Eric Hutchinson
Stanford University Stanford, California 94305
I
I
science:
A Component
of Liberal Education
The term "liberal education" is seldom heard in discussions between chemistry professors except a t a special event such as a conference dealing with science courses for nonscience majors. I believe that what I have to say is not restricted just to the chemistry which should he taught to nonscientists but may apply just as well to any science course. For the question really before us is: how should we treat the sciences as a part of liheral education? In attempting to answer that question I hope to suggest some ways of incorporating science into a liberal education which are superior in approach to those we usually follow for specialist science courses. We may assert that a liberal education attempts today, just as it did traditionally, to present a balanced view of man's cultural heritage and the intellectual culture of the present day. It is no new thing for science to be a component of liheral education: the curriculum of the medieval universities encompassed geometry and astronomy as well as literature, languages, and philosophy. That chemistry or physics is a necessary component of a liheral education is a proposition that needs no lengthy justification in American society in the middle of the twentieth century. I shall argue in this paper, however, that the presence of chemistry and physics in a college curriculum is not a sufficient condition for a liberal education unless the subjects are carefully taught. I believe that in method and thought thereis a common core in all scholarly subjects, although differences are more often emphasized than are the similarities. I suggest that we might profitably begin by asking what purpose is served in a liheral education by the teaching of any particular scholarly subject which has matured to the point of becoming professionalized or professorialized. In "The House of Intellect" (1) Barzun says that it is not the purpose of liberal education to concern itself with the teaching of scholarly subjects to a point a t which the student can become a practitioner of the subjects. Rather:
. . . with cautious confidence and sufficient intellectual training, it is possible to master the literature of s. subject and gam s. proper understanding of it. . . .This will not enahle one to add to what is known, but it will give possession of all that the discipline has to offw the world. [My italics.]. . .Every age has carried with it great loads of information, most of it false or tautalogical yet deemed indispensable at the time. Of true knowledge at any given time a good part is merely convenient, necessary indeed to the worker, but not to an understanding of his subject. The persistence of the term liheral education and the strenuous (possibly vain) efforts made to keep this term alive and significant suggest that teaching in colleges and universities has at least two functions. These are
liberal education and pre-professional training. It is hazardous to define terms in the field of education, hut I will venture the following. The purpose of general or liberal education is to broaden the ideas and intellect of the student so as to enahle him to become a better citizen in the sense of being more informed, more concerned, and more competent to reach decisions. The purpose of pre-professional training is conceptually simpler; to produce (this is the language now used (2)) technically trained journeymen to carry out the practice and application of normal (3) scientificand technological ideas to what society perceives to be the contemporary common good. In recognizably oversimplified terms, the highest aim of liheral education is to foster wisdom in the student and that of pre-professional training to foster learning in the student. In spite of contrary statements by educators (4), in American society today science and technology are all too often regarded as bringing most of their relevance to hear on goods and services. I have deliberately used the term pre-professional training, rather than education. Science ought to be concerned with accurate description, and pre-professional studies in most colleges and universities are so illiberal that to describe them as training courses is in accordance with the facts. The expansion of information, about which we hear so much, is generally regarded as &ording sufficient justification for adding extra information-loaded courses to the undergraduate science curriculum. For example, at a major American university the chemistry curriculum was revised about six years ago in such a way that during the senior year almost no chemistry courses were required of the student. The argument for this change--or, a t any rate, me argument-was that the chemistry student would be freed to take courses outside his specialized field and would bring to the study of literature, history, etc., some scholarly perspective that would influencehis understanding of these subjects and might even have a bearing on how they were taught to him. Already the senior year has been invaded by chemistry courses now regarded as essential to the training of the undergraduate chemist, a t least at the honors level.' Taken from a talk given at a conference on the theme of Chemistry for Nan-Science Majors-ponsored by a committee of the Advisorv Council on Colleee - Chemistrv. .. March 13. 1966. Dallas, Texas. 'The term "honors student" most commonly implies increasing exposure to specialized subject matter. It k a source of interesting speculation to inquire what would happen if it were made to imply some arbitrary standard of unusuel competence mtside the field. Would graduate science departments joyfully reach out for such honors students7 Volume 44, Number 5, May 1967
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Here, in very practical terms, we have illustrations of Barzun's remarks about the presumed indispensability of loads of information. That it was possible six years ago to capitalize on the improved quality of chemistry taught in the high schools, and thereby eliminate some material now unnecessa.ry in the first-year course, has produced no lasting effect on the freedom with which an honors student can pursue an education. The partial vacuum created by curricular reform simply provided space into which additional information-loaded courses could be packed. Why should one concern himself with this very natural response to a vacuous situation? If universities are concerned vith training rather than educating chemistry students, what valid objection can be raised if that training is made fuller and more comprehensive? At least one serious objection can be raised. To the extent that prediction has any value it may be presumed that honors students in chemistry are the ones from whom we expect the greater contributions to knowledge in their later professional life. It is reasonable to presume further that these contributions might be the more important the greater the student's understanding of his subject (as contrasted with his skill in practicing it). Information contributes to technical skill but not necessarily to understanding. Observation suggests that universities have some function other than providing pre-professional training. In many major universities a large proportion of the undergraduat.e student hody (as high in some cases as goy0) has the expectation of proceeding to graduate school. Even so, commencement lists of most colleges and universities indicate that the majority of students pursue courses of study that are explicitly not preprofessional. British universities were embarrassed last year to discover that far too few qualified students presented themselves for entrance to science and engineering places (5); and few chemistry departments in the U.S. are troubled by an oversupply of able students. It is of interest, moreover, that medical schools, law schools, and graduate schools of business-which are as professionalized in their own fields as the physical sciences are--show more and more hospitality to the student who has been led to learn and ponder about human thought and experience and less hospitality to the student with premedical, pre-legal, or precommercia1 training. I have no objection at all to the notion that universities should serve some utilitarian purposes: I am fully persuaded that historically they have been, and by social obligation should continue to be, useful contributors to the common good. The utilitarian function, however, is particularly directed to the intellect. The task of universities is to assist students to think, and to think not only in the currently fashionable modes but with a full appreciation of man's earlier ideas. In what follows I shall argue that, a t least in chemistry, many universities consider their responsibility to have been discharged if they train students to act. One of my colleagues, Professor F. 0.Koenig, who has devoted much thought to the teaching of chemistry in colleges, has pointed out (6) that for purposes of discussion science can be construed to have four meanings, of which two are preeminent: (1) "science is a certain kind of human activity:' (2) "science is a 262
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Journal of Chemicol Education
certain body of knowledge, namely all the knowledge called scientific" [my italics]. For the present purpose I intend to restrict these statements as follows: (1) chemistry is a certain kind of human activity; (2) chemistry is a certain body of knowledge, namely all the lcnowledge called chemical. I hope that I may use these statements as models without it being assumed that I mistake the models for reality. To disarm premature criticism I should point out that Xoenig is not alone in making statements which appear to give internal selfdefinitionsof science. With an important qualification, which I shall allude to later, Polanyi (7) has written: "I accept the existing scientific opinion as a competent authority, but not a supreme authority, for identifying the subject matter called 'science.' " The Human Activity Aspect of Science
Liberal education is very much concerned with human activities. One of its major tasks is to decide which human activities loom so large in intellectual and public affairs at a given time that they simply cannot be omitted from a liberal curriculum. As a mid-twentieth century activity, chemistry-r, more broadly, physical science-enjoys a good claim to be a component of liberal education. It may be plausibly argued that until the outbreak of World War I1 the impact of chemistry on human affairs was largely intellectual and economic. Those teachers who sought to incorporate the physical sciences in the liberal curriculum took great pains to treat them as intellectwll disciplines. Even so, no one can look a t the work of Conant (S),Holton (9),and Nash (10) and fail to see that these men attempted to combine both the "human activity" and the "body of knowledge" models in their subject matter. One advantage to be gained by thus fusing human activity and body of knowledge is that the student not only extracts something from the hody of knowledge accumulated by a particular kind of human activity, he also learns something about the human activity itself: more particularly he learns something about how the activity is carried on and about the actors themselves. One need only compare Holton's "Fundamentals of Modern Physical Science" (9) with the typical chemistry text to recognize the warm humanity of the former and the impersonality of the latter. From the human standpoint nothing in recent chemical literature and textbooks is more depressing than repeated phrases such as "It has been found that . . ." which convey to the student the notion that observation and idea in chemistry are somehow disembodied. When one incorporates in teaching large proportions of the human activity aspect of science, one cannot escape from dealing with the intellectual habits of people, especially the essential habit of abstraction. Whitehead has written (11): Ahstraetiarl involves emphasis, and emphasis vivifies experience, for good, or for evil. All characteristics peculiar to actualities are modes of emphasis whereby finitude vivifies the infinite. In this way creativit,y involves the production of vslue-experience, by the inflow from t,he infinite into the finite, deriving special character from the details and the totality of the infinite pattern. This is the ahstrsction involved in the crestion of any actuality, with its union of finitude with infinity. But consciousness proceeds ta a seoond order of abstraction whereby finite constituents of the acbual thing are abstracted from that
thing. This procedure is necessary for finite thought, though it weakens the sense of reality. I t is the basis of science.
Among the things that "the subject has to offer the world" (to quote Barzun) abstraction is very important, second order abstraction particularly so. Thus in chemistry the abstraction involved in the atomic theory, though considerable, is by no means the end of the story: for we pile on further abstractions regarding molecular architecture, chemical bonding, etc. Books such as Holton's very properly draw attention to the nature of the abstractions involved. Chemistry training texts almost always ignore the existence of abstraction; still less do they come to grips with the modes of abstractions. The result is that the practitioner of chemistry has a terribly impoverished view of his suhject as compared with the liberally educated student. In chemistry training courses we evidently feel so strongly the need to press on to the exposition of the body of knowledge that we bypass most of the ideas on which, for instance, the atomic theory rests2: we bypass even more quickly the people who contributed the ideas. It is in Holton's book (I$), and not in a standard chemistry text, that we find statements like the following. Dalton possessed a strong drive and a rich imaginat,inn, particolarly along the lines of mechanical models and clear mental pictures, but his great gift was an astonishing physical intuition which allowed him to arrive a t useful conclusions despite being only "a coarse experimenter" as his contemporary Hnmpbry Davy called him.
Holton's book devotes thirteen pages to an exposition of Dalton's atomic theory of chemistry. In contrast, a highly respected chemistry text takes only nine lines to go from the first introduction of Dalton's name to the statement: "The existence of atoms is now accepted as a fact." I think it proper to ask why courses in a liberal curriculum should be so rich in the background of ideas on which chemistry rests and why training courses should be so impoverished. If it is important for the liberally educated student to have a grasp of the principal abstractions it is surely even more important for the chemical practitioner to have them. It may be argued that the chemistry specialist gradually and informally acquires an appreciation of the many abstractions during his training period. It may even be argued that he needs no clear understanding of them. Polanyi attempts to explain, though not to justify these arguments (13). The decisive reasons why such obviously inadequate formulations of the principles of science were accepted by men of great intellectual distinction lies in a desperate craving to r e p resent scientific knowledge as impersonal. We have seen this achieved by two alternat,ive recipes: (1) b y describing science in terms of some secondary feature (simplicity, economy, practicality, fruitfulness, etc.), and (2) by setting up some formal model in t,e-3 of probabilities or constant conjunctions. . . . A scientist can accept, therefore, the most inadequate and misleading formulation of his own seientifio principles without ever realizing what is being said, because he automatically supplements i t b y his tacit knowledge of what icience really is, and thus makes the formulation ring true.
It may well be that men of great intellectual distinction % T h equestion even of the body of knowledge is nnt without its own confusions. I n s. forthcoming psper I hope to den1 with fashion as it pertains to body of knowledge.
do indeed supplement inadequate formulation with tacit knowledge. It would be comforting to believe this, but the frequency with mhich many dmtinguished scientists, from the time of Descartes on (14), have argued, against their own genius, that great science can be achieved merely by grasping scientific methodology properly, suggests that tacit knowledge may often be buried very deep. Experience has taught me scepticism about how much tacit knowledge the average, or even very able, trainee college chemistry major brings to his subject. There are other arguments for insisting that training courses should incorporate a larger amount of the activity model. I share Polanyi's belief (16) that: "No important discovery can be made in science by anyone who does not believe that science is important-indeed supremely important-in itself." Yet if science is to be treated impersonally in training courses, how is the trainee to be brought to believe that a personal, human activity is supremely important? By exposure to the enthusiasm of existing practitioners? Possibly, but I seriously doubt that there are enough genuinely and articulately enthusiastic practitioners to serve the needs of undergraduates, at least, though the situation for graduate trainees is much more favorable. Bridgman has emphasized (16) that there is far more to science than its body of knowledge, juct as there is more to art than the totality of pictures and sculptures which constitute its product. Bridgman used the terms "private" and "public" science to distinguish between the understanding possessed by the individual and the core of formulated, largely uncontroversial understanding which does duty as the "Westminster Confession" of a particular science. Polanyi goes further (17), arguing that even the public formulation of science contains much tacit knowledge which is rooted more in passionate or esthetic than in rational conviction. The affirmation of a great scientific theory is in part an expression of delight. The t,heory bas an inarticulate component, acclaiming its bea~lty,and this is essent,id to the belief that the theory is true.
Polanyi comes to the conclusion that truth is nltimately a matter of aesthetics that cannot be completely formulated, a conclusion which is probahly shocking to many physical scientists. Polanyi has ably argued his own proposition: it is enough, here, to say that I accept his arguments. I register the point vith tn-o purposes in mind: (1) to emphasize that in teaching science within the framework of a liberal curriculum it is evidently possible, and possibly essential, to include explicitly aesthetic argument as a component of intellectual argument; (2) to emphasize that while many scientists talk as if they mere diehard positivists, for whom a metascience is an unnecessary appendage, many of them, happily, conspicuously fail to act in that spirit. Science is Now in Politics
Until about twenty years ago it could be argued that chemistry (science) made its major impact in the areas of intellect and economics. This is no longer true. Though the activities of scientists have always taken place within the framework of the polis, in recent years the physical sciences have grown so much in scope and Volume 44, Number 5, M o y 1967
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extent that they obtrude perceptibly and influentially in the area of politics in even the narrower senses of that word. Derek Price drew attention to this in his aptly titled book "Little Science and Big Science" (IS), and Don K. Price has drawn still more pointed attention to the political problems raised by science in a democratic society in his book "The Scientific Estate" (19). We are obliged to recognize that the impersonality in which scientists have tried to cloak their activities is illusory: in today's society I regard that cloak of impersonality as not only deliberately misleading but mischievous. Don K. Price has used the engaging illustration of a spectrum running from truth at one end to power a t the other, the presumption being that the scientist's scholarly activities are directly related to the end marked truth and the politician's worldly activities with the end marked power. The illustration is well chosen: it points up with devastating clarity the proposition that when the scientist engages himself in power, i.e., in politics, he forfeits the claim on either scholarly or lay esteem that he could formerly command when he limited his activities to the search for intellectual truth. I need provide no extensive argument to validate the proposition that, as a group, scientists have become deeply involved in politics. I do not disapprove of this involvement: in any event, it is inevitable, regardless of the desirability of the situation. I am concerned only about its recognition and the consequences of recognition. As an individual, every scientist competing for public funds is directly involved in the political process, for a good deal of politics has to do with the distribution of finite resources. Groups of scientists competing for funds for their subject have become prominently and corporately involved in politics. The "Westheimer Report" ($0) is a document as frankly political as one could expect to read and as bold an exposition of vested corporate interest as any other in the public sector. It is not without interest, moreover, that this document contains a definition of chemistry which exhibits marked circularity.3 With science deliberately involving itself in the political sector, the need is greater than ever that a liberal curriculum should concern itself with science as a human activity: in particular that it should concern itself with the character and habits of scientists. Nobody would seriously contest the claim that chemistry (science) contributes to the common good ($1). But neither should it be seriously doubted that the actors whose activities are a subsidiary element of that common good are, and ought to be, open to common scrutiny. Aristotle argued in his "politics" that in matters affecting 6hounr-n-ue s m u d a f ~ u I n n ' , C n t : ~ n a i - t ?n F~~~~~t sh e acf,ivitie*~~w a s~hsklinrv$ement.n€ t h f f commnn 9 0 d the experts ($$), a proposition which bas received the support of many later philosophers ($3). But this implies that the demos needs to be sufficiently informed, in a general way, both as to the experts and their expertise. It is precisely a t this point that liberal education may, and should, be expected to make its own characteristic contribution to the common good. There is force to the proposition that in liberal education one might learn something about science but that one learns very little ' I am indebted to Professor Koenig for the observation that most definitions of chemistry given by chemists are circular in logic.
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science, but the force of the proposition is not overwhelming. For science is now an institution, and the study of institutions by no means requires that the student be an active participant in the life of the institution: indeed he may well gain in objectivity what he loses in technical skill by not participating in the daily life of the institution. One likely consequence of the involvement of science in politics is indicated by Price's spectral analogy. If the scientist releases some bold on truth in order to grasp a t power, it follows that in the public mind there will arise the suspicion-even though it may be totally unmerited-that the sacrifice of scruples in the public area implies the sacrifice of scruples in the scientific area., that bids for common resources may be presented with partiality. This will beunfortunate but, given the ethical standards of most men (and scientists are men), will have to be faced. At present, science in both its activity and body of knowledge roles commands great authority among both the scientifically literate and semi-literate. But authority is a t once a sturdy plant and one exposed to the virus of scepticism. Small initial losses of authority are apt to be followed by more serious erosion, and the loss of genuine authority is one of the more tragic occurrences in the life of society (24). It may fall to the lot of liberal education to do what training and the training establishment can never do, because of a presumed partiality, via. to support and strengthen in society the authority of science. This will be no small task, and it will require that the liberally educated man will need t o know about science rather than to know science. Can Liberal Education Foster Discovery?
Kuhn's book ($6) dealing with "normal" and "revolutionary" science treats science as an institution largely from a historical viewpoint; Skilling's book "Exploring Electricity" ($6) relates some interesting examples of the behavior and experiences of individuals within the institution; Ritchie's book "Studies in the History and Method of the Sciences" (27) discusses the setting of the scientific among other human institutions. Kuhn makes the point that progress in scientific understanding depends on the existence and recognition of serious anomalies and on the response of the extraordinary scientist when challenged by them. The successful responses which result in the extension of current paradigms or the formulation of new ones constitute the revolutionary in science. Between the fairly infrequent revolutions, "normal" science proceeds within the bounds of. the current ~aradipms,the ~rinciualobject paradigms or the formulation of new ones constitute the of us teach and most of us practice-we come fairly close to Barzun's prescription for liberal teaching, even in pre-professional training, though I am inclined to believe that we do so unconsciously. Barzun says that in liberal education we deal with what the subject has to offer, not with the task of converting the student into a practitioner. In training normal scientists we are engaged in training a special kind of practitioner. For, as Kuhn writes, ($8) . . .that enterprise seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm s u p plies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena.
Whitehead (29) uses yet stronger terms. The obscurantists of any generation are in the main constituted by the greater part of the practitioners of the dominant methodology. Today scientific methods are dominant, and scientists are the obscurantists.
If these analyses are correct, we are left with the proposition that we do not have, and cannot properly assume, t.he task of training students to make nzajor progress in science. Disregarding the infrequency with which genius flowers, few if any of us know how to train revolutionaries r h o will substantially enlarge the current paradigms. To raise trainees by strongly enforced paradigms and to hope for revolutionaries is a paradoxical expectation. But, a t the very least, we would surely do better to provide the student with an account of normal and revolutionary science. Among other benefits, this might reduce some of the frustrations of normal scientists who, quite naturally, fail to produce great work. But this suggestion implies the proposition that intelligent revolution requires a knowledge of history. How else, indeed, are we to recognize the nature of revolution? Yet how few colleges and universities offer good courses in the history of science? And how fewer still require that students majoring in science s h d y the history of their subject? The recognition of revolution may prove to he very difficult. Kuhn's model of the normal and the revolutionary possesses the strengths and wealmesses of any model, vie. great overall clarity and inadequacy to relate in detail the picture and the reality that it tries to represent. It is occasionally easy to recognize revolutionary ideas; witness Velikovsky's ideas on cosmology (SO). The response of science in these circumstances is clear: it is a response of intolerant authority that would he authoritarian (Sf) and is completely natural, given the fundamentally conservative nature of normal science. Writing in a different context Hannah Arendt has this t,o say (82): The modern ronrept of revolution, inextricably bound up with the notion that the course of history begins mew, that a new story, n story never known or told before, is about to unfold. was unknown pl'ior to the two great revolutions at the end of the eighteent,h rentwy. Before they were engaged in what then turned o11t to be a remhtion, none of the actors had the slightest premonit,ion of what the plot of the new drama was going to be. However, once the revolutions had begun to run their course, and long before those who were involved in them could know whether their enterprise would end in victory or disaster, the novelty of the story and the innermost meaning of its plot became manifest t,o actors and sp~ctstorsalike.
The Desirability of Educational Changes
I should like to propose an enlargement of educational goals. We can agree on the necessity of providing a liberal education in the sciences, emphasizing the human activity of science (with all that that implies) even if we are obliged to dip selectively, and perhaps shallowly, into the body of knowledge. The common good and the democratic evaluation of science as a component of the common good demand this. We can also agree that the practice of normal science is essential, particularly in a society in which the common good has a large and proper interest in goods and services. So also, therefore, is training for normal science. The body of knowledge is an important ingredient in the training for normal science. First, because it is
needed to exemplify and reinforce the current paradigms. Second, because, science now being a widespread human activity, the normal scientist's additions to the body of knowledge constitute his major political asset. We are stiilleft, however, with the challenge and responsibility of dealing with that segment of the scientific institution on which we depend for revolutionary advances. In the recent tradition we have hoped that pre-professional training, rounded out with more reflective studies at the doctoral level, would nurture revolutionary genius. It is my impression that in recent years doctoral work has become so professional, practical, and narrow that nowhere does the student find either opportunity or obligation to reflect on his subject. Genuine discovery is somethmg beyond normal science, and Polanyi has this observation (33). Nothing is a problem or a discovery in itself: it can he a problem only if it puzzles and worries somebody, and a discovery only if it relieves somebody from the burden of a problem. . . .The irreversible character of discovery suggests that no solution of a problem can be accredited as a discovery if it is achieved by a procedure following definite mles. . . . I t follows that true discovery is not a strictly logical performance, and accordingly, we may desoribe the obstsele to be overcome in solving the problem as a "logioal gap," and speak of the width of the logical gap as the measure of the ingenuity required for solving the problem. "Illumination" is then the leap by which the logical gap is crossed.
The major, indeed the only diierence between normal science and true discovery resides in two factors: (1) the quality of the problem, and (2) the quality of illumination. The difficulty of choosing a problem is formidable. Normal science presents an almost inexhaustible array of minor problems on which men can work for decades. Polanyi (34) speaks of the risks which lie across the investigator's path in choosing a problem. The investigator must be convinced that the hidden solution is accessible--and accessible to the skill of the investigator's own abilitieeand that to uncover the mystery will prove worthy of the talent, labor, and money expended on the solution. For funds we can invade the political realm and with funds we can enter the talent market for collaborators, but, as to the source of illumination, who can tell? When we speak of illumination as the leap by which we cross logical gaps, logic itself suggests that illumination resides outside the domain of strict logic. I cannot demonstrate, I can only affirm a belief that illumination has its roots in a liberal education which embraces science and many other subjects, that if we regard education in science as essential to liberal education, then, afortimi, we must regard a liberal education as an essential foundation for true discovery in science. There remains in the teaching of science a persistent hangover from the positivism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We teach as if we still believed that science is objective and neutral, though we all tacitly recognize the irreversibility inherent in even the simplest ohservation. It seems appropriate to end this brief treatment of science in the curriculum and in the polis with quotations from two great illuminators. First, Schroedinger (35) : This attitude of strict neutrality, purely observing and registering, is e d e d Machian positivism. I t originated as a wholesome reaction against verbal or specious explanations which easily obstruct further exploration of facts by prematurely Volume 44, Number 5, May 1967
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setting one's mind a t rest. . . .But there is in physics and chenlistry the case of mental constructs which have two points in common with those of history, archeology, and so on. Firstly, they are almost indispensable for an understanding of t,he o b served relations between perceivable characteristics, yet, they cannot themselves he made accessible to the senses. . . . [Secondly] these constructs are regarded by those to whom they are dear as the really valoahle result of their work, as the ideal image of their s~ibjectprod~~ced by their efforts.
Finally, Polanyi (36): Sciencecan bhen no longer hope tos~trviveonan islandof positive facts, around which the rest of man's intellectual heritage sinks to the level of suhjeetive emotionalism. I t must claim that certain emotions are right; and if it can make good such a. claim, it will not only save itself hut sustain by its example the whole system of cultural life of which it forms part. Literature Cited (1) BARZUN, J., "The House of Intellect," Harper Torchbooks, I-Iarper & Row, Publishers, Inc., New York, 1961, p. 12. W. R., Science, 143,319 (1964). (2) BRODIE, (3) KUHN,T. S., '*The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,"
International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, TJniversity of Chicago Press, 1963. (4) "Education and the Spirit of Science," National Educat.ion Association, Washington, D.C., 1966. (5) Manehester Guardian Weeklv, February 18, 1965. (6) KOENIG,F. O., "Men and Moments in the History of Science," University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1959, p. 58. M., "Personal Knowledge," Harper Torehbooks, (7) POLANYI, Harper & Row, Publishers, Ine., 1964, p. 164. (8) CONANT, J. B., "On Understanding Seience," Yale University Press, New Haven, 1947, (9) HOLTON,G., AND ROLLER,D. H. D., " F o ~ ~ n d a t i o n of~ JIodern Physical Science," Addison-Wesley Publishing Ca., Reading, Mass., 1958, , "Haward Case IIistories in Experimental Science, (10) N a s ~L., No. 4," H m m d University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1957, Vol. 1, pp. 215-321.
8. X., "Science and Philosophy," Tho Wisdom (11) WHITEHEAD, Library, 1948, p. 120. G.,op. cil., p. 378. (12) HOLTON, M., op. cit., pp. 168, 160. (13) POLANYI, (14) LINDSAY, A. D., "The Nodern 1)emocratie Stat,e," Gal:~xy Books, New Yak, 1962, p. 78. &I.,op. eit., p. 183. (15) POLANYI, P. W., '%efleetions of B Physieisl,," Philo(16) BRIDGMAN, sophical Library, New York, 1955, p. 43. (17) POLANYI, M., op. cil., p. 133. (18) PRICE, D. J. DE S., "Little Sciencc and Big Science," Columbia University Press, New York, 1963. (19) PRICE, D. K., "The S~ientificEstate," Bellrmp Press, 7"CK An"".
(20) "The Westheimer Report," Chem. Eny. rlletfis, 43, 72 (1965). (21) BRo~owsE1, J., "Science and Numall Values," Harper
Torehbooks, Harper & Row, Publishers, Ine., Piew Ywk, 19.5%
(22) BARKER, E., "The Politics of Arialntle,'' Galaxy Books, New York, 1962, pp. 123-126. B., "Sovereignty," Pheouiz Books, 1963, p. (23) DE JUVEN.~L, 281. ( 2 4 ) ibid., p. 33. (25) KUHN,T . S., op. cil. (26) SKILLINO, H., "Exploring Electricity," I h d d Press, S e w York, 1948. (27) RITCHIE,A. D., "Studies in the nistrxy and XIethods of the Sciences," Edinburgh University Pres.5, 1958. (28) KUHN,T. S., op. tit., p. 24.
1291 WHITEHEAD. A. N.. "The Functioi~of I t e a s o ~ ~Beawm " Press., Bost,on., 1958. - u. ~44 ~ (30) YELIEOWSKY, I., " ~ d r l d sin Collision," Tho Maondlnn Co., New York, 1950. L. C., Tho American Behavorial Seienbist, 7, 1') (31) STECCHINI, ~
~
~
(1963). H., "On Revol~~tion," Compass Books, New York, (32) ARENDT, 1965, p. 21. I , op. eit., pp. 122, 123. (33) P ~ L A N YM., (34) %bid.,p. 124. E ~ ,"What is Life?,'' Uoul~ledtqAnchor (35) S C H R ~ E D I N GE., Books, Doubleday $ Co., Inc., Ncu- York, 1956, p. 1 9-. 4~
(36) P o ~ a a u rM., , op. eit.. p. 134.
Upon examining the grounds on which science is pursued, I found tlvat iL is determined at every stage by undefinable powers of thought. No rules can account for the way a good idea is urodltced for stsrtine an enouirv: and there are no ndes either for the verification or the refutation for their own support and yet arrive a t universally valid conclusions; theories start from assumptions which scientists accept on the authority of scientific opinion, yet on snch dogmatic grounds discoveries are made that prove revolutionary. The life of the scientific community consists in enforcing the tradition of science and assuring a t the same time its continuous renewal. A dynamic free society lives as a whole in this way. I t cultivates asystem of traditional ideas which have the power of unlimited self-renewal. . . . The Dower of science to crow bv the orieinalitv of individual thaueht lcnn be1 estshlished ness. Man's ideals, unfolding in action, come into view.
.. .Michael Polanyl in the Preface to the Torchhook Edition of Personal Knouledge: Towards a Posl-Oilieal Philosophy
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Journal o f Chemical Education
