The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley): A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest; Peak in North AmericaStuck, Hudson
History
The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley): A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest; Peak in North America
Stuck, Hudson
McKinley, Mount (Alaska); Mountaineering -- Alaska -- McKinley, Mount; Stuck, Hudson, 1863-1920 -- Travel -- Alaska -- McKinley, Mount
A good many years ago, on an occasion already referred to, the writer
roamed through the depths of the Grand Canyon with a chance acquaintance
who described himself as "Herpetologist to the Academy of Sciences" in
some Western or Mid-Western State, and as this gentleman found the
curious little reptiles he was in search of under a root or in a cranny
of rock he repeated their many-syllabled names. Curious to know what
these names literally meant and whence derived, the writer made inquiry,
sometimes hazarding a conjectural etymology. To his astonishment and
dismay he found this "scientist," whom he had looked up to, entirely
ignorant of the meaning of the terms he employed. They were just
arbitrary terms to him. The little hopping and crawling creatures might
as well have been numbered, or called x, y, z, for any significance
their formidable nomenclature held for him. Yet this man had been keenly
sarcastic about the Noachian deluge and had jeered from the height of
his superiority at hoary records which he knew only at second-hand
reference, and had laid it down that if the human race became extinct
the birds would stand the best chance of "evolving a primate"! Since
that time other "scientists" have been encountered, with no better
equipment, with no history, no poetry, no philosophy in any broad sense,
men with no letters--illiterate, strictly speaking--yet with all the
dogmatism in the world. Can any one be more dogmatic than your modern
scientist? The reproach has passed altogether to him from the
theologian.
The thing grows, and its menace and scandal grow with it. Since coming
"outside" the writer has encountered a professor at a college, a Ph.D.
of a great university, who confessed that he had never heard of certain
immortal characters of Dickens whose names are household words. We shall
have to open Night-Schools for Scientists, where men who have been
deprived of all early advantages may learn the rudiments of English
literature. One wishes that Dickens himself might have dealt with their
pretensions, but they are since his day. And surely it is time some one
started a movement for suppressing illiterate Ph.D.'s.
[Sidenote: The Psalmist and Dr. Johnson]
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