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The organisation of thought, educational and scientific

Chapter 2: PREFACE
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About This Book

A set of essays and addresses arguing for educational reform and considering philosophy of science. The author criticizes superficial breadth and inert ideas, urging instruction in fewer subjects taught thoroughly to cultivate active thought, aesthetic receptivity, and technical expertise. He links technical and mathematical education to literature and national needs, proposes principles for elementary mathematical teaching, and analyzes how scientific concepts are formed and misconstrued. Final pieces examine the conceptual organization of space, time, and relativity, and recommend practical institutional changes for wartime and vocational contexts. The collection stresses that clear organization of thought underpins both effective education and sound scientific inquiry.

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PREFACE

THE discourses included in this volume have been delivered as addresses on various occasions which are duly noted; the only exception is The Anatomy of Some Scientific Ideas, which is now published for the first time. These discourses fall into two sections, the first five chapters deal with education, and the remaining three embody discussions on certain points arising in the philosophy of science. But a common line of reflection extends through the whole, and the two sections influence each other.

I have left in each chapter the reference to the particular occasion of its first production, and I have not sought for a verbal consistency covering perplexity. But the various parts of the book were in fact composed with express reference to each other, so as to form one whole.

I have to thank the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press for permission to republish the contents of Chapter V.

Imperial College of Science and Technology,
April 1917.