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  SCIENTIFIC CULTURE,
  _AND OTHER ESSAYS_.

  BY
  JOSIAH PARSONS COOKE, LL. D.,
  PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY AND MINERALOGY, IN HARVARD COLLEGE.

  _SECOND EDITION; WITH ADDITIONS._

  NEW YORK:
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
  1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET.
  1885.



  COPYRIGHT, 1881, 1885,
  BY JOSIAH PARSONS COOKE.



  TO
  MY ASSOCIATES
  IN
  THE CHEMICAL LABORATORY
  OF
  HARVARD COLLEGE
  THIS VOLUME
  IS
  AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.




PREFACE.


The essays collected in this volume, although written for special
occasions without reference to each other, have all a bearing on the
subject selected as the title of the volume, and are an outcome of a
somewhat large experience in teaching physical science to college
students. Thirty years ago, when the writer began his work at Cambridge,
instruction in the experimental sciences was given in our American
colleges solely by means of lectures and recitations. Chemistry and
Physics were allowed a limited space in the college curriculum as
branches of useful knowledge, but were regarded as wholly subordinate to
the classics and mathematics as a means of education; and as physical
science was then taught, there can be no question that the accepted
opinion was correct. Experimental science can never be made of value as
a means of education unless taught by its own methods, with the one
great aim in view to train the faculties of the mind so as to enable the
educated man to read the Book of Nature for himself.

Since the period just referred to, the example early set at Cambridge of
making the student's own observations in the laboratory or cabinet the
basis of all teaching, either in experimental or natural history
science, has been generally followed. But in most centers of education
the old traditions so far survive that the great end of scientific
culture is lost in attempting to conform even laboratory instruction to
the old academic methods of recitations and examinations. These, as
usually conducted, are simply hindrances in a course of scientific
training, because they are no tests of the only ability or acquirement
which science values, and therefore set before the student a false aim.
To point out this error, and to claim for science teaching its
appropriate methods, was one object of the writer in these essays.

It is, however, too often the case that, in following out our theories
of education, we avoid Scylla only to encounter Charybdis, and so, in
specializing our courses of laboratory instruction, there is great
danger of falling into the mechanical routine of a technical art, and
losing sight of those grand ideas and generalizations which give breadth
and dignity to scientific knowledge. That these great truths are as
important an element of scientific culture as experimental skill, the
author has also endeavored to illustrate, and he has added brief notices
of the lives of two noble men of science which may add force to the
illustrations.




CONTENTS.


                                                                  PAGE
     I.--SCIENTIFIC CULTURE                                          5
    II.--THE NOBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE                                  45
   III.--THE ELEMENTARY TEACHING OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE                71
    IV.--THE RADIOMETER                                             86
     V.--MEMOIR OF THOMAS GRAHAM                                   127
    VI.--MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HALLOWES MILLER                         145
   VII.--WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS                                     160
  VIII.--JEAN-BAPTISTE-ANDRE DUMAS                                 181
    IX.--THE GREEK QUESTION                                        203
     X.--FURTHER REMARKS ON THE GREEK QUESTION                     214
    XI.--SCIENTIFIC CULTURE; ITS SPIRIT, ITS AIM, AND ITS METHODS  227
   XII.--"NOBLESSE OBLIGE"                                         267
  XIII.--THE SPIRITUAL LIFE                                        289




ESSAYS.




I.

SCIENTIFIC CULTURE.

    _An Address delivered July 7, 1875, at the Opening of the Summer
    Courses of Instruction in Chemistry, at Harvard University._


You have come together this morning to begin various elementary courses
of instruction in chemistry and mineralogy. As I have been informed,
most of you are teachers by profession, and your chief object is to
become acquainted with the experimental methods of teaching physical
science, and to gain the advantages in your study which the large
apparatus of this university is capable of affording.

In all this I hope you will not be disappointed. You, as teachers, know
perfectly well that success must depend, first of all, on your own
efforts; but, since the methods of studying Nature are so different from
those with which you are familiar in literary studies, I feel that the
best service I can render, in this introductory address, is to state,
as clearly as I can, the great objects which should be kept in view in
the courses on which you are now entering.

By your very attendance on these courses you have given the strongest
evidence of your appreciation of the value of chemical studies as a part
of the system of education, and let me say, in the first place, that you
have not overvalued their importance. The elementary principles and more
conspicuous facts of chemistry are so intimately associated with the
experience of every-day life, and find such important applications in
the useful arts, that no man at the present day can be regarded as
educated who is ignorant of them. Not to know why the fire burns, or how
the sulphur trade affects the industries of the world, will be regarded,
by the generation of men among whom your pupils will have to win their
places in society, as a greater mark of ignorance than a false quantity
in Latin prosody or a solecism in grammar.

Moreover, I need not tell you that physical science has become a great
power in the world. Indeed, after religion, it is