Doctorates in the History of ScienceSource: Isis, Vol. 48, No. 3, The George Sarton Memorial Issue (Sep., 1957), pp. 351-352Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/226476 .

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eDISSER TA TIONS IN PROGRESSme IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

A doctoral dissertation on Dr. Charles V. Chapin and the Public Health Movement in America, z870Ig940, has been undertaken by JAMES H. CASSEDY at Brown University un- der the direction of Professor Donald Fleming.

A doctoral dissertation on the Questiones de spera of Nicole Oresme has been under- taken by GARRETT DROPPERS at the Univer- sity of Wisconsin under the direction of Pro- fessor Marshall Clagett. The dissertation will include a text and an analysis. This disserta- tion is in its early stages.

A doctoral dissertation entitled DEATH AND

PROGRESS: The Idea of Prolongevity in Ameri- can Science and Philosophy has been under- taken by GERALD GRUMAN, M.D., under the direction of Professors I. Bernard Cohen and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., at Harvard Uni- versity. Dr. Gruman will describe the de- velopment of ideas about the prolongation of life from the philosophic speculation of the Enlightenment to the empirical research of contemporary gerontology.

EvERETT MENDELSOHN is completing a doc- toral dissertation at Harvard University under the direction of Professor I. Bernard Cohen. Its subject is The Development of a Theory of Animal Heat. It deals primarily with ideas and techniques of the late eight- eenth and early nineteenth centuries. Mr. Mendelsohn is a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.

SEWYED HOSSEIN NASR has undertaken a doctoral dissertation at Harvard University under the direction of Professor H. A. R. Gibb and Professor I. Bernard Cohen. Its subject is The Meaning of Nature and the Methods Used for Its Study in Islamic Thought during the Fourth Century A.H.

A doctoral dissertation on Drug Adultera- tion: The Development of Scientific and Social Controls in Anglo-Saxon Countries has been undertaken by ERNST W. STIEB at the University of Wisconsin under the direction of Professor Glenn Sonnedecker. Completion is expected in I959.

mDOCTORATES m

IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

GEORGE GOLDAT has completed his doctor- ate (I957) at the University of Wisconsin under the direction of Professor Marshall Clagett. His dissertation was on The Early Medieval Traditions of Euclid's Elements. This includes texts of previously unpublished material, among them an edition of the text of Euclid given in the Bibliotheque Nationale Fonds latin I0257. He is teaching the history of science at Harvard University.

EDWARD GRANT has completed his doctor- ate (I957) at the University of Wisconsin under the direction of Professor Marshall Clagett. His dissertation was The Mathe- matical Theory of Proportionality of Nicole Oresme, a study based on a new edition by Dr. Grant from the extant manuscripta of the first three chapters of Oresme's De pro- portionibus proportionum and of the first part of his shorter tract, Algorismus proportionum.

Dr. Grant hopes to complete critical editions of these two works for later publication. He is currently teaching the history of science at the University of Maine.

JOHN E. MURDOCH has completed his doc- torate (I957) at the University of Wisconsin. His thesis, The Tractatus de continuo of Thomas Bradwardine, was begun in Profes- sor Clagett's seminar in medieval mathematics and mechanics, and was finished under the direction of Professor William H. Hay of the Philosophy Department. It included an edi- tion of the De continuo and an analysis ex- amining in particular the mathematical argu- ments concerning the continuum. He is now an instructor in the history of science at Harvard University.

EDWARD J. PPEIFER has completed his doc- torate (I957) at Brown University under the direction of Professor Donald Fleming. His

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352 BOOK REVIEWS

dissertation was on The Religious and Sci- entific Response to Darwinism in the United States to z88o.

WILLIAM R. STANTON received his doctor- ate in June, 1956, at Brown University, for his thesis, The Leopard's Spots, a history of scientific justifications of attitudes toward race in America, I776-i860, completed under the direction of Professor Donald Fleming. He is currently teaching at Michigan State University.

WILLIAM WALKER received his doctorate in 1955 at Johns Hopkins University. His thesis, The Health Reform Movement in the

United States, was completed under the di- rection of Dr. Richard Shryock. It concerned the history of various sectarian medical movements, all characterized by a common pervading interest in habits of personal hygiene.

The Reverend JAMES A. WEISHEIPL, O.P., completed his doctorate at Oxford University (I957). His thesis, directed by Dr. A. C. Crombie, was Early Fourteenth Century Physics of the Merton "School," with Special Reference to Dumbleton and Heytesbury. Father Weisheipl is now at the Dominican House of Studies in Blue Forest, Illinois.

I B O OK RE VIE WS e

RENi TATON: Causalitis et accidents de la dicouverte scientifique. lIUustra- tration de quelques itapes caractiris- tiques de l'volution des sciences. (Col- lection Evolution des Sciences.) I7I PP. Paris: Masson et Cie., I955.

The phenomenon of scientific discovery is one which may never be comprehended fully by historians of science. At root it is an artistic creation which cannot be explained entirely by analytical and rational means. Fully aware of this, Professor Rene Taton has chosen to discuss in his new book dif- ferent phases of scientific discovery. At the outset, Taton declares that he does not pretend to formulate or test any theory concerning the technique of scientific dis- covery. In fact, the subtitle of his book, "illustrations of several characteristic periods of the evolution of the sciences" is more revealing of its contents than is the main title.

The book is divided into three sections, each selectively covering the full breadth of the sciences throughout time. Section one divides the subject according to the different disciplines, emphasizing the fundamental similarities and differences among the mathe- matical sciences, the theoretical sciences, and the sciences of observation and experi- mentation. This subdivision, establishing guide lines rather than strict delineations

between the individual sciences, gains from the imprecision of definition of terms. In this treatment Taton evades the inherently polemical problems of the apparent or true individualism of each science. His ap- proach is more expository and historical in nature than philosophical. Thus, each subsection is predominantly devoted to il- lustrative case histories. The second sec- tion is entitled "the factors of discovery," and covers such widely different subjects as discovery by method, the fecundity of certain discoveries, and the role of chance and error. Here again examples are abundant and highly suggestive, though frustrating to the reader who seeks a general theory ex- plaining the mechanism of scientific discov- ery. In the third section, the author takes up other aspects of a more general nature, such as the question of precursors, priority, pre- mature discoveries, near-discoveries, the re- sistance to new ideas, and the relations be- tween scientific discoveries and the times in which they are made.

In its essentially historical approach, this book resembles the Harvard Case History series, initiated by the former president of Harvard, James B. Conant. But it is more ambitious in scope and less detailed, though historically as valid. The volume would be an excellent medium for stimulating an in- terest in the history of science among young

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