Book Reviews
33 1
have drawn upon all these lores, and added materials from
their own environment and experience to produce a richly
diversified and culturally independent folk tradition.”
This thesis wisely takes cognizance of the commonly
held viewpoint that American Indians and American
Negroes have interchange of folk materials, especially
stories. But it ignores similar interchange of material with
other peoples. The monumental research on folk motifs indicates that a comparatively small number of patterns are
used in forming the folktales of the world. For instance,
the sticky effigy (as found in “The Tar Baby”) has been
identified in no less than three hundred world tales. The
scholarly thoroughness with which Professor Dorson has
indicated parallels between his collection and the work of
other researchers would, it seems to this reviewer, discourage
him from describing localization of borrowings (by means of
small changes in place, character, custom, language) as “culturally independent folk tradition.”
Ball State Teachers College
Elizabeth Pilant
Six Wings: Men
of Science in the Renaissance. By George
Sarton. (Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1957.
Pp. xiv, 318. Illustrations, appendix, notes, and index.
$6.75.)
It is fortunate that the late George Sarton, who spent
most of his life in the study of ancient and medieval science,
should extend the area of study to include the period of the
Renaissance. This book is all the more remarkable since i t
was written by one who in 1929 felt that “from the scientific
point of view, the Renaissance was not a renaissance” and
who wrote of the Renaissance as a period of “instinctive resistance to any kind of scientific enlightment” (J. W. Thompson, et al., The Civilizution of the Renaissance, pp. 75, 93).
The title of this work, originally delivered as the Patten
Lectures a t Indiana University in 1955, is derived from the
six wings of the seraphim (Isaiah 6 :2) and the six wings, or
chapters, of the famous astronomical tables compiled by
Immanuel Bonfils of Tarascon in the middle of the fourteenth century. The six chapters of Sarton’s work are:
The Frame of the Renaissance ; Exploration and Education ;
Mathematics and Astronomy ; Physics, Chemistry, Tech-
332
Indiana Magazine of Hiatom
nology ; Natural History ; Anatomy and Medicine ; Leonardo
da Vinci: Art and Science. In this book the word Renaissance, “a kind of weasel,” refers to the period 1450 to about
1600; i.e., from the Western discovery of printing to the
death of Giordano Bruno.
Since the whole of science during this century and a half
is a subject of tremendous magnitude, the author has endeavored to sketch the contributions of some thirty men of
science, with the hope that by knowing these well one could
“imagine all the others.” His selection, while somewhat artificial, succeeds well in showing the gigantic and revolutionary novelties of Renaissance science. One can “hardly speak
of a rebirth; it was a real birth, a new beginning.”
Dr. Sarton always considered himself “a man deeply interested in all the humanities of science, and above all, in the
personalities of scientific investigators” (p. vii) . This trait
is well displayed in the present work. Biographical facts,
while necessarily limited, are sufficiently detailed to relate
the complex and elusive personalities of the men of science
to the exciting and troubled period of the Renaissance. Some
thirty authentic portraits by contemporary artists contribute
to the delineation of these scientific personalities.
The international character of the scientific discoveries
of the period is clearly demonstrated as well as the relationship of Renaissance science to that of the preceding periods.
Also amply brought out is the dualism of the period. The
Renaissance was an age of scientific fact and superstition,
the rediscovery of classical knowledge and the unveiling of
new facts, the use of Latin and the vernacular, the moderns
vs. the ancients, astronomy and astrology, chemistry and
alchemy, truth and nonsense, correct ideas and fantasies, and
the genius and the charlatan. The Renaissance was a golden
age of letters and arts, but it was also an age of intolerance
and cruelty.
An appendix on Leonardo Chronology, seventy pages of
notes, and an index complete the work. Professor Sarton was
prevented by his death on March 22, 1956, from reading
the proof and preparing the index. Had he lived the latter
undoubtedly would have been more adequate and complete
and the few errors in dates corrected: Ficino died in 1499
not 1497 (p. 101) ; Constantinople fell in 1453 not 1543
(p. 107) ; and the Italian text of Dioscorides was first pub-
Book Reviews
333
lished in 1544 not 1944 (p. 285). One shortcoming, if it may
be called so in a survey of this type, is the relatively little
attention given to the role of philosophy in the scientific
thought of the period. Aristotelianism, Platonism, and
Pythagoreanism were all important in the early development
of modern science.
Arizona State College, Tempe
Karl H. Dannenfeldt
Man on His Past: The Study of the History of Historical
Scholarship. By Herbert Butterfield.
(Cambridge :
Cambridge University Press, 1955. Pp. xvii, 238. Appendices and index. $4.50.)
Books about history writers can be of very different
kinds. There is, for example, the dry, dreary list of historical
authors, with summaries of their work, which is the bane of
the graduate student getting ready for his general examinations. At the other end of the scale there can be penetrating
and detailed studies of individual historians and the ways
their minds work. Professor Butterfield’s work belongs to
the latter category. It is an extended version of a series of
six lectures given at Queen’s University, Belfast, in 1954 and
later broadcast on the B.B.C.’s Third Program.
The fact that this could be broadcast over a national radio
program-even the Third Program-is a striking commentary
on the difference between British and American ideas of
what listeners are entitled to hear. It is almost inconceivable
that anything like this series of talks-which probably not
one person in ten thousand would understand, at least in our
country-could be broadcast in the United States, even over
a radio station belonging to a university, to say nothing of a
nationwide hook-up.
Professor Butterfield’s book is not for the newcomer to
the study of history. The reader must be familiar with the
course and some of the main events of European history, and
must have read some of the great historians-at least Ranke
and Acton, with whom the author deals most extensively. The
person thus prepared will find in Professor Butterfield’s discussions ample material for reflection, and will probably be so
impressed by the keen analyses and criticisms that he will get
out his Ranke and Acton again and refresh his acquaintance.
No single limited theme ties the six lectures together. In
general, though the author dips into historiography as f a r