Alec Resnick aresnick

Pasteur on "applied science" and prepared minds

An excerpt from his "ELIMINATION OF CUMULATION IN EDUCATION PHYSICAL AND NATURAL SCIENCES" (1868)

Peu de personnes comprennent la véritablé origine des merveilles de l’industrie et de la richesse des nations. Je n’en veux d’autre preuve en ce moment que l’emploi de plus en plus lréquent, dans le discours, dans le langage officiel, dans des écrits de tous genres, d’une expression fort impropre, celle de sciences appliquées. On se plaignait naguère, en présence d’un ministre du plus grand talent, de l’abandon des carrières scientifiques par des hommes qui auraient pu les parcourir avec distinction. Cet homme d’Etat essaya de montrer qu’il ne fallait pas en être surpris, qu aujourd'hui le règne des sciences théoriques cédait la place à celui des sciences appliquées. Rien de plus erroné que cette opinion: rien de plus dangereux, oserai-

via John Holt's How Children Fail:

Knowledge, learning, understanding, are not linear. They are not little bits of facts lined up in rows or piled up one on top of another. A field of knowledge, whether it be math, English, history, science, music, or whatever, is a territory, and knowing it is not just a matter of knowing all the items in the territory, but of knowing how they relate to, compare with, and fit in with each other. It is the difference between being able to say that a room in your house has so many tables, so many chairs, so many lamps, and being able to close your eyes and see that this chair goes here and that table there. It is the difference between knowing the names of all the streets in a city and being able to get from any place, by any desired route, to any other place.

I believe this now more strongly than ever, and it seems to me as important as any other idea set forth in this book.

Why do we talk and write about the world and

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