What Science really Means

Abstract

THE average science graduate of to-day seldom receives a trainingin scientific methods, and, on the other hand, the few art students who are taught scientific method rarely have a scientific background for their studies. Accordingly, the failure of many scientific workers to appreciate or understand the principles of the scientific method is paralleled by a corresponding lack of knowledge of the potentialities and limitations of that method on the part of the educated community in general. The situation is the more serious as not only are scientific workers considering the social and economic consequences of their work more closely, but also the community in general takes a keener interest in the application of science to social as well as to industrial problems, and is apt to blame science for consequences for which it cannot reasonably be heldresponsible. This book should fill a gap in the training of the scientific worker and also give the general reader an insight into the methods of science, and some appreciation of their potentialities and limitations, which should to some extent prevent hasty and unfair judgments upon them.

What Science really Means:

an Explanation of the History and Empirical Method of General Science. By Julius W. Friend and James Feibleman. Pp. 222. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1937.) 7s. 6dnet.