REVIEWS 499 



corpuscles, smaller than atoms, carrying a constant, necessary, minute, negative 

 charge, the now familiar electron. The treatment of this chapter is specially 

 interesting in view of the question asked at the beginning — the bias is clearly 

 there. Prof. Schuster has swallowed Wilson's fog condensation method whole, 

 as do most other electricians : yet there are among us those who remain not only 

 unsatisfied but carry a large positive charge of doubt. 



Radioactivity is the subject of Chapter III. In this the bias again peeps out 

 and we meet with strange reasoning on the meaning of the word element. 



Chapter IV opens with a pregnant sentence : " Difficulties cease to trouble us 

 either when they are surmounted or when we have become accustomed to them. 

 As soon as we observe a rare phenomenon, our brain starts working to find some 

 plausible explanation. . . ." Confession is said to be good for the soul : in this 

 sentence we have many " scientific" workers confessed ! Terrestrial magnetism 

 and finally the age of the earth come under consideration in this chapter. Lord 

 Kelvin's conclusions are referred to but no mention is made of Prof. Perry's 

 criticism thereon, though the justice of this, we believe, was admitted by Lord 

 Kelvin. 



Finally attention may be called to a paragraph on p. 122: "The progress 

 of science is achieved by individual reasoning which cannot be transferred from 

 one brain to another ; and the average span of a lifetime must therefore be an 

 important factor in the rate at which science progresses." There is profound truth 

 in the remark and it is one that should lead us to attach more value than is 

 perhaps customary to the individual labours of the competent few. 



Introduction to Science. By J. Arthur Thomson. Home University Library 

 of Modern Knowledge. [Pp. 256.] (Williams & Norgate. Price is. net.) 



THE title of this book is clearly a misnomer ; it should be called — Gush on 

 Science. The author shows that he has read widely and kept a commonplace 

 book in which he has entered endless extracts from various writers ; had he 

 published these as extracts from the poets are often published (Tennysoniana, etc.), 

 all would have been well ; by intermingling them with his own remarks, however, 

 he has produced a strange and most unsatisfactory hotchpotch which is scarcely 

 calculated to inform those who are not aware what " Science " is and of no great 

 use to those who are. As a psychological study — as throwing light on the writer's 

 state of mind and as showing the impression that is being made on biologists 

 by the results obtained by workers in other fields — the book is of considerable 

 interest. But much of the " connective tissue " could well be spared. The book 

 is "trippingly" written but we fear that much of it is properly described as only 

 " half sound," if not as dangerously near to "penny-a-lining." 



The author's failure to appreciate the definitions of science already given by 

 men whose opinion does count is nowhere better displayed than on page 38, 

 where we read, under " Science and Common-sense " : " It is somewhat remark- 

 able that several investigators of distinction have compared science to common- 

 sense. . . . Huxley emphasised the idea that 'Science is nothing but trained and 

 organised common-sense.' It seems to us that it would be nearer the truth to say 

 that Science is sharply contrasted with common-sense," etc., etc. A man who 

 either has or pretends to have such misconceptions as are contained in the para- 

 graph under notice has no message to deliver on the meaning of science. 



At p. 216 we read : "We have to remember also that the scientific spirit 

 has been slowly driven home by positivism— that its formulations must be freed 



