290

some points on whether they forced him to act as he did, at others on

whether they simply allowed him to get away with it. Moral judgments, in turn,
are built into decisions on the last three of these four considerations. They
would be absent from a fifth possibility, that of identifying underlying causes
that rendered the war inevitable. Dray does not find this kind of alternative
promising however. The other four paradigms of causal judgement have the
virtue of treating historical agents as moral beings acting for reasons.
The final essay concerns Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West.
Dray begins with a superb presentation of Spengler's theory and then
evaluates it. Specifying the nature of Spengler's predictions, Dray shows that
he eschews causal explanation as a way of showing why things must go in
the predicted direction but does not provide any plausible alternative
explanation. Concerning the factual foundations of the theory, Dray rejects
various arguments of Spengler's critics yet concurs in finding his system
empirically inadequate. Finally there are problems of coherence. The
inexorable development of a culture requires that it be unable not merely to
borrow from but even to understand other cultures. That contradicts
Spengler's own pretension to an understanding of non-western cultures and
to communication of it to western readers. Also, phases within the
development of a culture differ rather like cultures and are unamenable to
understanding from other phases. Thus we are apparently restricted to
understanding ourselves alone.
This summary of essential theses cannot do justice to the attendant
complexities or to Dray's sure-footed exploration of them. A few minor
obscurities remain. Beard's questioning of the possibility of knowing the past
as it actually was is evidently not identical with his doubts about historical
objectivity; the intersection between these two issues calls for delimitation.
Also there is an unresolved ambiguity in references both to persons and to
policies, actions or situations as putative causes (pp. 72, 78, 82-85).
Conversely, much of the value of these essays lies in the elaboration of
positions approached or less fully developed in Dray's earlier works,
particularly with respect to historical relativism. His review of the Taylor
controversy provides a significant addition to Dray's previous investigation of
causal judgment. It is, at the same time, an invaluable clarification of the
factual issues involved. Therein it exemplifies a pervading virtue of these and
Dray's
other
writings a and
rareSociety,
combination
ofby
penetrating
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Science,
Pseudo-Science
edited
Marsha P.
Hanen,
analysis
andJ.abiding
to the
realities ofWilfrid
historical
scholarship.
Margaret
Osier, sensitivity
and Robert
G. Weyant.
Laurier
University
CarletonWaterloo,
University1980. x, 303 pp. $7.50.
G. S. Couse
Press,
This volume presents papers given at a conference on "Science, Pseudoscience and Society," held at the University of Calgary, May 10-12, 1979.
Experience has taught me to look with a jaundiced eye at collections of
conference papers, especially those on the history and philosophy of
science. All too often one gets a series of dull platitudes, cobbled together by
retired Nobel Prize winners, justifying their week or two in the sun courtesy of
some tax-exempt foundation often put out at an inordinate price by some
university press or other. I am glad to say however that the volume under
review is a splendid exception: credit should go to the conference's

291

organizers, sponsors (the Calgary Institute for the Humanities), and most
particularly to the publishers. Perhaps small is indeed beautiful. I had heard
several of the papers previously on the CBC "Ideas" programme. I hope that
we will soon get a repeat broadcast, bringing the published volume to the
audience's attention.
The problems addressed at the conference and in the volume are those of
the nature of science and of its somewhat disreputable sibling, pseudoscience, of the relationships between the two, and of their effects on society.
Properly it was recognized that one simply must go at this problem in two
ways: from the perspective of the present and from that of the past. We can
all identify examples of real science: Newtonian mechanics, Darwinian
evolutionary theory, plate tectonics. We can all identify examples of
pseudo-science: phrenology, Velikovsky, alchemy. What we need first
however is some means of distinguishing the two, and thus being able to
decide on difficult cases. Is Freudian psychoanalytic theory a genuine
science or is it a pseudo-science? Then what we need is examination of the
importance in the past of pseudo-science. All this then will perhaps help us
towards an understanding of pseudo-science and its function today. Purists
might not like to see history used to throw light on present understanding
for them the practice of history is a self-justifying Kantian end in itself but
those of us who feel that a vital role played by our knowledge of the past is
that of aiding our knowledge of the present, will empathize strongly with the
approach taken by the historians who contributed to this volume.
Naturally, given the intentions, the volume falls into three parts. The first
section, "The Problem of Demarcation," tries to tease out precisely what it is
that makes for a pseudo-science as opposed to a science. Some old hands
who have been trying for years to separate out real from apparent give good
displays of their powers here. I particularly enjoyed Antony Flews analysis of
parapsychology. Several years ago he argued that "although there was no
repeatable experiment to demonstrate the reality of any of the putative
psi-phenomena, and although the entire field was buried under ever-mounting piles of rubbish produced by charlatans and suckers; nevertheless one
could not with good academic conscience dismiss the case as closed" (p.
56). Today his position is much the same, although perhaps more skeptical.
Flew stresses that the absence of any remotely plausible causal theory
behind parapsychology makes one very uneasy about its status. Also
valuable in this first section is Paul Thagard's discussion. He points out that
there is a fundamental distinction between resemblance and correlation
thinking. The latter tries to correlate instances ("How many teenage girls get
pregnant?") whereas the former works from superficial resemblances
("Fires are red, therefore red-headed people are hot-tempered"). He points
out that much pseudo-science relies extensively on resemblance thinking
(e.g. astrological claims about association with Mars leading to war, because
Mars is reddish and this is the colour of blood).
The second section, "The Impact of Pseudo-science on the Development
of Science," will have the most direct interest for the straight historian. The
gem in this section, perhaps the high-point of the whole collection, is Richard
S. Westfall's "The influence of Alchemy on Newton." Drawing from his vast
knowledge of and sympathy with Newton, Westfall demonstrates conclusively the hold that alchemaic thinking had on the greatest of English
scientists.
constantly
Let usFor
effort
ontobealchemy.
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papersNewton
testify.
application
worked
I have
of

292

devoted some time to a reliable quantitative measure of these papers.

They appear to contain well over a million words in Newton's hand. An
activity that left behind a record that large was clearly more than an
incidental diversion (p. 153).
Indeed, Westfall argues that alchemy was so far from being a diversion for
Newton, that from it he extracted the key notion for which he is justly famous,
namely gravitational force, attraction at a distance. By all the criteria of the
day, the force was not genuinely scientific. Newton was able to convince his
fellows that it should enter the realm of science; but its ancestry, Westfall
argues, was distinctly unsavoury. Obviously this provocative thesis will have
to be assessed by knowledgeable scholars of seventeenth-century science;
but if true will call for drastic reassessment, both of the status of Newton and
of alchemy.
Third in this volume we have, "Social Dimensions of Science and
Pseudo-science." I particularly enjoyed the essay by one of the co-editors,
Margaret J. Osier. She shows convincingly the extent to which science can
be blurred into pseudo-science, and how all sorts of values can thus be
incorporated into what is being purveyed as genuine, objective knowledge.
Notoriously, women in the nineteenth-century were excluded from education
and power on the basis of "scientific" claims about their general inadequacy.
I do however wonder whether what Osier discusses should really be called
"pseudo" science, or just plain "bad" or "false" science. As the earlier
contributors to the book point out, there is a difference between something
like Ptolemaic astronomy and something like Ptolemaic astrology, even
though both may be false. Were nineteenth-century claims about women
really "pseudo," or was it simply that they were wrong?
Let me repeat in conclusion: I think that this volume is an excellent
discussion of interesting and important questions. It is a very worthwhile
contribution to scholarship in Canada.
Dr.
Bernard
E. Demaitre.
University
of Gordon:
Guelph Professor and Practitioner, by Luke Michael
Ruse
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, 1980. xii, 263 pp.
$18.00.
Around the year 1300, when the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier was at
the high point of its prestige, the two most noted scholars to teach there were
Arnold of Villanova and Bernard Gordon. Yet while Arnold did not think of his
stay with the university as a final stage in his career indeed ensuing
history shows him as a doctor to kings and popes Bernard Gordon seems
to have thought of his much less lucrative position in the Studium as
permanent. He concentrated mostly on teaching, and on composing medical
treatises for the use of students and practitioners. Arnold's spectacular
career left many traces in our archives, be it in royal or papal chanceries or in
notarial records. For Bernard, on the other hand, we do not seem to have
much more than his own writings, treatises and compendia, which tend to be
very sparse in terms of historical information. This scarcity of data might
account for the fact that we have not had until now a full scale monograph
about this highly important figure in European intellectual history.
Professor Luke Demaitre's work therefore fills a serious gap in modern
scholarship. But his book may be appreciated on its merits as well, the result