7 NOVEMBER 1931, Page 23

The Development of Science

Advancing Science. By Sir Oliver Lodge.. (Berm. 6s.) Two Thousand Years of . Science. By R. Harvey-Gibson and A. W. Titherley. (Black. 12s. 6d.)

SIR OLIVER LODGE is known to everyone both for his very important contributions to the early development of wireless telegraphy, and for his popularizations of nineteenth-century science. Sir Oliver has devoted the whole of a very active life to the service of science and amongst the small fellowship of veterans to which he belongs there is no one who has a greater facility for - vivid -writing. • • • -

In his most recent book Advancing Science, Sir Oliver describes in a charmingly personal way the development of the work of the British Association from the time when, as a young man, he attended his first meeting at Bradford in 1873, until the end of the century. Why Sir Oliver should have cut short his narrative at 1900 he does not explain ; but there is no doubt that many of his readers will be disappointed that the story should have been stopped in the middle. The book tells not only of the discoveries announced year by year at the meetings of the British Association but gives also a large number of personal reminiscences of the scientists who attended these meetings. In the last few pages, Sir Oliver concludes by making a forecast of the way in which it seems to him that science will develop in the future. Here he tells us that he still hopes for the day when science will find empirical verifi- cation for his life-long dream of a material ether filling all space and of material spirits capable of being observed with scientific instruments. When this is achieved' he believes that science will abandon the sceptical attitude which it has adopted to-day towards the ultimate substance of nature, and will return to the materialistic conception of the world which was current amongst scientists of the last century.

In the preface Sir Oliver tells us that some of the material which appears in the book is to form part of an autobiography which will be published later in the year. In view of his very close association with the great physicists of the last sixty years all those who are interested in the human aspect of the development of science will look forward to the appearance of this autobiography.

Two Thousand Years of Science is a book with a much more ambitious programme, and as its title suggests, sets out not to describe a single epoch of science, but to give a comprehensive survey of the development of every branch of science since classical times. Since the appearance of the first edition of the book (which was published shortly after the death of its author in 1929) it has been revised and enlarged by Dr. Titherley who has added much new material. and . increased its scope. Throughout the whole book. the emphasis is on the actual dis- coveries of science, and the growth of one discovery out of another rather than on the changing metaphysical principles involved. From many points of view this is a disadvantage. At the same time it makes the book. suitable as a historical background for young people who are taking up the study of specialized branches of science for the first time. It would be surprising if fault could not be found with some of the detail of a book which sets out to survey so wide a field, but judged, as-a-whOle it succeeds excellently in its purpose; _