Physiology, Emotion and Psychosomatic Illness (review)

Leonardo, Vol. 8 ,pp. 345-357. Pergamon Press 1975. Printed in Great Britain BOOKS Readers are invited to recommnd books to be reviewed. In general, only books In &glish and in French can be reviewed at this stage. Thosewho would like to be added to Leonardo’spanel of reviewersshould write to the Founder-Editor,indicating their particular interests. From Mathematicsto Philosophy. Hao Wang. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1974.428pp. E7.75. Reviewed by G .Stanley Smith* The state of philosophy today is, in the author’s opinion, basically unsatisfactory and he sees as one reason for this the misapplication of logic evenwhen logical principles are emphasised. Thus the subject of a large part of the present volume is a study of mathematicalconcepts as a settingfor a logical discussionof the main issues in the philosophy of knowledge. The author is currently Professor of Mathematics and Philosophyat The RockefellerUniversity, New York; he is also the author of Logic, Computers and Sets (New York: Chelsea Publishers, 1970). The book was published under a different title in Peking in 1962. In the present volume there is no claim made for a philosophicaltheory or system and the author takes his stand on the idea that we know more about what we know than how we know what we know and he rejects philosophising over thin air. He has called his central dogma ‘substantial factualism’; this uses gross facts that could be found in physics, biology or history but actually are selected mainly from mathematics, because of his greater knowledge of this subject and the fact that it is especially suited to a stu& of conceptual thinking in philosophy. Brief indications of major matters dealt with are: mathematical logic, mathematical philosophy, general concepts, Gadel’s procedures, the logic of Russell and others, unsolvable problems, logical truth, semantics of formal systems, set theory, nature of mathematics and its practical aspects, kinds of propositions, mathematical structures, computers, minds and machines, and life and the pursuit of philosophy,together with detaileddiscussions of the theories of numerous philosophers and mathemati- . cians, past and present. Many of the sections can be read independently of the others but a prior knowledge of such subjects as the theory of sets is assumed. There is a fourpage index, mainly of names. The book is thus essentially about philosophic theory, which is dealt with at great length from many points of view-but with scarcely any specific reference to art. Many artists have, of course, based their work on philosophicalnotionsand there are still considerablepossibilities in the idea of introducing modern mathematical concepts into painting and sculpture but, if stimulus in these directions is sought, this is hardly the sort of book to provide it unless there is already a desire to study philosophy and particularly logic in great depth. Physiology, Emotion and Psychosomatic Illness. Ciba Foundation Symposium 8. Associated Scientific Publishers , Elsevier Excerpta Medica North-Holland, Amsterdam , 1972. 421 pp., illus. Reviewed by Helen DavidoffHirsch ** Freud felt that ultimately the mental apparatus and all its *3 Marine Dr., Seaford, Sussex, England. **221 Lydecker St., Englewood, N . J .07631, U.S.A. manifestations rested on a foundation of biological structure with a physiology that would one day be discovered and understood. He was wise enough to know and say that the day was far off when this state of affairs would hold, but he never lost sight of the possibility. In this present volume, which is pertinent to the artist and art teacher as a widely cultured human being and not because of any specific content, the gradual, complex movement toward a rapprochement of the mental and the biological is set out in its most up to date form. It is striking to one who studied this subject first about a quarter of a century ago to review in detail how far we have come, as well as seeing yet once again how far we still have to go. Twenty-five years ago the stress theories of Hans Selye, the discovery of adrenal cortical steroidsand their actions, the exciting but ultimately highly reductionisticnotions of the seven psychosomatic diseases (asthma, hypertension, peptic ulcer, rheumatoid arthritis, migraine (thyrotoxicosis ), ulcerative colitis and neurodermatitis are usually meant, although no general agreement exists) shook the...