The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. How do you explain the attitude of the ancients toward scientific inquiry?

2. State the ancient purpose in pursuing scientific studies.

3. Contrast Bacon and Plato as to aims.

4. Show that the thinking of Copernicus as to the motions of the heavenly bodies was an excellent example of deductive thinking.

5. Show that the discovery and reasoning of Galileo was an example of the common method of reasoning of to-day.

6. Were the difficulties that surrounded scientific inquiry and progress, as described by Bacon, easily removed?

7. Explain the readiness with which the clergy have so commonly opposed scientific inquiry for fear that the results might upset preconceived theological ideas.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Ball, W. R. R. History of Mathematics at Cambridge.
* Libby, Walter. An Introduction to the History of Science.
Ornstein, Martha. Role of the Scientific Societies in the Seventeenth
Century.
* Routledge, Robert. A Popular History of Science.
* Sedgwick, W. T. and Tyler, H. W. A Short History of Science.
* White, A. D. History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, 2
vols. Wordsworth Christopher. Scholae Academicae; Studies at the
English Universities in the Eighteenth Century.