The Teaching of Scientific Method. By Henry E. Armstrong, F.R.S.
(Macmillan and Co. 6s.)—Professor Armstrong is a well-known and enthusiastic advocate of what he has happily christened the "Heuristic" method of teaching. Whether or not it can be successfully applied to other subjects—a disputed point —there can be no question that this plan is the only one that should be used in scientific education. It involves the leading of the student along the same path that was followed by the pioneers in the building up of a science,—the encouraging of him to make for himself the same experiments and observations, and to base on them the same conclusions, that have been the fruit of a century or more of laboratory-work. Of course, the labours of a hundred years can only be reproduced in skeleton within the few months or years that can be devoted to the education of one who is intended in the near future to co-operate in the handing on of the sacred torch ; but the method is sound. Here again we recognise the truth of the biological axiom that ontogeny must reproduce phyllogeny,—the development of the individual -be a microcosm of the evolution of the race. This method of teaching, in which the student is allowed to find out things for himself, being only helped by his instructor to avoid wasting his time on paths that lead nowhither, is of course not new—as Professor Armstrong says, it is in a sense as old as the hills—" in fact, it is the method of nature : of the animal creation : of the human infant " ; but it was disused in schools when literary methods, depending upon authority rather than on the free use of reason, secured the mastery there. In the various papers—representing twenty years of propaganda— that are collected in this admirable volume, Professor Armstrong expounds the Heuristic method, illustrates its application to his own science of chemistry, and sets out the arguments for its general adoption with a zeal and thoroughness that leave nothing to be desired. The book should be in the hands of all teachers, and of all managers of schools. Nor will its perusal be wholly wasted time for a parent who intends to take an intel- ligent interest in the education of his child.
HORACE FOR ENGLISH READERS.
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