938 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 754 



Very Prevalent Abuse of Abstraction," ' whicli 

 happens to express precisely what I wish to 

 say concerning the book and the kind of pop- 

 ular scientific writing which it represents. 

 Professor James says that " to be helped to 

 anticipate consequences is always a gain, and 

 such being the help that abstract concepts 

 give us, it is obvious that their use is fulfilled 

 only when we get back again into concrete 

 particulars by their means." By far the 

 greater portion of the book under review fails 

 to meet this condition of utility, and on the 

 whole the book can not be looked upon as a 

 preliminary step towards a subsequent real- 

 ization of this idea of utility. 



One phase of the author's point of view may 

 be seen in the following quotations: "Water 

 is nothing more or less than a chemical com- 

 bination of two gases " (page 25) ; " Chemical 

 afiinity is nothing more or less than electrical 

 attraction between different atoms" (page 

 29) ; " An electron is nothing more or less 

 than electric charge in motion " (page 51) ; 

 " An electric current is nothing more or less 

 than an electron current " (page Y5) ; " Light 

 is simply waves in the ether " (page 153) ; 

 " It must be clearly understood that all atoms 

 of matter are made up of a number of elec- 

 trons revolving in regular orbits, and that we 

 can not in any way disturb these arrange- 

 ments " (page 157). As if one could be placed 

 under obligations to clearly understand any 

 physical fact in terms of an extremely vague 

 hypothesis ! 



Professor James gives the name "vicious 

 abstractionism " to this mode of using con- 

 cepts. He says: 



We can see a concrete situation by singling out 

 some salient or important feature in it, ana 

 classifying it under that; then, instead of adding 

 to its previous characters all the positive conse- 

 quences which the new way of conceiving it may 

 bring, we proceed to use our concept privatively; 

 we reduce the originally rich phenomenon to the 

 naked suggestions of that name abstractly taken, 

 treating it as a case of " nothing but " that con- 

 cept, and acting as if all the other characters 

 from out of which the concept is abstracted were 

 expunged. Abstraction functioning in this way 



^Popular (Science Monthly, May, 1909. 



becomes a means of arrest far more than a means 

 of advance in thought. 



The viciously privative employment of ab- 

 stract characters seems to be the greatest in- 

 firmity of the average mind in scientific work, 

 and books like this of Mr. Gibson's stand for 

 the extension to a wide circle of readers of a 

 hopelessly sterile philosophical by-product of 

 the modern physical sciences. 



The authors of such books as " Scientific 

 Ideas of To-day " stand before us, indeed, 

 chiefly in the role of teachers; but the teach- 

 ing of the physical sciences is to a very great 

 extent a matter of exacting constraint, and it 

 can not be accomplished in a manner which ia 

 pleasant and popular. 



Da wird der Geist Euoh wohl dressiert 

 In spanische Stiefeln eingeschniirt. 



The teaching of physical sciences is indeed 

 a compelling insistence upon precise ideas, a 

 forcible " making up " of a student's mind, 

 as it were; for, as Whewell says, nothing is 

 so essential in the acquirement of exact and 

 solid knowledge as the possession of precise 

 ideas, not, indeed, that a perfect precision is 

 necessary as a means of retaining knowledge, 

 but that nothing else so effectually opens the 

 mind for the perception even of the simplest 

 evidences of a subject. 



In speaking of the constraint that is in- 

 volved in genuine science teaching I do not 

 refer to the necessity of overcoming indiffer- 

 ence, but to a condition which is real in the 

 face of any amount and any quality of enthu- 

 siasm. Every one is of course familiar with 

 the life history of a butterfly, how it lives flrst 

 as a caterpillar and then undergoes a complete 

 transformation into a winged insect. It is of 

 course evident that the bodily organs of the 

 caterpillar are not at all suited to the needs 

 of a butterfly, the very food (of those species 

 which take food) being entirely different. As 

 a matter of fact, almost every portion of the 

 bodily structure of the butterfly is dissolved 

 into a formless pulp at the beginning of the 

 transformation, and the organization of a fly- 

 ing insect then grows out from a central 

 nucleus very much as a chicken grows in the 

 food-stuff of an egg. So it is in the develop- 

 ment of a scientifically trained mind. In early • 



