Practical Essays by Alexander Bain (best electronic book reader TXT) 📕

500
Chemistry 500
Biology, as physiology 500
Mental Science 500

SPECIAL OR CONCRETE SCIENCES:--
Mineralogy }
Botany } each 250
Zoology } or 300
Geology }

As a substitute for language, literature, and philosophy
of Greece, Rome, France, Germany, and Italy:--
Greece--Institutions and History 500
Literature 250
Rome--Institutions and History 500
Literature 250
France--Literature 250
Germany--Literature 250
Italy--Literature 250
Modern History 1,000


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II. THE SCHEME CONSIDERED.

The system of competitive examinations for the public service, of which I have laid before the Section a brief history compiled from the Reports, is one of those radical innovations that may ultimately lead to great consequences. For the present, however, it leads to many debates. Not merely does the working out of the scheme involve conflicting views, but there is still, in many quarters, great hesitation as to whether the innovation is to be productive of good or of evil. The Report of the Playfair Commission, and the more recent Report relative to the changes in the India Civil Service Regulations, indicate pretty broadly the doubts that still cleave to many minds on the whole question. It is enough to refer to the views of Sir Arthur Helps, W.R. Greg, and Dr. Farr, expressed to the Playfair Commission, as decidedly adverse to the competitive system. The authorities cited in the Report on the India Examinations scarcely go the length of total condemnation; but many acquiesce only because there is no hope of a reversal.

The question of the expediency of the system as a whole is not well suited to a sectional discussion. We shall be much better employed in adverting to some of those details in the conduct of the examinations that have a bearing on the general education of the country, as well as on the Civil Service itself. It was very well for the Commissioners, at first starting, to be guided, in their choice of subjects and in their assigning of values to those subjects, by the received branches of education in the schools and colleges. But, sooner or later, these subjects must be discussed on their intrinsic merits for the ends in view. Indeed, the scheme of Lord Salisbury has already made the venture that Macaulay declined to make; it has absolutely excluded some of the best recognised subjects of our school and college teaching, instead of leaving them to the option of the candidates.

I will occupy the present paper with the consideration of two departments in the examination programme--the one relating to the PHYSICAL or NATURAL SCIENCES, the other relating to LANGUAGES.

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[COMMISSIONER' SCHEME OF SCIENCE.]

The Commissioners' scheme of Mathematics and Natural Science is not, in my opinion, accordant either with the best views of the relations of the sciences, or with the best teaching usages.

In the classification of the Sciences, the first and most important distinction is between the fundamental sciences, sometimes called the Abstract sciences, and the derivative or Concrete branches. My purpose does not require any nice clearing of the meanings of those technical terms. It is sufficient to say that the fundamental sciences are those that embrace distinct departments of the natural forces or phenomena; and the derivative or concrete departments assume all the laws laid down in the others, and apply them in certain spheres of natural objects. For example, Chemistry is a primary, fundamental, or abstract science; and Mineralogy is a derivative and concrete science. In Chemistry the stress lies in explaining a peculiar kind of force, called chemical force; in Mineralogy the stress is laid on the description and classification of a select group of natural objects.

The fundamental, or departmental sciences, as most commonly accepted, are these:--1. Mathematics; 2. Natural Philosophy, or Physics; 3. Chemistry; 4. Biology; 5. Psychology. They may be, therefore, expressed as Formal, Inanimate, Animate, and Mental. In these sciences, the idea is to view exhaustively some department of natural phenomena, and to assume the order best suited for the elucidation of the phenomena. Mathematics, the Formal Science, exhausts the relations of Quantity and Number; measure being a universal property of things. Natural Philosophy, in its two divisions (molar and molecular), deals with one kind of force; Chemistry with another: and the two together conspire to exhaust the phenomena of _inanimate_ nature; being indispensably aided by the laws and formulae of quantity, as given in Mathematics. Biology turns over a new leaf; it takes up the phenomenon--Life, or the _animated_ world. Finally, Psychology makes another stride, and embraces the sphere of _mind_.

Now, there is no fact or phenomenon of the world that is not comprised under the doctrines expounded in some one or other of these sciences. We may have fifty "ologies" besides, but they will merely repeat for special ends, or in special connections, the principles already comprised in these five fundamental subjects. The regular, systematic, exhaustive account of the laws of nature is to be found within their compass.

[ORDER OF THE FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCES.]

Again, these sciences have a fixed order or sequence, the order of dependence. Mathematics precedes them all, as being not dependent upon any, while all are more or less dependent upon it. The physical forces have to be viewed prior to the chemical; and both physical and chemical forces are preparatory to vital. So there are reasons for placing Mental Science last of all. Hence a student cannot comprehend chemistry without natural philosophy, nor biology without both. You cannot stand a thorough examination in chemistry without indirectly showing your knowledge of physics; and a testing examination in biology would guarantee, with some slight qualifications, both physics and chemistry.

Let us now turn to the other sciences--those that are not fundamental, but derivative. The chief examples are the three commonly called Natural History sciences--Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology. In these sciences no law or principle is at work that has not been already brought forward in the primary sciences. The properties of a Mineral are mathematical, physical, and chemical: the testing of minerals is by measurement, by physical tests, by chemical tests. The aim of this science is not to teach forces unknown to the student of physics and chemistry; it is to embrace, under the best classification, all the bodies called minerals, and to describe the species in detail under mathematical, physical, and chemical characters. It is the first in order of the _classificatory_ sciences. Its purpose in the economy of education is distinct and peculiar; it imparts knowledge, not respecting laws, forces, or principles of operating, but respecting the concrete constituents of the world. It gives us a commanding view of one whole department of the material universe; supplying information useful in practice, and interesting to the feelings. It also brings into exercise the great logical process, wanted on many occasions, the process of CLASSIFICATION.

[CLASSIFICATORY SCIENCES.]

So much for an instance from the Inorganic world, as showing the distinction between the two kinds of sciences. Another example may be cited from the field of Biology; it is a little more perplexing. For "biology" is sometimes given as the name for the two concrete classificatory sciences--botany and zoology. In point of fact, however, there is a science that precedes those two branches, although blending with them; the science commonly expressed by the older term, 'Physiology,' which is not a classificatory and a dependent science, but a mother science, like chemistry. It expounds the peculiarities of living bodies, as such, and the laws of living processes--such processes as assimilation, nutrition, respiration, innervation, reproduction, and so on. One division is Vegetable Physiology, which is generally fused with the classificatory science of botany. Animal Physiology is allied with zoology, but more commonly stands alone. Lastly, the Physiology of the Human animal has been from time immemorial a distinct branch of knowledge, and is, of course, the chief of them all. Man being the most complicated of all organised beings, not only are the laws of his vitality the