Two Logics: The Conflict between Classical and Neo-Analytic Philosophy by Henry B. Veatch (review)

148 BOOK REVIEWS believe it is primarily ideas that make the world go round, reason cannot be denied its indispensible moiety to contribute to the building of a City of Man open to God. So (to indulge one more imaginative roving about the future) , should a generous philosophic reader yet unborn stumble upon this volume thirty or one hundred years hence, he will probably be warmed by the retrospect of professionals dedicated to the hard work of thought, eschewing the spectacular and oracular, struggling for his sake as much as theirs to push back the edges of darkness a little bit. Biscayne CoUege Miami, Florida JoHN M. QuiNN, 0. S.A. Two Logics: The Conflict between Classical and Neo-Analytic Philosophy. By HENRY B. VEATCH. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1969. Pp. 288. $8.00. What can be said of Prof. Veatch's Two Logics can be said of few other recent books in philosophy: it deals with issues that are at once topical and fundamental in a style that is free of abstruse or hypertechnical language. For what Veatch proposes to do in his latest book is no less than to explain how the present, often recognized conflict between our scientific and humanistic cultures arises out of a fundamental difference in their respective logics, i.e., in the way or method by which each of these opposed cultures achieves knowledge and understanding. Concretely, Veatch suggests that whereas the humanistic disciplines seek to understand things for what they are in fact and in reality, that is, seek to know things in their " whats " or natures, scientific disciplines seek to know things in their relation.