1.1. From the Preface by René Taton.

The general history of science, although warmly advocated by the polymaths Auguste Comte and the Positivist school, truly began to flourish only at the start of the 20th century. While certain specific sciences had been the subject of in-depth studies, no serious attempt had yet been made to paint a comprehensive picture of the evolution of the various sciences and technologies. However, the revolution brought about in human life by the ever-accelerating pace of scientific progress and industrial development could not fail to enlighten minds on the close interdependence existing between the evolution of these various branches of human activity and other aspects of the history of civilisations.

Viewed from this perspective, the history of science takes on a whole new significance and interest. While it retains a very special value for the scientist who cannot ignore the contribution of his predecessors and the lineage of the great currents of scientific thought, while it remains a subject of study of fundamental interest for the philosopher, it enters the field of general history, alongside political, economic and social history, and appears today as one of the most important chapters of the cultural history of humanity

The brilliant success of the General History of Civilisations Collection, whose authors have managed to place the history of science and technology in its true perspective, has drawn the attention of a wide audience to this discipline, which has remained neglected and poorly understood for too long. Touching on science, philosophy, and general history, the history of science finds itself in a very special position, at the very boundary of the humanities, the pure sciences, and technology. Its privileged position in an area of ​​fruitful convergence makes it a cultural instrument of great value. It thus appears as one of the principal foundations of the new scientific humanism whose implementation is rendered so necessary by the rapid development and ever-earlier specialisation of scientific and technical studies. Efforts undertaken to broaden its dissemination are beginning to bear fruit, and many countries have already introduced the study of the history of science into the curricula of higher scientific and literary education as well as those of secondary education.

However, as we have said, no comprehensive study has yet been published that provides a precise and objective picture of our current knowledge in this vast field. Besides specialised monographs, the educated public can only refer to a few secondary works that offer only schematic views and information of uncertain value. The unfortunately unfinished works of eminent historians of science such as Aldo Mieli and George Sarton are not entirely exempt from these criticisms

This new collection of General History of Science, whose three volumes will be complemented by three volumes of General History of Technology, published under the direction of Maurice Daumas, aims to fill at least partially this gap by providing an objective and sufficiently precise overview of the overall evolution of the general history of science and technology, considered as one of the essential aspects of the history of civilisations.

The preparation and execution of such an undertaking have not been without raising some delicate problems, both regarding the general direction to be given to the whole, and regarding the development of the plan and the choice of authors.

To make this collection accessible to a broad, educated audience, its volumes will contain only a minimum of notes, references, and critical discussions; moreover, the bibliographical references, while allowing the reader to properly direct further, more in-depth research, will be condensed as much as possible. While the figures inserted within the text itself facilitate the understanding of certain passages, the heliogravure plates, whose authenticity has been rigorously verified, aim to recreate the atmosphere of scientific life in various periods. Finally, while maintaining a high level of scholarly rigour in their contributions, the authors have avoided the use of overly technical vocabulary and have clarified the most complex passages with supplementary explanations that make them easier to read.

Presenting an objective and precise overview of current knowledge in the history of science, from Antiquity to the mid-20th century, and from mathematics to medicine, required the selection of numerous contributors with widely varying specialties, possessing a deep and direct knowledge of the subject matter. The authors who kindly agreed to participate in writing this General History of Science are all known for the value and interest of their work.

1.2. Review of Volume 1 by: Aydin Sayili.
Isis 49 (4) (1958), 445-446.

This is the first tome of a three-volume work on the general history of science published under the direction of René Taton, which will be supplemented by another three-volume series on the history of technology to be published under the direction of Maurice Daumas.

The present volume covers a long period extending from the earliest times up to 1450, and is divided into the following parts: (1) ancient science in the Orient (pp. 1-201) dealing with Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia and Israel, India, and China; (2) science in the Greco-Roman World (pp. 203-413); (3) the Middle Ages (pp. 415-582) dealing with America before Columbus, and with Islam, India, China, Byzantium, Israel, and Europe. The general introduction is written by R Taton, and is followed by a section on prehistoric times. The book contains figures and pictures needed for the elucidation of certain topics and is richly illustrated with excellent photographic plates. An index of names and one of subjects are appended.

The work is addressed to as numerous a body of readers as possible. Technical terms are therefore largely avoided, and the number of footnotes cut down to a bare minimum. Each chapter is followed by a select bibliography.

The aim of the present series is to make a synthetic presentation of the history of science. One of its stated interests is the contribution of science and technology to general civilisation, and it also shows a systematic preoccupation with the development of ideas from the viewpoint of their significance to the progress of science.

Each chapter deals with all the major branches of science whenever there is sufficient information concerning them. The part dealing with ancient science in Egypt and Mesopotamia contains short but penetrating discussions on the questions of the origins of science, its relations with technology and different kinds of magical and mystical beliefs and practices, as well as with philosophical thought. Thus, various questions that arise apropos of the necessity of deciding upon the minimum criteria needed for the differentiation of scientific work from other related human efforts is touched upon.

The relations of general concepts with the body of systematic knowledge form a theme which has not been neglected in any part of the book, but the section on Greek science is naturally the richest in this respect. Here one finds lucid expositions on the philosophy of Greek science. Major scientific trends, and especially the nature of the scientific achievements of Greek philosophers, are explained by presenting them against their philosophical background. Philosophy is generally conceived here as a factor dominating scientific trends, however, and a similar influence of science upon philosophical thought is left pretty much out of consideration. In the section on Islam, too, very interesting generalisations of this nature are touched upon, to the extent, of course, that research to date in this field makes such syntheses possible.

In the choice and the treatment of the materials going into each chapter, their bearing on our present-day science has undoubtedly been one of the underlying considerations, but this criterion is not adhered to in a very strict manner. Islam seems to have been an exception, however. For Arabic science is considered only within the period extending roughly from the eighth to the twelfth or thirteenth century. The bibliography at the end of this particular chapter, too, may be criticised as being too brief to answer the questions which may arise from the reading of the text to which it is appended. But such slight signs of lack of coordination are to be expected in a work which otherwise draws so many advantages from being the result of the collaboration of an array of distinguished scholars. Another example of this sort may be seen in the attribution of knowledge of the special case of the Pythagorean theorem to the Egyptians in the section on Greek science, while no such claim is made in their behalf in the chapter on Egypt.

It is unavoidable that small errors of various kinds should escape attention in the preparation of a book of this size. The example given on page 106 should have been 1.20.2 instead of 1.20.11, e.g., and the translation of the Almagest by Ibn al Bitrûjî would seem to be another instance. Likewise, the House of Science in Baghdad antedated Al Mamûn; the Cairene House of Science was not of great importance scientifically. The statement concerning the divergences in the orientations of the megaliths with a lack of the knowledge of precession in prehistoric times is apt to be misleading.

In short, La Science Antique et Médiévale may be characterised as an ordered and systematic presentation of its subject, achieving excellent coordination between the particular topics of its choice and the general plant of the book as a whole. It makes very good reading and offers a well-rounded perspective of man's scientific efforts and achievements through the ages. It is indeed a very welcome addition to the list of books on the history of science which no serious student of the subject can afford to do without. The present reviewer would like to express his hope that the remaining volumes will become available very soon.

1.3. Review of Volume 1 by: A C Crombie.
The English Historical Review 74 (291) (1959), 281-284.

When its three volumes are completed this work will be the most ambitious general history of science so far undertaken in any language. Although an appeal to include the history of science and of technology in the study of the history of civilisation was made by Francis Bacon and backed up vigorously by Voltaire and the encyclopaedists and by Auguste Comte and the positivist school (and by their critics, such as William Whewell), and although the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries produced some remarkable scholarship in this field, it is only in the present century that the study of the history of science has begun to make its way as a recognised academic discipline, with its own journals, organisation, and university posts. But lost time is being rapidly made up, and the rate at which monographic studies and edited texts now appear is becoming formidable. The effect is made even more daunting by the special character of the subject. Although the results of scientific inquiry are to a large extent impersonal, timeless, universally communicable, and cumulative, they were obtained by particular men sharing in the conditions of life, opportunities, and much of the world picture of a particular society at a particular time. It is not enough for an historian of science to study only the 'vertical' history of scientific problems as successive generations have dealt with them. He must certainly know the history of the transmission of scientific knowledge, for, as in other disciplines whose existence depends on a large content of ideas, theories and techniques, used, revised or rejected by successive generations, this provides the basic documents. He must certainly also know what the problems are scientifically. But the history of scientific inquiry cannot be understood, any more than any other aspect of history, in isolation from the other events as lived by the men and institutions of a period. As every historian of science knows, problems as presented and explanations as offered in scientific documents of the past are more often than not made intelligible to us only by asking what their author thought he was doing, what questions he was asking, what he saw as a problem, how he conceived the method of finding a solution, and what he regarded as a satisfactory solution. These questions can be answered only by investigating the context of thought in which science existed, and such 'horizontal' investigations must of course also comprise the discovery of as much as possible about the men who engaged in scientific activity and about the social, institutional, and educational opportunities for science in the period.

No single scholar can hope to keep up with more than part of a subject that makes such demands upon him; indeed it is only its comparatively short history as an academic discipline that may have led colleagues in other fields to suppose that he could. So level-headed a survey as the present work provides is thus of timely value, for the specialist as well as for the general historical reader. We are given a fairly detailed account of each period of science by twenty-one specialists (all but one of them French), all of them well aware of the many unsolved problems they have perforce to pass by. At the same time careful editorial planning - for which congratulations are due to Dr Taton, himself a well-known historian of science and especially of mathematics - has given the whole volume a readable unity without premature synthesis and with remarkably little repetition for a composite enterprise.

The division of the whole subject between the three prospective volumes, and of the parts of this first volume, makes an interesting historical comment in itself. The first volume runs 'des origines à 1450'; the second to 1800; the third to the present. After an opening chapter on pre-historic times, volume i (628 quarto pages) is divided into three parts, of which the first deals with 'Les sciences antiques de l'orient': Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia and Israel, Ancient India, Ancient China (194 pages). Part ii, 'Les sciences dans le monde gréco-romain', divides its subject into the Hellenic (92 pages) and Hellenistic and Roman (110 pages) periods, including a brief account of the Etruscans and science. Part iii, Le Moyen Age (163 pages), once more covers the globe, and takes in pre-Columbian America, Arabic science (41 pages), medieval India, medieval China, Byzantium, medieval Hebrew science, and the Latin West (65 pages). Short bibliographies are placed at the end of each section and the volume is illustrated with forty-eight handsome and well-chosen plates and several text-figures. There are also workable indices.

A work of such range cannot be reviewed technically by any one scholar, but some observations may be made, first about particulars and then about more general themes. The treatment of documentation seems to me to be unhappily austere. The primary sources for the whole of ancient and medieval science are often very thin (notoriously, for example, for Greek mathematics, where a few texts and fragments have to carry us over eight centuries) and always open to differences of opinion, both textual and interpretative. Although some authors, especially in the earlier chapters, make a conscientious attempt to indicate what the sources are, no open road is provided, as it should be in a work of this quality, from the information, quotations, and opinions given in the text to the original documents and specialised articles on which they are based. The short bibliographies are on the whole well chosen, but they do not meet the point.
...

1.4. Review of Volume 1 by: Marshall Clagett.
Science, New Series 127 (3304) (1958), 973.

The first volume of the new series of Histoire Générale des Sciences, under the editorship of René Taton, is the most complete and up-to-date survey of the science of these periods in any language. It is of course a collection of studies by experts in the different periods and cultures covered by this volume. But, surprisingly enough, the editor has managed to achieve a stylistic unity that is rather remarkable. As the title indicates, the volume includes science in antiquity and the Middle Ages. It contains three parts. The first part is devoted to pre-Greek science, more specifically, the science of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Israel, ancient India, and ancient China. The second part is a study of science in the Greco-Roman world, covering, first, the science up to and through the time of Aristotle and, next, Hellenistic and Roman science. The third part includes science of the Middle Ages and, more particularly, that of Islam, India, China, Byzantium, and western Europe.

I think that the best thing about this volume is the fact that it reflects recent research more directly than any other survey volume of which I know. Obviously, with such a broad coverage, it cannot replace some of the standard single-volume studies of shorter periods. For example, the student and reader will still want to consult Neugebauer's brilliant survey of mathematics and astronomy in his Exact Sciences in Antiquity. It might be thought at first that the present volume would not completely displace the excellent single volume of Brunet and Mieli covering the ancient period, for that latter work contained a good number of source readings. Still, as the reader examines this volume more closely, and particularly the excellent section on Greek science, he will find woven into the context many fairly long representative passages from the original authors. I think that the reader who is coming to this field fresh, without much previous training, might perhaps do well to read this single volume and to accompany it with a reading of Cohen and Drabkin, Source Book in Greek Science - the best single collection of documents on Greek science.

Painfully small and inadequate is the description of the content of Arabic exact sciences. Thus, astronomy is brushed off in only two pages, mechanics and optics are virtually untreated. The chapter on the science of western Europe in the Middle Ages is, in my opinion, very good indeed, although I would like to have seen more space devoted to it (with some of the peripheral material, like that on Phoenician science, Hebraic science, and so on, dropped).

There are, of course, matters of detail I would quarrel about. The author gives the impression that the medieval source of Hero's formula for the area of a triangle in terms of its sides is the Liber Embadorum of Savasorda. It had already been stated in the material of the Agrimensores. The first time it appeared in Latin with a proof was in the Verba Filiorum of the Banu Musa, translated by Gerard of Cremona. The medieval section of the volume is quite up-to-date and gives a brief and accurate picture of the main movements in the high and late Middle Ages, but the account of early Latin medieval science, such as it is, is very brief and inadequate.

The volume includes 48 quite handsome plates, and the editor and the Presses Universitaires are to be congratulated on the volume's fine appearance.

1.5. Review of Volume 2 by: Marie Boas Hall.
Isis 51 (4) (1960), 574-576.

The history of science is now such a well-established field that to avoid the title "short" a history of science covering more than one period must be contained in several volumes. As this is an undertaking few individuals are prepared to face, cooperative history is almost inevitable. Hence the plan of the Histoire Générale des Sciences, edited by R Taton, of which volume one (La Science Antique et Mediévale) appeared in 1957 (cf. Isis, 1958, 49: 445). The second volume, on Modern Science, covers the period 1450 to 1800 and is the work of 25 contributors.

While cooperative history has the advantage that large topics can be split into small units written by experts, it has the defects of this advantage, especially in a work addressed, like the one under review, to the general reader. For the general reader needs expertise less than continuity, balance and completeness. If cooperative history is to be successful it needs very careful planning, thoughtful selection of authors thoroughly informed of the basic plan, and careful detailed editing after the separate chapters have been written. Somehow the editor must ensure that the various authors write all on approximately the same level, that one does not discuss what belongs in the territory of another, and that no major developments are omitted. This book succeeds only fairly well in these regards: some chapters are elementary collections of facts, while others are sophisticated synthetic history; minor figures are given considerable space in some chapters, while major figures are only cursorily mentioned in others. Individual excellencies have thus failed to produce an excellent book.

This volume is divided into four parts: Renaissance, Seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century and, covering the whole period, Science Outside Europe (brief but interesting). The chronological parts are divided into sections, which increase in number and subdivision with time. The two main divisions in each part are between the Exact Sciences and the Natural Sciences, though the formulation varies slightly but not in any consistently helpful way: thus, the Exact Science of the sixteenth century becomes Mathematics and Physics in the seventeenth century, and Theoretical Science and Physical Science in the eighteenth century. Chemistry is, ingeniously, classified as a natural science in the sixteenth century, where the main emphasis is on metals and minerals, but as a physical science in the later periods. All three chemical sections are written by M Daumas who, especially in the first two sections where the material is less generally familiar, presents an extremely illuminating and interesting analysis, while demonstrating the advantages of continuity. The only other example of sustained continuity is A Koyré's truly excellent section on Renaissance exact science; here, mathematics, physics and astronomy are set out in their proper relation and, in spite of the exigencies of space, there is not merely an extremely useful outline of the problems of the period, but a penetrating discussion of the achievement of Copernicus and a surprisingly complete indication of how far the Copernican system was accepted in the later sixteenth century. Reading this, one cannot but regret that M Koyré did not treat some of the same subjects for the seventeenth century.
...
This is a book which historians of science will be glad to have on their shelves, but one which they will use and recommend with caution and restraint.

1.6. Review of Volume 2 by: Charles Donald O'Malley.
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 15 (3) (1960), 314-315.

The first volume (1957) of this work, to be comprised of three volumes, carried the story to approximately the year 1450, and the second volume now under consideration continues it to the close of the 18th century. As was the case of volume one, technology has been excluded since that subject will be treated in a separate series of volumes; on the other hand, medicine is included, as in the previous volume, since "if by reason of its goal, medicine is a technique... yet its development is too closely bound to that of biology to be left out."

Under the editorial direction of René Taton some 25 scholars have collaborated in the composition of the second volume; and whereas in the first, consideration of the science of the Far East led to the inclusion of one English scholar in an otherwise French group, now a concern with colonial America has required the assistance of an American scholar. Essentially, however, the volume deals with scientific developments in Europe, although occasionally there is perhaps a too great emphasis upon the history of scientific development in France at the expense of significant developments elsewhere. This is particularly true in the treatment of medicine, 1450-1600, in which the significance of the Paduan medical school is incorrectly allowed to be somewhat overshadowed by activities in Paris. Furthermore, in this account of renaissance medicine the all-too-brief mention of the development of anatomy pays no heed to the contributions of Achillini, Benedetti, Berengario, Massa, or Canano. It is, incidentally, the poorest of the several brief sections of the book devoted to medicine and includes such errors as the association of Colombo with the Bologna medical faculty and Eustachius with Pisa.

The account of 17th century medicine is better balanced, drawing examples more from Europe as a whole, although the discussion of the discovery of the circulation of the blood gives no recognition to Valverde, gives the date 1551 to Servetus' discovery (presumably alluding to the publication of the Christianismi Restitutio, actually published in 1553), and ignores the vital work of Malpighi. Eighteenth century medicine is better treated than either of the preceding sections, possibly because, or at least in part because, the author had a little more space at his disposal. Indeed, part of the above criticisms should perhaps be directed against an editorial policy which so severely limited the space allotted to medicine which might better have been excluded entirely from the volume. Furthermore, the division of the subject by centuries written by different authors tends to hamper any proper illustration of the development of such themes as that of the discovery of the circulation of the blood, and inevitably certain matters fall neglected between the accounts.

Despite these few criticisms, the book as a whole can be read by the non-specialist with considerable profit, and especially those portions dealing with the exact sciences even though consideration of them here would be outside the scope of this journal's major interest. The individual chapters are concluded with bibliographies which appear on the whole to represent a sound choice of works for further general reading, although the general reader might make better use of them if the bibliographies had been briefly annotated. The indices of names and subjects are satisfactorily detailed, and the illustrations are handsome even though they serve but little purpose insofar as assisting the reader in the comprehension of problems presented in the text.

1.7. Review of Volume 2 by: Marshall Clagett.
Science, New Series 130 (3372) (1959), 382-383.

This is the second of three projected volumes surveying the history of science. Fortunately, it maintains the same high standards of style and accuracy set by the first volume. ...
...
There are several points which make this the outstanding survey volume on the period from 1500 to 1800. (i) It is rich in detail. For example, this is the only single volume on the history of science that includes an adequate treatment of the history of mathematics (although I must admit that in treating mathematics separately and not in relationship to the development of the physical sciences, some of the effectiveness of including mathematics in the history of science is lost). (ii) The authors are all experts in their respective fields. This obviously makes for greater accuracy of detail and for accuracy in the reporting of recent research, an advantage that outweighs the loss of unity evident when there is more than one author.

Incidentally, this volume seems less unified stylistically than the first volume, a fact which stems in large part from the extraordinary diversity of subject matter and the consequent diversity of treatment. (iii) The contributors assume that the reader knows some science. In line with this assumption, many of the authors write in some detail about the scientific significance of the developments. Hence, for the most part, the contributors avoid the cardinal sin of most such surveys - inclusion of the names and dates of significant individuals without any clear and just evaluation of their contributions. (To be sure, the cataloguing approach is not completely avoided, particularly in the sections on the natural sciences.) (iv) There are good illustrations and indexes. The volume is handsomely, if not fully, illustrated with 48 plates and 36 figures. Subjects and proper names are separately indexed. The inclusion in the same index of the names and dates of the scientists mentioned will be useful to the reader who has no background knowledge of the history of science. (v) The bibliographical references are adequate. A selected list of readings is given at the end of each of the principal parts. Needless to say, these lists vary considerably in completeness and usefulness.
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The only major disadvantage of this volume is one that stems from the nature of the genre. As a survey, which includes the work of many contributors in limited space, it does not offer sufficient scope for the thorough treatment of any one line of development. But if survey volumes are desirable and play a role in the spread of knowledge, we can agree that this is an excellent example of the type.

1.8. Review of Volume 2 by: A C Crombie.
The English Historical Review 76 (299) (1961), 330-332.

With this volume Dr Taton's team of authors deals with a period generally acknowledged as crucial in the formation of the scientific civilisation of the West and in the separation of the tone of this civilisation from all its predecessors and contemporaries. It is also the period to which historians of science have recently paid the greatest attention, though with some notable gaps. The volume maintains the high standard of its predecessor and provides an excellent survey of the scientific revolution in the West, with an interesting tailpiece on the state of science outside Europe. Thus we are given a glimpse of the contrast in scientific and technical knowledge that made the Europeanisation of the globe, once the will was there, almost inevitable.
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1.9. Review of Volume 3 by: Charles C Gillispie.
Science, New Series 137 (3528) (1962), 418.

This skilfully and devotedly edited series is the first attempt on anything like an encyclopaedic scale to bring the entire history of science into the compass of a reasonably comprehensive venture. Here, in the next-to-last volume of the series, the editor wisely allows his contributors to interpret the limits of its period, the 19th century, with a latitude suited to their subjects. The subtitle, La science contemporaine, suggests that the reader can scarcely hope to find, either in chronology or in some other principle of organisation, elements of unity like those that gave form to the science of antiquity or of the early modern period which stretches for a century or so on either side of Newton.

René Taton suggests that this office might be filled, not by themes within the sciences, but by the circumstances and consequences of scientific work - the patronage of governments, the new connection with educational institutions, the social and political role of science. So it may, though scholarship is not yet able to bring it off. We are given essays - excellent ones in the case of the editor himself and his colleague at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Charles Morazé - on the historical environment that the 19th century provided for science, not only in western Europe but also in the cultures of Russia and of certain Asian and African countries. Apart from these occasional chapters, however, it cannot be said that the accounts of the sciences themselves, which necessarily form the substance of the volume, profit from the principle that the editor has laid down. These chapters have been written, for the most part, by professional scientists whose avocation is the recent past of their respective subjects.

One is grateful for the interest and devotion of the authors, but on the whole they do tend to write summaries rather than histories of their subjects. The mode of history is narrative, a story of how one event led to another, not just a précis of what the event was followed by an identification of the next one. That mild objection stated - and the historians do not exist who could better carry out the task - one must hasten to welcome this volume for all its many merits. If any topics are to be singled out for special appreciation, they will be Madame Tonnelat's account of theories of light, Maurice Daumas and Jean Jacques's description of chemical developments from the time of Dalton to the foundations of structural chemistry, and Pierre Costabel's discussion of the crisis of classical mechanics. If undue weakness is felt anywhere, it will be in the chapters on biology. The illustrations maintain the high standard that the preceding volumes have led us to expect, and the bibliography will permit a student to search further on any conceivable topic of the immense panorama of 19th-century science, which Taton and his colleagues have laboured mightily, and with greater success than anyone heretofore, to spread generously before us.

1.10. Review of Volume 3 by: L Pearce Williams.
Isis 54 (2) (1963), 305-306.

This large volume is the third in the Histoire générale des sciences edited by René Taton. There will be a final volume on the twentieth century and the series will then be complete. The project, as a whole, is a praiseworthy one and the first two volumes have already proven their value to the professional historian of science. These volumes covered relatively large periods of time and were able to draw upon a considerable quantity of sound and critical scholarship. The present work suffers by comparison. The fault is not to be laid entirely at the door either of the editor or of the authors. The history of science in the nineteenth century has not yet been explored by competent scholars and so the person who would write the history of any one science must set out, alone, into a wilderness where only a few landmarks can be recognised. The nineteenth century, too, was the scene of a burst of scientific creativity unparalleled in history. Simply to master one aspect of this extraordinary movement requires years of study in the sources and constant re-evaluation of one's preconceived ideas. Any attempt to do a one-volume history of science in the nineteenth century would face these difficulties. This one has not overcome them.
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1.11. Review of Volume 3 by: Jean Itard.
Revue Historique 235 (1) (1966), 239-240.

The first two volumes of this history were devoted respectively to ancient and medieval science (from its origins to 1450) and to modern science (from 1450 to 1800). René Taton had secured the collaboration of specialists in the History of Science, the vast majority of whom were French.

The third volume, on Contemporary Science, was intended to cover the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. However, it quickly became apparent that a single volume would be insufficient for a serious and lasting work. A first volume of 755 pages, published in 1961, was therefore devoted to the 19th century. It required 28 contributors, mostly historians of science, but already assisted by specialists from various scientific disciplines, who were very familiar with current science and interested, of course, in the historical and philosophical aspects of their techniques.

The volume devoted to the 20th century is the collective work of 57 world-renowned scholars, mostly French; René Taton, research director at the National Centre for Scientific Research, coordinated their efforts, corrected the proofs, compiled the index of names (71 pages, more than 6,000 names) and the index of concepts.
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Each specialist will naturally approach the book by reading the chapters concerning the science they know best. It seems to me that historians would benefit from first reading René Taton's preface, then Pierre Auger's masterful introduction, "The New Face of Science," and finally the last section on scientific life in various countries. They will then find, in the rest of the book, a wealth of very thorough and serious documentation, often written, it must be admitted, in rather impenetrable technical language - covering almost all areas of current science.

A history of science extending to the 1960s might be considered too audacious. Many discoveries, especially many theories that currently seem fundamental, will probably be obsolete within two or three decades. But, writes René Taton, "we believe that history can and must be closely linked to the most recent developments. Only this conception gives full meaning to current discoveries, while drawing researchers' attention to the precarious nature of hypotheses and theories, even if adopted by the near unanimity of scientists of a generation. Considered by discerning minds, history conceived in this way can even have prospective value and indicate certain probable lines of future progress. As for the educated public that follows the general perspectives of the evolution of the different branches of science, we believe it will then be better able to appreciate the spirit and trends of current science."

1.12. Review by: Georges Mounin.
La Linguistique 1 (1) (1965), 121-122.

Linguistics is still waiting for its historian. The re-edition of H Pedersen's book in English translation (The Discovery of Language, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1962), the publication of Kukenheim's L'esquisse historique de la linguistique française et de ses rapports avec la linguistique générale (Leiden, Universitaire Pers, 1962), and M Leroy's Grands courants de la linguistique moderne, avec un panorama des origines à 1900 (P.U.F., 1963), are all indications of a need that is being addressed. Each of these works already provides analyses, perspectives, and bibliographies, but without fully satisfying the reader. It is reasonable to assume, moreover, that a truly satisfactory history of linguistics will undoubtedly require a collective effort. Until then, we must make do with all the resources available.

Could the General History of Science truly be one? Philologists and linguists, R Labat, J Filliozat, L Dupont-Sommer, L Massignon, A-H Haudricourt, J Needham, J Chesneaux, and others, contributed to its writing. But the delimitation of the sciences to be considered, even in this history which explicitly aimed to take into account "the interdependence between the evolution of the various branches" of knowledge, lacks clarity: the exact sciences and natural sciences are always present, along with medicine, sometimes geography, navigation, quite often writing (and almost never teaching, though crucial), depending on the competence or interest of the writer, and always to the reader's great benefit. But it seems that, despite the title, the humanities, including history itself, were tacitly excluded.

It was surely difficult to conceive of a general history of all the sciences, and undoubtedly of those whose particular history is not yet well established. But a general history of the human sciences, perhaps premature, makes its necessity felt here.

Linguistics therefore appears only very episodically in these three volumes. J Filliozat refers to his Classical India (Hanoi, 1953), from which one can indeed draw the substance of a history of Hindu thought on language. Nothing of the sort, even briefly, concerns Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, or China, all subjects on which one would have liked to read at least the equivalent of a short, suggestive article like that of M Lejeune entitled La curiosité linguistique dans l'Antiquité classique (Lectures of the Institute of Linguistics, 1940-1948, Paris, 1949).

The only exceptions concern Mesopotamia (R Labat, vol. 1, pp. 85-90), with information on Sumerian philology, the emergence of monolingual and multilingual lexicons, especially the "science of lists," instructive for a semanticist. And the Arab world, from its origins to 1450 (Arnaldez and Massignon, vol. 1, pp. 430-470), with interesting information on classifications, lexicographical problems, translations (see also vol. 1, pp. 526 ff. The 12th century, the age of great translations), and the possible influence of linguistic structure on the form of scientific thought.