Science and Culture, and Other Essays — John Shaqi
Science and Culture, and Other EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Philosophy
Science and Culture, and Other Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
And this is one
of the real difficulties in the way of the introduction of physical
science into the ordinary University course, to which I have alluded.
It is a difficulty which will not be overcome, until years of patient
study have organised scientific teaching as well as, or I hope better
than, classical teaching has been organised hitherto.
A little while ago, I ventured to hint a doubt as to the perfection
of some of the arrangements in the ancient Universities of England;
but, in their provision for giving instruction in Science as such,
and without direct reference to any of its practical applications,
they have set a brilliant example. Within the last twenty years,
Oxford alone has sunk more than a hundred and twenty thousand pounds
in building and furnishing Physical, Chemical, and Physiological
Laboratories, and a magnificent Museum, arranged with an almost
luxurious regard for the needs of the student. Cambridge, less rich,
but aided by the munificence of her Chancellor, is taking the same
course; and, in a few years, it will be for no lack of the means and
appliances of sound teaching, if the mass of English University men
remain in their present state of barbarous ignorance of even the
rudiments of scientific culture.
Yet another step needs to be made before Science can be said to have
taken its proper place in the Universities. That is its recognition
as a Faculty, or branch of study demanding recognition and special
organisation, on account of its bearing on the wants of mankind. The
Faculties of Theology, Law, and Medicine, are technical schools,
intended to equip men who have received general culture, with the
special knowledge which is needed for the proper performance of the
duties of clergymen, lawyers, and medical practitioners.
When the material well-being of the country depended upon rude pasture
and agriculture, and still ruder mining; in the days when all the
innumerable applications of the principles of physical science to
practical purposes were non-existent even as dreams; days which men
living may have heard their fathers speak of; what little physical
science could be seen to bear directly upon human life, lay within the
province of Medicine. Medicine was the foster-mother of Chemistry,
because it has to do with the preparation of drugs and the detection
of poisons; of Botany, because it enabled the physician to recognise
medicinal herbs; of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, because the man
who studied Human Anatomy and Physiology for purely medical purposes
was led to extend his studies to the rest of the animal world.
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