Aspects of science

It is a well-known fact that a really intelligent child finds great difficulty in believing that the earth is round. Stupid children, on the other hand, believe anything they are told. The difficulty experienced by the first child is due to the fact that, in however elementary a way, it is conscious of the implications of the statement. The stupid child seems to be unaware that the statement has any implications; it seems able to accept almost any statement in some curiously bare, unrelated fashion. Hermann Bahr has an interesting and amusing story of how profoundly his faith in his father was shaken when the latter, à propos of a sunset, told the young boy that in reality it was the earth that turned round and not the sun. Completely overwhelming objections to this statement rose instantly in young Hermann’s mind, and, outraged by this insult to his intelligence, he preserved a hurt and dignified silence that lasted for days.

We notice the same essential difference in schoolboys and university students, and, in fact, in men of any age. Perhaps the majority of men, and less certainly of children, have but little sense of the implications of a statement. The sense of implications does not necessarily involve the ability to discover the implications—that is a comparatively rare gift. It acts rather in a negative manner, making the student restless under a subtly illogical presentation of a case, or leaving the schoolboy frankly mutinous at the end of a sermon. It is not a gift which makes a rapid learner, although its absence will prevent a man from ever knowing a subject properly. It is unfortunate that education, as practised in this country, does not sufficiently take into account this very desirable inhibition. The text-book plays a very large part in contemporary education, and most text-books are designed for those who can swallow statements at great speed. That delicate web of doubt, of half-seen alternative explanations, which comes into the mind of the intelligent student when confronted with the highly dogmatic statements and somewhat perfunctory “proofs” of many modern text-books, counts as sheer loss in the examination race. This is especially true of scientific text-books, which are usually conceived on an entirely wrong plan, judged from the standpoint of rational education. Statements which are the final expression of very difficult and slowly acquired abstractions are presented in all their nakedness, and followed by a collection of “examples.” The glib student learns these statements as if he were learning a foreign language, and soon masters the tricks necessary to apply them. I have known such students able to solve very difficult problems and yet entirely unable to meet, in any way, a sceptical attack upon the fundamental theorem they employ. The fact is that this method of teaching science is psychologically unnatural, and the knowledge acquired on this method is largely sham knowledge. While it may not be true that the child passes through “cultural epochs” in its mental growth, it is true that it will feel many of the hesitations and difficulties experienced by the men who first formulated the concepts now presented to it for its instant acceptance. It is for this reason that the best method of teaching a science is probably the historic method. In this way not only are many doubts fairly met instead of being merely repressed, but the exact portée of a statement and possible lines of extension are much more clearly seen. The effect of the modern text-book is to make the intelligent student feel that he is remarkably unintelligent; the text-book writer is so terribly cocksure.

But if the historic method must be rejected as too lengthy one may plead for its partial application. Let the text-book give the broad outlines, and let the student supplement these by reading, wherever possible, the standard memoirs written by the original discoverers. In this way he will gain something much more valuable than a more thorough acquaintance with his subject; he will learn something of the mental gesture of the true man of science, something very different from the glittering efficiency of the text-book writer. Consider, for instance, the following passage from Newton, writing on the theory of light: He discusses a corpuscular theory, and continues:

The subject here becomes alive in a way it never does in the text-book. It is of the greatest importance that the student should see, not merely the results, but the avenues of approach. He will gain more confidence in his own powers and more interest in the subject.

For those people also who, without being students, take an interest in science, the reading of original memoirs may be recommended. Much of the science they learn in this way will be wrong, but they will see it as something thoroughly human and, it may be, as something thoroughly sympathetic. The text-book has an air of infallibility which is very repellent, and it is difficult to avoid associating this with the scientific man. But it is merely a manifestation of the same tendency that produces stereotyped restaurants. A reading of the old memoirs shows science as tentative, imaginative, courageous. They show that the man of science is a humanist.