SOME EXPERIMENTS USED IN THE RUDIMENTARY 

 TEACHING OF BOTANY. 



By Rev. Frederick Charles Kolbe, D.D., D.Litt. 



(Received for publication April ii, 1919.) 



Useful ideas, like metaphors and willing horses, are some- 

 imes in danger of being ridden to death. Over-experimentation 

 at the threshold of Botany is one of them. We are just as liable 

 in Science as in Politics to the cajolery of catch-words. One 

 such catch-word is that Botany is an experimental science. Of 

 course it is, but it does not follow that it must needs be experi- 

 mental from the very start. 



The first stage of every science is pure observation. We 

 let Nature talk to us in her own way. Then we begin to ask 

 questions ; ; we isolate phenomena ; we control the conditions ; we 

 make partial changes in the latter, and watch the corresponding 

 change in the former. Eventually we put Nature to the torture 

 to make her reveal her secrets. That is experiment. When by 

 these means we come to final principles, we argue from them, 

 and the science passes into the deductive stage. 



All the sciences are trying vO become deductive with 

 varying success, but these three stages form the life-history of 

 the whole genus. 



In Geometry, the observation stage was so obvious and 

 universal, and the experiment stage so easy and so completely 

 controlled, that the science leaped at once into deduction ; so 

 much so that it has often been thought — and sometimes still is 

 thought — to be essentially deductive from the start. Hence the 

 frequent educational error of beginning Geometry with the third 

 stage instead of the first. Are we not perhaps making a parallel 

 mistake in Botany when we plunge into the second stage before 

 giving a reasonable chance to the first? 



Direct observation is always the most fruitful way of getting 

 knowledge, when we can have it. It becomes untrustworthy 

 when the object we want to study is too much mixed up with 

 other things, and when the normal conditions are too complex. 

 In such cases we experiment, i.e., we isolate the object, and 

 control and simplify the conditions — in order once more to 

 exercise direct observation. 



Now while from Nature's side the value of observation 

 varies as the isolation of the object, on our side it varies as the 

 intuitive knowledge we have of the conditions. 



Hence Psychologv. for instance, must always be predomi- 

 nantly introspective. Nothing is better isolated than our person- 

 ality : of nothing have we more intuitive knowledge than of our 

 reactions on our environment. Psychological experiment will 

 doubtless become increasingly interesting, but can never be the 

 mainspring of the science. 



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