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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1027 



istic implications as the orthogenesists claim 

 to be from neo-vitalistic stigmata; that 

 Socialists of the type of Hillquit are not 

 anarchists and that a very pretty fallacy 

 underlies the assertion that in the So- 

 cialistic state all incentive to invention will 

 vanish; that one can scarcely be at the same 

 time a neo-Kantian and a scientific ethicist. 

 What is further aimed at is to teach the scien- 

 tific or engineering freshman v^hom nature 

 has endowed with brains the ability to express 

 his inductions or deductions in readable 

 terms — to, well, let me suggest, write upon 

 Mendelism after the rhetorical method of 

 Punnett, and not after that of — . The blank is 

 not hard to fill. If scientists are ever to slay 

 the religion which Huxley likened to Bour- 

 bonism, they must be capable of approaching 

 the public with other explanations of abstruse 

 matter than such mathematical exposition as 

 even Professor Bateson admits he " could not 

 follow." 



And at this point I verge on my final plea 

 for the use by instructors of rhetoric of some 

 such book as Steeves and Eistine. With all 

 humility and yet all firmness, I contend that 

 the proper teacher of such courses is not the 

 ordinary composition instructor, aided by 

 casual, if expert, colleagues from the other 

 schools, nor, above all, the man with training 

 narrowly limited to science, engineering, or 

 law, but the rhetoric instructor who is wise 

 enough to assign only such topics as he him- 

 self has taken the trouble to master. Why not 

 the ardent young scientist? Because the very 

 reason for rhetoricians adopting the new text 

 is that they may train the scientists of the 

 next generation to learn to use the language 

 that seemed adequate to Darwin and Huxley, 

 Smith and Galton, Tyndall and Faraday. I 

 rather suspect that a certain professor of 

 physics was not entirely alone when he so 

 surprisingly confessed in the preface to his 

 well-known book that " he trusted he had 

 made no more errors than he had hoped for." 

 There is, however, a further reason for the 

 objection to turning such courses over to 

 scientists. Scientists love theories and even 

 hypotheses: witness the pleasing manner in 



which Eimer flayed Nageli for approximating 

 neo-vitalism — and then note how charmingly 

 mystical is Elmer's own analysis of ortho- 

 genetic forces. The basic thing in these 

 thought courses is that there be no adherent to 

 this school or that supervising the course. 

 For, whenever the mere imparting of informa- 

 tion or speculation is allowed to take the place 

 of the study of coherent arrangement of mate- 

 rial and sharp criticism of independent 

 thought, then the chief value of such courses 

 is thoroughly vitiated. And yet, if rhetoric 

 instructors do not awake, some time or other 

 scientists, engineers and lawyers will some- 

 how face the problem of themselves instilling 

 the principles of unity and coherence into 

 their promising students. 



Meddle West 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Prohlems of Science. By Federico Enriques. 

 Authorized translation by Katharine Eoyce, 

 with an introductory note by Josiah Eoyce, 

 Professor of History of Philosophy at Har- 

 vard University. Chicago, The Open Court 

 Publishing Company. 1914. Pp. xvi + 393. 

 Among mathematicians Enriques, who is 

 professor of projective and descriptive geom- 

 etry in the TTnversity of Bologna, has long 

 been favorably known for his contributions to 

 geometry, especially for his admirable treatise 

 on " Projective Geometry " and for his pene- 

 trating essays on " The Foundations of Geom- 

 etry." In the work before us the distinguished 

 geometrician addresses a far wider circle of 

 students and thinkers : not only mathemati- 

 cians, but psychologists, logicians, philosophers, 

 astronomers, mechanicians, physicists, chem- 

 ists, biologists and others. For the discussion, 

 which is as wide-ranging as the philosophic 

 writings of Henri Poincare or as that of John 

 Theodore Merz in the first two volumes of his 

 " History of European Thought in the Nine- 

 teenth Century," deals with fundamental ques- 

 tions drawn from every large department of 

 modern science. 



The original text, " Problemi della Scienza," 

 was published in 1906 and has since appeared 

 in German and French translations. Many a 



