THE
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.
APRIL, 1893.
| SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES.[1] |
By DAVID STARR JORDAN.
WE have come together to-day to do our part in raising one of the milestones which mark the progress of education in America. Our interest in higher education brings us here, and our interest in science; and, more than ever in the past, we find these two interests closely associated. More and more each year the higher education of America is becoming steeped in science; and in the extension of human knowledge the American university now finds its excuse for being.
I hope that in what I shall have to say I shall not be accused of undue glorification of science. I recognize in the fullest degree the value of all agencies in the development of the human mind. But the other departments of learning may each have its turn. We are here to-day to dedicate a hall of science. We are here in the interest of science teaching and scientific research. When, in a few years to come, we may dedicate a hall of letters, we shall sing the praises of poetry and literature. But to-day we speak of science, in the full certainty that the humanities will not suffer with its growth. All real knowledge is a help to all other, and all real love of beauty must rest on love of truth.
At this time, as we stand together by the side of the milestone we have set up, on the breezy upland which marks the boundary of our nineteenth century, it is worth while to glance back over the depressing lowlands from which we have risen; and, in our discussion of the relations of the American college to science,
- ↑ Read at the dedication of the Science Hall of the University of Illinois at Champaign, November 16, 1892.
