December 16, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



591 



man quality that lies tinder and behind all 

 progress — that all progress is at the expense 

 of human endeavor. And is not this one of 

 the prime objects of education? 



Tlie history of physics is only beginning 

 to be fully appreciated. In one of the east- 

 ern universities, courses were conducted for 

 a time by the head of the physics department, 

 in which he sought to present " not only the 

 material that can be found in some of the 

 books upon the subject, but also traced the 

 development of certain fundamental fields." 

 He employed the lecture method. His suc- 

 cess and possibly the reason why the work was 

 not continued after his departure from the 

 institution, are explained in part by the re- 

 mark of one of his colleagues. 



Professor himself was able to add the 



personal touch of experience in the historical de- 

 velopment in many phases of the work in physics. 



This, of course, is a brief statement of the 

 ideal qualifications of the director of any 

 course in tlie history of science. 



Often brief courses on special historical 

 subjects, or rapid surveys of a large portion 

 of the growth of a science are opened to pro- 

 spective teachers. Such work — where the 

 students are well grounded in their subject 

 and where the widest possible use is made of 

 the departmental library — is probably of no 

 small value, if for no other reason than that 

 by enriching the coming teacher's outlook, it 

 will make better the instruction of the next 

 generation. 



Wliere time is limited, a course may be 

 offered, say, once in three years, or the de- 

 partmental society or club may be pushed 

 into really serious activity. Even extension 

 courses are worth while if the students are 

 themselves teaching and have some library 

 and laboratory facilities at their own dis- 

 posal. Such work may be closely allied with 

 regular graduate work in the same field. 



A suggestion as to how a course may be 

 comixjsed of biographical studies, as well as 

 of a review of purely technical developments, 

 may be gained from the statement that the 

 study of the history of botany in one of the 

 greater universities has " included not only 



the evolution of the science, but the lives 

 and contributions of leading botanists, the 

 history of the microscope, etc." 



METHOD OF PRESENTATION 



The formation of a course in the history of 

 any branch of science has, in the majority of 

 cases, waited for the appearance of some sort 

 of book that might serve as a text. Few in- 

 structors have had the time or the courage to 

 plunge into such a course dependent only on 

 their own lecture material and the assignments 

 of collateral reading. No matter how desirable 

 it may be that the teacher should be thoroughly 

 capable of writing his own text, energy and 

 opportunity are seldom available for such an 

 accomplishment. 



Almost with one accord, the teachers who 

 have responded to the present inquiry have 

 voiced this need for text-books, for there is 

 very little in English that may be so used. 

 Note that the cry is not because of a lack of 

 original source material for reference or re- 

 search work, but for suitable secondary sources 

 that present the material in a form sufficiently 

 well chosen and digested to be usable by the 

 beginner and constitute a skeleton about which 

 a course may be built up. This seems to be 

 true even in the cases of those sciences of which 

 one or two quite admirable histories are now 

 available. In addition, little is to be found in 

 book form covering the developments of the 

 last decade or so. Of the few history texts 

 available, there is almost no choice. They are 

 necessarily the same works as used elsewhere 

 and in former courses. For obvious reasons 

 they can not be listed here, but their number 

 is so small that every science teacher probably 

 has on his own desk all that is obtainable for 

 his use at the present time. 



These few books are usually the outgrowths 

 of lectures given when there were no texts at 

 all. The years that have elapsed since their 

 publication have put them out of touch with 

 modern advances, although this is a fault which 

 may usually be overcome by the use of refer- 

 ences to current literature during the latter 

 days of the courses in which they are used. It 

 is perhaps not surprising that teachers have 



