(1) Our Physical World: a Source Book of Physical Nature-Study (2) Matter and Change: an Introduction to Physical and Chemical Science

Abstract

IT is generally admitted at the present time that science in some shape or form should be part of the general education of every boy. Whatever his main interests are to be, whether he is to be a serious student of other branches of learning, or a man of affairs, it is almost unthinkable that he should leave school without some instruction in the aims and methods of science. In particular, in these times when strange stories of fabulous inventions seem to have replaced the giant gooseberry and the sea-serpent in the columns of the ephemeral press, some knowledge of the principles of physics seems a desirable part of the education of all good citizens; though physics presents, perhaps, his greatest problem to the teacher of “science for all.” There is no time, in the few hours which are all that science can claim in a curriculum of general education, for the tedious process by which the “specialist” prepares the foundations for his higher studies in science; nor does it seem desirable that time and energy should be spent on laying elaborate foundations upon which nothing is to be erected subsequently. The selection of material, from so vast a storehouse, the nature of its presentment, the degree of rigour to be aimed at, are engaging the deepest attention of many of our most enthusiastic and capable teachers. It is not surprising that books on the subject multiply rapidly. Two are before us as we write. They reflect, in their extremest form, the divergences which exist as to what is possible and desirable in the way of the teaching of physics as part of a general education.

(1) Our Physical World: a Source Book of Physical Nature-Study.

By Elliot Rowland Downing. With a Chapter on Radio Communication, by Fred G. Anibal. (University of Chicago Nature-Study Series.) Pp. xviii + 367. (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press; London: Cambridge University Press, 1924.) 2.50 dollars.

(2) Matter and Change: an Introduction to Physical and Chemical Science.

By William Cecil Dampier Whetham. Pp. vii + 280 + 3 plates. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1924.) 7s. 6d. net.