Science Advances by J. B. S. HaldaneReview by: I. Bernard CohenIsis, Vol. 38, No. 3/4 (Feb., 1948), pp. 255-256Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/226132 .

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Reviews 255

The sequence leading to the evolution of the "Modern Solution" is given as follows: Galileo (Laws of Motion; Concept of Acceleration); Newton and Leibniz (Calculus); Descartes (Analytic Geometry); Leibniz (Monads); Mayer (Conservation of Energy); Joule (Me- chanical Equivalent of Heat).

This sequence is shown to have culminated in energy being translated into work units (foot-pounds, ergs, joules, etc.) enabling the correlation of "the different series of physical processes . . . in an inclusive system" and the relation of this series "to a common denomina- tor."

"In this respect," Osborne observes, "the Greek theories of change were very inadequate. Even atomism which is nearest akin to the modern scientific statement failed to express the process of change in terms of measurable iden- tities. The atoms were conceived as metaphysi- cal characters rather than as something capable of measurement."

Osborne walks the razor's edge when he at- tempts to critically evaluate Greek atomism in particular, and Greek science in general, in terms of some twenty-five hundred years of subsequent scientific achievement.

It is all very well, and quite the fashion, for Posterity to find Ancestry "inadequate" in one respect or another. However, in doing so, one, in effect, transforms himself into a long-lived ancestor wittingly or not. That is to say, if a Greek of the fifth century, B.C. were to have lived through to the twentieth century, A.D., he too would find the diaper-stage century "inade- quate" in one respect or another by contrast and in retrospect. Unfortunately, in the absence of phenomenal longevity of this sort, without the all-essential continuity of thought it could af- ford, our value judgments of the past must be (or should be) confined, if we are to offer judg- ments of any value at all, to the total related contemporaneous achievement in the given age, before we attempt correlation of the given age with other ages.

Osborne fails in this regard. He achieves the lucid generalization that "atomism . . . failed to express the process of change in terms of meas- urable identities," but does so from the mistaken premise that atomism "is nearest akin to the modern scientific statement." Although he ap- pears to realize that "atomism was a philosophic rather than a scientific statement" (Sarton), he cannot see how this fact by itself disqualifies the fitness of his direct comparison of it with the modern statement, and, indeed, has a final chap- ter entitled, "An Evaluation of the Greek Theo- ries of Change in Light of Modern Science."

Again, he observes that Democritus "never attempted to quantify change and even in the case of matter he had no permanent standard of measurement." Yet, without any reference to the achievement contemporaneous with the Atomists, as it bears on "quantifying change," he rests content in the statement that "Ancient

Science . . . proved deficient in invention and discovery." (See, in this regard, my article "Quantitative Measurement and the Greek Atomists," elsewhere in this number of Isis.)

Paul Tasch

J. B. S. HALDANE: Science Advances. 253 pp. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947. This collection of essays has a preface dated

October 1944, and on the verso of the title page declares: "First published in U.S.A. 1947." I offer this information, not for bibliomaniac rea- sons, but because it is relevant to the following remarks.

Haldane is considered in many circles to be one of the leading expositors of science for the layman, and there is every reason to suppose that his latest book will be widely read and may have a wide influence. The majority of the es- says were written for the London Daily Worker, an official Communist organ. Therefore, each of the essays has the "party-line" slant. Hal- dane anticipates, in his preface, the criticism of having "dragged in Marxism like King Charles's head." To Marxism, add also: "Soviet Union." Thus an interesting essay on newts ends up with a short paragraph on aquaria in the Soviet Union. A section entitled "Some Great Men" includes Marx, sandwiched between Newton and Archimedes. Lenin, the First International, and the abortive Russian Revolution of I905, form what is apparently a fitting conclusion to a dis- cussion of mathematics and time, apropos of the work of Milne.

The penultimate section is entitled "Soviet Science and Nazi Science." One of the essays in this section is devoted to the deceased Soviet scientist Vavilov. After describing Vavilov's work in some detail, Haldane adds:

The work of this [Vavilov's] institute was cut down to some extent in the years before the war, largely because the best varieties had been selected, and partly because Lysenko's invention of vernalization rendered many of them less valuable than they were before. Vavilov was shot about once a year in the American press, though he continued to communicate papers to the Academy at least up to 1I942.

Another article in this section is devoted to "Genetics in the Soviet Union." Discussing Ly- senko's attack on genetics, Haldane does add: ". . . the economic value of genetics is greater than he thinks." Then, he makes the following comment:

Vavilov still directs research on a vast scale. So far from having been muzzled for his alleged anti-Darwinian views he communicated seventeen papers on genetical topics to the Moscow Academy of Sciences between January ist and April ioth of 1940.

Now, let us recall the bibliographical informa- tion at the beginning of this review. The pref- ace was signed and dated 1944, and the book is published in 1947. To the last quotation above is added the following footnote, presumably written later than the essay (I suppose that the Daily Worker of London does not publish foot-

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256 Reviews

notes!): "Vavilov's name is now less promi- nent, but up till June I941 the output of geneti- cal work showed no sign of abatement." The presumption on the part of the reader, there- fore, is that Vavilov is today "less prominent" than heretofore; that he lives and flourishes; that, to quote Haldane:

After the war . . . Vavilov's successors should be able not only to improve the crop plants of their country, and ultimately of the whole world, but to increase our knowledge of variation, and to throw new light on the origin of agriculture, and therefore of civilization.

Viewing the future with such rosy glasses, Hal- dane admits: "If my science must be attacked, I prefer the democratic Soviet method."

Now, what are the facts? I don't propose to enter into the merits of the genetics contro- versy, being no geneticist; the reader who is in- terested in the details of this matter may con- sult the splendid reviews by Conway Zirkle in Isis 37, io6-iio. According to Professor Karl Sax (Scientific Monthly 65, 43-47), "By 1940

Lysenko had replaced Vavilov as Director of the Genetics Institute of the Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Applied Botany." Vavilov is dead, but the conditions under which he died "only the Russians know," says Professor Sax, "and they won't tell. Since Vavilov's liquida- tion there has been no reference to his work in the Russian literature." Not only are the facts in this controversy the direct contrary of what Haldane describes to the unsuspecting reader, but they surely should have been known to the publisher any time during I947. Haldane's sentiments about the Vavilov affair, making him "prefer the democratic Soviet method," may have been excused and put down to his parti- san zeal at the time he wrote the article: well before I944. But what excuse can there be for republishing them without change in I947? *

I mention this point only because there are many people in the United States -some Marx- ists and others, to varying degrees, under their influence- who argue that we in the United States should follow the Soviet example, that we should "plan" scientific research "more realistic- ally," in the way the Russians do. Haldane's book and his scientific reputation will go a long way toward advancing this point of view. Be- fore we listen to any such proposals, however, we should know all the facts; and we should certainly expect that a scientist of Haldane's reputation would present an up-to-date account.

Despite the recent evidence that Newton in fact told the story of the apple in connection with the birth of the idea of gravitation, Hal- dane dismisses it as part of the "ridiculous prop- aganda[!] about his life." Ignoring scholarship, Haldane writes that the preface to De revolu- tionibus was written by "Copernicus, or more probably a friend."

Haldane attacks "positivists," who believe that * See Th. Dobzhansky: "N. I. Vavilov, a martyr of

genetics," Journal of Heredity, Vol. 38(0947), pp. 227- 232.

"we have certain sensations, and it is a matter of convenience what theory we make to explain them." Positivists believe, according to Haldane, that it makes "no difference to us whether the earth was really fixed or spinning on its axis, except in so far as it simplifies astronomers' sums. Actually it makes a lot." Here, I must admit, my appetite was whetted: never mind the results of Einstein's "bourgeois" science - there is absolute proof of the earth's rotation! Where does it come from? Discoveries made in the Soviet Union, the results of Papinin's polar ex- pedition: If a north wind blows from the pole, how will it move an ice floe? If the earth is fixed, the ice will move due south. If it is turning, the ice will not have enough east- ward velocity to keep up with the sea as it moves south. It will be left behind.....

Why not have used the traditional Foucault pendulum experiment, whose explanation is almost identical? One proves absolute rotation no more than the other - in fact, not at all.

To conclude, this is a partisan book, mislead- ing and dangerous to the uninformed reader. While, under the system of life he rejects, Haldane is entitled to his own political views, he is not entitled to pervert the truth of history or of science under the authority of his scientific reputation. 1. Bernard Cohen

CASSIUS JACKSON KEYSER: Mathematics as a Culture Clue, and other essays. vii + 277 pp. New York: Scripta Mathematica, I947. $3.75. Not much more than a century ago, Goethe,

the poet and dramatist, was able to make signifi- cant contributions to biology, and Young, the physicist and physician, could rival Champollion as an Egyptologist. It still was possible to be "the man who knew everything" - to be at once a scientist and a humanist. Since then, how- ever, development in all fields has been so rapid and varied that specialization has become a rule without exception. No single individual, were he Gauss himself, could now master all aspects even of a single subject such as mathematics, the language of science. Concomitantly, there has appeared an ever-widening chasm between mathematics and science on the one hand and the humanistic studies on the other - a diver- sity of viewpoint which has become so pro- nounced as to be labelled, myopically, a "con- flict." Where once Leonardo da Vinci could straddle the gap with no difficulty, today voices of recognized authority often are too small to carry intelligibly across the gulf. Our culture has urgent need for modern Stentors, both sci- entific and humanistic, who are willing and able to transmit to the other side the aspirations and achievements of their respective fields. But such voices must be more than clear and powerful; they must speak a common language, such as that appropriately afforded by the informal essay. A hundred years ago mathematics boasted a De Morgan, and later there were

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