Science, Philosophy and Religion, Second Symposium

Abstract

126 BOOK REVIEWS the differences in the evaluation of the cognition based on analogy as one of the main reasons for the divergence of views, or as he says: " The difference lies in the definition of knowledge itself." I. Husik takes up a problem he discussed thirty-eight years ago (Philosophical Review, XIII [1904], 514): "The Categories of Aristotle"; contrary to other scholars he holds that the whole book is genuine, while it is considered by some as only partly so, by others as totally spurious. He brings forth evidence that the Categories are closely related to the Topics, written before and serving as basis for the latter; this he holds to apply to the Categories_ properly so called and to the Postpraedicamenta. J. H. Randall, Jr. has an article on "Newton's Natural Philosophy, Its Problems and Consequences," in which interesting relations to Kantian notions are illustrated. Finally, there is W. D. Wallis' "David Hume's Contribution to Social Science7" These essays are worth reading. They give an idea of the influence Dr. Singer exercised, and still exercises, on many minds. They also reveal, more clearly than is often the case, the many ramifications of philosophical thought and its actual or potential influences on fields which by some are considered as immune against contamination by philosophy. They finally show a lively interest in many problems of a ·rather speculative nature existing in more minds than the superficial observer of modern civilization may assume. Catkolie University ·of America, Washington, D. (J. RUDOLF ALLERs Science, Philosophy and Religion, Second Symposium. New York: Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their. Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc. 194fl. Pp. 559. $8.00. Our age will be remembered, it may be supposed, not only for its global war, but also for its symptomatic predilection for learned papers by specialists; and some future historian of culture might even give a paper showing how the experts of the twentieth century were learnedly giving papers as their world was crashing about them. Though there are some valuable contributions among them, this miscellany of papers does not in any real sense constitute a book. Papers which are interesting when presented orally against a background of discussion-as some of these were--often fall flat on the printed page, and the reasons for this are many, some of them being pointed out long ago by Plato. This is remedied somewhat by the group papers with critical comments by those in the same or other fields; yet even here one is reminded all the more poignantly how much has been lost in our failure to carry on a dialectical interchange, a lively clash of minds in which truth is begotten and errors are discarded. BOOK REVIEWS U7 The m~chanically juxtaposed papers with their contradictory deliverances challenge the reader to introduce some kind of order, and here the editors could have been more useful had they attempted at least to delineate sharply the areas of agreement and disagreement among the contributors. Just as there are different kinds of unity, so there are different kinds of difference: some are creative and permit a richer collaboration; others are destructive; and all the good will in the world, gentlemanly tolerance, and the like, cannot hold together mutually exclusive contradictories. The fact that there is so much disagreement within each of the disciplines, as well as among the different disciplines, shows how important it is to continue to explore differences. This should be done, not by covering them up politely, but by a rigorous philosophical method. Indeed, only by facing this task unflinchingly will the groundwork be prepared for some kind of unification. In its present form, this volume is an extended case history of what is healthy and diseased in our culture. The scientists differ among themselves and with the philosophers and theologians, who also differ among themselves on basic issues (except for the Scholastics, who share some common principles , at least); and there does not seem to be any generally accepted working definition of democracy. Even among the philosophers, who should know better, one, for example, rejects "many of the exaggerated claims of racism and nationalism on empirical grounds...