Abstract
DR. SCHOFIELD tells us in the preface that his object in writing this book is “to present to the reader an entirely new outlook on the subject with which it deals. The word borderland has hitherto been practically confined to a study of psychic phenomena; but here the meaning is so extended as to cover all that is obscure and unproved in any science.” The world of concrete and abstract things is pictured as a huge disc, in the centre of which is God, “the first great cause (though Himself uncaused), dwelling in perfect light” (p. 3); and round the edge of the disc stand “the scientists “in a crowded circle studying the disc by feelers which each mind possesses and by the light of their own reasoning powers” (p. 4). There are patches of the disc only half illuminated by either the human light or the Divine light, and these patches form the “twilight” regions-the borderlands of science (p. 6); and also there are patches “which we should know and need to know, but which science now clearly sees cannot be penetrated by its lights” (p. 7). “The goal of all human knowledge is in touch with the Light itself, although to scientists at the circumference, who use only their own lights, it may appear to be impenetrable darkness” (p. 4). The Central Unity is also the God of revelation (p. 40); “as we leave the clear though limited light of science we become conscious of a vague premonitioc or prescience of the spirit world” (p. 63), and “there are some few districts of thought which are illumed neither by science nor by religion” (p. 62).
The Borderlands of Science.
By Dr. A. T. Schofield. Pp. viii + 255. (London: Cassell and Co., Ltd., 1917.) Price 6s. net.
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The Borderlands of Science . Nature 99, 263 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/099263a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/099263a0