Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The _Elementary Zoölogy_ of _Frank E. Beddard_[45] contains an account
of a few types selected from the chief groups of the animal kingdom,
followed and accompanied by a consideration of some of the more
general conclusions of biology. A type system has to be used, but the
author has endeavored to obviate the great fault of that method--the
liability of the students conceiving that the characters of the
species selected for description are distinctive of a wider assemblage
of forms--by emphasizing here and there the differences between allied
groups. The question arises whether to begin with the higher forms and
go down to the lower, which some authorities believe to be the course
easier of comprehension by the student, or to follow the inverse
method. The author prefers to begin with the lower forms and gradually
work to the higher as the course having the undoubted advantage of
presenting the facts in a logical sequence. He accordingly begins with
the amoeba and proceeds upward. The treatment is simple and lucid.
Novelty has not been sought in the illustrations, though there are
several new ones, but selections have been made from the best already
drawn.
_An Introductory Logic_[46] grew out of the lectures of the author,
Prof. _J. E. Creighton_, to undergraduate classes in Cornell
University; is intended primarily as a text-book for students, and
aims at being both practical and theoretical. The broad view is taken
in the definition of the subject that logic is the science of thought,
or the science that investigates the process of thinking; and the
author expresses himself convinced that, in spite of some
difficulties, formal logic is one of the most valuable instruments in
modern education for promoting clear thinking and for developing
critical habits of mind. To doubters of the advisability of attempting
to include a theory of thought or a philosophy of mind in an
elementary course in logic, Professor Creighton replies that
psychology having differentiated itself from philosophy and become a
"natural" science, no longer undertakes to describe all that the mind
is and does. "It belongs to logic to investigate intelligence as a
knowing function, just as it is the task of ethics to deal with the
practical or active mental faculties." Logic must first be a science
before it can become an art, but it can not be regarded as an art in
the sense that it furnishes a definite set of rules for thinking
correctly. What it can do is to show the method by which new truths
have been discovered and the general conditions that must always be
fulfilled in reasoning correctly. The treatment in the text follows
the usual order, except that the author, keeping clear of artificial
diction, writes in talking English that is easy to be comprehended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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