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Interesting Unnecessary Remarks

TO ADVERTISE a five-volume HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT edited by Professor Giorgio D. de Santillana, the University of Chicago Press wrote to him for help. Some of the publisher's questions, and the replies of the M.I.T. Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science, as reported to the press, follow:

Q.--Mr. de Santillana, you have written a book on the origins of scientific thought and are editing a series on its history. Why do you consider this project necessary?
A.--I don't in the least. No book is necessary, save the Good Book. I thought it might possibly be useful.

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[[caption]]Professor de Santillana[[/caption]]

Q.--Useful, perhaps, in bringing science back in touch with the humanities?
A.--You are opening up an area in which banalities abound, you know.
Q.--Let's try to keep away from them.
A.--Frankly, I don't think a rapprochement between science and humanities is possible at the present. One of the very few ways in which it might be accomplished is to treat science as one of the humanities, which it emphatically is . . .
Q.--Before we proceed further, do you have a personal definition of science?
A.--Why? I suppose Webster's definition is still good.
Q.--To go back to your last answer but one, do you treat science as one of the humanities in your book?
A.--Well, when the series was first conceived, I thought of its purpose as trying to locate the launching ramps of the various ideas and the moment of take-off, then trace the idea to the point of impact in a later period. My "personal" working titles were: "Take Off," "Good Off," "Ideas in Orbit," and "Nose Cone Revisited." In reply to the question, yes.
Q.--What did you set out to do in "Take Off," or as it is now called, THE ORIGINS OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT: From Anaximander to Proclus--600 B.C. to 500 A.D.?
A.--I wanted to provide the foundation for the series. There is a certain period going from 600 to 300 B.C. which has really provided all the possible approaches, or shall we say the pack of cards that we can play. We can find new games, but the pack is still the same. I have been concerned, therefore, to mark the ways in which the various approaches to science are stated for the first time and explored in many directions. This provides the map on which we can follow the course of thought down into our own times.
Q.--Would you call the series an anthology?
A.--I don't know what I'd call it. The initial plan was to have as much as we could of the original text with the needed commentary and introduction. It turned out that not much could be done with the texts without a fairly complete presentation, so we will average out at about half and half.
Q.--This technique has been used before. Do you think it has been generally successful?
A.--For the publisher, perhaps, but the public is often cheated because the subject matter is only accessible to the specialist. Our attempt is to show the roots (that word!): to present the fundamental ideas of science as they start and develop from the social and cultural context, without following them beyond a certain degree of complication, the essence being that it must be generally accessible to the educated person, and allow him to use his critical judgment.
Q.--Stylewise (that word!), what audience did you write for?
A.--I have kept in mind the average reader of the Scientific American. Remember, the fundamental ideas of science are philosophically profound, often clear, always vital. The technical developments are beyond the common public, and any attempt at vulgarization will always lead to false impressions and a feeling of black magic. Sometimes even scientists do not really know what they are doing, and operate by guess and by God.
Q.--In other words, scientists themselves need a sense of the history of their discipline?
A.--Of course. Too many of them consider history of science as a collection of past mistakes which had better not be dug up. This is what has isolated them from the cultural world and turned some of them into dangerous gadgeting maniacs. Great scientists, however, have always understood what I have been saying and have contributed themselves validly to the philosophical and historical understanding of their discipline. The obvious names come to mind: Einstein, Bohr, Weyl, Poincare, Mach, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, D'Arcy, Thompson, Russell, Wiener.
Q.--Any messages for budding scientists?
A.--You mean students? Permit me to address myself to teachers as well. As far as education is concerned, it has been realized that one of the few ways of introducing the T-square boys to our planet and its human vicissitudes is to give them the feeling that science sprang from a given context of ideas which are really the whole of a civilization. We have found in fact that one of the few ways to teach history of ideas to M.I.T. students is to weave it around the evolution of scientific concepts. Science is never full blown. It is a hazardous endeavor stretching out perilously over uncharted territory, and an important way of knowing where we are going is to try to understand where we started from.

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