The Corpses of Times Generations

Book excerpt: Anyone who has ever tried to present a rather abstract scientific subject in a popular manner knows the great difficulties of such an attempt. Either he succeeds in being intelligible by concealing the core of the problem and by offering to the reader only superficial aspects or vague allusions, thus of deluding the reader by arousing in him the deceptive illusion of comprehension; Or else he gives an expert account of the problem, but as the untrained reader is unable to follow the exposition and becomes discouraged from reading any further. If these two categories are omitted from todays popular scientific literature, surprisingly little remains. But the little left is very valuable indeed. It is very important that the public is given an opportunity to experience-consciously and intelligently-the efforts and results of scientific research. It is not sufficient that each successive progression is taken up, elaborated, and applied by a few specialists in the field. Restricting the body of knowledge to a small group deadens the philosophical spirit of these people and leads to spiritual poverty. THE CORPSES OF TIMES GENERATIONS represents a valuable contribution to popular scientific writing. The main ideas to Theory are extremely well presented. Moreover, the presents state of our knowledge in which the paradigms of science are aptly characterized. Mr. Kosciejew shows how the criterial growth of our factual knowledge, with the striving for a unified conception comprising all empirical data, has led to the present situation which is characterized -despite all successes by an uncertainty concerning the choice of the basic theoretical concept.