The Mind and the Eye
A Study of the Biologist's Standpoint

The Mind and the Eye is an erudite book questioning the relationship between the eye that sees and the mind that weighs and pronounces.

Agnes Arber (Author), P. R. Bell (Author)

9780521313315, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 August 1985

168 pages
21.6 x 13.8 x 1.1 cm, 0.192 kg

Agnes Arber's international reputation is due in part to her exceptional ability to interpret the German tradition of scholarship for the English-speaking world. The Mind and the Eye is an erudite book, revealing its author's familiarity with philosophy from Plato and Aristotle through Aquinas to Kant and Hegel; but it is not dull, because the quiet enthusiasm of the author shines through. In this book she turns from the work of a specialist in one science to those wider questions which any scientist must ask at intervals. What, in short, is the relationship between the eye that sees and the mind that weighs and pronounces? An important feature of this Cambridge Science Classics reissue is the introduction provided by Professor P. R. Bell, who as a Cambridge botany student at the time that Agnes Arber was writing The Natural Philosopby of Plant Form, is uniquely able to set The Mind and the Eye in the context of contemporary biological research.

Preface to the 1954 edition
Acknowledgements
Introduction by P. R. Bell
Part I. The Nature of Biological Research: Introduction
1. The biologist and his problem
2. The mode of discovery in biology
3. The logical background of the biologist's problem
4. The biologist's use of analogy
5. The biologist and the written word
Part II. The Bases of Biological Thinking: Introduction
6. Biology and truth
7. The basic assumptions of biology
8. Biological antitheses
9. Antitheses and dialectic
10. The mind and the eye
List of books and memoirs cited
Index.

Subject Areas: Behavioural theory [Behaviourism JMAL]