508 EDUCATION 



usefully to employ this mode of thinking in ordinary life is, at 

 least, presumptive evidence that it can be usefully employed 

 in science where especial care is exercised. 



828. My object, however, is not to assail the attitude of the 

 systematists. " The isolation of the systematists is one of the 

 most melancholy sequela of Darwinism." l They are doomed to 

 extinction ; for facts arranged in chains of causation are so very 

 much more interesting to normal human beings than facts arranged 

 in any other way, and normal people are so driven to think, are so 

 trained to think, in chains of causation, by the ordinary con- 

 ditions of their lives, that even the severest systematic training 

 can hardly repress, and rarely quite represses, the tendency, the 

 instinct, to think in that way. Pure systematists are now a small 

 minority, even among biologists, and as a type are unknown, and 

 have always been unknown, amongst the students of all other 

 sciences. The great weight of scientific practice and opinion has 

 ever been strongly against them. They are a peculiar product of 

 biological training which still remains almost purely systematic ; 

 for, though Darwin greatly altered the course of biological thought, 

 his influence has not yet affected the method by which students 

 are instructed to nearly the same extent. Like monks and nuns, 

 systematists afford a remarkable example of the importance of 

 acquirement in human mental development, and of its power to 

 nullify even an instinct. 



829. My object is to draw attention to the circumstance that, 

 while the majority of biologists, impelled by instinct and informal 

 training, think about biological facts in terms of causation, yet, 

 unlike mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers, they receive 

 little or no formal education which especially fits them to deal with 

 their data in that way. Here they are, in fact, untrained thinkers. 

 I make this statement with no offensive intention. It may be 

 verified in any centre of biological teaching. All biological cur- 

 ricula are designed to impart only " systematic " knowledge. 

 If it is unscientific to think in terms of causation, it is never 

 explained to learners why it is unscientific. The result is that 

 numbers of students are left with what can only be very misty 

 or wrong notions as to what constitutes science. The circum- 

 stance that biologists are divided by real sectarian differences 

 that is, differences founded on an improper acceptance or rejection 

 of evidence or modes of thinking 2 is, alone, sufficient proof that 



1 Bateson, Darwin and Modern Science, p. 89 (footnote). 

 * See 45- 



