Study method

“ Now this I take to be a study quite apart from psychology in particular, although, as I have said, touching it at several points. It reviews all science and all knowledge, as to its structure, method, arrangement, classification, probation, enlargement. It deals in generalities the most general of any. By taking up what belongs to all knowledge, it seems to rise above the matter of knowledge to the region of pure form; it demands, therefore, a peculiar subtlety of handling, and may easily land us, as we are all aware, in knotty questions and quagmires. ”

“ Whenever a class is given a series of review questions for the purpose of requiring a general review of a whole subject, the result of the exercise is to fix in the student’s mind certain larger elements of the study and to establish certain broad habits of selection. Written examinations may be, from this point of view, devices of training, not merely tests of results. The examination method as a training method has, accordingly, an important place. ”

“ Let this first be recognized fully—the importance, which cannot be exaggerated, of a kind of study in which no man in England has had a regular training—and then we may proceed to consider the method by which this study may be raised to the prominence which it deserves. ”

“ The empirical school, which lauds the experimental method so much, turns its back upon it, thus to speak, when, instead of commencing by the study of the actual characters of our cognitions, as they are attested to us by consciousness and reflection, it plunges, without light and without guidance, into the pursuit of their origin. ”

“ The groups of Science now alluded to deal, not so much with abstractions, as with external and sensible objects ; their study quickens the faculty of observation, the powers of comparison and generalization, and the mental habit of method and arrangement. They familiarize the mind with the deeper philosophies of seeing, hearing and touch, and, in the close interrogation of Nature by actual experiment, they shew the value of the processes of analysis and synthesis. ”

“ The more common the particular responses are to all sorts of life situations, the greater the possibility of transfer. Second, the identity may be that of method or procedure. To be able to add, to carry, to know the method of classifying an unknown flower, to have a definite method of meeting a new situation in hand-work, to know how to use source material in history, to have gained the technique of laboratory skill in chemistry, to know how to study in geography, should be useful in other departments where the same method would serve. ”

“ Concentration evidently involves a solution of the question as to the relative value of studies. All the light that the discussion of relative values can furnish will be needed in selecting the different lines of appropriate study and in properly adjusting them to one another. ”

“ The preliminary discrimination of method is the distribution of all phenomena among certain grand divisions.
⁠7. It is of vital importance to discriminate between a division of phenomena for purposes of study, and a separation of the phenomena thernselves.
⁠8. Since the sciences deal with different aspects of the same objective world, it follows that they must cooperate to give a complete account of reality.
⁠9. Scientific method has been developed historically first in application to inorganic phenomena, then to organic life, more recently to psychical and social phenomena. ”

“ At first it is probable that our principal experimental work must be the illustration of particular branches of science, but as we go on we must add to this the study of scientific methods, the same method being sometimes illustrated by its application to researches belonging to different branches of science. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. CONCENTRATION. By concentration is meant such a connection between the parts of each study and such a spinning of relations and connecting links between different sciences that unity may spring out of the variety of knowledge. History, for example, is a series and collocation of facts explainable on the basis of cause and effect, a development. On the other hand, history is intimately related to geography, language, natural science, literature, and mathematics. It would be impossible to draw real history out by the roots without drawing all other studies out bodily with it. ”

“ The comparative method cannot, in fact, be well introduced until the student is somewhat advanced, and has already completed his elementary course of study dealing with the immediate aspects of the world, and his secondary course dealing with the separate formal and dynamical aspects that lie next in order behind the facts of first observation. ”

“ PART II THE NATURE OF THE PRINCIPAL FACTORS IN STUDY, AND THEIR RELATION TO CHILDREN CHAPTER III PROVISION FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES, AS ONE FACTOR OF STUDY The habit among eminent men of setting up specific purposes of study.
The scientific investigator habitually sets up hypotheses of some sort as guides in his investigations. Many distinguished men who are not scientists follow and recommend a somewhat similar method of study. ”

“ but we have made a perilous mistake in giving it too great a preponderance in method in every other branch of study. ”

“ It is needless to say how great has been the influence of the doctrine of Evolution, or rather perhaps of the method of investigation to which it has given birth, upon the study of history, especially the history of institutions. ”

“ It is the function of science or organized knowledge to observe all effects, or phenomena, and to seek for their causes. This twofold purpose gives richness and dignity to science. The observation and classifying of facts soon become wearisome to all but the specialist actually engaged in the work. But when reasons are assigned, and classification explained, when the number of causes is reduced and the effects begin to crystallize into essential and clearly related parts of one whole, every intelligent student finds interest, and many, more fortunate, even fascination in the study. ”

“ All science is based upon experience and consists in subjecting the data furnished by the senses to a rational method of investigation. Induction, analysis, comparison, observation, experiment, are the chief instruments of such a rational method. ”

“ Educational psychology has revealed the qualitative significance of many of the single elements in the very complex procedure that we have called a ‘method of teaching,’ and this new type of research aims to determine the quantitative significance of each of these several elements of method as factors in the production of abilities. ”

“ We see in many of the brute creation the exercise of one, at least, of the same powers of reasoning as that which we ourselves employ.
The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode at which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact. ”

“ In prosecuting our investigations into the science of education, therefore, our business is to study Nature in all the educational processes in which we find her occupied, and of which we shall find there are many;—to observe and collect facts;—to detect principles, and to discover the means employed in carrying them out, and the modes of their working;—to trace effects back to their causes, and then again to follow the effects through their various ramifications, to some ultimate end. ”

“ On the other hand, it is important to notice that things and their phenomena are grasped by the mind in the same way that words and language of common speech are learned. By study we gain knowledge of words, by investigation knowledge of the things and phenomena of our experience. The laboratory, the museum, the world at large are the normal fields of this process of investigation; much as books and the words of the lecturer are the normal fields of pure study. This brings us to the definition of research. ”

“ The more serious and methodical studies of literature demand, in some measure, a scientific habit of mind, in the largest sense of that expression; such a habit is necessary, for instance, in the study of history, in the scientific study of language, and in the higher criticism. Nor, again, does any one question that the studies of the natural sciences are instruments of intellectual culture of the highest order. The powers of observation and of reasoning are thereby disciplined in manifold ways; and the scientific habit of mind so formed is in itself an education. ”

“ Any subject of study, whether it be a scientific experiment or an historical event, or the significance of a text, is a matter of interpretation, and to approach it in the university spirit is to approach it with the question, "Is this the right interpretation?" Upon that question can be hung a whole philosophy of the subject, and from it can proceed a whole series of investigations: it embodies the true spirit of research and it opens the door to true learning. ”

“ It is a very great advantage, in such a mode of exhibiting scientific truths, that it resolves the verification of the most complex and comprehensive theories, into a number of small steps, of which almost any one falls within the reach of common talents and industry. That if the particulars of any one step be true, the generalization also is true, any person with a mind properly disciplined may satisfy himself by a little study. ”

“ There are certain studies which tend to develop the power or faculty of Inductive Reasoning. Any study which leads the mind to consider classification and general principles, laws or truth, will tend to develop the faculty of deduction. Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Biology and Natural History are particularly adapted to develop the mind in this particular direction. Moreover, the mind should be directed to an inquiry into the causes of things. Facts and phenomena should be observed and an attempt should be made not only to classify them, but also to discover general principles moving them. ”

“ While it extends the plan of knowledge commenced in the lecture of the first degree, it comprehends a more extensive system of learning, and inculcates, in our peculiar method, the most important truths of science. ”

“ Two methods of study are ardently advocated by those who instruct in natural science. The one demands practical personal investigation,—nothing but investigation,—deprecates the use of text-books, and insists upon the object only. ”

“ Such matters as knowledge of the past, of current technique, of materials, of the ways in which one's own best results are assured, supply the material for what may be called general method. There exists a cumulative body of fairly stable methods for reaching results, a body authorized by past experience and by intellectual analysis, which an individual ignores at his peril. ”

“ The Value of Research.—Some teachers believe that the original investigation of a subject in science, since it compels the student to think for himself and to depend upon his own observations, is worth several regular courses as a preparation for medical study. ”

“ The mode of investigation which, from the proved inapplicability of direct methods of observation and experiment, remains to us as the main source of the knowledge we possess or can acquire respecting the conditions and laws of recurrence, of the more complex phenomena, is called, in its most general expression, the Deductive Method ”

“ There are only two modes in which laws of nature can be ascertained—deductively and experimentally; including under the denomination of experimental inquiry, observation as well as artificial experiment. Are the laws of the formation of character susceptible of a satisfactory investigation by the method of experimentation? ”

“ Its fundamental principles, as well as its details of execution, have been sharply questioned. But a long-continued effort, extending through many years, by able and thoroughly-equipped teachers, to solve one of the greatest problems of education, deserves careful attention. The general theory of concentration, the selection and value of the materials, the previous history of method, and the best present method of treating each subject, with detailed illustrations, are all worked out with great care and ability. ”

“ In our day the true method, the method of observation, is rightly honored, and scientific questions, no longer agitated with mere parade of eloquence, are modestly studied by their facts in the seclusion of laboratories. ”

“ Training is such development of curiosity, suggestion, and habits of exploring and testing, as increases their scope [Pg 46] and efficiency. A subject—any subject—is intellectual in the degree in which with any given person it succeeds in effecting this growth. On this view the fourth factor, method, is concerned with providing conditions so adapted to individual needs and powers as to make for the permanent improvement of observation, suggestion, and investigation. ”

“ Another task demanded of the student is to draw lessons from the educational systems studied, to note what can be applied to modern conditions, and to avoid the errors of the past. The product of a method, as shown in the character of the people pursuing it, is of great interest in estimating the value of a scheme of education. ”

“ The branches of knowledge are many, but the intellectual faculties employed and the operations carried on in scientific investigation are comparatively few. A mind thoroughly trained in habits of observation, experiment, comparison, abstraction, generalization, and inference, possesses all the fundamental qualifications for undertaking the task of discovering those higher generalizations which unite the different and often seemingly-conflicting conclusions of the several sciences. ”