The Journal of Geology, January-February 1893: A Semi-Quarterly Magazine of Geology and Related SciencesVarious
Science
The Journal of Geology, January-February 1893: A Semi-Quarterly Magazine of Geology and Related Sciences
Various
Geology -- Periodicals
Another advantage attaching to geology as a science-study for the
college curriculum, arises from the fact that it may be pursued deeply
without the elaborate aid to the senses required in other sciences
for making minute record or measurement of facts or phenomena. As in
language and mathematics, it is essential to acquire a familiarity
with the grammar, the dictionary and the symbols, formulas and rules
of their usage before the finer training in the use of thought begins,
so the vocabulary and the definitions of a science must be acquired
before much use can be made of the higher discipline to be derived from
scientific study. In language study this higher training comes from
practice in making the minute analysis, in detecting the fine shades
of meaning expressed in the literature itself. So it is important in
selecting a science to be used as a disciplinary study that the facts
and laws of nature with which it is concerned should be capable of
clear and precise definition, and, moreover, that it should furnish a
field for the study of the minute and intricate relationship existing
between the different facts which are to be attained by personal
inspection of the objects themselves. In most of the sciences this
deeper exercise of scientific thought requires for its successful
pursuit artificial aids to the common senses of observation. Chemistry
must have its purified acids and reagents, test tubes, and delicate
scales for measurement of weight and volume. Mineralogy must have its
chemical analyses, or optical measurements so fine that microscopes
of highest power are essential tools for the investigation. Physics
must have the most delicate measurements of time and space and weight.
Botany, for the earlier stages of study, is fully equal to geology in
these respects, but its scope is much less general. Zoölogy requires
dissections calling for skill in manipulation, and in other respects
is ill adapted to general classes. But precision in the intellectual
processes of observation and reasoning can be cultivated in the use of
geological facts to their highest and widest perfection, with scarcely
any aids to the normal faculties of observation. A couple of hammers,
a pocket lens, a chisel and a few pointed steel tools for revealing
fossils, a tape line, compass and clinometer are the few equipments
that will enable the geologist to carry his investigations to almost
any degree of thoroughness.
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