Scientific Culture, and Other Essays: Second Edition; with AdditionsCooke, Josiah P., Jr. (Josiah Parsons)
Science
Scientific Culture, and Other Essays: Second Edition; with Additions
Cooke, Josiah P., Jr. (Josiah Parsons)
Science
Again, it has been said that while the opportunities for scientific
culture in college are ample, no one will oppose such a modification of
the requisitions for admission as the conditions of this culture demand,
provided only we label the product of such culture with a descriptive
name. Call the product of your scientific culture Bachelors of Science,
we have been told, and you may arrange the requisites of admission to
your own courses as you choose. I am forced to say that this argument,
however specious, is neither ingenuous nor charitable. If you will label
the product of a purely linguistic culture with an equally descriptive
name; if, following the French usage, you will call such graduates
Bachelors of Letters, we shall not object to the term Bachelors of
Science; or, without making so great an innovation, I, for one, should
have no objection to a distinction between Bachelors of Arts in Letters
and Bachelors of Arts in Science. But it is perfectly well understood
that in this community the degree of Bachelor of Arts is for most men
the one essential condition of admission to the noble fraternity of
scholars, to what has been called the "Guild of the Learned." To refuse
this degree to a certain class of our graduates is to exclude them from
such associations and from the privileges which they afford; and this is
just what is intended. Hence I say that the argument is not ingenuous,
and it is not charitable because it implies that a class of men who
profess to love the truth as their lives are seeking to appear under
false colors. To cite examples from my own profession only, I have
always maintained that such men as Davy, Dalton, and Faraday were as
truly learned, as highly cultivated, and as capable of expressing their
thoughts in appropriate language, as the most eminent of their literary
compeers, and I shall continue to maintain this proposition before our
American community, and I have no question that sooner or later my claim
will be allowed, and the doors of the "Guild of the Learned" will be
opened to all scholars who have acquired by cultivation the same power
which these great men held in such a pre-eminent degree by gift of
Nature.
Lastly, I am persuaded that in a large body politic like this it is
unwise, and in the long run futile, to attempt to protect any special
form of culture at the expense of another. If one member suffers, all
the members suffer with it; and what is for the interest of the whole is
in the long run always for the interest of every part. I would welcome
every form of culture which has vindicated its efficiency and its value,
and in so doing I feel that I should best promote the interests of the
special department which I have in charge.
XI.
SCIENTIFIC CULTURE; ITS SPIRIT, ITS AIM, AND ITS METHODS.[P]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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