An analogy used for describing science teaching
"Teachers talk of showing experiments, which is sheer nonsense. You can't show an experiment. What teachers do in classes is to give demonstrations, in explanation and verification of statements made – an improvement on clerical method, which merely involves taking statement on faith, yet a dogmatic, not a heuristic method. The clerics, however, only appeals to miracles: teachers enact them. You will understand me when I call your attention to that delightful passage in Bernard Shaw's wonderful play, Joan of Arc, where the Archbishop – who defines himself as a sort of idol, who has to keep still and suffer fools patiently, as a teacher has – discusses miracles…The archbishop defines a miracle as 'an event which creates faith. That is the purpose of miracles' (as of teachers' demonstrations), he says. 'They may seem very wonderful to the people who witness them and very simple to those who perform them. That does not matter: if they confirm or create faith, they are true miracles.'
An experiment as often as not has the result of undermining faith, not of confirming it…"
Armstrong, H. E. (1924) in H. E. Armstrong and the teaching of science 1880-1930 (Ed.: W H Brock, 1973), Cambridge University Press
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