La Pensée scientifique: Quelques concepts, démarches et méthodes by Andrzej Mostowski (review)

Leonardo, Vol. 13, pp. 246-261. Pergamon Press Ltd. 1980. Printed in Great Britain. BOOKS Readers are invited to recommend books to be reviewed. In general, only books in English and in French can be reviewed at this stage. Those who would like to be added to Leonardo's panel of reviewers should write to the Founder-Editor, indicating their particular interests. Philosophy East Philosophy West: A Critical Comparison of Indian, Chinese, Islamic, and European PhHosophy. Ben-Ami Scharfstein et al. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1978. 359pp. £12.00 Reviewed by Patrick Shaw'" 'A young philosopher on the verge of his career is apt to assume that what his teachers never required of him cannot be of any importance. Then, when he himself becomes a teacher, he perpetuates the attitude he has learned, and the beginning is never made' (p. 3). Scharfstein and his fellow contributors offer help in the difficult task of beginning the assimilation of other philosophical traditions, indeed, traditions of India and of China (Islamic philosophy they count as fundamentally within the Western tradition). The book is divided into two parts, each containing essays by various contributors. The first part gives a general background . There is discussion of the problems in comparing different cultural and intellectual traditions. The different approaches to philosophy are set within their religious and social contexts, and one has a discussion of the style of argument within each of the traditions. The second part consists of a number of particular comparisons: AI-Ash'ari and Spinoza, for example, on Fatalism and Causality, and Berkeley and Vasubandhu on the Dream-World argument. This second part seems to me less successful than the first. One's appetite has been whetted, but there is a shortage of solid nourishment. It would have been better, perhaps, to introduce Western readers to some of the writings of these Eastern philosophers with some sort of commentary to locate the context of debate. Instead, the various essayists introduce their philosopher and tell one briefly of his life, of the school in which he wrote and of his philosophical opponents but stop short of giving one an extended passage of the man's work. Yet this would give one a point of contact with his thought. Instead, each Eastern philosopher is compared with a familiar Western one. There might be cases when this procedure seems the natural one. But here, too often, it looks forced: a loose fit of topic, without genuine historical or methodological connection . And the essayists themselves sometimes generate the same feeling: One jokingly amends his title to An Illegitimate Comparison, to Be Taken with a Grain of Salt (p. 218). Of course, there is more to the essays than that. But the more is sometimes a little sophisticated, involving whole traditions or systems of thought necessarily treated very sketchily. The quick summaries of Kant, Berkeley and other luminaries and the accompanying attempts to give us an angle of approach to the unfamiliar heroes of Eastern philosophy I would have happily exchanged for some of those heroes' words; translate some passages from AI-Ash'ari and leave it to the reader whether those passages suggest or not Spinoza. Part One, fascinating; Part Two, a little disappointing.·Dept. of Logic, Glasgow University, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland. 246 La Pensee scientifique: Quelques concepts, demarches et methodes. Andrzej Mostowski et al. MoutoniUnesco, Paris, 1978.274 pp., ilIus. Paper. Reviewed by Pierre Auger'" A difficult book, a beautiful book! Reading it is sometimes thrilling, shedding light on most profound problems, sometimes discouraging, surrounding with deep darkness some parts of science that I thought I knew something about. Twelve brilliant scientific thinkers have discussed, mostly in ordinary language (but not always, by any means!), present abstract scientific concepts of sets, systems, models, signs, game structures and information, not to mention more familiar subjects like language, management and operations research . The title of the last essay is Metatheory, including metamathematics, but not metaphysics! Well, if I had to give advice to an artist, I would suggest not to take up the essays one after another but to start with Piaget on structure, pass to Mesarovic on systems, and, if these go well, to return to...