August 28, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



263 



courses in colleges of pure science for the 

 wMms and fads of the various instructors, 

 for at some later place in the course the 

 balance may be restored. This, however, 

 is not true in a school of engineering. 

 There is very little room for the practise 

 of fads and new schemes. It is easy to 

 exaggerate the need of a special sort of 

 subject matter in mathematics and a spe- 

 cial class of problems for engineering stu- 

 dents. We are apt to make some very 

 foolish mistakes, if we undertake to change 

 too freely the scientific material that is 

 presented to engineering students. A good 

 engineer is worthy of the best science and 

 the best instruction that can be brought to 

 him— he himself Avould be the first to 

 object if a different program were carried 

 out. 



I have had a little experience in employ- 

 ing engineering graduates in engineering 

 work. In the past ten years I have given 

 employment, in various capacities, to about 

 one hundred and thirty engineering grad- 

 uates. This work has been scattered over 

 quite a wide territory and the men have 

 come from the institutions of the east, from 

 the Pacific Coast, from the Mississippi 

 Valley and from the south. I have been 

 able to judge within the limits of my ex- 

 perience what the young engineering grad- 

 uates know, and what they have forgotten. 

 I find it true that the boys have forgotten 

 a great deal of the material they had in 

 college, and that they have remembered 

 other things. They remember the manual 

 and the mechanical things — how to swim, 

 how to ride a horse, how to fish, how to 

 play ball, how to run the level, how to work 

 the plane table, and how to do stadia work. 

 Now what have they forgotten ? The men 

 have forgotten the intellectual things — 

 hydraulics, electrical science, thermody- 

 namics, etc. The human mind possesses 

 an unlimited capacity for forgetting. But 

 my experience shows that the young men 



forget their hydraulics just as quickly as 

 they forget their mathematics or their 

 mechanics. The engineer in the field ob- 

 serves that a boy remembers the right end 

 of an instrument and seems to be amazed 

 that the same man does not know the right 

 end of an integral sign. He therefore 

 concludes that the mathematics has not 

 been "taught right." If he will compare 

 intellectual things with intellectual things 

 he will find that a miscellaneous group of 

 engineers will pass as good an examination 

 in mathematics ten years after graduation 

 as they would pass in thermodynamics or 

 hydraulics. 



It grates on me to hear mathematics 

 spoken of as a tool. Mathematics is to the 

 engineer a basal science and not a tool. 

 The spirit of that science is of more value 

 to the engineer than the particular things 

 that can be accomplished. The engineer 

 need not be a mathematician, but he needs 

 to think mathematically, and, to my mind, 

 he needs the power of mathematical 

 thought more than skill in manipulating 

 a few mathematical tools in mechanical 

 fashion. There are already too many fac- 

 tory-made products turned over to the col- 

 lege by the secondary schools. I make a 

 fundamental contrast between the engineer 

 with his mind endowed with the power of 

 creative and rational design, and the ar- 

 tisan with his hands equipped with tools 

 for physical construction. A great engi- 

 neer must be trained in correct seeing and 

 thinking, and must have the power of rea- 

 soning concerning some of the highest ab- 

 stractions of the human mind. In this 

 aspect mathematics is not a tool— it is a 

 basal science. 



Chas. S. Slighter 



University of Wisconsin 



At the close of Professor Townsend's 

 address he urged the desirability of tech- 

 nical schools offering more elective ad- 



