WHY NOT CHEMISTRY?

As a means of fulfilling the distribution requirement, chemistry has much to offer the non-scientist. It is probably the most fundamental of laboratory sciences, and, unlike physics, its principles are not obscured by intricate mathematics. Since its most important concepts are based on comparatively simple experiments, it is an ideal introduction to the scientific method of inductive analysis.

But he who enrolls in one of the elementary courses, will find his scientific interest soon crushed. He will find himself entangled in a web of minute regulations; he will be mechanized or flunked. Laboratory assistants do not as a rule show students the theories and principles which unite the details of the separate experiments and weld them into a comprehensive whole. Armed with mimeographed instruction sheets, they answer all those questions that should be asked and frown upon the extraneous. Tests come regularly and are returned regularly.

The system, as a system, is practically perfect, but the day when education can be imparted exclusively by a system has not yet arrived. An established framework is a necessity to every well organized course but it should have enough apertures to allow the student to get a view of the whole field which the course is supposed to cover.

Perhaps the Department of Chemistry does not wish to encourage dilettantes, among its test-tubes. It is unfortunate, however, that those desiring an approach to the laboratory method while concentrating in the humanities or social sciences have been forced into other fields simply because the lords of Mallinckrodt have confused science with mechanization.