SCIENCE 



Friday, Febeuaet 21, 1913 



CONTENTS 



The American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science: — 

 The Study of Man: Professor George T. 

 Ladd 275 



The Geological Society of America: — 

 Pleistocene Geology of New York State: 

 Professor Herman LeRot Faiechild . . . 290 



The Division of Educational Inquiry under 

 the Carnegie Foundation 299 



The MUwa/iikee Meeting of the American 

 Chemical Society 299 



Scientific Notes and News 300 



University and Educational News 302 



Discussion and Correspondence : — 



A Plan for the Encouragement of Medical 

 Besearch: Dr. E. G. Hoskins. Grana de 

 Brasile: W. H. Babcock. Concerning Gov- 

 ernment Application Blanks: Professor 

 James S. Stevens 303 



Scientific Books: — 



Greil's Bichtlinien des Entwieklungs- und 

 Vereriungsproilems: J. P. MoM. Wright 

 on the Origin and Antiquity of Man: Pro- 

 fessor George Grant MacCdrdt 304 



Special Articles: — 

 New and Extinct Birds and Other Species 

 from the Pleistocene of Oregon: Dr. E. 

 W. Shufeldt 306 



The Entomological Society of America: Pro- 

 fessor Alex. D. MacGillivbay 307 



Societies and Academies: — 



The Botanical Society of Washington: Dr. 

 C. L. Shear. The Torrey Botanical Club: 

 B. 0. Dodge 312 



MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 

 rcTlew should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 

 on-Hudson, N, Y. 



THE STUDY OF MAN'- 

 In that most amusing and instructive 

 dialogue, entitled " TheiEtetus, " the author 

 Plato makes Socrates enter into a discus- 

 sion with the youth by offering help as a 

 skillful midwife to deliver him of a true 

 and logical answer to the puzzling ques- 

 tion: What is knowledge? When the 

 youth replies, 



According to my present notion, he who knows 

 perceives what he knows, and therefore I should 

 say that knowledge is perception, 



Socrates proceeds — perhaps not altogether 

 fairly — to identify his doctrine with the 

 celebrated saying of Protagoras. This 

 saying is about all we know of the positive 

 teachings of him who was esteemed to be 

 the founder of the Sophists. The proposi- 

 tion as expressed in the same Dialogue 

 runs as follows : 



Man is the measure of all things; of that which 

 is, how it is; of that which is not, how it is not. 



Even in thfe time of Plato the Sophists 

 had translated this proposition into the 

 doctrine: For every person, that is true 

 and real which appears so to him. From 

 this doctrine it was no long step to the 

 conclusion, that there is possible for man 

 only a subjective and relative, not an ob- 

 jective and universal truth. 



From the time of Protagoras to the 

 present, the view of the nature, authority, 

 and limits, of perception by the senses, 

 which his celebrated dictum embodies, has 

 been the chief source both of popular and 

 of scientific and philosophical scepticism; 

 while the resulting doctrine of the rela- 

 tivity of all human knowledge, in its most 



'Address of the vice-president and chairman of 

 Section H — Anthropology and Psychology — Cleve- 

 land, 1913. 



