Art and Scientific Thought

Abstract

IT is impossible to mix with people these days without continuously meeting the question of values. "Why do we do this, and why do we do that?" Not so much how as why. Otherwise expressed, there is a tendency to show less interest in systems of law than in ends to be attained, an outlook essentially teleological in character. Historians, including those of the arts, will breathe freely in such an atmosphere, and scientific men (or at least some of them) would experience a certain awareness that experimental knowledge cannot indefinitely rid itself of responsibility for its discoveries, for good or for ill. Dispositions something like these have clearly been at work in Dr. Martin Johnson's mind, and the remarkable book before us is the result.

Art and Scientific Thought

Historical Studies towards a Modern Revision of their Antagonism. By Martin Johnson. Pp. viii + 192 + 16 plates. (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1944.) 16s. net.