i6o 



NATURE 



[August 4, 1923 



this in his view is what " logic," which he opposes to 

 " commonsense," is. Get behind language, behind the 

 sign which merely serves the purpose of a finger-post, 

 to the thing signified, and tlie prol)lcm disappears. We 

 call to mind that Descartes said, " Give me matter and 

 movement and I will make the world." But we also 

 remember Pascal's remark concerning it, " Quand cela 

 serait vrai, nous n'estimons pas que toute la philo- 

 sophic vaille une heure de peine." 



Mr. Klyce divides his task into three parts. Let us 

 leave the philosophy ami rdiL-ion and attend only to 

 the concrete science. The principle and method are the 

 same in all three parts. All difficulties turn out to be 

 a " trick of language," and, when this is exposed, the 

 sophistication is obvious and the truth becomes dull in 

 its very obviousness. When we come to the definite 

 treatment of mathematics and physics the problems 

 prove to be variations of the single problem of the One 

 and the Many. It is not easy to give a clear example, 

 notwithstanding the claim of lucidity, because the text 

 is so laden with diffuse parenthetical remarks. Some 

 notion of the principle may be gained, however, if we 

 reproduce verbatim a few sentences from the treatment 

 of Newton's three laws of movement, with which Part 

 II. on Physical Science begins. " Clearly his first law 

 is substantially equivalent to what we started with in 

 formulating language — the verbal meaning of a One 

 which we may arbitrarily divide. It is equivalent in 

 detail to : all matter (the One), as such, has the 

 ' property ' of not changing. And that is no ' property ' 

 at all, but an assertion that ' all matter ' is not-divided 

 — which is a verbal truism at the beginning of mono- 

 theistic speech." And this : "It may be reasonably 

 held that his first law is an assertion of or agreement 

 to use God the Father or One words. The second law, 

 then, is a statement of God the Holy Ghost, or ' force.' 

 And we shall see that the third is explicit statement of 

 God the Son." 



The book covers very complete ground, and the 

 author shows that he is acquainted with the modem 

 mathematical and physical theories which he discusses 

 in the above manner. There is a certain puzzling in- 

 consistency, however, in finding in logic the principle 

 of " unification " and then condemning logic as a 

 trick. But whether or not readers are convinced by 

 the author's argument, they cannot fail to be interested 

 in the psychology of the author himself which it reveals. 

 Yet it can scarcely have been this which has led Prof. 

 Dewey to write the prologue. Mr. Klyce would render 

 an inestimable service to philosophy if he would per- 

 suade Prof. Dewey to add an epilogue ; for his pro- 

 logue leaves us in some doubt as to whether he him- 

 self has verified this verifiable solution of the riddle of 

 the universe. 



NO. 2805, VOL. I 12] 



Our Bookshelf. 



The Study of English Speech by AVit; Methods in i ',i<,„tiiC 

 Investigation. By Dr. E. W, Scripture. (Published 

 for the British Academy.) Pp. 31. (London 

 Oxford University Press, 1923.) 35. 6d. net. 



Dr. E. W. ScRiPTi rk's memoir deals with the empl« 

 ment of instruments and apparatus which " not onl 

 record the facts of speech automatically and perm 

 nently, but also provide for interpreting them wi* 

 microscopic accuracy," and discusses a number ■ 

 linguistic problems which have been or might / 1 

 approached by these means. Philologists are divid< 

 more or less into two camps by the assertions of Proi. 

 Sievers, of Leipzig, as to the intonation of ancieir 

 Hebrew, Greek, Swedish, Gothic, etc. Rejected I 

 some as having no objective basis, his inferences a: 

 accepted by others as authoritative, and are nt' 

 finding their way into the text-books, as in Streitberi 

 " Gotisches Elementarbuch." Meanwhile the numl - 

 of phonetic laboratories on the continent is increasin 

 There are workers in this field in Paris, Hambur 

 Prague, Uppsala, Utrecht, Louvain, Kristiania, ana 

 other places. 



The recent correspondence on Shakespeare's V^erse 

 in The Times Literary Supplement (closured April 26) 

 shows how attractive such problems of analysis 

 can be to those who like to work at something 

 difficult, and suggests the need of concentration. It 

 difficult to believe that Shakespeare's lines have ev( 

 been more admirably delivered than by Sir J. Forbc^ 

 Robertson. A gramophone record allows those proso 

 dists who judge by ear to revise their impressions 

 indefinitely, while a mechanical enlargement of the 

 curves on the disc permits the metrical proportions of 

 duration, amplitude, and frequency to be measured to a 

 high degree of exactness, at the cost, certainly, of much 

 highly skilled labour. 



Thiorie mathlmatique des phinomenes thermiques 

 produits par la radiation solaire. Par Prof. M. 

 Milankovitch. Pp. xvi + 339. (Paris : Gauthier- 

 Villars et Cie, 1920.) 20 francs net. 



The earlier chapters of this work are concerned witli 

 finding formulae for the amount of " insolation " or 

 reception of radiation from the sun at various latitudes 

 on planets, first without atmospheres, and secondly 

 with them. The formulae involve the reflective power 

 of the planetary surfaces; the propagation of heat- 

 waves in the soil and the eflects of change of obliquitv 

 and eccentricity of orbit are also considered. It 

 pointed out that a rapid rotation diminishes the differ- 

 ence between diurnal and nocturnal temperatures 

 while slow rotation increases it. 



The second part of the book applies the formul, 

 obtained to the case of the four inner planets and the 

 moon. For the earth the author discusses secular 

 changes of climate depending on changes of obliquit}- 

 and eccentricity, and regards Croll's theory as still 

 tenable, being thus in opposition to most recei. 

 chmatologists. 



Prof. Milankovitch concludes that the thin air on 

 Mars allows a considerable amount of heat to reach 

 the soil by day, but that the nights are intensely cold. 



