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It is a rare event to pick up a book that one may call rather perfect in these days of hurried publication, squandered print and flamboyant jacket covers. In this volume the Professor of Psychology at Harvard presents us with the rare event. The jacket cover is merely protective and does not tell us what a wonderful man Boring is, the undercover is usefully devoted to a spiral graph of contributions from 1600 to the present day. The book is dedicated to a distinguished man—von Helmholtz, whose picture forms the frontispiece. Further, we find that the author tells us how the book came about and that it began to form eighteen years ago. This is the second of the Boring trilogy. Boring will let the scientific world down if he at all continues with his doubts that he should complete the volume that he is now planning.
The book has a title that exactly describes the contents. The literature is covered fully. Appropriate credit is given for priority of idea, originality of research and establishment of fact. Hypothesis is carefully distinguished from fact. The material was well assimilated before presentation. Each chapter has an ample bibliography. There is a full and accurate index. After this it is only necessary to give chapter titles to indicate the ground covered by the author: Sensation and Perception, Physiology of Sensation, Visual Sensation (Color, Space, Depth, Distance), Hearing (Tone Psychophysics, Perception, Theory), Taste and Smell, Tactual Sensibility, Organic Sensibility, Perception of Time and Movement.
The volume ends with a brief chapter on scientific progress. The last paragraph of the volume gives an appropriate moral, “Yet a knowledge of the history of science is important. It gives perspective. It aids humility. It exhibits the kinds of errors that can be avoided. It even saves the trouble of discovering the same fact twice. If scientists need to compute errors of observation and to determine the constants of their instruments, then they should reme