Abstract
ONE of the most important needs of the present day is the acquisition by the ordinary citizen and the statesmen alike of an adequate general scientific knowledge as a background for the problems with which they are both confronted and the decisions they are called upon to make in this scientific age. An essential step to that knowledge is an understanding of the way in which science has reached its present position in the sum of human knowledge and culture. In this book, Mr. H. A. Reason gives a very competent account of the way in which the present structure of scientific knowledge has been built up and of the contribution of individual men of science from the times of Thales, Pythagoras and Hippocrates onwards. He has a sense of values, and his account of the development of the individual sciences from the time of Newton, without being superficial, is never unbalanced or too detailed, and his final chapter on the present day, if brief, is adequate and accurate. Although written primarily for young people, the book is never childish and has equal claims to a place in reading and courses of general science which form an indispensable element in the training of the adolescent for citizenship to-day and in those courses of adult education which endeavour to rectify the gaps in older and more inadequate curricula.
The Road to Modern Science
By H. A. Reason. Pp. xii + 306 + 24 plates. (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1935.) 6s. net.
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[Short Notices]. Nature 137, 449 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137449a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137449a0