430 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1946 
And finally, it is only through science study that we can acquire 
that most valuable of mental habits, the scientific approach. ‘The 
merest beginner in science soon learns that preconceptions, personal 
bias, and wishful thinking have no place in the laboratory; that each 
problem must be approached with an open mind, subject to no influence 
but that of established fact. Could that approach be learned by the 
majority of men and maintained in the affairs of daily life, how many 
of our political and social problems would be solved, and how soon the 
demagogue and political sophist would disappear. 
True it is, that we have seen some highly trained scientists guilty, 
in political or social issues, of the personal bias, wishful thinking, 
and even unreasoning passion, which are characteristic of the undis- 
ciplined mind. But may it not be that they learned the scientific 
approach too late in life for it to become a habit, so that it remained 
nothing more than an accomplishment, capable of practice in the quiet 
of a laboratory, but impotent in an atmosphere of controversy ? 
ESTABLISH SCIENTIFIC APPROACH IN YOUTH 
It is early in life that our mental habits form, and that fact gives 
tremendous value to the acquisition of the scientific approach as early 
as possible in school days. Herbert Spencer, in his autobiography, 
ascribes whatever success he attained in philosophy to the habit, de- 
veloped in him during childhood by his father, of questioning the rea- 
son for everything he saw. If the all-important mental process which 
we call the scientific approach is to become an integral habit of mind, 
rather than a limited accomplishment, it must be through science sub- 
jects in the school curriculum. 
All children profit from science study in proportion to their mental 
ability. Only through science teaching can those with real aptitude 
for scientific work be discovered and started on the research careers 
urgently demanded by the national interest. Judged from the view- 
point of either the nation’s welfare or the individual pupil’s best 
advantage, the work of the science teachers in our schools is of the 
utmost importance. 
