The Life Of Science - Essays In The History Of Civilisation

THE LIFE OF SCIENCE Essays in the Jiistory of Civilization BY GEORGE SARTON Associate o ll c Ginm ic Institution o K J TVo cssor o lie Hisory of Scictiff, 7i iri nr i FOREWORD BY MAX H FISCH HENRY SCHUMAN NEW YORK FOREWORD There is in the making a movement of thought toward a new focus in the history of science. Though interrupted by two world wars and a great depression, it has been steadily taking shape and gath ering strength. It has drawn to itself a considerable number of our more thoughtful scientists, historians, and educators. So far, it has spoken the language of scholars. In The Life of Science Library, it is beginning to speak the language of lay men and women, girls and boys. Among the scholars, George Sarton, who holds the chair of the History of Science at Harvard University, is respected and loved as the leader of the movement. It was he who conceived and fash ioned its two basic tools the Introduction to the Jiistory of Sci ence, which he has now brought through the fourteenth century, and the journal 7s is, with its systematic and critical bibliographies of current publications in the field. Dr. Sarton has not only led in developing a sound scholarly basis for the movement, but he has been the most eloquent voice of its ideals as a new form of humanism which is needed to do for our time what an older humanism did for the Renaissance. Many of the essays in which he has expressed these ideals can be read with understanding and enjoyment by the wider circle of readers for whom The Life of Science Library is intended. It has seemed to the publisher and sponsors of The Life of Science Li brary that its purposes could not be better conveyed than by gath ering together in thepresent volume a selection from these essays. The essays chosen, though far apart in time of composition, are united by spirit and intent. They were not planned with a view to being collected here. Yet, when read together, they have vir tues a more formal treatment would lack. By their very diversity of subject and method, they give the beginner and the layman VI FOREWORD a livelier sense of the range of forms the history of science may take, and of the values that may be expected from it. They show by varied and lucid examples, both topical and biographical, that it is no narrow specialty but a liberating approach to human cul ture as a whole. They are linked, moreover, by certain recurring themes The unity of mankind, The unity of knowledge, The international character of science, The kinship of artists, saints, and scientists as fulfillers of human destiny, as creators and diffusers of spiritual values, The history of art, religion, and science as the essential history of mankind, which has so far been largely secret history, Science as progressive in a way in which art and religion are not. The dependence of other forms of progress upon scientific prog ress, The history of science as, therefore, the leading thread in the history of civilization, the clue to the synthesis of knowledge, the mediator between science and philosophy, and the keystone of education. The reader learns to recognize and welcome the variations on these themes. They end by becoming signposts for his own thinking. Since reading these essays in proof, I have been turning over again the pages of the thirty-eight volumes of 75 5, and re-reading Dr. Sartons contributions to them especially his prefaces. In an essay, The Faith of a Humanist which did duty in 1910 as preface in Volume III, he quoted a sentence from the classical scholar Gilbert Murray One might say roughly that material things are superseded but spiritual things not or that everything considered as an achievement can be superseded, but considered as so much life, not Dr...