Thus, your training in science has not only taught you to use your
eyes, but to use them intelligently, and in such a way as to see much
more in the world around you than is visible to the uninstructed man.
This widened perception might be illustrated from any department of
natural science. Let me take, by way of example, the relation of the
student of science towards the features and charms of landscape. It
may be said that no training is needed to comprehend these beauties;
that the man in the street, the holiday-maker from town, is just as
competent as the man of science to appreciate them, and get quite as
much pleasure out of them. We need not stop to discuss the relative
amounts of enjoyment which different orders of spectators may derive
from scenery; but obviously the student of science has one great
advantage in this matter. Not only can he enjoy to the full all the
outward charms which appeal to the ordinary eye, but he sees in the
features of the landscape new charms and interests which the ordinary
untrained eye cannot see. Your accomplished Professor of Geology has
taught you the significance of the outer lineaments of the land. While
under his guidance you have traced with delight the varied features of
the lovely landscapes of the Midlands, your eyes have been trained to
mark their connection with each other, and their respective places in
the ordered symmetry of the whole scene. You perceive why there is here
a height and there a hollow; you note what has given the ridges and
vales their dominant forms and directions; you detect the causes that
have spread out a meadow in one place and raised up a hill in another.
Above and beyond all questions as to the connection and origin of its
several parts, the landscape appeals vividly to your imagination.
You know that it has not always worn the aspect which it presents
to-day. You have observed in these ridges proofs that the sea once
covered their site. You have seen the remains of long extinct shells,
fishes, and reptiles that have been disinterred from the mud and silt
left behind by the vanished waters. You have found evidence that not
once only, but again and again, after vast lapses of time and many
successive revolutions, the land has sunk beneath the ocean and has
once more emerged. You have been shown traces of underground commotion,
and you can point to places where, over central England, volcanoes were
once active. You have learnt that the various elements of the landscape
have thus been gradually put together during successive ages, and that
the slow processes, whereby the characteristic forms of the ground have
been carved out, are still in progress under your eye.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account