Scientific Culture, and Other Essays / Second Edition; with Additions

by Jr. Josiah P. Cooke

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.