Abstract
THE title of Mr. Marvin's earlier book, “The Living Past”, published in 1913, and frequently and deservedly reprinted, was almost a stroke of genius. In a phrase, it seemed to reveal, or at least to suggest, the true nature of the historian's task. The question whether history is a science has often been discussed, and is one which might naturally appeal to many readers of NATURE. Mr. Marvin is too wise to spend his efforts upon the somewhat academic question whether the methods and the materials of history fairly bring it into the category of what is usually called science. He prefers to go straight to the problem what we are really doing, or ought to be doing, in that study of the past which is called history, and how the process has been changed by the general movement of thought, scientific and philosophical, in modern times. He then proceeds to deal with certain selected aspects of history, by no means repeating his earlier work, but again leaving the reader with a high sense of human achievement, notwithstanding the terrible setbacks that have to be recorded. The chapters on the scientific work of the ancient Greeks, and on the marvellous technical advance in modern tunes, will prove specially interesting to scientific readers.
Old and New: Thoughts on the Modern Study of History
F. S.
Marvin
By. (University Extension Library.) Pp. 224. (London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson, Ltd., 1935.) 4s. 6d. net.
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Old and New: Thoughts on the Modern Study of History. Nature 136, 1009 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/1361009b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1361009b0