La Science Allemande

Abstract

PROF. PIERRE DUHEM, member of the Institute, has printed four lectures which he gave to students at the University of Bordeaux. Their general aim was to deliver the minds of his hearers from subservience to German thought, and they certainly make for fresh air. The first deals with mathematics and philosophy, and its conclusion is that an excessive fondness for deductive method and a contempt for common sense have made intellectual Germany like the house of Chrysale, whence reasoning drove forth reason. Hegel's axiom as to the identity of contradictories is compared to that of Nicolas of Cues, often called the cardinalis teutonicus, that the maximum is always identical with the minimum. But this is surely playing to the gallery. The second lecture is de voted to the experimental sciences, and includes an interesting sketch of Pasteur's trial and error methods, a denunciation of Haeckel, and an assurance that Fabre's fine work has left us with scarcely more than the debris of the Darwinian theory. The exaggeration and misunderstanding involved in the last statement show us that the illustrious author has his obfuscating prejudices like the rest of us.

La Science Allemande.

By Prof. P. Duhem. Pp. 143. (Paris: A. Hermann et Fils, 1915.)