ng instead of guessing, of weighing evidence,
of patient perseverance, and of doing thoroughly honest work, is a
method of using that power efficiently. The accumulation of facts is
the least important. The power to acquire information and the
knowledge of how to use it is of far greater value than any number of
the most useful facts. The value of an education does not consist in
the number of facts acquired, but in the ability to discover facts by
personal observation and investigation and in the power to use these
facts in deducing new conclusions and establishing fundamental
principles. There is no comparison between the value of a ton of
horseshoe nails and the ability to make a single nail.

=Utilitarian aim of the engineering subjects: information and training=

The engineering student usually desires to reverse the above order and
assumes that the acquisition of information, especially that directly
useful in his proposed profession, is the most valuable element of an
education; and unfortunately some instructors seem to make the same
mistake. The truth is that methods of construction, details of
practice, mechanical appliances, prices of materials and labor, change
so rapidly that it is useless to teach many such matters. However
important such items are to the practicing engineer, they are of
little or no use to the student; for later, when he does have need of
them, methods, machines, and prices have changed so much that the
information he acquired in college will probably be worse than
useless. Technical details are learned of necessity in practice, and
more easily then than in college; whereas in practice fundamental
principles are learned with difficulty, if at all. A man ignorant of
principles does not usually realize his own ignorance and limitations,
or rather he is unaware of the existence of unknown principles. The
engineering college should teach the principles upon which sound
engineering practice is based, but should not attempt to teach the
details of practice any further than is necessary to give zest and
reality to the instruction and to give an intelligent understanding of
the uses to be made of fundamental principles.

As evidence that technical information is not essential for success in
an engineering profession, attention is called to the fact that a
considerable number of men who took a course in one of the major
divisions of engineering have practiced in another branch with
reasonable s