Electromagnetics

Abstract

HOWEVER gratifying the remarkably rapid progress of experimental science and its practical applications during the last few decades may appear, the immense accumulation of new facts and hypotheses has tended greatly to confuse rather than to elucidate our fundamental concepts, and the edifice of science is becoming like a Tower of Babel in which hosts of skilled workers are busily engaged on their several portions but with-out plan or architect, and are becoming so divided by specialization as scarcely to be able to understand one another. To such an extent has this confusion grown that we seem to be reverting to pro-Newtonian scholasticism, and many modern men of science are now adopting the speculative and metaphysical modes of thought and expression against which science had to struggle for its very existence in its infancy; so that although humanity is more and more amazed at the achievements of science, it is losing confidence in it as a trustworthy interpreter of natural phenomena and as a guide to human progress.

Electromagnetics

A Discussion of Fundamentals. By Prof. Alfred O'Rahilly. Pp. xii + 884. (London, New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd.; Cork: Cork University Press, 1938.) 42s. net.