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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 787 



passes from the realm of opinion, guess 

 work and dogma into that of knowledge. 

 Yet unless this perception accrues, we can 

 hardly claim that an individual has been 

 instructed in science. This problem of 

 turning laboratory technique to intellectual 

 account is even more pressing than that of 

 utilization of information derived from 

 books. Almost every teacher has had 

 drummed into him the inadequacy of mere 

 book instruction, but the conscience of most 

 is quite at peace if only pupils are put 

 through some laboratory exercises. Is not 

 this the path of experiment and induction 

 by which science develops? 



I hope it will not be supposed that, in 

 dwelling upon the relative defect and back- 

 wardness of science teaching I deny its 

 absolute achievements and improvements, 

 if I go on to point out to what a compara- 

 tively slight extent the teaching of science 

 has succeeded in protecting the so-called 

 educated public against recrudescences of 

 all sorts of corporate superstitions and silli- 

 ness. Nay, one can go even farther and 

 say that science teaching not only has not 

 protected men and women who have been 

 to school from the revival of all kinds of 

 occultism, but to some extent has paved the 

 way for this revival. Has not science re- 

 vealed many wonders? If radio-activity 

 is a proved fact, why is not telepathy 

 highly probable? Shall we, as a literary 

 idealist recently pathetically inquired, ad- 

 mit that mere brute matter has such capaci- 

 ties and deny them to mind? When all 

 allowance is made for the unscrupulous 

 willingness of newspapers and magazines 

 to publish any marvel of so-called scientific 

 discovery that may give a momentary thrill 

 of sensation to any jaded reader, there is 

 still, I think, a large residuum of published 

 matter to be accounted for only on the 

 ground of densely honest ignorance. So 

 many things have been vouched for by 



science; so many things that one would 

 have thought absurd have been substan- 

 tiated, why not one more, and why not this 

 one more? Communication of science as 

 subject-matter has so far outrun in educa- 

 tion the construction of a scientific habit 

 of mind that to some extent the natural 

 common sense of mankind has been inter- 

 fered with to its detriment. 



Something of the current flippancy of 

 belief and quasi-scepticism must also 

 be charged to the state of science teach- 

 ing. The man of even ordinary culture is 

 aware of the rapid changes of subject- 

 matter, and taught so that he believes sub- 

 ject-matter, not method, constitutes science, 

 he remarks to himself that if this is science, 

 then science is in constant change, and there 

 is no certainty anywhere. If the emphasis 

 had been put upon method of attack and 

 mastery, from this change he would have 

 learned the lesson of curiosity, flexibility 

 and patient search; as it is, the result too 

 often is a blase satiety. 



I do not mean that our schools should be 

 expected to send forth their students 

 equipped as judges of truth and falsity in 

 specialized scientific matters. But that the 

 great majority of those who leave school 

 should have some idea of the kind of evi- 

 dence required to substantiate given types 

 of belief does not seem unreasonable. Nor 

 is it absurd to expect that they should go 

 forth with a lively interest in the ways in 

 which knowledge is improved and a marked 

 distaste for all conclusions reached in dis- 

 harmony with the methods of scientific 

 inquiry. It would be absurd, for example, 

 to expect any large number to master the 

 technical methods of determining distance, 

 direction and position in the arctic regions ; 

 it would perhaps be possible to develop a 

 state of mind with American people in gen- 

 eral in which the supposedly keen Amer- 

 ican sense of humor would react when it is 



