Le Mouvement Mesures de l'étendue et mesures du temps

Abstract

SOME literary effusions—for instance, the novel with a purpose—present to the reviewer an awkward problem, namely, whether to concentrate his attention on the novel as such, or on the purpose. The present work might almost be included in some such category, inasmuch as it may be regarded from the point of view of a mathematician pure and simple, of a more or less practical mechanic, or even of an astronomer, while all the time it apparently claims to be a philosophical treatise, and as such to appeal to what may be called the general reader. In some parts of the book the philosopher is much in evidence, and in many places the absence of diagrams, and the assumption that the reader will understand determinants, vectors, or even ordinary equations of motion without explanation, would certainly repel the ordinary reader. The mathematician will find perhaps little that is novel. The suggestions of non-Euclidean space, whether that of Lobatchewsky or of Riemann, are little more than suggestions, and can only give those to whom such ideas are new the kind of shock the earlier cyclists felt on first riding a free-wheel. On the other hand, a very good historical sketch, amply provided with diagrams, is given of the development of scientific clock-making with due respect to the great English horologists.

Le Mouvement. Mesures de l' tendue et mesures du temps.

By Prof. J. Andrade. Pp. vi + 328. (Paris: Librairie F lix Alcan, 1911.) Price 6 francs.