The Outline of Science
edited by . Vol. I. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1922. Royal 8vo, xx+296 pp. $3.75.
SCIENCE is no more than the accumulation of our verified knowledge of nature, plus properly tested rational inferences, deductions, and hypotheses which arise from the methodical study of such knowledge. It is for this reason that science is one of the few safe guides in the conduct of life and in the management of human affairs.
Unfortunately, the pleasures of acquaintance with such knowledge and the advantages of its use have always been denied to most men and seem to become more and more inaccessible. This state of affairs is, however, not so inevitable as it seems, for there is much science that is obscured by technicalities which were, no doubt, necessary for its production, but which are unnecessary for the understanding and use of it. Bearing this fact in mind. The Outline of Science undertakes to give a sound but popular statement of the content of contemporary natural science. Professor Thomson of Aberdeen, the editor, is a distinguished naturalist, an old hand at popular scientific writing, no mean philosopher, and an enthusiast at his task. Judging by the first volume of the work, he has accomplished his aim with much success. The book is pleasant, intelligible, and also accurate and trustworthy, though it does not err on the side of qualification and reservation.
The treatment of the subject is unsystematic. This may surprise those who remember that Professor Thomson has lately published his Gifford Lectures under the title, The System of Animate Nature. But the systematization of science is a task for the philosopher or the logician. Science is essentially fragmentary because always incomplete. Thus a systematic treatment would have been both artificial and misleading, because not scientific. The treatment is also largely unhistorical. This seems to me a defect, for, as Bacon perceived, the scientist is a craftsman. Such a man can be understood only in his milieu. He is a creature of habit and tradition, and the difficulty of understanding his work is more often due to ignorance of his traditions and his ways than to the intricacy of the subject.
As a naturalist, the editor puts great emphasis on natural history; as a philosophical naturalist, on evolution. For him the problem of the factors of evolution is ‘the greatest of all scientific problems.’ There is not much to be said for such a statement, and there seems to be no doubt that evolution fills too great a place in the ‘Outline.’ The science of mechanics rather than the study of evolution has been the great source of scientific insight. These are, however, defects of proportion. The work as a whole promises to be a success in bringing science to the man in the street.
In addition to seven chapters on evolution, inorganic, organic, and mental, the first volume has one chapter on astronomy and one on physics. Volume II is also to be devoted largely to organic nature. No doubt the later volumes will restore the balance.
The book is illustrated with a large number of well-chosen photographs and drawings.
LAWRENCE J. HENDERSON.