The Place of Science in our View of History

Abstract

ON several occasions the pages of NATURE have afforded evidence of the growing importance taken by science in the writing and teaching of history. It is, in fact, at the root of the difficulty which was dealt with recently in one of the leading articles. How to secure that our political leaders—and one might well add leaders of all other kinds—should approach their business in a scientific spirit? There are, of course, many ways by which the change will come, and is coming, but it may be doubted whether any way will affect a larger number of persons than that of infusing the ordinary teaching and view of history with some notion of the part that science has played in the process. For we all learn some history. Not only at school but also in after life, so far as we do any serious reading at all, it is of a historical kind; floods of memoirs and biographies are being constantly poured out by the press.

The History of British Civilization.

By Dr. Esmé Wingfield-Stratford. Vol. 1. Pp. xv + 574. Vol.2. Pp. viii + 575–1332. (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc., 1928.) 42s. net.