Thinking and learning to think, Nathan C. Schaeffer [each kindness read aloud txt] 📗
- Author: Nathan C. Schaeffer
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“Language, we must remember,” says Dr. Morrell, “is not constructed afresh by every individual mind which uses it. It is a world already created for us,—one into which we have simply to be introduced, and in which the process of human development, up to any given period, is more or less perfectly preserved and registered. Recollection, accordingly, by enabling us to appropriate to ourselves a whole system of signs, with the ideas attached to them, initiates us insensibly into the intellectual world of the present, puts us upon the vantage-ground of the latest degree of civilization, and enables us to grasp the ideas of the age without the labor of thinking them out consecutively by our own individual effort.”[11]
“Language,” says Dr. Whewell, “is often called an instrument of thought; but it is also the nutriment of thought; or, rather, it is the atmosphere in which thought lives; a medium essential to the activity of our speculative power, although invisible and imperceptible in its operation; and an element modifying, by its qualities and changes, the growth and complexion of the faculties which it feeds. In this way the influence of preceding discoveries upon subsequent ones, of the past upon the present, is most penetrating and universal, though most subtle and difficult to trace. The most familiar words and phrases are connected by imperceptible ties with the reasonings and discoveries of former men and most distant times. Their knowledge is an inseparable part of ours; the present generation inherits and uses the scientific wealth of all the past. And this is the fortune not only of the great and rich in the intellectual world, of those who have the key to the ancient storehouses and who have accumulated treasures of their own, but the humblest inquirer, while he puts his reasoning into words, benefits by the labors of the greatest discoverers. When he counts his little wealth, he finds he has in his hands coins which bear the image and superscription of ancient and modern intellectual dynasties; and that, in virtue of this possession, acquisitions are in his power, solid knowledge within his reach, which none could ever have attained to if it were not that the gold of truth, once dug out of the mine, circulates more and more widely among mankind.”[12]
“The word ‘vernacular,’” says Hinsdale, “is derived from vernaculus, which comes from verna, a slave born in his master’s house; and it means the speech to which one is born and in which he is reared,—the patrius sermo of the Roman, the Mutter-sprache of the German, the mother tongue of the Englishman. Command of a noble vernacular involves the most valuable discipline and culture that a man is capable of receiving. It conditions all other discipline and culture.... The greatest mental inheritance to which a German, a Frenchman, or an Englishman is born is his native tongue, rich in the knowledge and wisdom, the ideas and thoughts, the wit and fancy, the sentiment and feeling, of a thousand years. Nay, of more than a thousand years; for these languages, in their modern forms, were enriched by still earlier centuries. To come back to the old thought, such a speech as one of these only flows out from such a life as it expresses, and is in turn essential to the existence of that life.”[13]
Parents who wish their children to possess the best instruments of thought cannot be too careful in the selection of teachers for them. Children whose mother tongue is a dialect should be trained in one or more of the languages that have been enriched by centuries of development and literary culture. The best that the people of Pennsylvania-German extraction can do for future generations is to make the transition as speedily as possible from their vernacular—so poverty-stricken in its vocabulary—to the English, with its abundant vocabulary and its unsurpassed literary treasures. In the English they will find the instruments of thought fitted to develop native powers that have been inherited from an ancestry of sturdy husbandmen, and strengthened through heredity by centuries of contact with the soil, even as the giant Antæus, in wrestling with Hercules, is fabled to have gained new strength as often as he came in contact with mother earth. The same advice will apply to the other nationalities who have come to live on American soil, even though they have brought with them a more developed vernacular. The English dictionary contains one hundred and twenty thousand words; but besides these words in common use, the dictionaries of the specialists contain several hundred thousand more, which may be called technical terms, and which serve as instruments of thought in scientific discussions and investigations. To these we next turn our attention.
VITECHNICAL TERMS AS INSTRUMENTS OF THOUGHT
It is the power of thinking by means of symbols which demarcates men from animals, and gives one man or nation the superiority over others.
Lewes.
Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social subjects ever make their way among mankind or assume their proper importance in the minds even of their inventors until aptly selected words or phrases have, as it were, nailed them down and held them fast.
J. S. Mill.
Though most readers, probably, entertain, at first, a persuasion that a writer ought to content himself with the use of common words in their common sense, and feel a repugnance to technical terms and arbitrary rules of phraseology, as pedantic and troublesome, it is soon found by the student of any branch of science that, without technical terms and fixed rules, there can be no certain or progressive knowledge. The loose and infantine grasp of common language cannot hold objects steadily enough for scientific examination, or lift them from one stage of generalization to another. They must be secured by the rigid mechanism of a scientific phraseology. This necessity has been felt in all the sciences, from the earliest periods of their progress.
Whewell.
Ideas and existences are represented by terms and phrases; and as terms and phrases are representative of thoughts and things, and are the means which enable us to speak about them, the definitions, descriptions, and explanations of terms form a very necessary part of science; and he who would understand science must learn the meaning of the special terms employed in it.
Gore.
VITECHNICAL TERMS AS INSTRUMENTS OF THOUGHT
Some teachers are very much afraid of technical terms. They teach their pupils to say name-word instead of noun, action-word instead of verb, and bring over instead of transpose. There is no end to the phrases they invent for the sake of avoiding technical terms. Acting on the maxim that a pupil shall never be allowed to use a word without comprehending its meaning, they prefer to use compound words and phrases to denote the fundamental ideas of the various branches of study. This fear of technical terms is a natural result of the reaction against rote teaching. So much has been said and written against the teaching of mere words, especially big words, against parrot-like recitations of definitions, rules, principles, and forms of statement given in the text-book or wrought out by the teacher, that many people fail to see the value of technical terms as instruments of thought. A separate chapter is necessary to point out their function in scientific thinking and instruction. In common parlance the use of technical terms should be avoided. Do we say that Nebuchadnezzar had a long noun or a long name? Noun is a technical term; name is the word in ordinary use. Do we say that a man broke his femur or his leg? The doctors who set the limb will probably use the technical term in their conferences. In talking with the common people they use the common names, unless they wish to awe the multitudes by a show of learning. Often, indeed, men use big words to hide their ignorance. In physiology the investigations are carried as far as possible, and then a term is coined to cover the unknown. Often high-sounding words are strung together to cover a lack of ideas or to establish a reputation for erudition. These are tricks to which a genuine teacher has no occasion to resort. It is his duty to ascertain the educational value of the technical terms of science, and to use these terms for the purpose of fixing scientific ideas in the mind and of causing the pupil to think clearly and exactly.
At the basis of every science, as we have seen, there are certain ideas which cannot be conveyed to other minds by the use of the corresponding technical terms. These basal concepts must be built up in the learner’s mind by skilful teaching, sometimes by the very process by which the race acquired or discovered them. It may require a trip to the field, to the museum, or to the mine; or an experiment in the laboratory may be necessary. Perhaps a development lesson is needed to enable the pupil to grasp the idea clearly and fully. It is very certain that if the idea is hazy and ill-defined, the subsequent thinking will be loose, obscure, and unsatisfactory. The glib use of technical terms may often hide from the teacher the defects of the pupil’s thinking, and it may require an examination to reveal the points wherein the teacher has failed. Questions which require a pupil to look at his knowledge from a new point of view are helpful; an examination abounding in such questions may be an intellectual blessing to both teacher and pupil. The examiner should, of course, avoid puzzling catch-questions, for these are calculated to embarrass the pupil and confuse his thinking.
A clear thinker can always make his ideas intelligible to those who have acquired the basal concepts of the things, principles, and laws with which he deals. Lecturers on popular science avoid the abstruse questions of advanced science and the technical terms which do not convey a definite meaning to the average hearer. They select topics which can be discussed in the language of common life, and often state the results of scientific research without leading the audience through the successive steps by which these results are obtained. The popular lecture requires special gifts that are not in the possession of every scientist. Huxley was one of the most gifted men of the century; yet he says of himself,—
“I have not been one of those fortunate persons who are able to regard a popular lecture as a mere hors d’œuvre unworthy of being ranked among the serious efforts of a philosopher, and who keep their fame as scientific hierophants unsullied by attempts—at least of the successful sort—to be understanded by the people. On the contrary, I have found that the task of putting the truths learned in the field, the laboratory, and the museum into language which, without bating a jot
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