REVIEWS 699 



HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



Le Scuole Ionica, Pythagorica ed Eleata. (I prearistotelici, I.) By Aldo 

 Mieli. [Pp. xvi 4- 503.] (Firenze : Libreria della Voce, 1916. Price 

 12 lire.) 



This volume contains the first three chapters of that part of a projected general 

 history of science down to the end of the eighteenth century which deals with the 

 Ionian School, the Pythagorean School, and the Eleatic School and Heraclitus. 

 It is to be noticed that the work is on the general history of science, in which all 

 branches of science are treated in the same book for the sake of the light which 

 they often throw on one another — a branch of knowledge of which the most 

 distinguished living cultivator is M. George Sarton, who carried on the self- 

 sacrificing work of editing Isis near Ghent before the war broke out. This volume 

 is dedicated to M Sarton. The ambition of Prof. Mieli is to carry on the 

 historical work begun in this volume down to the end of the eighteenth century, 

 the nineteenth being excluded because "it is yet too close to us." However, it 

 seems a pity to defer writing a history of a period until a great deal about the 

 period has been forgotten. Indeed, it is quite possible that some important things 

 will, unless we are careful, be forgotten even so soon as in the next few years, 

 owing to the present spread of culture at the point of the bayonet or in an 

 atmosphere of poisonous gas. 



A fuller description of the contents is as follows : The first chapter (pp. 3-207), 

 on the Ionian School, deals with the Greeks of Asia Minor and their relations with 

 Egypt, Thales and his meteorological and astronomical knowledge, the intro- 

 duction of mathematics into Greece, the speculations of the Ionian philosophers 

 on "the primordial element," the astronomical and cosmogonic ideas of the 

 Ionians and their geological, biogenetic, and anthropogenetic theories, Ionian 

 geography, and the technical arts with the Ionians. To this and the other 

 chapters are appended critical bibliographies, in which British works are rather 

 incompletely listed, and indexes. The second chapter (pp. 211-78), on the 

 Pythagorean School, deals with Pythagorean arithmetic, geometry, acoustics, 

 astronomy, etc., and '.rchytas and the Delian problem. From a scientific point of 

 view the most interesting parts are on the Pythagorean theory of number and 

 arithmetical concepts (pp. 227-58), geometry (pp. 259-80), and the relation of 

 acoustics to the subject of the progressions (pp. 230, 256-8). The third chapter 

 (pp. 381-503), on the Eleatics and Heraclitus, contains an account of the works of 

 Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Melissus, and Heraclitus. 



The chief point of interest in this period is the well-substantiated opinion that 

 the Pythagoreans held that geometrical figures were composed of points— of a 

 finite number of points in fact— and the refutation of this opinion by the Pythagorean 

 discovery of irrationals (pp. 253-6, 267-72) and also by the wonderfully subtle 

 arguments of Zeno (pp. 231, 240-1, 272 440-4, 447-8). Prof. Mieli follows Paul 

 Tannery in his interpretation of all of this, and, though there is not a great deal 

 that is new in this book, it is a careful and useful work and should serve as a 



foundation for future investigations. r ~™*w,« 



Philip E. B. Jourdain. 



The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindns. By Brajendranath Seal, 



M.A., Ph.D. [Pp. viii + 295.] (London, New York, Calcutta, Bombay, 



Madras : Longmans, Green & Co., 191 5. Price 12^. bd. net.) 



These studies in Hindu science are intended to serve as a preliminary to some 



studies of the author on comparative philosophy ; and Dr. Seal remarks truly that 



