The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory

ISSN: 0016-8890 (Print) 1930-6962 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vger20

Literature and Science. Proceedings of the Sixth

Triennial Congress (International Federation for
Modern Languages and Literatures), Oxford, 1954

Heinrich Meyer

To cite this article: Heinrich Meyer (1957) Literature and Science. Proceedings of the
Sixth Triennial Congress (International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures),
Oxford, 1954, The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, 32:2, 145-147, DOI:
10.1080/19306962.1957.11786876

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19306962.1957.11786876

Published online: 15 Dec 2016.

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Literature and Science. Proceedings of the Sixth Triennial Congress (Inter
national Federation for Modem Languages and Literatures), Oxford,
1954. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1955. Pp. xvi, 330.
An editorial committee of six scholars has admirably succeeded in sum
marizing the substance of some fifty-odd papers in English, French, Ger
man," Italian, and Spanish and even in letting us feel at times the real
presence of the speakers. But it would be foolish if the reviewer now tried
to summarize a summary. Only an impression of the great wealth of ma
terial can here be given. Papers not referred to are not necessarily less inter
esting; they are perhaps only less interesting to the reviewer or his pre
sumable readers.
Three outstanding general addresses open and close the volume, Herbert
Dingle's "Relations between Science and Literature," without a doubt the
one paper that everyone can appreciate, G. Temple's "Style and Subject in
the Literature of Mathematics," comments on the art of mathematical
presentation, and Ronald Peacock's "Abstraction and Reality in Modem
Science, Art and Poetry." Peacock does not confuse analogy with reality
when he shows the structural similarity of art and science in our day. As
this also occurred to Delacroix and Chopin over a century ago, perhaps the
form of science and art has always been subject to a common factor? The
trouble is in fi.nding it. Various approaches have here been taken, some
pedestrian, some bright. Some have studied scientific methods, others
scientific subject matter used by the poets, again others looked for the
impact of science on literary form. The mellow and rich discussion of
"Bibliography," by McManaway, would fit in anywhere, but here it took
on new weight in its context, while Hatzfeld's arbitrary summary of
146 THE GERMANIC REVIEW

"Methods of Stylistic Investigation" shows surprising limitations of histori

cal knowledge. We may pass over an essay in praise of paleography and a
number of linguistic, statistical, and psychological papers because they deal
only with scientific methods applied to literature or offer little that is
pertinent, even though some are leamed and original. The major part of
the volume is concemed with studies, interpretations, and evaluations of
individual authors who were scientists of a literary bent or who concemed
themselves with science and literature at the same time. For some, new
material was used, as for Haller and Bonnet by Charly Guyot and for
Claude Bemard by Helen Trudgian. Other papers appear to be little more
than summaries of what everyone but the writer has long known.
Except for Peacock's brilliant address, which displays his usual command
of form, no paper in the field of Germanics is up to the standard of the
papers on French letters. The best of them is perhaps E. L. Stahl's "Nature
and Art in Goethe's Science and Poetry," the worst Bckmann's "Goethes
naturwissenschaftliches Denken als Bedingung der Symbolik seiner Alters
dichtung," which re-combines ideas expressed before Bckmann into a
falsely rationalized system. Of papers referring to Goethe, Z. L. Zaleski's
"Mickiewicz et la grande querelle scientifique entre Cuvier et Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire" might serve as an introduction to a problem that few Ger
manists have studied from the sources. Geoffroy, incidentally, also enters
much into a Balzac study by Gamet Rees. Henel's "Goethe and Science"
is rather general or perhaps was so much cut that it seems somewhat weak.
(lt may be that some apparent weaknesses result from the form of delivery;
for it would be only natural if the Committee had chosen to cut down
generalities in an impressive address rather than to eliminate substance
supported by quotations in a solid paper.) A. Closs' "Scientific Analysis
and Interpretation in Modem German Literary Criticism" is a random
assembly of such superficiality that it is embarrassing to read.
Original ideas were expressed in many papers, e.g., A. C. Crombie's
"Galileo's Conception of Scientific Truth," that supplements Dingle, W. G.
Moore's "Scientific Method in the French Classical Writers," Gamet Rees'
"The Influence of Science on the Structure of the Novel in the Nineteenth
Century," Guido di Pino's impressionistic talk, "Letteratura e scienza
nella prima meta del Seicento," Yvonne Batard's "Dante et la science de
son temps." Kovalevsky's Chekhov Paper, Reto Roedel's "La scienza e 'I
promesi sposi' " or Jean Mayer's "D'Alembert et l'Academie des Sciences"
approach more the standard history-of-science studies, to which the papers
of Roscoe E. Parker, M. Dominica Legge, and Robert Davril belong, all
of whom write of medieval and Renaissance matters.
Some of the most fruitful papers to this reviewer were those that offered
new suggestions on the problem: have the sciences an impact on literary
form or creative processes? Many such papers were here offered on Voltaire,
Diderot, Montesquieu, Balzac, Flaubert, Maeterlinck, Proust, Valery, and
 BOOK REVIEWS 147

others by such scholars as Folkiersky, who refers a great deal to Ira Wade
(next to Dingle the most often quoted scholar), Mercier, Roddier, Mortier,
Rees, Roos, Vattaui, Bisson, Bemol, and von Richthofen. To evaluate these
suggestions will require years of further investigation. The book as a whole
then is rich and varied, and that which may displease one may stimulate
another who looks at it with different ideas or a different sense of form and
substance. At any rate, it is quite worth owning and studying and
pondering.
Muhlenberg College HEINRICH MEYER