The Scientific Habit of Thought: an Informal Discussion of the Source and Character of Dependable Knowledge

Abstract

PROF. BARRY, of the Columbia University, has written an important and timely book on a question, or series of questions, which must often occupy the minds of readers of this review. How is it that the colossal progress of science, and the way in which science now permeates and dominates every department of practical life, is so little appreciated by the mass, even of the thinking public, which is thus dominated? Anyone can see—and this perception prompted Prof. Barry's essay—that there is a great gulf fixed between the practicians of science and that small minority who more or less understand its methods, and the great public who enjoy its inventions and bow the head in distant reverence at its power, but have no conception either of the nature of a scientific discovery or how such discoveries are utilised for the improvement of life. Here, then, is a magnificent subject and a very urgent one—to build a few bridges over this gulf.

The Scientific Habit of Thought: an Informal Discussion of the Source and Character of Dependable Knowledge.

By Prof. Frederick Barry. Pp. xiii + 358. (New York: Columbia University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1927.) 17s. 6d. net.