D. APPRECIATIONS, ATTITUDES, AND IDEALS AS AIDED BY BIOLOGY
(4) Attitudes of life perfected by study of the life sciences
This group of objectives is a bit less tangible, as some think, than those that have been mentioned; but in my own opinion they are as important and as educable for the good of the youth by means of biology as are knowledge, skill, and habit. In a sense these states of mind arise as by-products of the getting of information, skills, and habits; in turn they heighten their value. We have spoken above of the need of skill and habit in making use of the various steps in the scientific method in reaching conclusions in life. These are essential, but skill and habit alone are not enough to meet the necessities in actual life.
In the first place the habit of using the scientific method in the scientific laboratory does not in itself give assurance that the person will apply this method in getting at the truth in problems in his own personal life; and yet this is the essential object of all this scientific training. In order to get the individual to carry over this method,—especially where feelings and prejudices are involved,—we must inculcate in him the scientific ideal and the scientific attitude until they become general in their influence. To do this he ought to be induced as a regular part of his early courses in biology to practice the scientific method upon certain practical daily decisions exactly with the same rigor that is used in the biological laboratory. The custom of using this method in animal study should be transformed into an attitude of dependence upon it as the only sound method of solving one's life choices. Only by carrying the method consciously into our life's problems, as a part of the exercise in the course in biology, can we break up the disposition to regard the method as good merely in the biological laboratory. We must generate, by practice and precept, the ideal of making universal our dependence upon our best instrument of determining truth. A personal habit in the laboratory must become a general ideal for life, if we hope to substitute the scientific method for prejudice in human living. There is no department of learning so well capable of doing this thing as biology.
In the second place, the scientific method standing alone, because of its very excellence as a method, is liable to produce a kind of over-sure dogmatism about conclusions, unless it be accompanied by the scientific attitude or spirit of open-mindedness. The scientific spirit does not necessarily flow from the scientific method at all, unless the teacher is careful in his use of it in teaching. We make a mistake if, in our just enthusiasm to impress the scientific method upon the student, we fail to teach that it can give, at best, only an approximation to truth. The scientific attitude which holds even our best-supported conclusions subject to revision by new evidence is the normal corrective of the possible dogmatism that comes from over-confidence in the scientific method as our best means of discovering truth.
The student at the end of the first year of biology ought to have more appreciation and enjoyment of plants and animals and their life than at the beginning,—and increased appreciation of his own relation to other animals; some attitude of dependence upon the scientific method of procedure not merely in biology but in his own life; a desire, however modest, for investigating things for himself; and an ideal of open-minded, enthusiastic willingness to subject his own conclusions to renewed testing at all times. All these gains should be reinforced by later courses.
Special Aims of Biology in Education
(5) Biology a valuable tool for certain technical pursuits
So far as I can see, the preparation of students for medicine, for biological research, or for any advanced application of biology calls only for the following,—in addition to the further intensification of the emphasis suggested above: