Part 14

Again, it has been said that while the opportunities for scientific culture in college are ample, no one will oppose such a modification of the requisitions for admission as the conditions of this culture demand, provided only we label the product of such culture with a descriptive name. Call the product of your scientific culture Bachelors of Science, we have been told, and you may arrange the requisites of admission to your own courses as you choose. I am forced to say that this argument, however specious, is neither ingenuous nor charitable. If you will label the product of a purely linguistic culture with an equally descriptive name; if, following the French usage, you will call such graduates Bachelors of Letters, we shall not object to the term Bachelors of Science; or, without making so great an innovation, I, for one, should have no objection to a distinction between Bachelors of Arts in Letters and Bachelors of Arts in Science. But it is perfectly well understood that in this community the degree of Bachelor of Arts is for most men the one essential condition of admission to the noble fraternity of scholars, to what has been called the "Guild of the Learned." To refuse this degree to a certain class of our graduates is to exclude them from such associations and from the privileges which they afford; and this is just what is intended. Hence I say that the argument is not ingenuous, and it is not charitable because it implies that a class of men who profess to love the truth as their lives are seeking to appear under false colors. To cite examples from my own profession only, I have always maintained that such men as Davy, Dalton, and Faraday were as truly learned, as highly cultivated, and as capable of expressing their thoughts in appropriate language, as the most eminent of their literary compeers, and I shall continue to maintain this proposition before our American community, and I have no question that sooner or later my claim will be allowed, and the doors of the "Guild of the Learned" will be opened to all scholars who have acquired by cultivation the same power which these great men held in such a pre-eminent degree by gift of Nature.

Lastly, I am persuaded that in a large body politic like this it is unwise, and in the long run futile, to attempt to protect any special form of culture at the expense of another. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; and what is for the interest of the whole is in the long run always for the interest of every part. I would welcome every form of culture which has vindicated its efficiency and its value, and in so doing I feel that I should best promote the interests of the special department which I have in charge.

XI.

SCIENTIFIC CULTURE; ITS SPIRIT, ITS AIM, AND ITS METHODS.[P]

I assume that most of those whom I address are teachers, and that you have been drawn here by a desire to be instructed in the best methods of teaching physical science. It has therefore seemed to me that I might render a real service, in this introductory address, by giving the results of my own experience and reflection on this subject; and my thoughts have been recently especially directed to this topic by the discussion in regard to the requisites for admission, which during the past year have actively engaged the attention of the faculty of this college.

[P] An address delivered at the opening of the Summer School of Chemistry at Harvard College, July 7, 1884.

At the very outset of this discussion we must be careful to make a clear distinction between instruction and education--between the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of the faculties of the mind. Our knowledge should be as broad as possible, but, in the short space of human life, it is not, as a rule, practicable to cultivate, for effective usefulness, the intellectual powers in more than one direction.

Let me illustrate what I mean from that department of knowledge which is at once the most fundamental and the most essential. I refer to the study of language. No person can be regarded as thoroughly educated who has not the power of speaking and writing his mother-tongue accurately, elegantly, and forcibly; and scholars of the present day must also command, to a considerable extent, both the French and the German languages. These three languages, at least, are the necessary tools of the American scholar, whatever may be the special field of his scholarship, and his end is gained if he has acquired thorough command of these tools. But if he goes further, and studies the philology of these languages, their structure, their derivation, their literature, the study may occupy a lifetime, and be made the basis of severe intellectual training. More frequently, and as most scholars think more effectually, such linguistic training is obtained by the study of the ancient languages, especially the Latin and the Greek, and no one questions the value and efficiency of this form of mental discipline. But obviously such a preparation is not necessary for the use of the modern languages as tools, or in order to acquire a knowledge of ancient history, of the modes of ancient life, or the results of ancient thought. In recent discussions a great deal has been said about the value of classical learning, and it has been argued that no man could be regarded as thoroughly educated who had never heard of Homer or Virgil, of Marathon or Cannæ, of the Acropolis of Athens or the Forum of Rome. Certainly not. But all this knowledge can be acquired without spending six years in learning to read the Latin and Greek authors in the original, or in writing Latin hexameters or Greek iambics. The discipline acquired by this long study is undoubtedly of the highest value, but its value depends upon the intellectual training which is the essential result, and not upon the knowledge of ancient life and thought, which is merely an incident.

Now, this same distinction, which I have endeavored to illustrate on familiar ground, must not be forgotten in considering the relations of physical science to education. Physical science may also be studied from two wholly different points of view: First, to acquire a knowledge of facts and principles, which are among the most important factors of modern life; secondly, as a means of developing and training some of the most important intellectual faculties of the mind--for example, the powers of observation, of conception, and of inductive reasoning.

The experimental sciences must often be studied chiefly from the first point of view. If no man can be regarded as thoroughly educated who is ignorant of the outlines of Roman and Greek history: one who knows nothing of the principles of the steam-engine, or of the electric telegraph, is certainly equally deficient. I do not question that in our high-schools the physical sciences must be taught, for the most part, as funds of useful knowledge, and in regard to such teaching I have only a few remarks to make. Assuming that information is the end to be attained, the best method of securing the desired result is to present the facts in such a way as will interest the scholar, and thus secure the retention of these facts by his memory. I think it a very serious mistake to attempt to teach such subjects by _memoriter_ recitations from a text-book, however well prepared. This method at once makes the subject a task; and, if in addition the preparation for an examination is the great end in view, it is wonderful how small is the residuum after the work is done. Such subjects can always be made intensely interesting if presented by lectures, with the requisite illustrations, and I do not believe that the cramming process required to pass an examination adds much to the knowledge previously gained. Many teachers, finding that the parrot-like learning of a text-book is unprofitable, attempt to make the exercise more valuable by means of problems--usually simple arithmetical problems--depending upon principles of physics or chemistry. And there can be no doubt that such problems do serve to enforce the principles they illustrate; but I am afraid they also more frequently, by disgusting the student, stand in the way of the acquisition of the desired knowledge.

It must not be forgotten, in studying the results of science, that the facts are never fully learned unless the learner is made to understand the evidence on which the facts rest. The child who reads in his physical geography that the world revolves on its axis, learns what to him is a mere form of words, until he connects this astronomical fact with his own observation that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west; and so the scholar who reads that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen has acquired no real knowledge until he has seen the evidence on which this fundamental conclusion rests. Let, then, the sciences be taught as they have been in schools, as important parts of useful knowledge, but let them so be taught as to engage the interest of the scholar, and to direct his attention to the phenomena of Nature.

All this, however, is not scientific culture, in the sense in which I have constantly used the term, and does not afford any special training for the intellectual faculties. For myself, I do not desire any study of natural history, chemistry, or physics from this point of view as a preparation for college; simply because, with the large apparatus of the university, all these subjects can be presented more effectively, and be made more interesting, than is possible in the schools. What I desire to see accomplished by our schools is a training in physical science, comparable in extent and efficiency with that which they now accomplish in the ancient languages. And this brings me to another topic, namely, scientific culture as a system of mental training.

Before attempting to state in what scientific culture consists, we shall do well, even at the expense of some repetition, to show that what often passes for scientific culture is far different from the system of education which we have so constantly advocated. The acquisition of scientific knowledge, however extensive, does not in itself constitute scientific culture, nor is the power of reproducing such knowledge, at a competitive examination, any test of real scientific power. Nevertheless, the examination papers which have been published by the universities of England and of this country show that this is the sole test of scientific scholarship on which most of these universities rely, in awarding their highest honors to students in physical science. The power of so mastering a subject as to be able to reproduce any portion of it with accuracy, completeness, and elegance, at a written examination, is the normal result of literary, not of scientific, culture, and the power is of the same order, whether the subject-matter be philology, literature, art, or science. Indeed, scientific are, as a rule, much less adapted than literary subjects to the cultivation of this power. Moreover, it is also true that scholars, having attained to a very high degree of scholarship, may not possess this power of stating clearly and concisely the knowledge they actually possess. We have all of us known eminent men, possessing in a very high degree the power of investigating Nature, who have been wholly unable to state clearly the knowledge they have themselves discovered. Great harm has been done to the cause of scientific culture by attempting to adapt the well-tried methods of literary scholarship to scientific subjects: for, as I have said in another place, competitive examinations are no test of real attainment in physical science.

Let me not be understood as disparaging the retentive memory and power of concentration which enable the student to reproduce acquired information with accuracy, rapidity, and elegance. This is a power of the very highest order, and is the result of the cultivation to a high degree of many of the noblest faculties of the mill. And I wish to enforce is, that success in such examinations is no indication of scientific culture, properly so called.

What, then, are the tests of true scientific scholarship? The answer can be made perfectly plain and intelligible. The real test is the power to study and interpret natural phenomena. As in classical scholarship the true test of attainment is the power to interpret the delicate shades of meaning expressed by the classical authors, so in science the true test is the power to read and interpret Nature; and this last power, like the other, can as a rule only be acquired by careful and systematic training. As some men have a remarkable facility for acquiring languages, so also there are men who seem to be born investigators of Nature; but by most men such powers can only be acquired through a careful training and exercise of the faculties of the mind, on which success depends. No man would be regarded as a classical scholar, however broad and extended his knowledge, if that knowledge had been acquired solely by reading English translations of the classical authors, however excellent. So, no man can be regarded as a scientific scholar whose knowledge of Nature has been solely derived from books. In either case the real scholar must have been to the fountain-head and drawn his knowledge from the original sources. In order, then, to discover how scientific culture must be gained, we must consider the conditions on which the successful study and interpretation of Nature depend.

Of the powers of the mind called into exercise in the investigation of Nature, the most obvious and fundamental is the power of observation. By power of observation is not meant simply the ability to see, to hear, to taste, or to smell with delicacy, but the power of so concentrating the attention on what we observe as to form a definite and lasting impression on the mind. There are undoubtedly great differences among men in the acuteness of their sensations, but successful observation depends far less upon the acuteness of the senses than on the faculty of the mind which clearly distinguishes and remembers what is seen and heard. We say of a man that he walks through the world with his eyes shut, meaning that, although the objects around him produce their normal impression on the retina of his eye, he pays no attention to what he sees. The power of the naturalist to distinguish slight differences of form or feature in natural objects is simply the result of a habit, acquired through long experience, of paying attention to what he sees, and the want of this power in students who have been trained solely by literary studies is most marked.

An assistant, who was at the time conducting a class in mineralogy, once said to me: "What am I to do? One of my class can not see the difference between this piece of blende and this piece of quartz" (showing me two specimens which bore a certain superficial resemblance in color and general aspect). My answer was, "Let him look until he can see the difference." And, after a while, he did see the difference. The difficulty was not lack of vision, but want of attention.

The power of observation, then, is simply the power of fixing the attention upon our sensations, and this power of fixing the attention is the one essential condition of scholarship in all departments of learning. It is a power which ought to be cultivated at an early age, and in a system of scientific culture the sciences of mineralogy and botany afford the best field for its culture, and I should therefore place them among the earliest studies of a scientific course. Minerals and plants may be profitably studied in the youngest classes of our secondary schools, but they should be studied solely from specimens, which the scholar should examine until he can distinguish all the characteristics of form, feature, or structure. I am told that in many of our secondary schools both mineralogy and botany are studied with great success and interest in the manner I have indicated. But a mistake is frequently made in attempting to do too much. With mineralogy or botany as classificatory sciences, our secondary schools should have nothing to do. The discrimination between many, even of the commonest, species of minerals or plants depends upon delicate distinctions which are quite beyond the grasp of young minds, and the study of botany frequently loses all its value, through the ambition of the teacher to embrace so much of systematic botany as will enable scholars "to analyze plants."

If a child, twelve or fourteen years of age, is made to observe the characteristic qualities of a few common minerals so as to enable it to recognize them in the rocks, and is likewise led to examine the structure of a few familiar flowers, not only will a new power have been acquired, but a new interest will have been added to life.

Of course, the faculty of observation thus early exercised in childhood only attains the highest degree of development after long experience and continued practice. The acuteness which practice gives is frequently very remarkable, and rude men often surprise us by the extent to which their power of observation has been cultivated in certain special directions. The sailor who recognizes the outlines of to him a well-known coast, where the ordinary traveler sees nothing but a bank of clouds, or the miner who recognizes in the rock indications of valuable ores, are illustrations which may give a clearer conception of the nature of the power we have been attempting to describe.

Naturally following the power of observation in the order of education is the power of conception with the cognate power of abstraction; that is, the power of forming in the mind distinct and accurate images of objects, and relations, which have been previously apprehended either by direct observation, or through description; and also the power of confining the attention to certain features which these images may present to the exclusion of all others. This is a power which depends very greatly on the imagination and is capable of being cultivated to a very high degree. There is no study which is so well suited to the training both of the powers of conception and of abstraction as the study of geometry.

To this end the study of geometry should be begun at an early period in school-life, and it should be studied at first not as a series of propositions logically connected, but as a description of the properties and relations of lines, surfaces, and solids--what has sometimes been called "the science of form." A text-book prepared on this idea by Mr. G. A. Hill forms an admirable introduction to the study.

I esteem very highly the system of geometry of Euclid, either in its original form or as it has been modified by modern writers, as a means of developing the logical faculty. The completeness of the proof of the successive propositions and their mutual dependence by means of which, as on a series of steps, we mount from simple axiomatic truths to the most complex relations, furnish an admirable discipline for the reasoning power; but too often the whole value of this discipline is lost by the failure of the pupil to form a clear conception of the very relations about which he is reasoning, and the study becomes an exercise of the memory and nothing more. Often have I seen a conscientious and faithful student draw an excellent figure, and write out an accurate demonstration, without noticing that the two were not mated; and in a recent meeting of teachers of our best secondary schools it was gravely asserted that solid geometry is the most difficult study with which the teachers had to deal. In solid geometry, however, the reasoning is no more difficult than in plane geometry, but the conceptions are far more complex, and, if the teacher insisted that the pupil should not take a single step until his conceptions were perfectly clear, all the difficulties would disappear. Of this I am fully persuaded, for I have had to encounter the same difficulties over and over again in teaching crystallography. In beginning the study of geometry, of course the power of conception should be helped in every possible way. Let your pupil find out by actual measurement that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles, and he will easily discover the proof of the proposition himself. So, also, if he actually divides with his knife a triangular prism made from a potato or an apple into three triangular pyramids, he will find no difficulty in following the reasoning on which the measurement of the solid contents of a sphere depends. Let me assure teachers that the study of geometry, taught as I have indicated, is a most valuable introduction to the study of science. But, as it has been usually taught as a preparation for college, it is almost worthless in this respect, however valuable it may be as a logical training.

I consider practice in free-hand drawing from natural objects a most valuable means of training both the power of observation and the power of conception, besides giving a skill in delineation which is of the greatest importance to the scientific student. Accuracy of drawing requires accuracy in observation, and also the ability to seize upon those features of the object which are the most prominent and characteristic. Hence, in a course of scientific training, the importance of practice in drawing can hardly be exaggerated, and it should be made one of the most important objects of school-work from an early period.

To the scientific student the powers of observation and conception are not sought as ends in themselves, but as means of studying Nature. The precise portions of this wide field to which the attention of the student shall be directed will be determined by many circumstances, and it is not our purpose in this address to lay down a plan of study. To most students the natural history subjects offer the most attractive field; but all, I think, will admit that the experimental sciences should form a considerable portion, at least, of the course of all scientific students, whatever specialty may subsequently be chosen. That on which I desire particularly to dwell is the spirit in which all these studies should be pursued; and I can best illustrate what I mean by confining my remarks to that subject in which I am most interested, and in regard to which I have the greatest experience.

In a course of scientific study, chemistry can not be dissociated from physics, and the two sciences ought to be studied to a great extent in connection with each other. Not only does the philosophy of chemistry rest upon physical conceptions; but, moreover, chemical methods involve physical principles. There is, however, a distinction to be made; for, while some of the departments of physics are best studied as a preparation for chemistry, there are other subjects which are best deferred until the student has some knowledge of chemical facts. Among the preliminary subjects we should mention elementary mechanics, including hydrostatics and pneumatics, and also thermotics; while electricity, acoustics, and optics, including the large subject of radiant energy, may well be deferred until after the study of chemistry.