John Pendleton Campbell
Published: 2017-09-18
Total Pages: 188
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Excerpt from Biological Teaching in the Colleges of the United States The absolute necessity for considerable Science teaching in any liberal course Of study is now generally admitted, and teachers seem almost unanimous in believing that the training in methods is the primary Object Of such work, and that the information involved, important though it is, must be given a subordinate place. It follows, therefore, that if the quality Of teaching is what it should be, the methods Of Scientific inquiry, SO far at least as they are common to all branches, may be learned by studies in one department of science quite as well as in any other. It follows, too, that in the arrangement Of studies, in a college curriculum at least, all sciences must be given an approximately equal rank, equal SO far as the general character Of the logical methods is concerned, and varying principally in the extent to which they depend upon the two sources Of information - observation and experiment. It is as a means of training the observational powers that biology 1s chiefly valuable. In this respect it is surpassed by no one Of the natural sciences, and indeed it possesses certain features which it shares with none Of them. In spite Of this the general improvement in the methods of teaching biology has come much 'later than in any Of the sister sciences. In seeking for the cause of this it seems evident that the introduction Of practical and rational methods into the teaching Of chemistry and physics has been greatly facilitated by popular ap preciation based upon the very erroneous but widespread idea that the final end and aim Of chemistry is the ability to determine the composi tion Of unknown substances, while physics finds a justification for its existence only in such occasional discoveries as the electric light and the phonograph. The educational value Of practical work in chemistry and physics seems, therefore, to have been something Of an after thought, and to have been demonstrated only after such work had been performed for a considerable time with other Objects in view. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
