Essays in Scientific Synthesis

Abstract

THE editor of the well-known international journal of science, Scientia, has done well to give Englishmen, whom he regards as “not attracted by broad generalisations,” an opportunity of appreciating in their own language some of the stimulating essays that come from his untiring pen. They deal, indeed, with generalisations of the loftiest scope, but those who cannot follow the author up all the peaks which he seeks to climb will be rewarded by many an interesting view of the solid ground of facts below. The bond uniting the eight essays is that they express the synthetic spirit, and that they are animated by the object “of demonstrating the utility in the biological, psychological, and sociological fields of the theorist, who, without having specialised in any particular branch or subdivision of science, may nevertheless bring into those spheres that synthetic and unifying vision which is brought by the theorist-mathematician, with so much success, into the physico-chemical field of science.” We are not sure that “theorist” is the proper title for the generalising- thinker like Herbert Spencer, or that Dr. Rignano sufficiently realises the -dangers of the synthetician's ambition, but we agree with his protest against the narrow view that all experimentation must be done in a laboratory. What the author really stands for is, that complementary to the work of the experimentalist is the work of the quiet thinker who has had sufficient discipline in scientific method on one hand, and in metaphysical analysis on the other. For this function the book before us is an apologia, and, while it naturally illustrates the risks of the adventure, it also clearly demonstrates its rewards. The second essay gives a luminous exposition of the synthetic value of the evolution-theory. “No other theory, perhaps, has succeeded in bringing into one general survey so many disparate phenomena, and in co-ordinating in one complete complex the numerous individual theories which hold their own in widely differing branches of science, and which, at first sight, seem to have nothing in common.” We wish, however, that the author had said something about the fallacy so frequently involved in applying the same word “evolution” to historical sequences which have little in common except that they are processes of becoming.

Essays in Scientific Synthesis.

By E. Rignano. Pp. 254. (London: G. Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1918.) Price 7s. 6d. net.