100 YEARS AGO

India. By Colonel Sir Thomas Holdich. With climates varying from the ice-bound deserts of the higher Himalayas and the rain-steeped forests of Tenasserim, to the desolation of Makran... where in one part music is produced by stamping on a piece of wood, and in another has been carried to a refinement which requires sixty-four tones to our octave... where there is found a system of laws so elaborate that the cashier who has confessed to embezzlement may yet succeed in escaping punishment, and a system of government so paternal that it imprisons the husband, whose domestic happiness has been ruined, to prevent his committing the crime of murder; the territories known as British India may be a country for political purposes, but in no proper sense of the word do they constitute a nation... To write a description which, in a book of moderate compass, will convey a clear and fairly proportioned conception, requires a master hand; not to have failed is in itself high praise, but Sir Thomas Holdich has done more than this, he has produced a topographical description of the Indian Empire which... is not only interesting to read, but accurate and well proportioned on the whole.

From Nature 19 January 1905.

50 YEARS AGO

In a publication entitled “Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Astronomer, Mystic, Revolutionary, 1736–1793”... Edwin Burrows Smith gives an account, including a very comprehensive bibliography and index, of one who was a statesman, astronomer and savant... Born into an essentially artistic milieu, Bailly abandoned the arts to study Newtonian physics, became a respected astronomer and won wide recognition throughout Europe for his research on Jupiter's satellites... The study of Newtonian physics led Bailly to the belief that scientific precision could be extended to other fields of human knowledge, such as history, law, language, etc., and this view led to a breach with the sceptical philosophers who had little confidence in systematic explanations of immaterial or intangible phenomena. As the author of this biography remarks, “Bailly fell victim to the hobgoblin of vraisemblance”; in other words, in cases where truth could not be demonstrated, he was prepared to accept the probable explanation. The French Revolution represented the acid test for Bailly's philosophy... and Bailly's ideas did not survive the test.

From Nature 22 January 1955.