The World Machine. The First Phase, the Cosmic Mechanism

Abstract

IN this book the author purposes to go back to the I simplest beginnings of things “to the days when primitive man first learned to count, to measure, to time, and to weigh, and to mark out how his every step towards positive knowledge has been an advance toward mechanical conceptions of phenomena, which must one day end in a mechanical conception of the whole.” Two-thirds of the book are therefore devoted to a history of man's ideas about the construction of the universe, while the remaining pages give an account of the results of the investigations of the present day. Among his predecessors the author mentions Pliny and Humboldt. It would be unfair to blame him for not coming up to the high level of Humboldt, but it is unfortunate that he too often resembles Pliny in not having understood his sources properly, without resembling him in presenting his readers with a great mass of detail. The narrative is very verbose, ad does not clearly show how one idea or group of ideas has been developed from previous ones.

The World Machine. The First Phase, the Cosmic Mechanism.

By Carl Snyder. Pp. xvi + 488. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1907.) Price 9s. net.