EDITOR'S OUTLOOK
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If more students could be brought to comprehend HE PHILOSOPHICAL CHEMIST. We have often advocated in these columns the desirability just what Professor Rowland meant and to realize the of emphasizing the philosophical rather than the full force of his statement we would have fewer scienfactual aspects of science in courses directed toward tific fundamentalists and fewer illusions concerning the cultural ends. It seems to us that the case for a nature of "reality." Indeed, many fights of supposed philosophical point of view in professional training is genius take OR from nothing more esoteric than the ability to recognize time-honored axioms as hitherto equally cogent. Surely culture, like charity, may most appropriately convenient assumptions or points of view and to disbegin a t home. Every professional man worthy of the card them when they have outlived their usefulness. The student of natural science should be conscious name makes some pretentions to culture. Consider the anomaly of pretentious to culture which do not include that the laws and theories of his predecessors have a realization and a development of the cultural poten- emerged under handicaps a t least as great as those tialities of one's own specialty. The professional which beset the three fabulous blind men who underdoer-af-good-& confirmed lover of mankind in the took to make tactile examination of an elephant. He abstract-who cannot live agreeably with his own should take the moral of that fable to heart both in family is rightly regarded with suspicion and contempt. connection with the use of what he "knows" and in the Congruently, it is difficult to escape the conviction search for new knowledge. It is of course prudent to qualify our thesis by the that there is something spurious about purely avocaadmission that all science students have not the philotional culture. That, however, is but one aspect of the matter. sophical turn of mind. This, however, is probably There is some reason to believe that a more thorough only another way of stating a familiar, though regretgrounding in scientific philosophy would have made table fact-that many who acquire scientific degrees of many a man a better chemist than he now is. If we are incapable of becoming scientists. More instruceducated more natural philosophers and fewer tech- tional emphasis on philosophy might discourage some nicians we would have more genuine scientists as misfits and aid some potential scientists who would distinguished from measuring worms and molecular otherwise miss their mark. . carpenters. Henry A. Rowland has said: "There is no such thing as absolute truth and falsehood. The scienti6c mind should never recognize the perfect truth or the perfect falsehood of any supposed theory or observation. The This month's o v e r picture i s o ordinary crude mind has only two compartments, one reproduction of a peinting by Jan Steen, entitled "Alchymkt." for truth and one for error; indeed, the contents of the It degicts, according to your fioint two compartments are sadly mixed in most cases; the of &a, the stubborn folly or the ideal scientific mind, however, has an infinite number. tragic steadfastness o j purpose of there e o r h aredecessors o f the Each theory or law is in its proper compartment indichemist, wltobften beggeredihemcating the probability of its truth. As a new fact selves and imposed hardships upon their families i n their fruitless arrives the scientist changes i t from one compartment quest for the Philosopher's Stone. to another so as, if possible, to keep i t always in its proper relation to truth and error."
