nature, but such emphasis is only infre- by having students propose, discuss, 

 quently given, since, in large segments and criticize real or hypothetical ex- 

 of American science, to mention the periments. The acquisition of some 

 word "beauty" is seemingly considered skill in scientific thinking may lead to 

 not quite manly. the development of less emotional, 



2. Making known to students that more objective, more calculating 

 satisfaction which comes from possess- methods of viewing controversial ques- 

 ing accurate knowledge, from detecting tions and problems, to the detection 

 and rejecting misinformation and su- of spurious claims in advertising, to 

 perstition. Such satisfaction may arise generally more objective modes of 

 in large degree from the flattering of thinking. 



the ego, certainly a legitimate function 5. Appreciation of the interrelation- 



of education, if that flatterv is derived ships among the sciences and the con- 



from intellectual growth. The erasure nections of the sciences with other 



from student minds of superstitions fields of human thought. The relation 



and misconceptions about plants (e.g., between plant production and soil 



that spontaneous generation accounts science, that between plant functions 



for the appearance of molds on stale and chemistn', that between tree rings 



foods, that veast is a chemical, that and meteoroiog\% and especially that 



plants lose their nutritive value if they among botany, archaeology^, philology', 



do not receive "organic fertilizers," radiation physics, human history, an- 



