Biotechnics : the practice of synthesis in the work of Patrick Geddes

then, of starting with the three “R’s” we substitute the three “H’s”—Heart, Hand and Head—for in that order they develop. ‘But the mistaken and perverted order is still prevalent, and still authoritative; and beginnings like Madame Montessori’s, or our own at the Outlook Tower—of course with its complemental Inlook—are still far too few. ‘People laugh at Madame Montessori’s sense-training: but it has to go farther yet. The eye is predominantly important for this intellectual life (Do you sce?) and the ear for emotional appeal (He that hath ears to hear—). Odour is deeply related to memory, and taste to good taste, and thus to character; and touch to realism and sympathy. The muscular sense is related to mathematics and also to music: and the orientation sense is. related to morals and character—‘‘steady” and “‘well-balanced”, “giddy” or “unbalanced”, as we commonly say. And as senses are thus deeply related in life, so with our ideas, our whole personality and powers. “Hence we must cease to think merely in terms of separated departments and faculties, and must co-relate these in the living mind; in the social life as well—indeed, this above all. Thus emotional education involves Re-religion, and this Re-politics, of which civics is the best beginning. Intellectual education involves general and sensory, imaginative and artistic education: Re-education, Re-creation, and thus Re-construction and the conception of Culture in its literal sense, of “to cultivate”. Thus, then, we are reaching a re-classification of our ideas and our ideals with them. Each science is thus associated with its related arts and crafts, from simple occupations to complex ones.

An illustration to the Dundee farewell lecture

Physics to _{ Mechanical Industries Esthetics Arts & Crafts b Biology Hygiene & Medicine * Psychology Education <, J Sociology Government * Ethics Religion