French and German, and especially the latter language, are absolutely
indispensable to those who desire full knowledge in any department of
science. But even supposing that the knowledge of these languages
acquired is not more than sufficient for purely scientific purposes,
every Englishman has, in his native tongue, an almost perfect instrument
of literary expression; and, in his own literature, models of every kind
of literary excellence. If an Englishman cannot get literary culture out
of his Bible, his Shakespeare, his Milton, neither, in my belief, will
the profoundest study of Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, give it
to him.
Thus, since the constitution of the College makes sufficient provision
for literary as well as for scientific education, and since artistic
instruction is also contemplated, it seems to me that a fairly complete
culture is offered to all who are willing to take advantage of it.
But I am not sure that at this point the "practical" man, scotched but
not slain, may ask what all this talk about culture has to do with an
Institution, the object of which is defined to be "to promote the
prosperity of the manufactures and the industry of the country." He may
suggest that what is wanted for this end is not culture, nor even a
purely scientific discipline, but simply a knowledge of applied science.
I often wish that this phrase, "applied science," had never been
invented. For it suggests that there is a sort of scientific knowledge
of direct practical use, which can be studied apart from another sort of
scientific knowledge, which is of no practical utility, and which is
termed "pure science." But there is no more complete fallacy than this.
What people call applied science is nothing but the application of pure
science to particular classes of problems. It consists of deductions
from those general principles, established by reasoning and observation,
which constitute pure science. No one can safely make these deductions
until he has a firm grasp of the principles; and he can obtain that
grasp only by personal experience of the operations of observation and
of reasoning on which they are founded.
Almost all the processes employed in the arts and manufactures fall
within the range either of physics or of chemistry. In order to improve
them, one must thoroughly understand them; and no one has a chance of
really understanding them, unless he has obtained that mastery of
principles and that habit of dealing with facts, which is given by
long-continued and well-directed purely scientific training in the
physical and the chemical laboratory. So that there really is no
question as to the necessity of purely scientific discipline, even if
the work of the College were limited by the narrowest interpretation of
its stated aims.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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