From Sail to Steam (1907)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE NAVAL ACADEMY IN ITS RELATION TO THE NAVY AT LARGE. 1850-1860 Probably there have been at all periods educational excesses in the outlook of some of the Naval Academy authorities; and I personally have sympathized in the main with those who would subordinate the technological element to the more strictly professional. I remember one superintendent—and he, unless rumor was in error, had been one of the early opposition—saying to me with marked elation, "I believe we carry the calculus farther here than they do at West Point." I myself had then long forgotten all the calculus I ever knew, and I fear that with him, too, it was a case of omne ignotum pro magnified. A more curious extravagancy was uttered to me by a professor of applied mathematics. I had happened to say that, while it was well each student should have the opportunity to acquire all he could in that department, I did not think it necessary that every officer of the deck should be able to calculate mathematically the relation between a weight he had to hoist on board and the power of the purchase he was about to use; which I think a mild proposition, considering the centuries during which that knowledge had been dispensed with. "Oh, I differ with you," he replied; "I think it of the utmost importance they should all be able to do so." Nothing like sails, said my friend the sail- maker; nothing like leather, says the shoemaker. I mentioned this shortly afterwards to one of my colleagues, himself an officer of unusual mathematical and scientific attainment. "No!" he exclaimed; "did he really say that?" This was to claim for this mere head knowledge a falsely "practical" value, as distinguished from the educational value of the mental training involved, and from the undoubted imperative need of such ...