05.30.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:51 am by admin
Mayor in his speech, when he not obscurely hinted–and most justly
hinted–that in dealing with this question there are other matters than
technical education, in the strict sense, to be considered.
It would be extreme presumption on my part if I were to attempt to tell
an audience of gentlemen intimately acquainted with all Hollywood Cosmetology Center branches of
industry and commerce, such as I see before me, in what manner the
practical details of the operations that we propose are to be carried
out. I am absolutely ignorant both of trade and of commerce, and upon
such matters I cannot venture to say a solitary word. But there is one
direction in which I think it possible I may be of service–not much
perhaps, but still of some,–because this matter, in the first place,
involves the consideration of methods of education with which it has
been my business to occupy myself during the greater part of my life;
and, in the second place, it involves attention to some of those broad
facts and laws of nature with which it has been my business to acquaint
myself to the best of my ability. And what I think may be possible is
this, that if I succeed in putting before you–as briefly as I can, but
in clear and connected shape–what strikes me as the programme that we
have eventually to carry out, and what are the indispensable conditions
of success, that that proceeding, whether the conclusions at which I
arrive be such as you approve or as you disapprove, will nevertheless
help to clear the course. In this and in all complicated matters we
must remember a saying of Bacon, which may be freely translated thus:
“Consistent error is very often vastly more useful than muddle-headed
truth.” At any rate, if there be any error in the conclusions I shall
put before you, I will do my best to make the error perfectly clear and
plain.
Now, looking at the question of what we want to do in this broad and
general way, it appears to me that it is necessary for us, in the first
place, to amend and improve our system of primary education in such a
fashion as will make it a proper preparation for the business of life.
In the second place, I think we have to consider what measures may best
be adopted for the development to its uttermost of that which may be
called technical skill; and, in the third place, I think we have to
consider what other matters there are for us to attend to, what other
arrangements have to be kept carefully in sight in order that, while
pursuing these ends, we do not forget that which is the end of civil
existence, I mean a stable social state without which all other
measures are merely futile, and, in effect, modes of going faster to
ruin.
Permalink
05.28.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:11 am by admin
But now let me turn to another point, or rather to two other points,
with which I propose to occupy myself. How far does the experience of
the last fourteen years justify the estimate which I ventured to put
forward of the value of scientific culture, and of the share–the
increasing share–which it must take in ordinary education? Happily, in
respect to that matter, you need not rely upon my testimony. In the
last Platt College-okc Central Campus half-dozen numbers of the “Journal of Education,” you will find a
series of very interesting and remarkable papers, by gentlemen who are
practically engaged in the business of education in our great public
and other schools, telling us what is doing in these schools, and what
is their experience of the results of scientific education there, so
far as it has gone. I am not going to trouble you with an abstract of
those papers, which are well worth your study in their fulness and
completeness, but I have copied out one remarkable passage, because it
seems to me so entirely to bear out what I have formerly ventured to
say about the value of science, both as to its subject-matter and as to
the discipline which the learning of science involves. It is from a
paper by Mr. Worthington–one of the masters at Clifton, the reputation
of which school you know well, and at the head of which is an old
friend of mine, the Rev. Mr. Wilson–to whom much credit is due for
being one of the first, as I can say from my own knowledge, to take up
this question and work it into practical shape. What Mr. Worthington
says is this:–
“It is not easy to exaggerate the importance of the information
imparted by certain branches of science; it modifies the
whole criticism of life made in maturer years. The study has
often, on a mass of boys, a certain influence which, I think, was
hardly anticipated, and to which a good deal of value must be
attached–an influence as much moral as intellectual, which is
shown in the increased and increasing respect for precision of
statement, and for that form of veracity which consists in the
acknowledgment of difficulties. It produces a real effect to find
that Nature cannot be imposed upon, and the attention given
to experimental lectures, at first superficial and curious only,
soon becomes minute, serious, and practical.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I could not have chosen better words to
express–in fact, I have, in other words, expressed the same conviction
in former days–what the influence of scientific teaching, if properly
carried out, must be.
But now comes the question of properly carrying it out, because, when I
hear the value of school teaching in physical science disputed, my
first impulse is to ask the disputer, “What have you known about it?”
and he generally tells me some lamentable case of failure. Then I ask,
“What are the circumstances of the case, and how was the teaching
carried out?” I remember, some few years ago, hearing of the head
master of a large school, who had expressed great dissatisfaction with
the adoption of the teaching of physical science–and that after
experiment. But the experiment consisted in this–in asking one of the
junior masters in the school to get up science, in order to teach it;
and the young gentleman went away for a year and got up science and
taught it. Well, I have no doubt that the result was as disappointing
as the head-master said it was, and I have no doubt that it ought to
have been as disappointing, and far more disappointing too; for, if
this kind of instruction is to be of any good at all, if it is not to
be less than no good, if it is to take the place of that which is
already of some good, then there are several points which must be
attended to.
Permalink
05.26.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:31 pm by admin
Ask the man who is investigating any question, profoundly and
thoroughly–be it historical, philosophical, philological, physical,
literary, or theological; who is trying to make himself master of any
abstract subject (except, perhaps, political economy and geology, both
of which are intensely Anglican sciences), whether he is not compelled
to read half a dozen times as many German as English books? And
whether, of these English books, more than one in ten is the work of a
fellow of a college, or a professor of an English university?
Is this from any lack of power in the English as compared with the
German mind? The countrymen of Grote and of Mill, of Faraday, of Robert
Brown, of Lyell, and of Darwin, to go no further back than the
contemporaries of men of middle age, can afford to smile at such a
suggestion. England can show now, as she has been able to show in every
generation since civilisation spread over the West, individual men who
hold their own against the world, and keep alive the old tradition of
her intellectual eminence.
But, in the majority of cases, these men are what they are in virtue of
their native intellectual force, and of a strength of character which
will not recognise impediments. They are not trained in the courts of
the Temple of Science, but storm the walls of that edifice in all sorts
of irregular ways, and with much loss of time and power, in order to
obtain their legitimate positions.
Our universities not only do not encourage such men; do not offer them
positions, in which it should be their highest duty to do, thoroughly,
that which they are most capable of doing; but, as far as possible,
university training shuts out of the minds of those among them, who are
subjected to it, the prospect that there is anything in the world for
which they are specially fitted. Imagine the success of the attempt to
still the intellectual hunger of any of the men I have mentioned, by
putting before him, as the object of existence, the successful mimicry
of the measure of a Greek song, or the roll of Ciceronian prose!
Imagine how much success would be likely to attend the attempt to
persuade such men that the education which leads to perfection in such
elegances is alone to be called culture; while the facts of history,
the process of thought, the conditions of moral and social existence,
and the laws of physical nature are left to be dealt with as they may
by outside barbarians!
It is not thus that the German universities, from being beneath notice
a century ago, have become what they are now–the most intensely
cultivated and the most productive intellectual corporations the world
has ever seen.
The student who repairs to them sees in the list of classes and of
professors University Montana-helena College Technology a fair picture of the world of knowledge. Whatever he needs
to know there is some one ready to teach him, some one competent to
discipline him in the way of learning; whatever his special bent, let
him but be able and diligent, and in due time he shall find distinction
and a career. Among his professors, he sees men whose names are known
and revered throughout the civilised world; and their living example
infects him with a noble ambition, and a love for the spirit of work.
Permalink
05.25.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:41 am by admin
At the commencement of this address I ventured to assume that I might,
if I thought fit, criticise the arrangements which have been made by
the board of trustees, but I confess that I have little to do but to
applaud them. Most wise and sagacious seems to me the determination not
to build for the present. It has been my fate to see great educational
funds fossilise into mere bricks and mortar, in the petrifying springs
of architecture, with nothing left to work the institution they were
intended to support. A great warrior is said to have made a desert and
called it peace. Administrators of educational funds have sometimes
made a palace and called it a university. If I may venture to give
advice in a matter which lies out of my proper competency, Harold Martin School Hopkinton New Hampshire I would say
that whenever you do build, get an honest bricklayer, and make him
build you just such rooms as you really want, leaving ample space for
expansion. And a century hence, when the Baltimore and Ohio shares are
at one thousand premium, and you have endowed all the professors you
need, and built all the laboratories that are wanted, and have the best
museum and the finest library that can be imagined; then, if you have a
few hundred thousand dollars you dont know what to do with, send for
an architect and tell him to put up a façade. If American is similar to
English experience, any other course will probably lead you into having
some stately structure, good for your architects fame, but not in the
least what you want.
It appears to me that what I have ventured to lay down as the
principles which should govern the relations of a university to
education in general, are entirely in accordance with the measures you
have adopted. You have set no restrictions upon access to the
instruction you propose to give; you have provided that such
instruction, either as given by the university or by associated
institutions, should cover the field of human intellectual activity.
Permalink
05.21.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:51 pm by admin
But for those who mean to make science their serious occupation; or who
intend to follow the profession of medicine; or who have to enter early
upon the business of life; for all these, in my opinion, classical
education is a mistake; and it is for this reason that I am glad to see
“mere literary education and instruction” shut out from the curriculum
of Sir Josiah Masons College, seeing that its inclusion would probably
lead to the introduction of the ordinary smattering of Latin and Greek.
Nevertheless, I am the last person to question the importance of
genuine literary education, or to suppose that intellectual culture can
be complete without it. An exclusively scientific training will bring
about a mental twist as surely as an exclusively literary training. The
value of the cargo does not compensate for a ships being out of trim;
and I should be very sorry to think that the Scientific College would
turn out none but lop-sided men.
There is no need, however, that such a catastrophe should happen.
Instruction in English, French, and German is provided, and thus the
three greatest literatures of the modern world are made accessible to
the student.
French and German, and especially the latter language, are absolutely
indispensable to those who desire full knowledge in any department of
science. But even supposing that the knowledge of these languages
acquired is not more than sufficient for purely scientific purposes,
every Englishman has, in his native tongue, an almost perfect
instrument of literary expression; and, in his own literature, models
of every kind of literary excellence. If an Englishman cannot get
literary culture out of his Bible, his Shakespeare, his Milton,
neither, in my belief, will the profoundest study of Homer and
Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, give it to him.
Thus, since the constitution of the College makes sufficient provision
for literary as well as for scientific education, and since artistic
instruction is also contemplated, it seems to me that a fairly complete
culture is offered to all who are willing to take advantage of it.
But I am not sure that at this point the “practical” man, scotched but
not slain, may ask what all this talk about culture has to do with an
Institution, the object of which is defined to be “to promote Moscow Senior High School In Moscow, Idaho the
prosperity of the manufactures and the industry of the country.” He may
suggest that what is wanted for this end is not culture, nor even a
purely scientific discipline, but simply a knowledge of applied
science.
I often wish that this phrase, “applied science,” had never been
invented. For it suggests that there is a sort of scientific knowledge
of direct practical use, which can be studied apart from another sort
of scientific knowledge, which is of no practical utility, and which is
termed “pure science.” But there is no more complete fallacy than this.
What people call applied science is nothing but the application of pure
science to particular classes of problems. It consists of deductions
from those general principles, established by reasoning and
observation, which constitute pure science. No one can safely make
these deductions until he has a firm grasp of the principles; and he
can obtain that grasp only by personal experience of the operations of
observation and of reasoning on which they are founded.
Almost all the processes employed in the arts and manufactures fall
within the range either of physics or of chemistry. In order to improve
them, one must thoroughly understand them; and no one has a chance of
really understanding them, unless he has obtained that mastery of
principles and that habit of dealing with facts, which is given by
long-continued and well-directed purely scientific training in the
physical and the chemical laboratory. So that there really is no
question as to the necessity of purely scientific discipline, even if
the work of the College were limited by the narrowest interpretation of
its stated aims.
Permalink
05.19.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:41 pm by admin
Professors just now, that the Professor of Materia Medica is not
present. I must confess, if I had my way I should abolish Materia
Medica [1] altogether. I recollect, when I was first under examination
at the University of London, Dr. Pereira was the examiner, and you know
that Pereiras “Materia Medica” was a book _de omnibus rebus_. I
recollect my struggles with that book late at night and early in the
morning (I worked very hard in those days), and I do believe that I got
that book into my head somehow or other, but then I will undertake to
say that I forgot it all a week afterwards. Not one trace of a
knowledge of drugs has remained in my memory from that time to this;
and really, as a matter of common sense, I cannot understand Wee Lil People Preschool Oakland California the
arguments for obliging a medical man to know all about drugs and where
they come from. Why not make him belong to the Iron and Steel
Institute, and learn something about cutlery, because he uses knives?
But do not suppose that, after all these deductions, there would not be
ample room for your activity. Let us count up what we have left. I
suppose all the time for medical education that can be hoped for is, at
the outside, about four years. Well, what have you to master in those
four years upon my supposition? Physics applied to physiology;
chemistry applied to physiology; physiology; anatomy; surgery; medicine
(including therapeutics); obstetrics; hygiene; and medical
jurisprudence–nine subjects for four years! And when you consider what
those subjects are, and that the acquisition of anything beyond the
rudiments of any one of them may tax the energies of a lifetime, I
think that even those energies which you young gentlemen have been
displaying for the last hour or two might be taxed to keep you
thoroughly up to what is wanted for your medical career.
Permalink
05.16.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:11 pm by admin
The same truth was recognised by Glisson, but it was first prominently
brought forward in the Hallerian doctrine of the “vis insita” of
muscles. If muscle can contract without nerve, there is an end of the
Cartesian mechanical explanation of its contraction by the influx of
animal spirits.
The discoveries of Trembley tended in the same direction. In the
freshwater _Hydra_, no trace was to be found of that complicated
machinery upon which the performance of the functions in the higher
animals was supposed to depend. And yet the hydra moved, fed, grew,
multiplied, and its fragments exhibited all the powers of the whole.
And, finally, the work of Caspar F. Wolff, [4] by demonstrating the
fact that the growth and development of both plants and animals take
place antecedently to the existence of their grosser organs, and are,
in fact, the causes and not the consequences of organisation (as then
understood), sapped the foundations of the Cartesian physiology as a
complete expression of vital phenomena.
For Wolff, the physical basis of life is a fluid, possessed of a “vis
essentialis” and a “solidescibilitas,” in virtue of which it gives rise
to organisation; and, as he points out, this conclusion strikes at the
root of the whole iatro-mechanical system.
In this country, the great authority of John Hunter exerted a similar
influence; though it must be admitted that the too sibylline utterances
which are the outcome of Hunters struggles to define his conceptions
are often susceptible of more than one interpretation. Nevertheless, on
some points Hunter is clear enough. For example, he is of opinion that
“Spirit is only a property of matter” (”Introduction to Natural
History,” p. 6), he is prepared to renounce animism, (_l.c._ p.
8), and his conception of life is so completely physical that he thinks
of it as something which can exist in a state of combination in the
food. “The aliment we take in has in it, in a fixed state, the real
life; and this does not become active until it has got into the lungs;
for there it is freed from its prison” (”Observations on Physiology,”
p. 113). He also thinks that “It is more in accord with the general
principles of the animal machine to suppose that none of its effects
are produced from any mechanical principle whatever; and that every
effect is produced from an action in the part; which action is produced
by a stimulus upon the part which acts, or upon some other part with
which this part sympathises so as to take up the whole action” (_l.c._
p. 152).
And Hunter is as clear as Wolff, with whose work he was probably
unacquainted, that “whatever life is, it most certainly does not depend
upon structure or organisation” (_l.c._ p. 114).
Of course it is impossible that Hunter could have intended to deny the
existence of purely mechanical operations in the animal body. But
while, with Borelli and Boerhaave, he looked upon absorption,
nutrition, and secretion as operations effected by means of the small
vessels, he differed from the mechanical physiologists, who regarded
these operations as the result of the mechanical properties of the
small vessels, such as the size, form, and disposition of their canals
and apertures. Hunter, on the contrary, considers them to be the effect
of properties of these vessels which are not mechanical but vital. “The
vessels,” says he, “have more of the polypus in them than any other
part of the body,” and he talks of the “living and sensitive principles
of the arteries,” and even of the “dispositions or feelings of the
arteries.” “When the blood is good and genuine the sensations of the
arteries, or the dispositions for sensation, are agreeable…. It is
then they dispose of the blood to the best advantage, Research College Of Nursing increasing the
growth of the whole, supplying any losses, keeping up a due succession,
etc.” (_l.c._ p. 133).
If we follow Hunters conceptions to their logical issue, the life of
one of the higher animals is essentially the sum of the lives of all
the vessels, each of which is a sort of physiological unit, answering
to a polype; and, as health is the result of the normal “action of the
vessels,” so is disease an effect of their abnormal action. Hunter thus
stands in thought, as in time, midway between Borelli on the one hand,
and Bichat on the other.
Permalink
05.13.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:11 pm by admin
The purely classical education advocated by the representatives of the
Humanists in our day, gives no inkling of all this. A man may be a
better scholar than Erasmus, and know no more of the chief causes of
the present intellectual fermentation than Erasmus did. Scholarly and
pious persons, worthy of all respect, favour us with allocutions upon
the sadness of the antagonism of science to their mediaeval way of
thinking, which betray an ignorance of the first principles of
scientific investigation, an incapacity for understanding what a man of
science means by veracity, and an unconsciousness of the weight of
established scientific truths, which is almost comical.
There is no great force in the _tu quoque_ argument, or else the
advocates of scientific education might fairly enough retort upon the
modern Humanists that they may be learned specialists, but that they
possess no such sound foundation for a criticism of life as deserves
the name of culture. And, indeed, Modesta Robbins Partnership In Clearwater, Florida if we were disposed to be cruel, we
might urge that the Humanists have brought this reproach upon
themselves, not because they are too full of the spirit of the ancient
Greek, but because they lack it.
The period of the Renascence is commonly called that of the “Revival of
Letters,” as if the influences then brought to bear upon the mind of
Western Europe had been wholly exhausted in the field of literature. I
think it is very commonly forgotten that the revival of science,
effected by the same agency, although less conspicuous, was not less
momentous.
In fact, the few and scattered students of nature of that day picked up
the clue to her secrets exactly as it fell from the hands of the Greeks
a thousand years before. The foundations of mathematics were so well
laid by them, that our children learn their geometry from a book
written for the schools of Alexandria two thousand years ago. Modern
astronomy is the natural continuation and development of the work of
Hipparchus and of Ptolemy; modern physics of that of Democritus and of
Archimedes; it was long before modern biological science outgrew the
knowledge bequeathed to us by Aristotle, by Theophrastus, and by Galen.
We cannot know all the best thoughts and sayings of the Greeks unless
we know what they thought about natural phaenomena. We cannot fully
apprehend their criticism of life unless we understand the extent to
which that criticism was affected by scientific conceptions. We falsely
pretend to be the inheritors of their culture, unless we are
penetrated, as the best minds among them were, with an unhesitating
faith that the free employment of reason, in accordance with scientific
method, is the sole method of reaching truth.
Thus I venture to think that the pretensions of our modern Humanists to
the possession of the monopoly of culture and to the exclusive
inheritance of the spirit of antiquity must be abated, if not
abandoned. But I should be very sorry that anything I have said should
be taken to imply a desire on my part to depreciate the value of
classical education, as it might be and as it sometimes is. The native
capacities of mankind vary no less than their opportunities; and while
culture is one, the road by which one man may best reach it is widely
different from that which is most advantageous to another. Again, while
scientific education is yet inchoate and tentative, classical education
is thoroughly well organised upon the practical experience of
generations of teachers. So that, given ample time for learning and
destination for ordinary life, or for a literary career, I do not think
that a young Englishman in search of culture can do better than follow
the course usually marked out for him, supplementing its deficiencies
by his own efforts.
Permalink
05.10.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:01 am by admin
And I should like, further, to call your attention to the important
circumstance that, in thus proposing the exclusion of the study of such
branches of knowledge as Zoology and Botany, from those compulsory upon
the medical student, I am not, for a moment, suggesting their exclusion
from the University. I think that sound and practical instruction in
the elementary facts and broad principles of Biology should form part
of the Arts Curriculum: and here, happily, my theory is in entire
accordance with your practice. Moreover, as I have already said, I have
no sort of doubt that, in view of the relation of Physical Science to
the practical life of the present day, it has the same right as
Theology, Law, and Medicine, to a Faculty of its own in which men shall
be trained to be professional men of science. It may be doubted whether
Universities are the places for technical schools of Engineering or
applied Chemistry, or Agriculture. But there can surely be little
question, that instruction in the branches of Science which lie at the
foundation of these Arts, of a far more advanced and special character
than could, with any propriety, be included in the ordinary Arts
Curriculum, ought to be obtainable by means of a duly organised Faculty
of Science in every University.
The establishment of such a Faculty would have the additional advantage
of providing, in some measure, for one of the greatest wants of our
time and country. I mean the proper support and encouragement of
original research.
The other day, an emphatic friend of mine committed himself to the
opinion that, in England, it is better for a mans worldly prospects to
be a drunkard, than to be smitten with the divine dipsomania of the
original investigator. I am inclined to think he was not far wrong.
And, be it observed, that the question is not, whether such a man shall
be able to make as much out of his abilities as his brother, of like
ability, who goes into Law, or Engineering, or Commerce; it is not a
question of “maintaining a due number of saddle horses,” as George
Eliot somewhere puts it–it is a question of living or starving.
If a student of my own subject shows power and originality, I dare not
advise him to adopt a scientific career; for, supposing he is able to
maintain himself until he has Sheridan Way Elementary In Ventura, California attained distinction, I cannot give him
the assurance that any amount of proficiency in the Biological Sciences
will be convertible into, even the most modest, bread and cheese. And I
believe that the case is as bad, or perhaps worse, with other branches
of Science. In this respect Britain, whose immense wealth and
prosperity hang upon the thread of Applied Science, is far behind
Permalink
05.08.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:21 am by admin
It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thing
as an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose that an adult man,
in the full vigour of his faculties, could be suddenly placed in the
world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best
might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Nature
would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the
properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling
him to do this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would
receive an education which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and
adequate to his circumstances, though there would be no extras and very
few accomplishments.
And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam, or, better still, an
Eve, a new and greater world, that of social and moral phenomena, would
be revealed. Joys and woes, compared with which all others might seem
but faint shadows, would spring from the new relations. Happiness and
sorrow would take the place of the coarser monitors, pleasure and pain;
but conduct would still be shaped by the observation of the natural
consequences of actions; or, in other words, by the laws of the nature
of man.
To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new as to Adam. And
then, long before we were susceptible of any other mode of instruction,
Nature took us in hand, and every minute of waking life brought its
educational influence, shaping our actions into rough accordance with
Natures laws, so that we might not be ended untimely by too gross
disobedience. Nor should I speak of this process of education as past
for any one, be he as old as he may. For every man the world is as
fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for
him who has the eyes to see them. And Nature is still continuing her
patient education of us in that great university, the universe, of
which we are all members–Nature having no Test-Acts.
Those who take honours in Natures university, who learn the laws which
govern men and things and obey them, are the really great and
successful men in this world. The great mass of mankind Lake Region Vocational Center Naples Maine are the
“Poll,” who pick up just enough to get through without much discredit.
Those who wont learn at all are plucked; and then you cant come up
again. Natures pluck means extermination.
Thus the question of compulsory education is settled so far as Nature
is concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and passed long ago.
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