Title: Arthur and Fritz Kahn Collection 1889-1932
Identifier: arthurfritzkahn_03_reel03 (find matches)
Year: [1] (s)
Authors: Kahn, Arthur and Fritz
Subjects: Kahn, Fritz 1888-1968; Kahn, Arthur David 1850-1928; Natural history illustrators; Natural history
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Contributing Library: Leo Baeck Institute Archives
Digitizing Sponsor: Leo Baeck Institute Archives

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10 The New York Times Book Review. /l/>ril 4 1943 Cosmic Philosophy r PHY8IC8 AND PHILOSOPHY. By Sir James Jeans. 222 pp. New York: The Macmillan Company. $2.75. By WALDEMAR KAEMPFFERT EVER since the opening of the Century physical scl- ence has been bewildered ^ by its own discoveries and conclusions. The inability of New- ton's laws to explain Mercury's erratic behavior and other phe- nomena, the grotesqueness of an ether which is at once more ten- uous and indetectable than any gas and yet more rigid than steel, and the Inexplicable way in which electrons leap about in atoms without the slightest regard for Space and time, have given us en- tlrely new conceptions which can- not be visualized in mechanical modeis. The universe is now fi- nite and closed; the properties of the Victorian ether have been transferred to space; time and Space are no longer absolutes; light and other forms of rsuiiant energy come in projectiles called "quanta." All this can be ex- pressed and understood only by the mathematical physicist. But when this same physicist studies his equations and tries to find out whether tables and houses are what they seem to be he begins to philosophize. One of these self-taught phi- losophers, a mere "intruder," as he much too modestly describes himself, is Sir James Jeans. In his widely read "Mysterious Uni- verse" he explains the difficult Position in which gifted scientists like himself are now placed and gives US a world which was fash- ioned not by an engineer but by a mathematician—a world in which Chance rules, a world in whi^h events are more important than substances. He returns to the Problem in his latest populär book and with his usual clarity. Both sociologists and metaphy- sicians will probably object to much of the argument presented, Philosophy, Sir James, holds, sprang from curiosity, like sei- ence. It may be that the Marxist philosophers dwell too much on the influence of practical neces- sity, and especially of economics, on the development of the nat- ural sciences, but even the most conservative professors now con- cede that our physical science came out of a study of practical necessities, Curiosity is indeed a powerful incentive in all fields of inquiry, but when the physicists of the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries, among them such worthies as Galileo, Newton and Tartaglia, concerned themselves with bal- listics and derived very useful mechanical laws from them, it is piain that social pressure directs the inquiring mind into definite Channels. Nevertheless, Sir James Jeans gives US many a fine passage which many who have never delved very deeply into science or philosophy will read with grati- tude. In discussing the contro- versy waged by Leibnitz and Newton, Sir James points out that Leibnitz was right in mak- ing much of the defects in New- ton's laws of gravitation—right because the laws, though ap- proximately correct, are not as satisfactory as Einstein's prfn- ciples in dealing with time and space, or with the whole idea of "force," an idea which contains a good deal of anthroppmorphism. The new dispensation in physics, with its emphasis on Chance and probability, makes the reader wonder where free will Stands. According to the de- terminist point of view—the view that man is a living lYiachine sub- ject entirely to the predictable action of external forces—there can be no free will; according to the indeterminist point of vieAv, human beings do not act wholly under the influence of past events or under the influence of me- chanical laws. Though Sir James has not much use for fixed laws of nature, forces and machines, he holds that even the indeterminist point of view is hardly distin- guishable from the determinist. It is evident that, much as he would like to break with cause and effect, Sir James finds it hard to do so. Before 1900 the observer stood apart from the ob- ject observed. Now it is known that he is part of every experi- ment which he perforras and hence part of the thing he studies. The truth seems to be, as Sir James has pointed out time and time again in his various ad- dresses, that this is a fuzzy uni- verse, and that a clear-cut Sep- aration of determinism and inde- terminism is impossible. There is no more eloquent, in- teresting or persuasive expositor of what may be called the science of philosophy than Sir James Jeans, and this latest book of his will for that reason be wel- comed by those who want ques- tions about the nature of things answered. The modern school of logical empiricists (William James's pragmatists) will have nothing but scorn for an argu- ment which holds that things may not be what they seem to the senses; but a public which wants to read some meaning into nature will extract much pleasure from the pagea of "Physics and Philosophy."
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A View Into the Depths of a Wound. An Illustration for "Man in Struclure and »Function." (Knopf.) Guide and Chart for the Human Interior MAN IN STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION. By Fritz Kahn, M. D. Translated from the German and edited by George Rosen, M. D. 740 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $8.75. By LOG AN CLENDENING, M.D. SOME years ago I saw on the shelves of a Munich book- store a set of volumes called "Das Leben des Menschen," by Fritz Kahn. I opened one of them and \vas fascinated by the illustrations. They were scientifically accurate and yet infused with a power of Imagination, first, to discern what parts and activities of the body the non-technical layman would be curious about, and sec- ond, to infuse into the picture a point of view which lifted it to the level of magic—to catch the body, as it were, at the very iaplit second when it was most interesting. I make this introductory ex- planation to warn all review- readers that I am unqualifiedly cnthusiastic about "Man in Struc- ture and Function," which is "Das Leben des Menschen" re- written, brought down to date to include the latest advances, ex- cellently translated and edited by Dr. George Rosen and pub- lished here in two volumes. A number of the old illustrations remain and many new ones have been added, to a total of 461. The point of view of the expo- sition is broadly anthropological, biological and even more, includ- ing what the Germans call Erde- Lehre—a kind of combination of physical geography, geology, ag- riculture, meteorology and chem- istry. Kahn sees man in his world—from conception, through birth, to death; from the Ceno- zoic to the Roosevelt era; sur- rounded by other animals and plants, by the chemicals of the soll, air and sea, exposed to the sun and rain, to cold and heat, to lowlands and high altitudes. It is a Pisgah-sight that has never been captured in any school physiology or any other account known to me. The first chapter, "From the Electron to Man," deals with physical and organic chemistry and the activities of living cells. Then follow two sections on the structure of the skeleton and the muscles. Then chapters on the circulation, respiration and diges- tion, The section on nutrition has chapters on food, diets, Vitamins, stimulants—coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol—hunger and thirst, body temperature, clothing, the endo- crine hormones and excretion. The last sections are on the nerv- ous System, the skin and sensory Organs—eye, ear, nose—and sex life. In this last it is gratifying to see that Dr. Kahn's exegesis differs from the school physiolo- gies used by the sage of Balti- more in which "all of the abdomen south of the umbilicus was repre- sented by a smooth and quite un- eventful surface." The text is accurate, detailed, adequate, albeit somewhat plod- ding. Perhaps it is as well that it should be because its principal purposes is to furnish an explana- tion of the illustrations. To the illustrations I return fascinated, as I am sure any one eise will be the moment he opens the book. They have the qualities of the wonderful exhibits in the Deutsche Musee in Munich. I pray nightly that the R. A. F. will spare that. They may have Cologne Cathedral and Potsdam and the Brandenburg Gate and the Castles on the Rhine so far as I am concerned if only they leave the Deutsche Musee intact. Those modeis of pure and applied science —of industrial plants, of mines, of the conduits and arteries be- neath the streets of a modern city —all clear and understandable, yet constructed with such Imagi- nation as held one immobile be- fore them for hours on hours! Dr. Kahn's illustrations have the same quality. Here is a tape- worm's-eye view of the inside of the intestine with the villi, which are in reality one-fiftieth of an inch long, magnified to the size of your finger—one absorbing food, one gorged with digested food and one delivering its nutrition to the blood stream; at the side, an in- testinal gland spouting up its di- gestive Juice like a geyser; and all over, the scavenger, wandering cells creeping out from their hid- ing places to clean the surface of the resting villi. In the chapter on the functions of the lymph is shown the depths of a wound—a tarn, a fissure out of Dante with gnome-like leuco- cytes bustling about their work of healing. Other illustrations are less fanciful, more mathematical and exact. In all, it is as if Dor4 and Salvadore Dali and the edi- tors of Fortune had combined their powers to illuminate this text. I could wlsh that this book were used as a basis for Instruc- tion in physiology in all of our high schools. Indeed, for fresh- men in medical schools it would be no bad discipline. \

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