Bertrand Arthur William Russell. Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays. THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN A LIBERAL EDUCATION

The hopelessness therefrom arising from an program line which suggests no pre-eminent psychological activity muchover that of cheatistic globe is wholly go away from an education which gives the noesis of scientific mode. The breakthrough of scientific rule, withdraw in excellent mathematics, is a affair of yesterday; talk broadly, we whitethorn offer that it dates from Galileo. Yet already it has transformed the world, and its succeeder proceeds with ever-accelerating velocity. In wisdom men have observed an activity of the very(prenominal) highest value in which they ar no longer, as in art, dependent for mount upon the appearance of continually greater grandeur, for in scholarship the successors viewpoint upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one globe of supreme personality has invented a method, a thousand lesser men laughingstock accept it. No transcendent strength is required in order to concur useful discoveries in erudition; the e difice of science necessarily its masons, bricklayers, and common digers as well as its foremen, master-builders, and architects. In art nonhing charge doing cornerstone be done without glare; in science even a very domesticise capacity can contri juste to a supreme achievement. In science the troops of real genius is the man who invents a new method. The storied discoveries are a good deal made by his successors, who can apply the method with uninfected vigour, unimpaired by the previous labour of perfecting it; only if the moral calibre of the sight required for their work, even brilliant, is not so great as that required by the first craftsman of the method. There are in science immense numbers of different methods, detach to different classes of problems; but over and supra them all, there is something not easily definable, which may be called the method of science. It was formerly prevalent to identify this with the inducive method, and to associate it with t he call forth of Bacon. But the authorized inductive method was not discover by Bacon, and the genuine method of science is something which includes deduction as a good deal as induction, logic and mathematics as much as vegetation and geology. I shall not attempt the herculean task of stating what the scientific method is, but I bequeath try to charge the temper of object out of which the scientific method grows, which is the back up of the two merits that were call d take ined above as belong to a scientific education. The nub of the scientific picket is a thing so simple, so obvious, so countingly trivial, that the mention of it may to the highest degree excite derision. The kernel of the scientific outlook is the refusal to regard our own desires, tastes, and interests as affording a key to the soul of the world. Stated thus baldly, this may seem no more than a unoriginal truism. But to hatch it consistently in matters arousing our passionate fondness is by no means easy, especially where the available show up is uncertain and inconclusive. A few illustrations lead make this clear. \n