ions mutually imply and support one another. This double
relation of "leading to and confirming" is what is meant by the terms
logical and rational. The everyday conception of water is more available
for ordinary uses of drinking, washing, irrigation, etc., than the
chemist's notion of it. The latter's description of it as H20 is
superior from the standpoint of place and use in inquiry. It states
the nature of water in a way which connects it with knowledge of other
things, indicating to one who understands it how the knowledge is
arrived at and its bearings upon other portions of knowledge of the
structure of things. Strictly speaking, it does not indicate the
objective relations of water any more than does a statement that water
is transparent, fluid, without taste or odor, satisfying to thirst,
etc. It is just as true that water has these relations as that it is
constituted by two molecules of hydrogen in combination with one of
oxygen. But for the particular purpose of conducting discovery with a
view to ascertainment of fact, the latter relations are fundamental. The
more one emphasizes organization as a mark of science, then, the more he
is committed to a recognition of the primacy of method in the definition
of science. For method defines the kind of organization in virtue of
which science is science.

4. Subject Matter as Social. Our next chapters will take up various
school activities and studies and discuss them as successive stages
in that evolution of knowledge which we have just been discussing. It
remains to say a few words upon subject matter as social, since our
prior remarks have been mainly concerned with its intellectual aspect. A
difference in breadth and depth exists even in vital knowledge; even
in the data and ideas which are relevant to real problems and which are
motivated by purposes. For there is a difference in the social scope of
purposes and the social importance of problems. With the wide range
of possible material to select from, it is important that education
(especially in all its phases short of the most specialized) should use
a criterion of social worth. All information and systematized scientific
subject matter have been worked out under the conditions of social life
and have been transmitted by social means. But this does not prove that
all is of equal value for the purposes of forming the disposition and
supplying the equipment of members of present society. The scheme of a
curric