(1) Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (2) René Descartes' Philosophische Werke (3) Herders Philosophie (4) The International Scientific Series The Mind and the Brain (5) Essay on the Creative Imagination (6) Structure and Growth of the Mind

Abstract

(1) THE sixth volume (new series) of the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society contains the papers read before the society during its twenty-seventh session, 1905–6, and is unusually bulky, as publication has now become a much more important part than formerly of the society's work. Among other articles, it contains one on teleology by Dr. Shad worth H. Hodgson, the veteran ex-president of the society; a symposium “Can Logic abstract from the Psychological Conditions of Thinking?” to which contributions are made by Messrs. Schiller, Bosanquet, and Rashdall; and the records of a controversy (on Kantian and anti-Kantian lines) between Dr. G. Dawes Hicks and. Prof. Stout. Scientific readers will turn with interest and profit to a paper by Mr. T. Percy Nunn, entitled “The Aims and Achievements of Scientific Method.” Mr. Nunn defines the aim of the scientific process as an endeavour to render the Objective in its actual determinations intelligible. He points out the stages of Animism and Hylozoism through which pre-scientific thought has passed, and examines more particularly, in the case of Kepler, the struggle between the non-scientific (and commonly theological) prepossession and the purely scientific spirit—so well illustrated, for example, in Kepler's demonstration that the orbit of Mars is an ellipse, and riot a circle as his “prepossession of perfection” had originally compelled him to suppose. But in all attempts at explanation, whether “the divine” is invoked or not, the primary facts are qualified by an hypothesis—in other words, they are made to form part of an apperceptive system. In this way the non-scientific attempts to render the Objective intelligible do not differ formally from the scientific, and Mr. Nunn argues that it is, in fact, difficult to declare any concept essentially incapable of mediating a scientific interpretation of the Objective to some thinker: he instances the use made by some scientific men of the concept of cause in the sense of transeunt action, or again the preference shown by Weber and the Continental school for the concept of action at a distance, as contrasted with the equally marked preference of the British school for the concept of an intervening medium. Finally, as for the close connection between mathematics and science, it is due simply to the fact that primary facts present themselves for the most part in series, and so “the most useful method of determining the Objective consists in correlating terms of these series with the members of the number series.”

(1) Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.

New Series. Vol. vi. Pp. 402. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1906.) Price 10s. 6d. net.

(2) René Descartes' Philosophische Werke.

Erste Abteilung (Fortsetzung). Übersetzt und herausgegeben von Dr. Artur Buchenau. Pp. xviii + 149. (Leipzig: Dürr'schen Buchhandlung, 1906.) Price 1.80 marks.

(3) Herders Philosophie.

Herausgegeben von Horst Stephan. Pp. xliv + 309. (Leipzig: Dürr'schen Buchhandlung, 1906.) Price 3.60 marks.

(4) The International Scientific Series. The Mind and the Brain.

By Alfred Binet. (The authorised translation of “L'Âme et le Corps.”) Pp. xii + 280. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Ltd., 1907.) Price 5s.

(5) Essay on the Creative Imagination.

By Th. Ribot. (Translated from the French by A. H. N. Baron.) Pp. xix + 370. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Ltd., 1906.) Price 7s. 6d. net.

(6) Structure and Growth of the Mind.

By W. Mitchell. Pp. xxxv + 512. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1907.) Price 10s. net.