288 G. K. Gilbert — Inculcation of Scientific Method. 



not best to offer them in the abstract until he has become well 

 acquainted with them in the concrete. Typical investigations 

 should be described in detail, illustrating the varied phases of 

 the method of hypothesis, and not omitting to show how its 

 successes are achieved through series of failures. The history 

 of at least one science should be developed, with the rise and 

 fall of its successive theories. These educational factors are 

 directed to the training of his mind, but his mind needs also to 

 be stored with scientific knowledge, which shall serve as a 

 foundation for analogies. If he would explain some feature of 

 nature, he must depend on the explanations others have reached 

 for other features ; and he needs large resources of knowledge 

 of the relations of phenomena. 



The course of training for the apprentice of science should 

 give him, in the study room and in the class room, a varied 

 acquaintance with the laws of nature that have been discovered 

 by research. It should not needlessly burden his memory 

 with empiric classifications, for these belong to the humbler 

 walks of science, and it is unwise to impress on the novice the 

 high importance of that which the master regards as provisional. 

 It should teach observation by actual practice, — practice rigor- 

 ously restricted to selected groups of phenomena. It should 

 illustrate with varied reiteration — by books, by lectures, by 

 demonstrations in the laboratory — the method of discovery bj 

 the aid of hypotheses. It should assign him actual investiga- 

 tion and subject his methods to criticism. 



Students whose projected careers are not scientific, but who 

 are unwilling to ignore so important a subject, naturally wish 

 to cover a wide field in a short time. Their teacher, imbued 

 with the vastuess of science, is tempted to give them a maxi- 

 mum number of facts, with such order and classification as 

 best favor their rapid statement. If he yields to the tempta- 

 tion, there is reason to fear that a permanent misapprehension 

 is established, and the essence of science is not communicated. 

 In my judgment he will do better to contract the phenomenal, 

 and enlarge the logical scope of his subject, so as to dwell on 

 the philosophy of the science rather than its material. For 

 such students laboratory work may or may not be expedient, 

 but they can at least accompany the pupils who look forward 

 to careers in research in some of the descriptive illustrations of 

 methods of scientific achievement. 



The investigator becomes an educator when in giving his 

 work 10 the world he describes the route by which his end was 

 reached. It is not denied that the publication of sound con- 

 clusions is in itself educational, but it is maintained that the 

 publication of the concrete illustration of a good method is 

 educational in a higher sense. It is not insisted that all skillful 



