178 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1338 



in Relation to Botany ' (Scientific Monthly), 

 and as Henry Jones Ford uses it in ' Radical- 

 ism in American Poltics ' (July, Yale Re- 

 view), in the first paragraph of which he re- 

 fers to Madison and Pranklin as radicals. 

 The word can not possibly be regarded as 

 synonymous with, or identified with, Bolshe- 

 vism, I.W.W., or anarchy.'' Ed.] 



ANATOMICAL LITERATURE 



Professor ERrcn Kallius (Anatomisches 

 Institute, Breslau, Germany), who has taken 

 over the editorship of the Anatomische Hefte 

 and Ergebnisse der Anatomie und Entwick- 

 lungsgeschichte, writes that it is difficult now 

 to obtain foreign literature and that he would 

 be very glad if American contributors would 

 send reprints as freely as possible for the use 

 of these journals. 



H. V. Wilson 



University of North Carolina, Chapel 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Greeh Science and Modern Science. A Com- 

 parison and a Contrast. By Charles 

 Singer. London, Oxford University Press, 

 1920, 8o, -22 pp. 



This lecture, inaugurating a systematic 

 course on the histoi-y of science and of scien- 

 tific ideas, was delivered at University Col- 

 lege, London, on May 12, 1920. Its author, 

 one of Emerson's " monks of Oxford," was a 

 captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps 

 during the recent war. Its object is to bridge 

 over the embarrassing gap between the history 

 of Greek science and that of modern science. 

 It is a commonplace to deride the Middle 

 Ages for sterility in science; the thing is 

 to ascertain just how, where and why they 

 were sterile. This department of historical 

 investigation Singer defines as " the pathology 

 and embryology of human thought"; for, in 

 the Middle Ages, Greek science did slowly 

 and surely die, and strange as it may seem, 

 our modern scientific methods were actually 

 engendered, by lengthy and painful travail, 

 out of medieval restrictions. 



Of this view of things, Dr. Singer's lecture 

 gives a clear and intelligible account. The 



argument is as follows : It is one of the vain- 

 est delusions of the modern mind to imagine 

 that we can entirely enter into the modes of 

 thought of the ancient Greeks. This fact, 

 which Singer has frequently insisted upon in 

 private correspondence, was already empha- 

 sized long ago in the verses of one who was 

 very close to them, the Roman Lucretius. 



Nee me animi fallit Graiorum obscura reperta 

 Difficile inlustrare Latiuis versibus esse, 

 Multa novis verbis prEesertim cum sit agendum 

 Propter egestatem linguae et rerum novitatem. 



But it is at least reasonably certain that the 

 Greeks based their scientific system upon 

 Egyptian, Minoan and Assyro-Babylonian tra- 

 dition, that this pre-Hellenic material was an 

 anonymous, socialistic, collectivistic product; 

 while the Greeks thought as individuals, not 

 as a people, stamping their work, each one of 

 them, with his own individuality, thus giving 

 to science the eponymous character which it 

 has since retained. We have only to think of 

 Diophantine algebra, Euclidian geometry, the 

 corpus Hippocraticum of Galenical remedies. 

 Credulous and facile of generalization as 

 were the Greeks, they had yet an abiding 

 intuitive conviction that " order reigns in 

 nature " ; that behind the observed and ob- 

 servable phenomena there is an ascertainable 

 law which correlates them and is their raison 

 d'etre. It is just this sense of law in nature 

 and of the necessity for personal scientific in- 

 vestigation that is their most valuable heri- 

 tage to posterity. This is what Sir Henry 

 Maine meant when he said that " Nothing 

 moves in the modern world which is not 

 Greek." In the Middle Ages, the reckless 

 freedom in speculation as to the causes of 

 things which the Greeks enjoyed was sup- 

 pressed by prince and prelate as subversive of 

 the feudal theory of the state and of the theo- 

 logical view of the universe. But, in spite of 

 the harm it has done, there was, in Singer's 

 view, a distinct advantage in all this. It got 

 the practical scientific worker away from 

 sterile speculation and down to brass tacks; 

 so that gunpowder, printing, the mariner's 

 compass, spectacle lenses were immediately 

 taken up, and the. outcast, outlawed medieval 



