The State of Public Knowledge

Abstract

WHATEVER defects this book may be held to p sgsa, no one will suggest that Dr. Barlow lacks carage. Defying traditional philosophy, and in a Spirit partaking of the holoism of Smuts, he develops further on an epistemological basis the argument he outlined in “The Discipline of Peace” for a re-consideration of man's relations with the living world of Nature and an attempt to redress the evils which have arisen from man's interference with the balance of Nature. He has now given us a dissertation on the limits of public knowledge which sets the lights at amber on the road to planning, and challenges outright the gospel of State control and nationalization as it is often preached to-day. In some ways in this new approach he is more fundamental as well as less doctrinaire than Hayek or Polanyi, and the chapter “Physics and Politics” which contains the core of the book is a brilliant little essay. With a trifle more in the same vein, Dr. Barlow might have given us a classic to set on the shelf beside Bagehot, but unfortunately his earlier chapters are heavy reading. The style is laboured, and lacking the felicity of expression which marks the final chapters; these chapters may well deter some readers from reaching the valuable and original observations which make this little volume a true tract for the times.

The State of Public Knowledge

By K. E. Barlow. Pp. 112. (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1946 8s. 6d. net.