Information and Prediction in Science, Proceedings of a Symposium of the Académie Internationale de Philosophic des Sciences (1962) ed. by S. Dockx and P. Bernays (review)

874 BOOK REVIEWS Information and Prediction in Science, Proceedings of a Symposium ·of the Academie Internationale de Philosophic des Sciences (1962). Edited by S. Dockx and P. Bernays. New York: Academic Press, 1965. Pp. 272. $9.50. Science is technology. Science is scientists-theoreticians and experimentalists and administrators and science teachers. Science is a body of knowledge, but it is also M. I. T. and Cal Tech. Science is the history of science: it is Newton and Darwin and Einstein, and your local lab technician as well. Science is sociologists, is city-planners and computers. It is also a method, or a set of methods, or a way of looking at things, even a way of life. And, of course, science is physics, natural history, cryogenics, entomology, psychology, and theoretical medicine. Science is, simply, too complex to be captured in any one description. All attempts to say what science " really is " amount to a description of an aspect of science that has caught the fancy of the interpreter. Must one, then, despair of describing science at all? Or, if someone makes the attempt, must he simply hope that his perspective will turn out to be an important one? Today the case is less bleak than all this would make it sound. For a sociology of science is in the making that may offer a theoretical structure of science complex enough to manage at least a great number of aspects, perspectives, and descriptive data. And to complement this theoretical structure 111 number of exciting new views on the nature and epistemology of science, and on discovery or creativity in science, have come into being. In this atmosphere a concept that has been proposed as a key to the understanding of this complex structure is information theory. In such a view the exchange or communication of information becomes the operative concept. Information and Prediction in Science, the proceedings of a symposium held in 1962, is an attempt to explore this concept. The meeting centered very largely around the contribution of Leon Brillouin, an eminent theoretician in the field of information theory, discussing " how the human mind establishes a law of science from experimental information " (Preface). Other contributors were Satosi Watanabe: "Une Explication Mathematique de Classement d'Objects," Andre Mercier: " La Physique et !'Information," and D. M. MacKay: " Information and Prediction in Human Sciences "-a fascinating amalgam, to say the least, of high-level mathematical theory and concrete application. Needless to say, as with all such symposia the results are uneven. A favorable reviewer can find plenty to commend, a critic can come down hard on a weak article or two. (For instance, I found the article by van Duiju rather insubstantial, and, at the opposite extreme, I would question the pertinence of the long and thorough article by Alonzo Church.) How- BOOK REVIEWS 875 ever, it seems more to the point to question (a) the extent to which the volume as a whole fulfills the promise of its basic theme, and (b) the relative importance of that theme. On the first point it seems fair to say that the volume throws a good deal of light on the problems information theory must face if it is to serve as a key to the analysis of scientific practice. The second point is more complex: Is the time ripe, at this stage in the history of science and its new interpretations, to look for a key to the complex structure of science? If by " looking " is meant a detailed, careful, theoretical or experimental search for pieces to be fitted into a slowly-developing construct -then the time is always ripe. If, however, looking means a speculative search for a grand scheme, then I would guess that the time is not yet ripe-the theory of information is still too young, new approaches to science are only beginning, even the sociology of science, which might offer an undergirding, is yet in its infancy. In sum, Information and Prediction in Science is an interesting volume. It brings together in congress representatives of many specialties in many countries in interdisciplinary dialogue, and it presents some tentative beginnings in the extension of information theory into larger fields. But...