Education and Biology

Abstract

MANY thoughtful biologists, both in schools of various grades and in colleges and universities, are becoming increasingly disturbed in their minds concerning the relation of their teaching to the ideals and wider issues of education. This unease is not merely a state to be resolved by the more widely spread inclusion of biology in the curriculum, desirable though this be: it has its roots in questionings of the philosophic perspectives of the subject itself and its presentation to the pupil. Mr. Lauwerys attempts to clarify the situation by considering the general problem and its practical issues, and as he is lecturer in the methods of science at the London Institute of Education, is deeply interested and widely read in the philosophic aspects of science, and has come under the humane influence of Sir Percy Nunn, his book is of absorbing interest. His point of view throughout is that biology possesses its own concepts, technique and methods; the biologist must perceive the living organism as a concrete sensual whole with time and space relations; he must interpret his observations and results in biological concepts, and he must formulate a vitalistic philosophy of biology using “dynamic type“as a central concept. For the teaching biologist this would involve not the abandonment of the usual subject matter but a fundamental alteration in the usual mode of presentation.

Education and Biology.

By J. A. Lauwerys. with the assistance of F. A. Baker. Pp. xvi + 207 + 4 plates. (London: Sands and Co., 1934.) 5s.