The Wykehamist
The Wykehamist’ s Archive
The Disillusionment of the Scientist
All of us experience it: it is the inevitable fate of everyone who decides to burn his boats and boldly to enter the Palace of Science. And yet what child, what grown man of any imagination has not been enthralled by the Romance of Knowledge? Mothers tell their babies of Archimedes and his bath, of Galileo and his tower, of Newton and his apple, of James Watt and his kettle, and the babies treasure up the stories in their hearts, and thrive on them. They go out to see Mr. Maskelyne producing rabbits out of his mouth and young ladies from nowhere in particular, they read of magicians and wizards and alchemists and Rosicrucians, of witches and whirling dervishes and Indian jugglers, and every step they progress in life, the more entrancing the prospect seems – for them Romance is expressed in terms of Science.
And then like the blow of fate comes education. Gone to the winds are the fairy stories, and the miracles of the Arabian Nights; the magician with all his apparatus of skulls and wands, crystals and brindled cats is torn aside: the cold light of knowledge sweeps away the romantic shades of folly, and in their place comes Grammar, History and Science. The child now learns the maxims of common sense. Thaws burst the water pipes, he is told, lightning-conductors conduct the lightning to the earth. Worms have rings on them where they were joined up; the air is full of countless germs always waiting to rush into his mouth if he sleeps with it open: salamanders he imagines as living gaily in the middle of the fire; the swallows he watches are flying low because the rain is coming; he is in terror of the bane of the dandelion, the poison of any gaily-coloured fungus, and the sting of the snake. He is told that blind-worms are very much naturally blind, that moles live underground because they can’ t see, and that bats fly at night because they have no eyes, dead carcases breed bees, cheese mice, and water plants, and out of all this medley of fact a new, a strong and well-founded romance of knowledge arises, and again his imagination is given play.
And again he is smitten by a blow of fate. He takes up Science, and out of the nebulous world of common sense, he is brought with a bang into the realms of logic. For the first time he realizes to the full the difference between Science Buildings and a Classic Div. Room. He has no use now for Archimedes, or the maxims of the outside world, he cares only for experience and facts. Lightningconductors do not conduct lightning, worms have never succeeded in reuniting, bats and moles have eyes and use them, blind-worms are not blind, snakes do not sting, and dandelions are nutritious, salamanders are not fireproof, and it is not the thaw that bursts the pipe. Swallows fly low only in order to catch insects and the air is not heavy with clous of germs. What does it matter that these are noble conceptions? Science is inexorable: she is his guide and follow her he must wherever she leads.
Gone is the romance of knowledge, gone the grandeur of the lightningconductor clothed in flame, and in its place is substituted“ an upward reduced charge of electricity to rise and counteract the anti-charge generated by the cloud.” Gone are those lurking ambushes of germs and instead we are given an unintelligible conglomeration of polysyllables. Our conception of the Romance of Science withers away, and dies as we advance; and knowledge is seen to be but a jumble of letters and figures: the Palace of Science is gone and in its place stands bleak and gaunt – Science Hut!
# 661, Published June 1925 Anon.
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