Science Advances

Abstract

IT is not easy to discern the relevance of the title to the series of essays which Prof. J. B. S. Haldane has collected in this book. They cover a wide field. Some rather scrappy biographical sketches of Newton, Archimedes, Copernicus, Landsteiner, de Geer, Eddington and others are followed by sets of essays on animals and plants, human physiology and evolution, medicine, hygiene, inventions, on Soviet science and Nazi science, and an article on human life and death at high pressures which appeared in Nature. They touch on such subjects as bird migration, instinct, vernalization, afforestation, the electron microscope, immunization, overcrowding, microfilms, and fisheries, and in many of them Prof. Haldane shows to the full his talent as an expositor of a high order. But it is difficult to believe that Prof. Haldane is really concerned first and foremost with that task of explaining science to the public which he believes is the responsibility of men of science in a democracy. His first concern is not to advance science but to advance communism, and one suspects that communism and not science should be the title word.

Science Advances

By J. B. S. Haldane. Pp. 254. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1947.) 10s. 6d. net.