(1) The Discovery of the Nature of the Air, and of its Changes during Breathing (2) Stories of Scientific Discovery (3) Makers of Science: Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy

Abstract

IT is not improbable that the historian of a thousand years hence will describe the nineteenth century as the last phase of apriorism. Certainly it augurs well that not only philosophers but also theologians are now showing a growing reluctance to accept cloud-born principles at face value. When a new principle of science is enunciated nowadays, it is rightly treated as an hypothesis; and an hypothesis, however sagaciously chosen, however useful a purpose it may serve for a time, always involves some kind of an assumption, and more probably than not it is therefore doomed to take its turn in being obliterated from the scientific palimpsest. Who twenty years ago would have dared to doubt Newton? And who doubts that Einstein in his turn will come to be doubted? We no longer go behind experience, in obedience to some a priori sentiment. The world has become critical of all new appearances; even “facts “have ceased to be accepted unquestioned. We have come to recognise that in all observations and in “all measurements there are necessarily errors, for both our sense-organs and our measuring-instruments are imperfect.

(1) The Discovery of the Nature of the Air, and of its Changes during Breathing.

By Clara M. Taylor. (Classics of Scientific Method.) Pp. ix+84+8 plates. (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1923.) 1s. 6d. net.

(2) Stories of Scientific Discovery.

By D. B. Hammond. Pp. ix+199+8 plates. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1923.) 6s. net.

(3) Makers of Science: Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy.

By Ivor B. Hart. Pp. 320. (London: Oxford University Press, 1923.) 6s. net.