Abstract
WE welcome the first number of the Modern Quarterly (offices: 2 Parton Street, London, W.C.I), because throughout it proclaims the supreme importance and the social function of science in the contemporary world. But we must add a qualifying regret that it appears both from its contents and the personnel of its editorial council to be inclined to identify the progress of science with one form of the organization of society and especially of industry. This must prejudice many readers against the suggestive ideas and generally high aims of the pro-motors. Must we accept Marx, Lenin and Russia, it will be asked, as the gospel and best exemplification of science in society? Are not the more liberal, though more slowly moving societies, like our own, perhaps doing the work of human evolution even more effectively in the long run, certainly without the bitterness and the bloodshed of the revolutionary method? But these are large questions impossible to discuss in a note. Of the articles in this number, two should be especially mentioned: the first, by Prof. H. Levy, acutely criticizing the mechanistic explanation of the universe, and the fourth, by Dr. Joseph Needham (the bulk of his Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford), in which he attempts a revaluation of Spencer's presentation of the idea of progress. This is the most valuable part of this first number and deserves careful study, none the less because it contains conspicuous examples of the communistic doctrines referred to above. Mr. Max Black has an article carefully considering and criticizing the doctrines of Wittgenstein and the logical Positivists. It is rather a remarkable feat to be able to write a complete, though short, account of “The Evolution of Positivism” (including the nineteenth century) without even mentioning the man who first systematized that way of thinking and gave it its name.
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The Modern Quarterly. Nature 141, 281 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141281b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141281b0