Januaby 28, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



125 



even into efforts to increase still further 

 the scope of scientific subject-matter in 

 education. The procedure of Spencer is 

 typical. To urge the prerogative of sci- 

 ence, he raised the question vphat knowl- 

 edge, what facts, are of most utility for 

 life, and, answering the question by this 

 criterion of the value of subject-matter, 

 decided in favor of the sciences. Having 

 thus identified education with the amassing 

 of information, it is not a matter of sur- 

 prise that for the rest of his life he taught 

 that comparatively little is to be expected 

 from education in the way of moral train- 

 ing and social reform, since the motives of 

 conduct lie in the affections and the aver- 

 sions, not in the bare recognition of mat- 

 ters of fact. 



Surely if there is any knowledge which 

 is of most worth it is knowledge of the ways 

 by which anything is entitled to be called 

 knowledge instead of being mere opinion or 

 guess-work or dogma. 



Such knowledge never can be learned by 

 itself; it is not information, but a mode 

 of intelligent practise, an habitual disposi- 

 tion of mind. Only by taking a hand in 

 the making of knowledge, by transferring 

 guess and opinion into belief authorized by 

 inquiry, does one ever get a knowledge of 

 the method of knowing. Because partici- 

 pation in the making of knowledge has been 

 scant, because reliance on the efficacy of 

 acquaintance with certain kinds of facts 

 has been current, science has not accom- 

 plished in education what was predicted 

 for it. 



We define science as systematized knowl- 

 edge, but the definition is wholly ambigu- 

 ous. Does it mean the body of facts, the 

 subject-matter ? Or does it mean the proc- 

 esses by which something fit to be called 

 knowledge is brought into existence, and 

 order introduced into the fiux of experi- 

 ence? That science means both of these 



things will doubtless be the reply, and 

 rightly. But in the order both of time and 

 of importance, science as method precedes 

 science as subject-matter. Systematized 

 knowledge is science only because of the 

 care and thoroughness with which it has 

 been sought for, selected and arranged. 

 Only by pressing the courtesy of language 

 beyond what is decent can we term such 

 information as is acquired ready-made, 

 without active experimenting and testing, 

 science. 



The force of this assertion is not quite 

 identical with the commonplace of sci- 

 entific instruction that text-book and lec- 

 ture are not enough; that the student 

 must have laboratory exercises. A stu- 

 dent may acquire laboratory methods as 

 so much isolated and final stuff, just as 

 he may so acquire material from a text- 

 book. One's mental attitude is not neces- 

 sarily changed just because he engages in 

 certain physical manipulations and handles 

 certain tools and materials. Many a stu- 

 dent has acquired dexterity and skill in 

 laboratory methods without its ever occur- 

 ring to him that they have anything to do 

 with constructing beliefs that are alone 

 worthy of the title of knowledge. To do 

 certain things, to learn certain modes of 

 procedure, are to him just a part of the 

 subject-matter to be acquired ; they belong, 

 say, to chemistry, just as do the symbols 

 H2SO4 or the atomic theory. They are part 

 of the arcana in process of revelation to 

 him. In order to proceed in the mystery 

 one has, of course, to master its ritual. 

 And how easily the laboratory becomes lit- 

 urgical! In short, it is a problem and a 

 difficult problem to conduct matters so that 

 the technical methods employed in a sub- 

 ject shall become conscious instrumentali- 

 ties of realizing the meaning of knowledge 

 —what is required in the way of thinking 

 and of search for evidence before anything 



