HISTORY OF SCIENCE. 427 



engage me in another part of it; for it would be necessary to examine 

 and study the new books and memoirs relative to those subjects any- 

 way. The publication of I sis may then be rightly considered as a by- 

 product of my main work. The introduction and Isis will complete 

 one another. 



During the past year I have edited two numbers of Isis, 8 and 9 

 (Vol. Ill, pp. 157-570). They contain nine papers and fifty-two 

 reviews. The chief feature of Isis is, however, its critical bibliography 

 of the history, philosophy, and organization of science and of the his- 

 tory of civilization; the last two bibliographies contain 855 notes 

 covering 101 pages (on the average, S}4 notes to a page). The three 

 first volumes of Isis contain about 5,620 bibliographic notes, 312 

 reviews, and 43 longer papers. It is very unfortunate that circum- 

 stances beyond my control oblige me to publish this journal in Bel- 

 gium, since such transatlantic publication is an endless source of 

 delay and error and a continual cause of vexation to me. 



3. The new humanism. — I am carrying on my propaganda for this 

 movement, that is, the reconciliation of the scientific with the human- 

 istic spirit. The historian of science is better qualified than any one 

 to conduct such propaganda, for his own field of research lies on the 

 borderland between the domain of positive science and the domain 

 of history. As soon as we realize that our knowledge of nature and 

 of man can not be complete until we combine historical with scientific 

 information and take the whole past into account, the history of 

 science becomes, so to speak, the keystone of the whole structure of 

 education. 



I wrote two papers to support this movement: Science and style 

 (Scribner's Magazine, vol. 69, p. 755-759, June 1921), and Herbert 

 Spencer {Isis III, 375-390, 1921); and delivered a lecture before 

 Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. 



4. Harvard lectures. — I gave a course of 38 lectures on the history 

 of science at Harvard University. I take pleasure in expressing my 

 deep appreciation of the hospitality of this university and especially 

 of the Widener library. What makes this library of incomparable 

 value to me is not simply the richness of its collections, nor the fact 

 that its books are unusually well selected and classified and as acces- 

 sible to me as if they were my own, but the possibility of keeping my 

 own apparatus criticus within its walls. To do in the public libraries 

 of Oxford, London, or Paris the work I am doing now, I believe would 

 take me at least 25 per cent more time. I must add, however, that 

 some of the time I thus gain is miserably dissipated through the 

 necessity of publishing most of my work, under poor conditions, 

 across the ocean. 



