SCIENCE EDUCATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF MONTREAL, 1827-1925
Abstract
We live in an age when the several delights of chidlood appear to have little to do with the business of life, and when the word "science" represents a monument of such awesome scale and scope that far too few dare approach it. But before that monument arose, as the following little history shows, science was pursued in the last century by men like Dawson with an unmistakably boyish enthusiasm, and with a sense of curiosity that might rambled like a puppy across all the boundaries of what we now rather earnestly call disciplines. Stanley Frost seems to have rambled in much the same spirit down a side alley of his History of McGill project, with this account of a forgotten phase in the pursuit of science when so much was yet to come, and, when a child could understand the point of it all. RÉSUMÉ Nous vivons à une époque où les délices de l'enfance n'ont pas grand rapport avec la réalité de la vie et où la notion de "science" revêt des proportions tellement gigantesques que nous sommes très peu nombreux à oser l'aborder. Avant cela, au siècle dernier, comme l'illustre l'anecdote suivante, la science suscitait chez des hommes comme Dawson un enthousiasme de gamin et une curiosité ressemblant à celle d'un chiot se hasardant au-delà des frontières de ce qu'on nomme aujourd'hui avec conviction, disciplines. C'est tout à fait dans cet esprit que Stanley Frost semble s'être hasardé dans l'un des méandres de l'histoire de McGill, avec son récit d'une phase oubliée de la recherche scientifique alors qu'il y avait tant de choses à venir et qu'un enfant était capable d'en saisir tout le sens.Downloads
Published
1982-01-01
How to Cite
Frost, S. B. (1982). SCIENCE EDUCATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF MONTREAL, 1827-1925. McGill Journal of Education / Revue Des Sciences De l’éducation De McGill, 17(001). Retrieved from https://mje.mcgill.ca/article/view/7440
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