The demand for scientific studies as a part of the college curriculum
is felt by all those who have to do with the provision of higher
instruction for American youth. The reasons for this may be various,
but a fundamental reason is found in the tendency among the American
people in particular, and in this age in general, toward practicality
in all things. Applied to education this practicality asks for a
training which shall have a direct bearing upon the business of life to
be followed immediately after the training period is ended. It means
a differentiation of subjects and specialization in methods to adjust
the education to the different functions which the students taking it
are preparing for. It calls for a professional education for those
who expect to become lawyers, doctors, ministers, or teachers,--a
technical education for those who are to engage in the arts of the
mechanical or civil engineer, or of the architect. It results not only
in the establishment of colleges and universities devoted to this
kind of education, but it affects the methods of the high schools and
academies, and is felt down to primary schools, and on the other hand
the older institutions founded on a different plan are adapted to the
popular demand by the addition to the regular studies of "electives,"
chosen not always for their value or disciplinary studies, but because
of the practical applicability of the information to be derived from
them, to the business of the student.
Without discussing the relative merits of the two ideas of education,
the chief contrast between them may be found in the character of the
results sought. The knowledge of things and their uses is of chief
importance in the practical education; the knowledge of ideas and skill
in their use is the aim of the liberal education. Geology is one of the
sciences which most men will at once classify as among the practical
sciences. It deals with matters of practical importance to everybody.
Coal, iron, the metals, silver, gold, tin, lead, building stone, sand,
clay, petroleum, and natural gas, and all geological products are
essential materials of modern civilization, and a knowledge of them
and of their modes and places of occurrence is one of the requisites
of an education, either from the practical or the liberal point of
view. So too the dynamics of atmospheric and hydraulic erosion, the
agency of rivers and oceans in destruction, removal and reconstruction
of geological formations have their eminently practical bearings upon
the various arts of engineering. While the practical value of geology
is thus evident and undisputed, it is not on this account that its
importance as a part of a college course of education is urged. As
a practical study geology becomes the centre of a group of studies
requiring years for mastery. Chemistry and physics are primarily
essential to a full understanding of the most common of geological
problems. And to use geological facts and phenomena, an acquaintance
with the complex methods of engineering, civil and mechanical, which
again call for a thorough mastery of mathematics, is necessary.
Mineralogy and petrography, metallurgy and mining engineering have
each reached a stage of development entitling them to the rank of
separate sciences, but the practical training of the geologist should
include them all. When we add the biological sciences connected with
historical geology, paleontology, zoölogy and botany, with all the
laboratory and field work required for their proper study, we have a
group of affiliated branches of learning requiring four or five years
of continuous study after the student has learned how to study. It is
plain therefore that only a specialist, one who is willing to neglect
other studies, or who has previously had a liberal training, can
perfect himself on the practical side in the science of geology.
But irrespective of its practical uses, as a means of training and
supplementary to the ordinary studies of a college curriculum, geology
is one of the most useful of the sciences of observation. It is
in providing that particular training to which President Eliot has
recently called attention in the _Forum_ (Dec., 1892, Wherein Popular
Education Has Failed), that geology can be used to such advantage.
Speaking particularly of the lower education, President Eliot says
it is "the judgment and reasoning powers" that particularly require
attention. Their systematic development is to be attained in the four
directions of "observing accurately, recording correctly, comparing,
grouping and inferring justly, and expressing cogently the results of
these mental operations." (p. 421.) The attainment of these ends is
one of the purposes of liberal education, whether it be in the primary
school or in the university. And geology, or any other science, is
of value in a college course in proportion to its fitness for the
exercise and development of these functions of the student. Geology may
be taught without regard to these ends, and then it is valuable from
the practical point of view, but when we examine it in respect of its
availability as a disciplinary study we find it offering particular
attractions.
Using the distinction between theory and practice, which is as old
as Aristotle, geology in its theoretical aspect is more easily
comprehended than is the theoretical aspect of most of the modern
sciences. This arises first from the fact that the facts and phenomena
are of a simple and grand nature, making it possible for the teacher
to direct certain attention to the specific facts under consideration.
The water of the rivers, the mud by the road side, the rocks and sands
on the shore are familiar objects to all, and it is a simple matter to
call attention by ordinary language to the specific facts regarding
them, which, analyzed out, are to form the basis of exact ideas and
scientific definition and classification. Geology is the one science
among the natural sciences which may begin with the common language
of the pupil, and by means of such language alone may build up ideas
of precise phenomena in scientific terms. Physiography or physical
geography surpasses geology proper in this particular, as the admirable
work of Professor Davis is showing, and on this account it is the best
introduction to geology. But the very largeness and indefiniteness
of the facts are in the way of the use of physical geography for the
exercise of the finer and more exact functions of observation. The
disciplinary value of classics and mathematics is to a considerable
extent derived from this quality, the precision with which the words
or figures kindle like ideas. So long as the object of the training
is to teach the knowledge of ideas and how to use them, classics and
mathematics are the simplest and purest means of developing a liberal
education. The addition of sciences to the college course is not
because of the usefulness of the knowledge of things thus to be gained,
but because the language of the sciences is essential to call forth the
observation and the exercise of the accompanying mental operations.
When it comes to dealing with the ideas associated with particular
sense-observation, where form or motion can not be expressed in
simple mathematical terms, language can not communicate a new idea
or kindle it in another mind with precision. It is necessary by some
means to recall or to present the object itself to the student. In
the teaching of science this point is of great importance, and much
of the unsatisfactoriness of science-teaching is doubtless due to
failure to note it. No circumlocution of words can arouse in another
or communicate to him the idea appropriate to a sensation he has never
felt. The blind man whose eyes are opened sees men as trees walking.
In the use of science for elementary training (and the training
is elementary until the student is capable of investigating and
interpreting the facts and phenomena of a science directly) that
science is the better which deals with objects which are simple, common
and easily observed. Such is geology in some of its aspects. Every time
the student walks in the country he sees the facts discussed in the
text-book or by his teacher; and from attention to those with which he
is already familiar he can be readily led to observe and give attention
to others and to analyze those already in his mind by properly directed
questions.
In the field of geology are found the ready means for the exercise
and development of observation and thought. The learner begins
with ideas which every intelligent mind associates with the objects
described or named, and by degrees the marks of his knowledge are
increased, the relations of things are grasped, and the content of his
ideas associated with the language of his science is enlarged. In the
process of learning the science he has been building up his stock of
knowledge of facts and phenomena, but, of more importance than that,
he has learned the method of observing and of scientific thinking.
He has had training in the methods of reducing the hard facts of
nature to the laws of thought and practice, he has seen the method by
which theoretical order is made out of the interminable confusion and
complexity of natural things.
Beside this primary reason for the use of geology as a disciplinary
science-study, there is a second reason arising from the symbolic
nature of a large group of its facts. This aspect of the science is
best seen in the historical and stratigraphical parts of geology, in
which fossils are the chief data for study. The interpretation of a
fossil into a species of organism, having its definite place in the
elaborate classification of the zoölogist, or as an indicator of
the time and place and mode of formation of the strata in which it
is buried, is, to be sure, a most intricate and, at first thought
it would seem, an unattractive process. But no more so, I would
say, than the interpretation of a series of Greek characters. The
interpretation of the Greek reveals to us the richest results of human
thought and most perfect laws of human speech, and we find therefore
in the analysis required the most perfect discipline of the powers
of speech and language. The fossil too holds, ready to be revealed,
the story of the history of the world and the laws of the evolution
of the organic life of the globe, and records an inexhaustible wealth
of information regarding the laws of nature. But as an instrument of
intellectual discipline its great merit lies in its symbolic nature.
It is this symbolic character of the classical languages and of the
mathematics which fits them to be universal means of liberal training.
The symbolic nature of the fossil fits it to become the exponent of
training in the pure science of nature. The fossil is a mark which
stands for something, and thus, in the nature of things, it asks
for interpretation. As a symbol it stimulates minute and accurate
observation, and kindles close and exhaustive thought; as a symbol it
leaves us the ideas it has engendered after it is lost to memory as
an observation. Thus the value of its study does not depend upon the
retention in the memory of the facts brought before the mind, but in
the training of the mental processes required in its interpretation.
The study of this branch of geology exercises and develops all the
faculties which are specially exercised in any scientific investigation.
Another aspect in which it is an ideal means for such training comes
from the fact that it is equally valuable at every stage of progress
of the student. When first examined it means nothing to him. He knows
nothing of organism, of strata, of geological time. The fossil gains
meaning only as he is able to put meaning into it. The student must
ask questions, and as step by step he answers his questions by more
minute and wider examination, the fossil holds a fuller interpretation.
His studies lead him to investigation of the whole field of nature,
the rocks, the formation of deposits, the action of the elements, the
conditions of life, the forms of organism, their functions and habits,
the laws of growth, their adaptation to environment, the changes of
events in time, the efforts of association and struggle for life, the
principles of evolution and development--the migration and origin and
extinction of organisms on the globe. Nothing in nature is without
interest to him. Further than this the amount of good he gains is not
measured by the number of fossils he studies, but by the wideness of
his research. A handful of fossils from some one fossiliferous ledge
may be the text for a year's study, and the methods acquired in the
study may be the nucleus of a life's work. In this department of
geology the possibilities for new discoveries, new developments of
science are almost endless. As a single author thoroughly read develops
a wealth of knowledge of the laws of language and thought, so geology
may be studied by the use of a limited set of its phenomena and become
the introduction to the exhaustive study of natural science.
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.
What has already been said applies to the study of the pure science
of geology either in the field or in the laboratory. There is
still another use to which this, as other sciences, may be put in
disciplining the college student in directions not provided for by
literary or mathematical studies,--the study of man as an investigator.
In the pursuit of the study of geology, the first instruction must be
received in didactic form, but after the text-book and lecture stage
is passed, or while it is under way consultation of the literature
of the sciences is appropriate. In the use of scientific literature
the critical judgment is brought under training, and the varying
interpretations of well known phenomena by expert scientists suggest
the prominent part which the notions already in the mind play in
the interpretation of the external facts observed. The experienced
geologist will recall many cases of honest report of impossible facts
by men who are unable to distinguish between what they saw and the
false interpretations they made of these observations. One man will
report that a live toad jumped out of the middle of a solid piece of
coal, when it was heated in the stove; another will swear that he saw
a fossil shark's tooth taken out of a ledge of Trenton limestone.
It is evident that our memory of observation is not the revival of
the object producing the sensation, but of the idea we framed of the
sensation at the time. The study of original descriptions of objects of
nature reveals the fact that the describer uses the ideas he already
has in his mind as he does the standard foot-rule in his hand for
measuring that which he describes, and it is by the study of scientific
literature and the comparison of views of many scientists that this
highest discipline of the observational faculties is attained--the
power to determine the personal equation of error for the observer,
and thus see through his descriptions a truer representation of the
facts than the observer himself saw. Geological literature is admirably
adapted for this higher discipline, and in no field of science (I think
not in astronomy itself), has wider and more comprehensive thought been
applied than in geology. While other branches of science have been
developed and become more narrow and special in their treatment of the
facts concerned, geology still stands as the most comprehensive of all
the sciences of nature.
H. S. Williams.
=Yale College=, November 30, 1892.