Paul Tannery and the History of Science

Abstract

THE last volume of Tannery's “Mémoires” has a special and immediate interest in view of the recent International Congress of the History of Science and Technology. We have in it the latest views and full evidence of the quality of a man belonging to a class too little known and much needed in England. He was a scholar of the most profound and unquestioned thoroughness, who gave his life to research in a branch of learning which we regard as a side issue but is in fact at the centre of human progress, namely, exactly how men have come to think as they do about scientific questions, especially in the realms of mathematics, physics, and astronomy. On the first of these matters he was at his death probably the most completely informed man in the world. But his special quality, which should commend this volume to English readers, was his constant effort to see the details, which he knew so well, as part of the general process of thought. He was in fact a philosopher as well as a specialist in scientific history. To English students, as a rule, it seems sufficient to know what the particular group of men in the past were working at, and the very idea that there is a general movement of thought is suspect. For this fault the work and temper of Tannery and men like him are a whole-some corrective. They are to be found more abundantly in all other countries than our own. France and Germany lead the way, with Italy as a good third, while America, more open-minded than ourselves, welcomes the spirit and is vigorously following in a more popular way.

Mémoires scientifiques de Paul Tannery.

Publiés par L.-L. Heiberg et H.-G. Zeuthen. Tome 10 (Supplement au Tome 6): Sciences modernes, généralités historiques, 1892–1930. Édité avec la collaboration de Joseph Pérès. Pp. xvi + 500. (Toulouse: Édouard Privat; Paris: Gauthier-Villars et Cie, 1930.)