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SCIENCE. 



[N.S. Vol. XVI. No. 417. 



garcled as more than a reminder that the 

 history of our sciences deserves attention. 



There are numerous other works which 

 contain chapters upon portions of our sub- 

 ject. Thus Libri, 'Histoire des sciences 

 mathematiques en Italic,' four volumes, 

 1865, is very valuable. Also Pouchet's 

 'Histoire des sciences naturelles au moyen 

 age/ 1855, and Cuvier's 'Histoire des sci- 

 ences naturelles,' three volumes, 1831-8, 

 contain some treatment of physics along 

 with that of the other sciences. 



From the above discussion it should be 

 clear that an ideal history of physics, or 

 one which approaches somewhere near to 

 that ideal, is a much-desired and needed 

 thing. That such a work would receive a 

 warm welcome is evident when we note 

 that the works of Whewell passed through 

 three editions in ten years and have been 

 reprinted several times since and are still 

 carried by the Appletons among their 

 regular books. It has also been translated 

 into German. The work of Mach is now 

 in its fourth German edition and has been 

 translated into English. These are the 

 best, in my opinion too, of the histories of 

 science. 



A satisfactory history should then be 

 written, all the more since Whewell 's work 

 ended in 1847. The first step in the prep- 

 aration of such a history seems to me to 

 be the compiling of a bibliography. Now 

 while astronomy has its Lalande, its 

 Houzeau and Lancaster, its Weidler, and 

 others, physics can boast of nothing better 

 than Poggendorff 's ' Biographisch-litter- 

 arisches Handworterbuch zur Geschichte 

 der exacten Wissenschaf ten. ' This is an 

 extremely valuable work as a reference, 

 but it is not at all complete as a bibliog- 

 raphy. The author expressly states that 

 he has included in the work no one con- 

 cerning whom he could find no biograph- 

 ical record. This being so, he has, as he 



himself acknowledges, omitted many 

 books Avhich should be in a bibliography. 

 There are partial bibliographies, like the 

 'Bibliographic Neerlandaise ' of Bierens de 

 Haan, 1883. This is a fairly complete 

 list of the works in mathematics and 

 physics published in Dutch during the six- 

 teenth, seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 

 turies. There are quite a number of 

 smaller bibliographies of the works written 

 by Italians in various towns. In fact, the 

 Italian towns seem, now that their glory 

 is in the past, to show a desire to exhibit 

 their departed prowess by each town print- 

 ing a list of the great works which have 

 originated there or whose writers were bom 

 there. There are several attempts to 

 cover certain portions of the subject which 

 have been made by the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution such as Tuckermann's 'Bibliog- 

 raphy of the Spectroscope,' 1888. Prom 

 the result it would appear either that the 

 library in which Mr. Tuckermann worked 

 was inadequate or that he did not spend 

 time enough upon the subject. Kayser's 

 'Handbuch der Spektroscopie, ' 1900, is 

 more complete than this. 



Thus a satisfactory bibliography of 

 physics is also a mueh-to-be-desired thing. 

 It does not, however, seem strange that one 

 has not yet been compiled, for most of 

 those who know enough physics to do the 

 work well find that their energy is all 

 needed to keep up with the rapid progress 

 and expansion of their subject. But it 

 seems now as if the time were come when 

 such work must be done. Men are begin- 

 ning to question more than ever the basis 

 of scientific work, to look behind the prin- 

 ciples and laws which lie on the surface, 

 and to inquire into the real nature of the 

 ideas upon which their science has been 

 founded. A satisfactory answer can only 

 be obtained through a careful study of the 

 history of those ideas— through a knowl- 



