This is a theoretical paper. A little theory goes a long way in history, for me; but it is good to collect as much as is feasible in one paper, so that gaps and inconsistencies can be noticed. I use ‘theory’ in the definite sense of a set of hypothetical statements such that deductions can be made and compared with data, facts, or generalizations obtained in some other way than as derivation from theory. Deductions need not always be rigorous, and there may be two or more ‘solutions’ obtainable, of which the scientist may choose one and discard the rest (for example, he may discard all ‘imaginary’ solutions). I am ignoring the differences between propositions, demonstrations, problems, and the like. Actually there must always be several statements, including rules of procedure, in the set; but often many are assumed and only the new or controversial one is stated as ‘the’ hypothesis of Mr X.
THE first half of the nineteenth century in Britain-and perhaps the second quarter more particularly than the first quarter-was one of the most formative, searching, and basically determinative periods in the history of science. By 1850 most of the great problems had been posed, most of the tools needed to solve them had been invented, and most of the men who were to solve them had been trained in a professional way which their elders had invented only in the preceding generation. To be sure, these elders had not relied only on British sources of inspiration. Lagrange in mathematics, Bessel in astronomy, Fourier in physics were among the great stylists whom the early Victorians transplanted and transmuted.There is very little accurate information in print about this turbulent period. In most fields, there is not only no satisfactory general work, there is also no particular monograph whose scope and accuracy can be trusted. One must often determine every factual statement from original sources, not only in one's central arc of concern, but also in peripheral matters.In spite of the difficulty this situation causes in writing a simple narrative accurately, it is nevertheless clear in which areas the basic changes took place between 1800 and 1850. The first is the area of evidence. The mass of experiments to be explained was enormously greater by 1850. This accumulation was deliberate, not the result of some inherent sociological growth factor. In area after area, scientific spokesmen called for more data, and the scientific community laboured to respond. One thing noticeable about monographs in physics, for example, is how many there were which resembled monographs in chemistry. That is, they reported exhaustive tests on a wide variety of different substances and different forms of substances; they are a very different kind of reading from Newton's Principia. This might perhaps be expected in a man like Faraday, who was originally a chemist, but it appears also in the physics monographs of, for example, the astronomer John Herschel.s Then we remember that Herschel's desire in astronomy was to chart and classify every single nebula in the heavens: as demanding a search for huge amounts of individual data as one could wish. Herschel's original motive, however, is quite clear. It was to furnish overwhelming evidence for his father's disputed theories concerning the structure and evolution of the universe.P He did not, that is, collect catalogues of data for the sake of the catalogues themselves, but in order 20 at University of Victoria on July 12, 2015 hos.sagepub.com Downloaded from HISTORY IN DEPTH 21to support theories of the widest scope. In time, of course, he became fascinated with the sheer beauty of the complexities he was observing, and was able to use his experience in areas well beyond his father's ideas.A similar fascination with the beauty of accumulating more and more detailed information is apparent in geology; the Geological Society of London was founded in 1807, in reaction against premature theoris...
As another parent of two children who have had high school biology (both had the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study Blue Version course), I would like to comment on Branson's letter (28 Oct.). My children have both come away, instilled with enthusiasm for the study of biology, with the feeling that it's a science, that it's understandable, and that it has principles. I feel that the BSCS Blue Version high school course is a great advance over its predecessors, precisely because it is so intellectually interesting and stimulating. It teaches the excitement of modern biology. It cannot, of course, teach all of the facts. No course can. The most that a high school biology course can do is to awaken the student's interest, and thence to help him to want to learn for himself other related biological matters.I do not feel either that my children have been shortchanged by the BSCS Blue Version course, because they didn't learn about the difference between "beetles and crickets." They luckily already knew the difference because they had learned this kind of biology in elenmentary school, which is probably a good place to start learning it. In Pasadena, at least, the introduction to natural history forms an important part of the elementary school education, when children are of an age and disposition which makes them natural collectors and classifiers. I would hope that in the future, as our education becomes more organized and systematized, children in general would learn about natural history, about the wonderful variety of plants and animals, about their ecologies, anatomies, and taxonomies, in the elementary schools, and that by the time they reach high school they will not only have been prepared for learning the excitement of biology as a science from the Blue Version BSCS, or its successor, but will be able to do so with a sound foundation in basic classical biology gained at a younger age.-Branson and I are asking 1.i5 (2
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