The History of Science and the New Humanism

Abstract

IN his recent book on “Clothes”, Mr. Eric Gill says that “in our hearts we know science for what it is—the greatest frivolity of history.... If it was not that science enables a lot of people to get rich it would now be what it was before: the amusing hobby of charming old fools.” While this statement is no doubt intended to be deliberately provocative, it unfortunately represents—if only in caricature—the opinion of many otherwise cultured men and women, who have somewhat surprisingly failed to realise that science is as essentially concerned with the philosophic values and the ‘eternal ideas’ as any other department of human intellectual activity. As followers of science, we know that the reproach is entirely unjustifiable, but to refute it is by no means easy. The difficulty lies mainly in the fact that, while the material results of science are immediately obvious, the philosophic framework of science, its methods, its aims, and the rigorous discipline of the laboratory, are scarcely to be comprehended, or even imagined, except by those who have had some considerable personal experience of scientific work. It is, however, clearly of the first importance that, in a world for which science has opened strange new vistas, and upon which she has conferred the power of limitless exploitation of natural resources, misconceptions of the ultimate character of science and misapplications of scientific knowledge should he removed as completely as possible. The History of Science and the New Humanism. By George Sarton. Pp. 178. (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1931.) 2 dollars.