The Scientist in Action: By William H. George. New York: Emerson Books, Inc., 1938. 354 pp.

This book aims to present science as one form of human action and so to consider it as inseparable from the scientist himself. 'The research worker, as a pure-reason machine, is abandoned for the idea of a biological unit reacting to, and acting upon, an everchanging environment… In its passionate and challenging devotion to facts, science seems to be distinguished from all other human activities… A passionate devotion to statement of fact outside of science may alienate a man from his friends, if not put him in a law court, prison, concentration camp, or before a firing squad.' Scientific research, says the author, yields facts and arrangements of facts. Opposed to research are man's tendencies to attack or escape from what is new, his thinking in terms of should and ought, and his assessments of value. The author lays great emphasis upon the importance of 'patterning', which he developed before becoming acquainted with gestalt psychology. The book is conscientious, detailed, and replete with illustrations from all fields of scientific research. Psychoanalysis is briefly included as an illustration of research by 'extremes'—referring to learning about the normal by studying the psychoses, perversions, etc. The author evidently has a real biological and psychological interest in his theme. 'The whole book', he says, 'is based on the idea that whatever else it may be, research is a form of human action'. But the