638 



NA TURE 



[October 22, 1908 



secure success. Much of the very best work, as we all 

 know, in science has been done in very inferior quarters 

 and with very poor appliances. 



Dr. Warren's personal acquaintance with the work 

 of the museum, extending as it does over about two- 

 thirds of the fifty years of its e.xistence, his well- 

 know-n strong interest in natural science, and his full 

 appreciation of the paramount influence the scientific 

 method exerts on every form of human activity, make 

 his sketch of the work accomplished by the great men 

 of science who have been associated with the museum 

 especially valuable. He said : — 



1 have seen the museum, then, and its work, growing 

 and advancing for something over thirty years. I can 

 recall the individual characteristics and work of the 

 eminent professors who have served it in its different 

 departments during this period, the brilliant zoological 

 series of RoUeston, Moseley, Lankester, and Weldon, and 

 the brilliant geological series of Philips, Prestwich, and 

 Green. I can remember the introduction of physiology and 

 the epoch-making advent of Sir John Burdon-Sanderson. 

 All along the line there has been continuous, steady, and 

 healthy growth. I do not know how the number of 

 students or the departments of the museum now would 

 compare with that of the numbers when I was an under- 

 graduate. I will take one simple test. I find that in 1872, 

 the year I came to Oxford, the number of names in the 

 natural science honours list is ten. The number of names 

 last term in the corresponding list is seventy-four, seven 

 times as many. When I was an undergraduate the Oxford 

 Medical School was a shadow of a mighty name. The 

 medical student was a lara avis. My impression is that 

 there was one, or at the most two, a year at Balliol when 

 I was there, and in the whole University I should doubt 

 whether there were a dozen. In the strict sense there 

 were hardly any. That is to say, there was scarcely a 

 student studying medicine in any of its branches within 

 the University. Now all that is changed. We have been 

 singularly fortunate in our series of medical professors. 

 Sir Henry Acland, Sir John Burdon-Sanderson, Dr. Osier. 

 It would be difficult to show a more brilliant trio or a 

 trio more suited to complement and supplement each 

 other's labours. I have always held, and I think that 

 experience has justified the belief, that a strong medical 

 school would be for the advantage of pure science in 

 Oxford. Out of practical schools, if properly administered, 

 research work grows, just as again research gives ever 

 new life to practical studies. I think the same is true of 

 practical studies like forestry, which we have recently 

 introduced ; agriculture, a still later introduction ; and 

 engineering, which I am rejoiced to think is just going 

 to commence its work here. It will be seen, then, that 

 science has made an immense advance in Oxford. 



We welcome this advance, and we look forward 

 hopefully to the future in store for science in the 

 University of Oxford. We acknowledge frankly and 

 gratefully that the serious Oxford student realises 

 fully the beneficial influence which the earnest pursuit 

 of the methods of scientific inquiry in a imiversity 

 has upon other studies. We know that many Oxford 

 professors and students of other subjects acknowledge 

 that the adoption of the methods perfected by men 

 of science to problems in their particular domains 

 have led to unprecedented results. But it is still true 

 that the average Oxford man leaves his Alma Mater 

 profoundly ignorant of the scientific method, and with 

 a scarcely veiled contempt for natural knowledge ; 

 and it is the ordinary university man, who remains 

 undistinguished from the academic point of view, who 

 eventually exerts a predominating influence in Parlia- 

 ment, and in county and municipal affairs. 



In his address the Vice-Chancellor dealt with these 

 facts, and his wise words foster the hope 

 that steps will be taken to ensure that no man 

 ignorant of the fundamental principles of science shall 

 leave his university with any sort of academic diploma. 



NO. 2034, VOL. 78] 



With all this activity in its own field, natural science 

 does not really affect, as it should, the minds of the ran'K 

 and file of our able young students here. It is not 

 brought home to them ; they do not appreciate or under- 

 stand it. They either still retain some of that old pre- 

 judice and contempt which regarded science at schools as 

 an extra or a /od, or else they are indifferent to it. 

 Some few years ago I remember Prof. Lankester com- 

 plaining that our statesmen and public men generally 

 reared in our public schools and at the old universities 

 were insensible of, indifferent to, the claims of science. 

 I think that while he spoke strongly, as he often does, I 

 think he also spoke as he not seldom does, even when he 

 speaks strongly, with reason. This ought not to be the 

 case. It is the scientific attitude and frame of mind, the 

 scientific outlook on the world, as a part of general culture, 

 which is, I think, what is wanted in education, and par- 

 ticularly in Oxford education, to-day. Oxford has many 

 great intellectual traditions. Some of them are less strong 

 than they were, but they are still potent. The old 

 scholastic tradition, partly theological, partly philosophical, 

 partly logical, is still potent with us. Our predominating 

 school, even if it is now only prima inter pares, is the 

 philosophical school of Literae Humaniores. It affects 

 insensibly and indirectly even those who never read for it. 

 It is an admirable tradition. So again is the more literary 

 tradition of our classical scholarship. I hope that these 

 traditions will always be maintained. I think they do to 

 some extent affect the scientific student here. I should 

 like to see them affect him more than they do, and I 

 believe that I should carry many of the leading men of 

 science with me in that desire. But what I should also 

 like to see is the classical and the literary, the philosophical 

 and the theological student, more affected by science. I 

 should like to see science an element in our general educa- 

 tion both in our schools and in the universities, and we 

 are told, and I believe it is true, that if we wish to have 

 it in the schools, we must insist on having it in the 

 university. It is not so much that I think the small 

 amount of actual knowledge which would be acquired by 

 the individual student would be of great value, but I think 

 it would conduce to the creation of this general atmo- 

 sphere which I desire to see created. 



Fortunately it is becoming recognised increasingly 

 that the object to be aimed at in every sphere and 

 stage of education is the inculcation of the scientific 

 spirit, a patient training in the methods of science, 

 which leads a person, whatever the problem with 

 which he is confronted, courageously to look facts in 

 the face, and after a broad survey of the conditions 

 so far as available processes of inquiry make possible, 

 humbly to endeavour to trace the causes of the effects 

 which have been accurately and honestly recorded. 

 Science has before now been taught, not only in 

 schools, but in the universities themselves, in such 

 a manner as to obscure rather than elucidate the atti- 

 tude of the true man of science, but the Vice-Chan- 

 cellor made it clear that this danger is fully appre- 

 ciated at Oxford. As he remarked : — 



The real lessons of science do not, I think, consist in 

 knowledge of facts. . . . They consist in the recognition 

 of the importance of truth, of absolute scrupulous accuracy 

 in matters great or small ; that nothing happens without 

 a cause and without a consequence ; that matter, how- 

 ever mutable it may be, is indestructible ; that the same 

 elements, or many of them, as are found in our earth 

 may be found, for instance, in the sun, and probably 

 pervade the universe ; that energy in the same way is 

 imperishable ; the general scientific conception of force, 

 of atoms, of gravitation, of resistance, of mass, of pro- 

 portionate combination, and of the methods by which these 

 truths were discovered and can be again demonstrated — 

 these are the things which ought to be part of our common 

 heritage and knowledge. I hope the next era will see, 

 not the decay or the obliteration of the old traditions, but 

 the addition of the new. 



Thus to urge the claims of science as a valuable 

 instrument of education of the kind necessary to train 



