RATIONAL BELIEF: AN INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC
, by Albert M. Frye and AlbertW. Levi '32, Harcourt, Brace ir Cos. p. xiii,482. $2.75.
WHATEVER A MAN'S INTERESTS in college and after life, he needs to think straight, and know how to detect fallacies and weigh probabilities. For this reason, elementary logic has for twenty three centuries been recognized to be one of the most important subjects in the college curriculum. Many essential principles were so well stated by Aristotle that they remain unchanged today. Others have been discovered from time to time, some during the present generation.
While they acknowledged the value of logic, American undergraduates during the nineteenth century often complained that courses were dry, and unnecessarily technical. Early in the present century great improvements in methods of instruction were effected, at Dartmouth by H. H. Home and W. H. Sheldon. Their successors here have endeavored to imitate them, and likewise emphasize topics whose utility students appreciate.
This book is the latest fruit of such endeavors. The topics chosen for discussion are those which Dartmouth experience has found best suited to the interests and needs of students. The text is well organized. It is accurate in statement of principles. There are abundant and well chosen exercises and illustrations. The chief novel feature is the introduction of semantics, which Professor Levi handles admirably. The book is now being used by a class of two hundred fifty students. At the time of writing about half of the text has been traversed by this class, with satisfactory results. While the volume is not without pedagogical faults, it now appears to be the best text available for this course. Alumni who wish to refresh their memory of elementary logic and to acquaint themselves with its latest developments, as well as those who were unfortunate enough not to have taken logic and now desire to remedy a deficiency in their education, will do well to read this book.
Fifty Years Study and Experience in OcularMotility, by Dr. Walter B. Lancaster, a pamphlet of 39 pages, has been reprinted from the Transactions of Twenty-Eighth Annual Meeting Pacific Coast Oto-Ophthalmological Society.
Inter-Correlations Between Growth Ratesof Conifers in Northern New England, by Professor Charles J. Lyon, has been reprinted from the January issue of the Tree-Ring Bulletin.
Simple Examples of Limiting Processes inProbability, by Professor Bancroft H. Brown, has been reprinted from the February issue of the American Mathematical Monthly.
Professor Carl L. Wilson is the author of an article in the February issue of ChronicaBotanica entitled The Evolution of the Stamen.
The May issue of the Red Book contains a story by Mr. Peter Cardozo '39 entitled Women Are Such Fools.
