Essays in the History of Ideas by Arthur O. Lovejoy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 407 Of all the volumes in the Library of Living Philosophers,· this present one is the best. Einstein found physics in the face of two dilemmas. Today, in the twilight of his career, there is a new crisis stemming from the two physical systems which he did so much to found. For quantum physics holds to the indeterminacy of matter while the relativity system insists that the world is a strictly determined one. The present volume reveals Einstein as standing alone in favor of the belief that the quantum uncertainty relations are mere temporary barriers that future research will overcome. The other outstanding physicists who touch upon quantum mechanics in their essays feel that indeterminism is here to stay. Between the dilemmas confronting physics at the beginning of the century and the one facing physics at the present hour, great progress has been made. Such is the history of empiriological research. At this level, each system of physics can see matter under certain aspects, but none can grasp the whole. That is why empiriological physics, in its account of structure, can turn up with only shadows of matter and form. The lightand in the philosophy of nature it is a dim one-belongs to pre-experimental physics which can grasp things as wholes. Experiment, quantitative, selective, capable of grasping only the potential or controllable side of matter, must always yield at best only a partial picture of the real. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana VINCENT EnwARD SMITH Essays in the History of Ideas. By ARTHUR 0. LOVEJOY. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1948. Pp. 876, with index. $5.00. This selection of sixteen essays from the hundred odd contributions of Prof. Lovejoy to various journals fittingly commemorates a double event. It marks the fiftieth year of his intense study and literary output, as appears from the bibliography appended to these essays, listing the professor's books and his articles from 1898 to 1948; and it celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the History of Ideas Club of John Hopkins University. It was a happy thought of the members of the club to invite its originator to select and revise a number of his essays, most of which are inaccessible to the ordinary reader, as giving a practical and authoritative example of the ideals for which the club stands, namely "the historical study of the development and influence of general philosophical conceptions, ethical ideas, and aesthetic fashions, in occidental literature, and of the relations of these to manifestations of the same ideas and tendencies in the history of philosophy, of science, and of political and social movements" (Foreword 7 408 BOOK REVIEWS by Don Cameron Allen, p. ix) . In accordance with the wishes of his colleagues , the author limits his selection to essays of a .historical nature, excluding those which deal with metaphysical or epistemological questions. Students of philosophy will regard this as a privation, but may consider that Prof. Lovejoy's philosophical ideas are sufficiently set forth in his contribution to " Essays in Critical Realism," in his " Revolt against Dualism," and" The Great Chain of Being." Many of the essays do, however , contain much that is of interest to the historian of philosophy, who cannot be indifferent to the aims of this school in tracing the origin and repercussions in a wider cultural field of ideas that are common to philosophy and to cognate sciences and literature. Prof. Lovejoy explains the aims of the historiography of ideas in his first essay. Specialized research in the twelve fields which cover the history of ideas in one form or anotheT has become so detailed that now it is necessary to set up close collaboration between the specialists in order to bring the results of their investigations to bear unitedly on those elements which are common to their researches. To obtain a synthetic comprehension, to restore the unity thus artificially sundered, with a view to the full understanding of the vicissitudes of any one particular idea, it will be necessary to regard the history of philosophy as the seminarium of the most influential and pervasive ideas. Among such ideas there are certain typical or " unitideas " which re-appear under...