At the basis of every science, as we have seen, there are certain ideas which cannot be conveyed to other minds by the use of the corresponding technical terms. These basal concepts must be built up in the learner’s mind by skilful teaching, sometimes by the very process by which the race acquired or discovered them. It may require a trip to the field, to the museum, or to the mine; or an experiment in the laboratory may be necessary. Perhaps a development lesson is needed to enable the pupil to grasp the idea clearly and fully. It is very certain that if the idea is hazy and ill-defined, the subsequent thinking will be loose, obscure, and unsatisfactory. The glib use of technical terms may often hide from the teacher the defects of the pupil’s thinking, and it may require an examination to reveal the points wherein the teacher has failed. Questions which require a pupil to look at his knowledge from a new point of view are helpful; an examination abounding in such questions may be an intellectual blessing to both teacher and pupil. The examiner should, of course, avoid puzzling catch-questions, for these are calculated to embarrass the pupil and confuse his thinking.
Popular lectures.
A clear thinker can always make his ideas intelligible to those who have acquired the basal concepts of the things, principles, and laws with which he deals. Lecturers on popular science avoid the abstruse questions of advanced science and the technical terms which do not convey a definite meaning to the average hearer. They select topics which can be discussed in the language of common life, and often state the results of scientific research without leading the audience through the successive steps by which these results are obtained. The popular lecture requires special gifts that are not in the possession of every scientist. Huxley was one of the most gifted men of the century; yet he says of himself,—
Huxley.
“I have not been one of those fortunate persons who are able to regard a popular lecture as a mere hors d’œuvre unworthy of being ranked among the serious efforts of a philosopher, and who keep their fame as scientific hierophants unsullied by attempts—at least of the successful sort—to be understanded by the people. On the contrary, I have found that the task of putting the truths learned in the field, the laboratory, and the museum into language which, without bating a jot of scientific accuracy, shall be generally intelligible, taxed such scientific and literary faculty as I possessed to the uttermost; indeed, my experience has furnished me with no better corrective of the tendency to scholastic pedantry, which besets all those who are absorbed in pursuits remote from the common ways of men, and become habituated to think and speak in the technical dialect of their own little world, as if there were no other.”
Exact thinking.
There is an error, on the other hand, into which practical men fall when they object to the technical language of the scientist. There are many things in science which cannot be made plain to the non-scientific mind. The difficulty lies not in the terminology employed, but in the lack of the basal concepts necessary for the advanced thinking which must be employed. Says Robert Galloway, “Words when employed in science, unlike their employment in common use, have a meaning steadily fixed and precisely determined; this precision in the meaning of scientific terms necessarily requires on the part of those who can make proper use of them accurate habits of thought; this is an indispensable qualification for attainment in any science; there is no dispensing with it, consequently one who does not know the language of a science, and who has not been taught to think accurately with respect to it, cannot understand properly what may be told or shown him about the facts or principles of that science.”
De Quincey.
From this point of view it is easy to see the use which the teacher should make of technical terms. Circumlocutions and explanatory phrases may be helpful in developing fundamental ideas, but the corresponding technical terms should be associated with the ideas as soon as these assume clear, definite shape. Language is the atmosphere in which thinking lives; technical language is as necessary to the scientific thought as the air we breathe is to the physical life. In one of his letters to a young man whose education had been neglected, De Quincey renders an important service to the science of teaching. “In assigning to the complex notion X the name transcendental, Kant was not simply transferring a word which had previously been used by the school-men to a more useful office; he was bringing into the service of the intellect a new birth; that is, drawing into a synthesis, which had not existed before as a synthesis, parts or elements which exist and come forward hourly in every man’s mind. I urge this upon your attention, because you will often hear such challenges thrown out as this (or others involving the same error): ‘Now, if there be any sense in this Mr. Kant’s writings, let us have it in good old mother English.’ That is, in other words, transfer into the unscientific language of life scientific notions which it is not fitted to express. The challenger proceeds upon the common error of supposing all ideas fully developed to exist in esse in all understandings, ergo, his own; and all that are in his own he thinks we can express in English. Thus the challenger, in his own notions, has you in a dilemma, at any rate; for, if you do not translate it, then it confirms his belief that the whole is jargon; if you do (as, doubtless, with the help of much periphrasis, that will be intelligible to a man who already understands the philosophy), then where was the use of the terminology? But the way to deal with this fellow is as follows: My good sir, I shall do what you ask; but before I do it I beg you will oblige me by (1) translating this mathematics into the language of chemistry; (2) translating this chemistry into the language of mathematics; (3) both into the language of cookery, and, finally, solve me the Cambridge problem, Given the captain’s name, the year of our Lord, to determine the longitude of the ship? This is the way to deal with such fellows.”