Februaet 1, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



177 



themselves to a process whicli might be lead- 

 ing them any whither. 



This volume contains an excellent historical 

 sketch of the various systems of symbolic 

 logic and as such is a most valuable book of 

 reference. To read it with profit, however, 

 some knowledge of the several systems is neces- 

 sary. It would have been a manifest advan- 

 tage had the author given, for instance in his 

 chapter on The Process of Solution, a more 

 detailed and elementary account of the orig- 

 inal method of Boole, or of the method of 

 Venn, being as it is a developed form of the 

 Boole method. Thereby the difficulties for 

 the lay reader would have been overcome to a 

 great extent. John Grier Hibben. 



Pkinceton Universitt. 



Thought and Things, or Genetic Logic. Vol. 

 I. Functional Logic. James Mark Bald- 

 win. London, Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. ; 

 New York, The Macmillan Co., 1906. Pp. 

 siv + 273. 



This is the first of three volumes, appearing 

 in both French and English, on a subject 

 never before given comprehensive systematic 

 treatment. It brings into use a somewhat 

 unusual terminology. The terms pragmatelic, 

 semble, sembling, autotelic, heterotelic, syn- 

 telic, psychonomie, autonomic, heteronomic, 

 syndoxic, progression, mode, schema are used 

 with restricted although clearly defined mean- 

 ings, and we might add to the list. Some 

 readers will wish for more elucidation and 

 continuity in places and there are some 

 passages whose meanings are rather elusive. 

 But the methodological difficulties of the sub- 

 ject are unusually great and have been 

 handled with a remarkable degree of success. 

 The author's evident interest in the subject 

 itself, rather than in the style of the discus- 

 sion, is neither surprising nor reprehensible. 



The author realizes that the title. Genetic 

 Logic, is likely to provoke criticism (pp. vii, 

 18). We should say the place of genetic logic 

 among the philosophical disciplines is not 

 unlike that of sociology among the social 

 sciences. Sociology is neither history, econo- 

 mies, psychology nor anthropolog-y and some 

 whose contributions to these subjects give 

 them a right to speak say there is no separate 



science of sociology. Genetic logic is neither 

 straight logic, straight psychology, nor 

 straight epistemology. Logic is not genetic, 

 psychology is not interested in questions of 

 logical validity, and epistemology, although 

 broader and more elastic than the other two, 

 does not involve as much psychology as this 

 book presents. And yet the author is correct 

 in assuming that the problems here discussed 

 are real and pressing. They are not new. 

 The time seems to have come for a systematic 

 presentation of all this material and it is to 

 be hoped that this is only the first of several 

 works on the subject. It is a colossal task for 

 which the philosophical Zeitgeist has been 

 long in training, and one can only praise the 

 keenness and comprehensiveness of this treat- 

 ment. 



The author confines himself to the same 

 rules of observation and hypothesis as those 

 observed in ' the empirical sciences generally ' 

 (p. 9), asking the questions — ^How? and Why? 

 — as well as the question — What? — with 

 reference to each form and mode of knowl- 

 edge. IsTeither the formal logician's logic, 

 noi the metaphysician's ' logicism,' will con- 

 cern us here, but rather the knower's logic, 

 cognitive processes viewed from the knower's 

 standpoint. We are to study the genesis of 

 knowledge and thought, and construct a gene- 

 tic theory of reality. The former topic is 

 discussed in the first two volumes, the latter, 

 in volume third. The first volume presents 

 a genetic theory of what the author calls the 

 pre-logical cognitive functions, the second, a 

 genetic theory of thought and judgment, and 

 the third, a genetic theory of real logic or the 

 'hyper-logical functions' (p. 15). 'Genetic 

 psychology of cognition ' and ' genetic epis- 

 temology ' (p. 18) are other names for the 

 two main topics of the work. It seems to us 

 that ' genetic epistemology ' would be a good 

 title for the entire work. 



The author asks (1) ' what are the condi- 

 tions determining the construction of objects 

 at any given stage of mental development, 

 and (2) what are the psychic characters of 

 the objects thus determined' (p. 30). He dis- 

 tinguishes " in the actual results to which the 

 research has led, the following phases of con- 



