The Old Humanities and the New ScienceOsler, William, Sir
Philosophy
The Old Humanities and the New Science
Osler, William, Sir
Classical education; Science
The practical point for us here is that in the only school dealing with
the philosophy of human thought, the sources of the new science that has
made a new world are practically ignored. One gets even an impression of
neglect in the schools, or at any rate of scant treatment, of the Ionian
philosophers, the very fathers of your fathers. Few "Greats" men, I
fear, could tell why Hippocrates is a living force to-day, or why a
modern scientific physician would feel more at home with Erasistratus
and Herophilus at Alexandria, or with Galen at Pergamos, than at any
period in our story up to, say, Harvey. Except as a delineator of
character, what does the Oxford scholar know of Theophrastus, the
founder of modern botany, and a living force to-day in one of the two
departments of biology, and made accessible to English readers--perhaps
indeed to Greek readers!--by Sir Arthur Hort?[10] Beggarly recognition
or base indifference is meted out to the men whose minds have fertilized
science in every department. The pulse of every student should beat
faster as he reads the story of Archimedes, of Hero, of Aristarchus,
names not even mentioned in the "Greats" papers in the past decade. Yet
the methods of these men exorcised vagaries and superstitions from the
human mind and pointed to a clear knowledge of the laws of nature. It is
surprising that some wag among the examiners has never relieved the
grave monotony of the papers by such peripatetic questions as "How long
a gnat lives," "To how many fathoms' depth the sunlight penetrates the
sea," and "What an oyster's soul is like"--questions which indicate
whence the modern Lucian got his inspiration to chaff so successfully
Boyle and the professors of Gresham College.
[10] Loeb Series.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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