The most direct road for
elementary students into civics and economics is found in
consideration of the place and office of industrial occupations
in social life. Even for older students, the social sciences
would be less abstract and formal if they were dealt with less as
sciences (less as formulated bodies of knowledge) and more in
their direct subject-matter as that is found in the daily life of
the social groups in which the student shares.
Connection of occupations with the method of science is at least
as close as with its subject matter. The ages when scientific
progress was slow were the ages when learned men had contempt for
the material and processes of everyday life, especially for those
concerned with manual pursuits. Consequently they strove to
develop knowledge out of general principles -- almost out of
their heads -- by logical reasons. It seems as absurd that
learning should come from action on and with physical things,
like dropping acid on a stone to see what would happen, as that
it should come from sticking an awl with waxed thread through a
piece of leather. But the rise of experimental methods proved
that, given control of conditions, the latter operation is more
typical of the right way of knowledge than isolated logical
reasonings. Experiment developed in the seventeenth and
succeeding centuries and became the authorized way of knowing
when men's interests were centered in the question of control of
nature for human uses.
Pages:
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331