392 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 613. 



and the judgment upon the students most 

 unflattering, for the research method is, 

 after all, nothing but the elaboration of the 

 simple processes of perceiving and conceiv- 

 ing the world, elaborated in such a way that 

 it can be applied to the complex and subtle 

 problems of the physicist, the geologist, the 

 biologist, etc. If the scientific method were 

 the cause of unpopularity we should have 

 to assume that the process of knowledge 

 itself, the very function of cognition, was 

 disagreeable to the average student. 



If, however, we examine these two types 

 of studies we do meet a distinction which 

 holds for many if not for all. In the phys- 

 ical sciences the process of investigation 

 involves the analysis of the objects, which 

 are studied, into elements which are not 

 present to immediate experience and which 

 are with difficulty conceived and presented 

 to the mind. The resolution of nature into 

 atoms and molecules or corpuscles is an 

 undertaking presenting itself at the begin- 

 ning of scientific investigation, that is not 

 forced upon the social sciences. Here the 

 elements into which analysis reduces its 

 objects are at bottom, but more or less re- 

 producible states of our own consciousness, 

 or still more direct objects of possible 

 sense-perception. This was a difficulty that 

 did not inhere in the old-time natural his- 

 tory. There the problem that aroused in- 

 vestigation was stated in terms of every- 

 day experience, and for this very reason 

 natural history was a more successful sub- 

 ject in the curriculum than our physics and 

 chemistry. Its problems were real prob- 

 lems in the minds of the students. They 

 were not located in a field as yet foreign to 

 their acquaintance and, therefore, artificial 

 and unmeaning. 



The problems of biology and geology do 

 not suffer as much from this remoteness, 

 for to a large degree they can be stated in 

 terms of a possible immediate experience 

 of the student, and it is true that they make 



a more immediate appeal to the student 

 than do the physical sciences. But it must 

 not be forgotten that these biological and 

 geological sciences are to no small degree 

 applied physics and chemistry, and that 

 this tendency is steadily increasing. That 

 is, it is increasingly difficult to state the 

 problems of these sciences in terms of im- 

 mediate experience; their problems do not 

 arise of themselves in the consciousness of 

 the student, in other words, he is not imme- 

 diately interested in the study. 



We can generalize this in the following 

 form : the result of the development of our 

 sciences has been that their problems are 

 no longer within the immediate experience 

 of the student, nor are they always sta- 

 table in terms of that experience. He has 

 to be introduced to the science before he 

 can reach the source of interest, i. e., prob- 

 lems which are his own and which he wants 

 to solve by the process of his own thinking. 



On the whole, the problems of the social 

 sciences have a meaning to the student 

 when he meets them, i. e., they can be his 

 own problems from the start, and they do 

 not have to be translated into terms which 

 must be somewhat painfully acquired be- 

 fore they can be used. 



In a certain sense mathematics has be- 

 come the language of the physical sciences, 

 and the student must have a command of 

 this vernacular before he can read with 

 interest that which is writ in the sciences, 

 before he can attack their problems. But 

 even where the vernacular of the science is 

 not that of mathematics, it is still true, to 

 a large extent, that the field of the real 

 problems in the science lies outside of the 

 direct experience of the student. 



It hangs together with this, in the second 

 place, that the natural sciences are not in- 

 terconnected in the minds of the students, 

 that they exist in water-tight compart- 

 ments. There is no common field out of 

 which they all spring. It seems to me that 



