The Place of Science in a Liberal Education, Bertrand Russell

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Place of Signs and a Liberal Education by Bertrands Russell.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Science, to the ordinary reader of

(00:22):
newspapers is represented by a varying selection of sensational triumphs,
such as wireless telegraphy and aeroplanes, radioactivity in the marvels
of modern alchemy. It is not of this aspect of
science that I wish to speak. Science in this aspect
consists of detached, up to date fragments, interesting only until

(00:47):
they are replaced by something newer and more of to date,
displaying nothing that the system of patiently constructed knowledge, out
of which almost as casual incident, have come the practically
useful results which interest the man in the street. The
increased command over the forces of nature, which is derived

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from science is undoubtedly an amply sufficient reason to encourage
scientific research. But this reason has been so often urged
and is so easily appreciated, that out are reasons, to
my mind quite as important, are apt to be overlooked.
It is with these other reasons, especially with the intrinsic

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value of a scientific habit of mind in forming our
outlook on the world that I shall be concerned in
what follows. The instance of wireless telegraphy will serve to
illustrate the difference between the two points of view. Almost
all the serious intellectual labor required for the possibility of

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this invention is due to three men, Arday, Maxwell and Herts.
Layers of experiment and theory. These three men build upon
the modern theory of electromagnetism and demonstrate the identity of
light with electromagnetic waves. The system which they discovered is

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one of profound intellectual interest, bringing together in unifying an
antless variety of apparently detached phenomena, and displaying a cumulative
mental power which cannot but afford delight to every generous spirit.
The mechanical details which remain to be adjusted in order
to utilize their discoveries for a practical system of telegraphy. Demoneent,

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no doubt, very considerable ingenuity, but had not that broad
sweep in that universality which could give them intrinsic interest
as an object of disinterested contemplation from the point of
view of training the mind of giving that well informed,
impersonal outlook, which constitutes culture in the good sense of

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this much misused word. It seems to be generally held
indisputable that a literary education is superior to one based
on science. Even the warmest advocates of science are apt
to rest their claims on the contention that culture ought
to be sacrificed to utility. Those men of science who
respect culture, when they associate what men learn in the classics,

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are apt to admit, not merely politely, but sincerely a
certain inferiority on their side, compensated doubtless by the services
which science renders to humanity, but nonetheless real. And so
as long as this attitude exists among men of science,
it tends to verify itself. The intrinsically valuable aspects of

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science tend to be sacrificed to be merely useful. Little
attempt is made to preserve a leisurey, systematic survey, but
which the finer quality of mind is formed nourished. But
even if there be present fact any such inferiority, as
is supposed in the educational value of science, this is,

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I believe, not the fault of science itself, but the
fall of the spirit in which science is taught, its
full possibilities were realized by those who teach it. I
believe that its capacity of producing those habits of mind
which constitute the higher mental excellence, would be at least
as great as that of literature, and more particularly of
Greek and Latin literature. In saying this, I have no

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wish whatever to disparage a classical education. I have not
myself enjoyed its benefits, and my knowledge of Freak and
Latin authors is derived almost wholly from translations. But I'm
firmly persuaded that the Greek fully deserve all the admiration
that is bestowed upon them, that it is a very
great and serious loss to be unacquainted with their writings.

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It is not by attacking them, by drawing attention to
neglect the excellences and science, that I wish to conduct
more argument. One defect, however, does seem inherent in a
purely classical education, namely in a two exclusive emphasis in
the past, but the study of what has absolutely ended

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and can never be renewed. A habit of criticism towards
the present and the future is engendered the qualities in
which the present excels are qualities to which the study
of the past does not direct attention, and to which
therefore the student of Greek civilization may easily become blind.
And what is new and growing there is apt to

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be something crude, insolent, and even a little vulgar, which
is shocking to the man of sensitive taste. Quivering from
the rough contact, he retires to the trim gardens of
polished past, forgetting that they were reclaiming from the wilderness
by man as rough and herve soiled as those from
whom he rings in his own day. The habit of

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being unable to recognize merit until it is dead is
too apt to be the result of a purely bookish life,
and their culture, based wholly on the past, will seldom
be able to pierce through every day surroundings to the
essential splendor of contemporary things, or to the hope of
still greater splendor in the future. My eyes sall not

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the men of old, and now their age away has rolled.
I weep to think I shall not see the heroes
of posterity, so says the Chinese poet. But such impartiality
is rare in the more pugnacious atmosphere of the West,
or champions of the past and future fight a never

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ending battle instead of combining to seek out the merits
of both. This consideration, which militates not only against the
exclusive study of the classics, but against every form of
culture which has become static, traditional and academic, leads inevitably
to a fundamental question, what is the true end of education?

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But before attempting to answer this question, it will be
well to define the sense in which we are to
use the word education. For this purpose, I shall distinguish
the sense in which I mean to use it from
two others, both perfectly legitimate, the one broader, in the
other narrower than the sense in which I mean to

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use the word. In the broader sense, education will include
not only what we learn through instruction, but all that
we learn through personal experience, the formation of character for
the edication of life. This aspect of education, fintally important
as it is, I will say nothing, since its consideration

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would introduce topics quite foreign to the question with which
we are concerned. In the narrower sense, education that be
confined to instruction the imparting of definite information on various subjects,
because such information in and for itself is useful in
daily life. Elementary education, reading, writing, and arithmetics is almost

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wholly of this kind. But instruction necessary as it is,
does not per se constitute education in the sense in
which I wish to consider it. Education in the sense
in which I mean. It may be defined as the
formation by means of instruction, of certain mental habits and
a certain outlook on life and the world. It remains

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to ask ourselves what mental habits and what sort of
outlooks can be hoped for as the result of instruction.
When we have answered this question, we can attempt to
decide what science has to contribute to the formation of
the habits and outlook which we desire. Our whole life
is built about a certain number, not a very small number,

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of primary instincts and impulses. Only what is in some
way connected with these instincts and impulses appears to us
desirable or important. There is no faculty, whether reason or virtue,
or whatever it may be called, that can take our
active life and our hopes and fears outside the region

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control by these first movers of all desire. Each of
them is like a queen bee aided by a hive
of workers. Gathering honey. But when the queen is gone,
the workers languish and die in the cells, and the
cells remain empty of their expected sweetness. So at each

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primary impulse and civilized man, it is surrounded and protected
by a busy swarm of attendant derivative desires, which store
up in its surface whatever honey the surrounding world affords.
But if the queen impulse dies, the death dealing influences,
though retarded a little by habit spread slowly for all

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the subsidiary impulses, and a whole tract of life becomes
inexplicably colorless. What was formerly full of zest and so
obviously worth doing that it raised no question, has now
grown dreary and purposeless. With a sense of disillusion, we
inquire the meaning of life on the side, perhaps that

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all is vanity. Search for an outside meaning that can
compel an inner response must always be disappointed. All meaning
must be at the bottom related to our primary desires,
and when they are extinct, no miracle can restore to
a world the value which they reflected upon it. Purpose

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of edication therefore cannot be to create any primary impulse
which is lacking in the unindicated. The purpose can only
be to enlarge which the scope of those that human
nature provides, increasing the number and variety of attendant thoughts,
and by showing where the most permanent satisfaction is to

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be found. Under the impulse of a calvinistic worr of
the natural man, this obvious truth has been too often misconceived.
In the training of the young. Nature has been falsely
regarded as excluding all that is best in what is natural.
The endeavor to teach virtue has led to the production
of stunted and contorted hypocrites instead of full grown human beings.

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From such mistakes in education, a better psychology, or a
kinder heart is beginning to preserve the present generation. We need, therefore,
waste no more words on the theory that the purpose
of edication is to fart or eradicate nature. But although
nature must supply the initial forces of desire, nature is

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not in the civilized man the spasmodic, fragmentary, and yet
violent set of impulses that it is in the savage.
Each impulse has its constitutional ministry of thought and knowledge
and reflection, through which possible conflicts of impulses are foreseen
and temporary impulses are controlled by the unifying impulse, which

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may be called wisdom. In this way, education destroys the
crudity of instinct increases through knowledge the wealth and variety
of the individual's context with the outside world, making him
no longer an isolated fighting unit, but a citizen of
the universe, embracing distant countries, remote regions of space, and

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vast stretches of past and future within the circle of
his interest. It is this simultaneous softening in the instance
of desire and enlargement of its scope that is leave
moral end of medication. Closely connected to this moral end
is the more purely intellectual aims of edication, the endeavor

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to make us see and imagined a world in an
objective manner in far as possible as it is in itself,
and up merely through the disortening medium of personal desire.
The complete attainment of such an objective view is no
doubt an ideal, indefinitely approachable but not actually fully realizable.

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Medication considered as a process of forming our mental habits
and her outlook in the world, is to be judged
successful in proportion as its outcome approximates to this ideal
that is to say, as it gives us a true
view of our plays in society, of the relation of
the whole human society and its non human environment, the

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nature of the non human world as it is in itself,
apart from our own desires and interests. If this standard
is admitted, it can return to the considerations of science,
inquiring how far science contributes to such an aim, and
whether it is in any aspect superior to its rivals
and ed occasional practice. Two opposite and at first sight

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conflicting meriats belong to sciences as against literature and art,
but one which is not inherently necessary, but a certainly
true at present day, This hopefulness as to the future
of human achievement, in particular as to the useful work
that may be accomplished by any intelligent student. This merit
and the cheerful outlook which it is generous, prevent what

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might otherwise be the depressing effect. And another aspect of science,
to my mind, also a merit, and perhaps its greatest merit,
I mean, the irrelevance of human passions and the holy
subjective apparatus where scientific truth is concerned. Each of these
reasons for differing. The study of science requires some amplification.

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Let us begin with the first. In the study of
literature or art, our attention is perpetually riveted upon the past,
and then of Greece or the Renaissance, that, better than
any do now the tribes of former ages, so far
from facilitating tribes in our own age, actually increased the
difficulty of fresh tribes by rendering originality harder of attainment.

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Not only is artistic achievement not cumulative, but it seems
even to depend upon a certain freshness, a naivete of
impulse and vision, which civilization tends to destroy. Hence comes
to those who have been nourished on the literary and
artistic productions of former agents, a certain peevishness and undue

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fastidiousness towards the present, from which there seems no escape,
except in the deliberate vandalism, which ignores tradition, and in
the search after originality achieves only the eccentric. But in
such vandalism there is not of the simplicity and spontaneity
out of which great art springs. Theory still, the concurrence

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core insincerity destroys the advantage of a merely pretended ignorance.
The despair does arising from an indication which suggests no
pre eminent mental activity except that of artistic creation, is
wholly absent from an indication which gives the knowledge of
scientific method. The discovery of scientific method except in pure mathematics.

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The thing of yesterday. Speaking broadly, we may say that
it dates from Galileo. Yet already it has transformed the world,
and its success proceeds whatever accelerating velocity. In science, men
have discovered in activity of the very highest value, in
which they are no longer as an art dependent or

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prop upon the appearance of continually greater genius. For in science,
successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors. Where one
man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand
lesser men can apply it. No transcendent ability is required
in order to make useful discoveries and science. The edifice
of science needs its masons, bricklayers, and common laborers, as

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well as its foreman, master builders, and architects. In art,
nothing worth doing can be done without genius. In science,
even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme
achievement science. In science, a man of real genius is
the man who invents a new method. The notable discoveries

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are often made by its successors, who can apply the
method with fresh vigor, unimpaired by the previous labor of
perfecting it. Not the mental caliber of the thought required
for real work, however, brilliant, is not so great as
that required by the first inventor of the method. There
are in science immense numbers of different methods appropriate to
different classes of problems. But over and above them all

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there is something not easily definable, which may be called
the method of science, and was formally customary to identify
this with the inductive method, and to associate with it
the name of Bacon. But the true inductive method was
not discovered by Bacon, and the true method of science
is something which includes deduction as much as induction, logic

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and mathematics as much as botany and geology. I shall
not attempt the difficult task of stating what the scientific
method is, but I will try to indicate the temper
of mind out of which the scientific method grows, which
is the second of the two merits that were mentioned
above as belonging to a scientific education. The kernel of

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the scientific outlook is of things so simple, so obvious,
so seemingly trivial, that the mention of it may almost
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 understanding of the world. Stated

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this boldly, this may seem no more than a trite truism,
But to remember it consistently in manners arousing our passionate
partnership is by no means easy, especially where the available
evidence is uncertain and inconclusive. A few illustrations will make
it clear. Aristotle, I understand, considered that the stars must

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move in circles because the circle is the most perfect curve.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, he allowed
himself to decide a question of fact by an appeal
to esthetical moral considerations. In such a case, it is
at once obvious to us that this appeal was unjustifiable.

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We know now how to ascertain as a fact the
wan in which the heavenly bodies move, and we know
that do not move in circles, or even in accurate ellipses,
or in any other kind of simply describable curve. This
may be painful to a certain hankering after a simplicity
of pattern in the universe. We know that in astronomy
such feelings are irrelevant. Easy as this knowledge seems now,

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we owe it to acourage an insight of the first
invendors of scientific method, and more especially of Galileo. We
take as another illustration Malthus's doctrine of population. This illustration
is all the better for the fact that his actual
doctrine is now known to be largely erroneous. Is not

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as conclusions that are valuable, but the temper and method
of his inquiry. As everyone knows, it was to him
that Darwin owed an essential part of his theory of
natural selection was only possible because Malthus's outlook was truly scientific.
His great merit lies in considering man not as the

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object of praise or blame, but as part of nature,
a thing with a certain characteristic behavior from which certain
consequences must follow. If the behavior is not quite what
Malthus is supposed, the consequences are not quite what he inferred.
That may falsify his conclusions, but does not impair the

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value of his method. The objections which were made when
his doctrine was new, that it was horrible and depressing,
that people ought not to act as he said they did,
and so on, where all such has implied an unscientific
attitude of mind as against all of them. His calm
determination to treat man as a natural phenomena marks an

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important advance over the reformers of the eighteenth century and
the Revolution. Under the influence of Darwinism, the scientific attitude
towards man has now become fairly common, and it is
to some people quite natural, though to most it is
still a difficult and artificial intellectual contortion. There is, however,
one study which is as yet almost wholly untouched by

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the scientific spirit. I mean the study of philosophy, philosophers,
and the public image that the scientific spirits pervade. Pages
that bristle with allusions to ions germ plasms in the
eyes of shellfish. But as the devil can quote scripture,
so to philosopher can quote science. The scientific spirit is

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not an affair of quotation of externally required information, any
more than manners are an affair of the etiquette book.
The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of
all other desires in the interest of the desire to
know it involves suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates,
and the whole subjective emotional life, until we become subdued

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to the material, to see it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias,
without any wish except to see it as it is,
and without any belief that what it is must be
determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we
should like it to be or what we can easily
imagine it to be. Now, in philosophy, this attitude of

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mind has not yet been achieved. A certain self absorption,
not personal but human, has marked almost all attempts to
conceive the universe as a whole mind or some aspect
of it. Thought or will or sentience has been regarded
as the pattern after which the universe is to be conceived,
for no better reason, at bottom than that such a

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universe would not seem strange and what give us the
cozy feeling that every place is like home. To conceive
the universe as essentially progressive or essentially deteriorating, for example,
is to give to our hopes and fears a cosmic importance,
which may of course testified but which we have as
yet no reason to suppose yestified until we have learned

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to think of it in ethically neutral terms. We have
not arrived at a scientific attitude in philosophy, and until
we have arrived at such an attitude, it is hardly
to be hoped but philosophy will achieve any solid results.
I have spoken so far largely of the negative aspects
of the scientific spirit, but it is from the positive

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aspect that its value is derived. The instinct of constructiveness,
which is one of the achieve incentives to artistic creation,
can find in scientific systems a satisfaction more massive than
any epic poem. Disinterested curiosity, which is the source of
almost all intellectual effort, finds with the astonished delight that

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science can unveil secrets which might well have seemed forever undiscoverable.
The desire for a larger life, and what are interests
for in escape from private circumstances and even from the
whole recurring human cycle of birth and death, is fulfilled.
That the impersonal, cosmic outlook of science, as by nothing

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else to all these must be added as contributing to
the happiness of the man of science. The admiration of
splendid achievement, and the consciousness of an estimable utility to
a human race. Life devoted to science is therefore a
happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very

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best sources that are open to the dwellers on this
troubled and passionate planet. And of the place of science
in a liberal education by Batrance Russell