778 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 960 



A large section of the world, an increas- 

 ingly large section of the world, cared more 

 for books that explained the tendencies of 

 the present than for those that embodied 

 the ideals of the past. Perhaps this move- 

 ment may have gone too far and may have 

 caused people to care too little for the 

 ideals of the past, to overvalue scientific 

 reading as compared with historical or 

 literary reading. I shall not try to dis- 

 cuss whether it did or not. At any rate, 

 a curriculum which was exclusively occu- 

 pied with classics and philosophy ceased to 

 meet the demands of grown men or the 

 needs of boys, and the course of study in 

 our colleges had to be remodelled accord- 

 ingly. Each decade of the last fifty years 

 has witnessed a gradual crowding out of 

 classics from our older schools and col- 

 leges by subjects of new and more present 

 interest, and a growth of new schools and 

 colleges of a different kind, where science 

 in varying forms is made the chief subject 

 of attention and other matters relegated 

 more or less to the background. 



Now this increasing interest in science is 

 a matter about which we all, members of the 

 academy and guests of the academy, scien- 

 tific men and literary men, may rejoice 

 heartily. But how far the things that are 

 called science always deserve the name of 

 science, or how far the teaching of such 

 subjects by present methods always de- 

 serves the name of education, is quite 

 another question. Every school superin- 

 tendent likes to stimulate the attention of 

 his pupils by giving them the opportunity 

 to see amusing phenomena with their own 

 eyes, and if possible set them in motion 

 with their own hands. Under some cir- 

 cumstances this may be the best kind of 

 scientific training; under other circum- 

 stances it may be no training at all. 



Nature study — to quote a phrase which 

 is popular among educators of the present 



time — is good if it is made the basis for 

 teaching scientific methods, and bad if it is 

 simply made a means of momentary amuse- 

 ment. Unfortunately, a large part of our 

 school committees and school teachers think 

 that the subject makes the science. They 

 may not go as far as the author of "Mur- 

 ray's Handbook to Spain," who says that 

 the mountains of that country, to quote 

 his own words, "abound in botany and 

 zoology." But they are apt to assume 

 that the picking to pieces of flowers is in 

 itself botany, and that hearing a carbon 

 disulphide mixture make a loud explosion 

 marks progress in chemistry, and to act 

 accordingly. A short time ago a school 

 superintendent in one of our more newly 

 developed parts of the country said he 

 had to make a change because it was so 

 easy to find thoroughly competent teachers 

 of physics, but that so few of them ever 

 knew any algebra. 



Fifty years ago the members of the Na- 

 tional Academy of Sciences who held seats 

 in college faculties were occupied in pro- 

 tecting science against its enemies. I am 

 not sure but what to-day their chief duty 

 lies in protecting it against its friends. 

 When the National Educational Associa- 

 tion says that high schools should be 

 allowed to omit the study of algebra and 

 geometry and that the colleges should be 

 compelled to accept for admission an 

 equivalent amount of "science" — God save 

 the mark! — it is time for the true friends 

 of science to call a halt. 



For the importance of scientific training 

 to the student in our high schools and col- 

 leges is not due primarily, or in large meas- 

 ure, to the facts of physics or biology that 

 he learns in the school. It is due to the 

 training in certain habits of observation 

 and deduction, in certain methods of hy- 

 pothesis and verification, which he can get 

 more effectively by a good course in science 



