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Frank F. Bartol, PhD |
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Professor of Reproductive Biology |
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“’Gentlemen’, I have ventured to offer you these considerations upon the scholars place, and hope, because I thought that standing, as many of you now do, on the threshold of this College, girt and ready to go and assume tasks, public and private, in your country, you would not be sorry to be admonished of those primary duties of the intellect whereof you will seldom hear from the lips of your new companions. You will hear every day of the maxims of low prudence. You will hear that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. What is this Truth you seek, what is this Beauty, men will ask with derision? If nevertheless God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say: ‘ As others do, so will I, I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land and let learning and romantic expectations go until a more convenient season;’ then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history, and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. It is this domineering temper of the sensual world that creates the extreme need of the priests of science. Be content with a little light, so be it your own. Explore and explore. Be neither chilled nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept another’s dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of Truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men’s affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.” |
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Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘Oration on Literary Ethics (1838) - An adaptation as recorded by Professor E.C. Amoroso (1901-1982) and pinned above his desk at Cambridge University. |
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Perspectives |
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Contact Info: |
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“..[T]he world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding, … but the understanding is to be expanded and opened till it can take in the image of the world.” |
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Francis Bacon (Novum Organum, 1620); Abstracted from ‘The Twilight of American Culture by Morriss Berman (2000), P. 110. WW Norton & Co., NY |
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“Ardent desire for knowledge, in fact, is the one motive attracting and supporting investigators in their efforts; and just this knowledge, really grasped and yet always flying before them, becomes at once their sole torment and sole happiness. Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery which is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel. But by a whim of our nature, the joy of discovery, so sought and hoped for, vanishes as soon as found. It is but a flash whose gleam discovers for us fresh horizons, toward which our insatiate curiosity repairs with still more ardor. Thus, even in science itself, the known loses its attraction, while the unknown is always full of charm. Therefore the minds that rise and become really great are never self-satisfied, but still continue to strive.” |
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Claude Bernard (1865); An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, pp. 221-222; Translated from the original French by HC Greene, 1957, Dover Publications, Inc. |
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“There is no higher or lower knowledge, but one only, flowing out of experimentation.” |
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Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) |
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“The world enforced distinction between the practical and scientific worker is utterly futile… We are training men in a preeminent degree not only to be scientific, but to be practical, and to be practical largely because they are scientific.” |
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William Barton Rogers (1804-1882); From his address at MIT graduating exercises, 1881. |
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“Science has just the privilege of teaching us what we do not know, by replacing feeling with reason and experience and clearly showing us the present boundaries of our knowledge. But by a marvelous compensation, science, in humbling our pride, proportionately increases our power.” |
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Claude Bernard (1865); An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, p. 82; Translated from the original French by HC Greene, 1957, Dover Publications, Inc. |
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“...ideas are what give facts their value and meaning… Facts materially alike may have opposite scientific meanings, according to the ideas with which they are connected. A cowardly assassin, a hero and a warrior each plunges a dagger into the breast of his fellow. What differentiates them, unless it be the ideas which guide their hands.” |
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Claude Bernard (1865); An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, p. 103; Translated from the original French by HC Greene, 1957, Dover Publications, Inc. |
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“When two physiologists quarrel, each to maintain his own ideas or theories, in the midst of their contradictory arguments, only one thing is absolutely certain: that both theories are insufficient, and neither of them corresponds to the truth.” |
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Claude Bernard (1865); An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, p. 39; Translated from the original French by HC Greene, 1957, Dover Publications, Inc. |
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Teaching is the act of imparting knowledge or skill. Therefore, a teaching philosophy should be a rational set of truths or principles related to this act. Effective teaching reflects the success of a tacit partnership between teacher and student. Students must agree to make an effort to learn. The best students, challenged to absorb, integrate and understand new and exciting information, will exercise their intellect and imaginations in ways that will change their perception of the world and affect the perspective of their teachers as well. Teachers, in turn, have the significant privilege and responsibility of organizing and presenting information and orchestrating activities in ways that will incite students to keep their part of the bargain and, under the best of circumstances, be inspired to pursue the discipline and contribute to its development. The best teachers are perpetual students, humble masters, and dynamic ambassadors of their disciplines. These are people who can not only place facts in context and theories in perspective, but who can animate ideas, encourage imagination, and inspire insight. The best teachers recognize that they must be informed and entertaining, organized and provocative, rigorous and fair, patient and compassionate. The best teachers embody their discipline and impart enthusiasm for it in the minds of their students through the power of their performance in the classroom and their humanity in the hallway. Teaching effectiveness for these people is not and cannot be defined by classroom technology. For the best teachers, neither chalk nor computers are crutches and the availability of one does not negate the value of the other. These teachers realize that effective teaching -- learning -- occurs neither on a chalk board nor on a computer screen, but in the minds of students and teachers who have been inspired to learn. Therefore, it is the teacher’s responsibility to inspire by example. ….. Given that teaching is the most important service provided by an institution of higher learning, the need to evaluate teaching effectiveness is both understandable and essential. Beyond certain limits, it may also be objectively impossible. Performance polls and popularity contests not withstanding, the best measure of teaching effectiveness is likely to be found in the hearts and minds of students who recognize, years later, that the things they have done and the ways in which they have been accomplished are reflections of, if not monuments to those individuals who first inspired them to pursue their dreams. The teachers whose names and faces appear to us in those moments rarely know who they are. They are the best. |
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Frank F. Bartol (10.94) - From an essay on teaching as a tribute to my teachers. |