Abstract

The book is intended as a critical history of the growth of the ideal of knowledge in science, philosophy and history since Hegel. In order to give some conception of its encyclopædic scope, one need only mention an incomplete list of the topics which are considered in it: the development of non-Euclidean geometries, the logical foundation of the concept of number, the effect of the quantum theory on the concept of physical knowledge, the development of classification and systematization of natural forms in biology, the effects of Darwinism and of the mechanism-vitalism controversy on biological thought, the development of such modes of historiography as the romantic, positivistic and political, as well as of the history of civilization and the history of religion.