THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY 1 3 



ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ARTHUR T HADLEY 



OF YALE 



ON 



" The Relation of Science to the Higher Education 



in America " 



Dr. HADLEY: Mr. President, Members of the National 

 Academy, and Ladies and Gentlemen: The half century which 

 has elapsed since the founding of this Academy has witnessed, 

 as we all know, a radical change in the relations between science 

 and education. This change is equally marked in professional 

 training which prepares students for their several callings, and 

 in the general training which prepares them for the duties and 

 enjoyments of citizenship. 



Fifty years ago the professional study of science in our univer- 

 sities was confined within very narrow limits, surprisingly 

 narrow to those who see those places as they are today. There 

 was no room for science in the schools of theology or of law. 

 Schools of philosophy, in the modern sense of the word, had 

 hardly developed. Even in schools of medicine, where among 

 universities the study of natural sciences first gained a foothold, 

 there was relatively little of scientific method as we today under- 

 stand the words, either in the teaching or in the study. There 

 was much more learning of names of things and much less 

 learning of reasons of things; much more of tradition and much 

 less of investigation. The anatomy and chemistry of the medical 

 schools of those days were good sciences, as far as they went, but 

 they generally did not go very far. As to the use made of it, 

 there is truth in the remark of one of my former colleagues that 

 down to a recent day the three learned professions of theology, 

 law and medicine had not advanced far beyond the old con- 

 ception of the magic of the tribal medicine man, that the im- 

 portant thing for science to do was to find proper formulas of 

 exorcism with which to banish evil spirits from their several 

 realms of action. 



