Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vols. IV and V: Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, 1966/1968 ed. by Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 339 This work is clearly written and cogently argued; while the frequent repetitions of material may distract the professional reader, they surely shorten the book and increase its impact on the beginning student into whose hands the book may confidently be placed. Blackwell is both an able and fair guide into the literature of the problem and a somewhat successful creator in an area where "somewhat successful" is substantial praise. This reader would have been interested to find among the many important distinctions in the book some analysis of the difference between a methodology of discovery and an epistemology of discovery, and he wonders whether Professor Blackwell would ascribe normative potential to his description of the process of discovery. Wherein lie the main sources of progress on the question of the nature of discovery? One of these is certainly the bringing to bear on the problem the insights of differing philosophical positions. Another, the potential fruitfulness of which is shown by the fact that many of the pioneering authors who have written most creatively concerning creation in science have also read deeply in the history of science, lies in the gradually increasing number of historical studies which tell not just of the verification of a new hypothesis but also search for the roots from which and the process by which it came to be. And lastly, progress will surely he aided if the many powerful distinctions, acute analyses, and leads for future research contained in Blackwell's Discovery in the Physical Sciences are studied and discussed by other humanists of science. The reader of this cannot leave it without a strong sense of the complexity of the problem, engendered by Blackwell's cautious approach, as well as a sense of the importance of this problem, the solution of which may become the chief task of philosophers of science in the last third of this century. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana MICHAEL J. CROWE Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vols. IV and V: Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, 1966/1968. Edited by RoBERTS. CoHEN and MARX W. WARTOFSKY. New York: Humanities Press, 1969. Vol. IV, pp. 545, $20.00; Vol. V, pp. 490, $16.75. Vol. VI: Ernst Mach, Physicist and Philosopher. Edited by RoBERT S. CoHEN and RAYMOND J. SEEGER, New York: Humanities Press, 1970, pp. 303, $11.50. These three substantial volumes are the latest additions to the Boston Studies series, bringing to six the volumes now available. 340 BOOK REVIEWS The first title, Volume IV, consists of lectures given at the Boston Colloquium from 1966 to 1968 and represent a wide range of interests in contemporary philosophy of science. The topics treated range from the neurophysiology of perceptual and linguistic behavior, through the philosophy of mind and of language, the philosophy of history and of the social sciences, and studies in the fundamental categories and methods of philosophy, to the interrelationships of the sciences with ethics and metaphysics. Most of the twenty-two authors represented are philosophers, although there are essays of philosophical significance by a sociologist, an anthropologist, a political scientist, and by three neurophysiologists. Philosophers of science have not sufficiently addressed themselves to areas of research in the life sciences that would influence analyses of perceptual and linguistic behavior. The contributions in this volume that attempt to supply for this defect include the first English translation of the classic and fundamental work on aphasia of Carl Wernicke (1848-1905), the guiding spirit of the Breslau School in neurology and psychiatry, which is accompanied by a lucid and appreciative guide to his work by Norman Geschwind. The latter author follows this by a detailed analysis, in the Wernicke tradition, of "Anatomy and the Higher Functions of the Brain," concluding with some philosophical reflections on the whole man, the unity of consciousness, the value of introspection, and language and thought. After this is a stimulating essay by another neurophysiologist, Robert Efron, entitled " What is Perception? " wherein the author attempts to show that a precise answer to this " abstract and philosophical question " is necessary to formulate a valid methodology for any study of the neural mechanisms that underlie...