Book Reviews 38.5

Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe 1815-1914, Sandi E. Cooper (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 336 pp., US$39.95.

Sandi E. Cooper, professor of History at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, has written an excellent study of the somewhat neglected and almost always denigrated peace movement in Europe between 1815 and 1914. Her research is voluminous (the bibliography extends 23 pages) and widespread (in the archives of Britain, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, France and the U.S.A. and the press of these countries and Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany). She focusses on an untraditional aspect of international relations, dealing with a (largely) powerless and forgotten but revealing element of the political spectrum. Though sympathetic with her subject, she renders a realistic and unsentimental assessment of pacifist influence and aspirations. Her fine book will appeal to general readers, political activists and scholars of political theory, diplomatic practice and European culture.

The peace movement passed through several general stages. Before the nineteenth century the problem of peace had interested occasional leaders, thinkers (including some notable ones from Dante and Erasmus to Rousseau and Kant) and religious groups. The quarter century of conflict during the French Revolution and Napoleon fostered the aspiration for peace not only of conservatives like Metternich but also religious activists first in Britain and the U.S.A., then Geneva (1830), and later among Belgian and French progressive intellectuals and politicians (1830s and 1840s). This first stage came to a close with the counter-revoIutions of 1850, the Crimean War, and the American Civil War. During those violent 20 years a new generation of activists developed two distinct continental groupings-one moderate-conservative inspired by Cobden’s liberal economics with Frederic Passy as its most notable spokesman, the other more flambuoyant, democratic, Jacobin and anti-clerical including Garibaldi, Hugo and Mill (briefly) and seeking working class connections. The democratic peace movement was again sundered by conflict and revolution, this time the France-Prussian War and Commune.

The phoenix of peace arose, however, from the ashes of war andgrew steadily to World War I. Peace organisations were formed in nearly every European state and expanded socially to include workers and women, teachers and students, pastors and parliamentarians. The heyday was between 1889 and 1914, when a vigorous peace movement was formed, organised between 1889 and 1891 as two “peace internationals”, one with members of parliaments (which exists stiil as the Interparliamenta~ Union), the other of private citizens (Universal Peace Congress, 1889-1939 with cu one million members in 1914). Cooper traces the evolution of these organisations, refinement of doctrine and intensification of tactics to reach not only governments but also the masses. Trying to square peace and patriotism, the mainstream of the movement approved of defensive war, i.e. the “patriotic pacifism” of her title. But again war prevailed and the movement collapsed in 1914.

How can one evaluate the movement? In the most obvious sense it failed to keep the peace; however worthy, there is nothing more irrelevant than a good idea before its time has come. Governments disregarded it-but no more than they did virtually all public opinion. An answer requires a more specific question: what do we mean by success? The pacifists were right in their analysis of the nature and effects of modern war, as they were in their vision of a prosperous, integrated Europe. Their views prefigured subsequent ideas and institutions; indeed, if success allows for a iongue duree, one can view post-1945 as the fulfillment of their aspiration. Only the means were wrong: the world wars not world peace removed the obstacles which their arguments could not. Whether this was Europe’s only possible path raises the slippery question of determinism on which the peace movement poses an awkward dilemma. If the pacifists had no chance (as the

386 Book Reviews

“realists” contend), then history is determined in that sense and war was unavoidable. If history is not determined, then the pacifists might have had some (however minimal) chance. Either way their story is worth telling and Professor Cooper has done it masterfully.

Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts L.L. Farrar Jr

Laws and Symmetry, Bas C. Van Fraassen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), xv + 395 pp., US$55.00 cloth, US$14.95 paper.

In Laws and Symmetry, Van Fraassen continues to elaborate the anti-realist philosophy

of science that he set out in TheScientificZmage(1980). In the present work, he approaches questions about the nature and status of science by attacking the almost universal assumption that laws of nature are one of the central components of scientific theories, Laws are usually invoked to account for the explanatory power of scientific theories and to explicate the notion of physical necessity. Van Fraassen examines several recent accounts of laws, particularly that of David Lewis, and argues that these accounts do not adequately describe the way science functions. In fact, he claims, laws do not play a role in the process of science.

Van Fraassen considers the most common criteria philosophers of science have used to identify statements as laws and proceeds to demonstrate with exacting precision that, on Lewis’ and others’ de~nitions, laws fail to function as the usual criteria demand. Laws do not necessarily explain observed phenomena. Candidates for the role oflaw do not always meet the various criteria simultaneously. For example, the simplest laws may not always be the most explanatory. And propositions which meet the criteria often presuppose that the science in question is complete or finished, and so the criteria are not very useful for analysing science in process. Moreover, in order to account for the fact that laws explain necessity, it is necessary to admit some kind of anti-nominalism.

Van Fraassen argues that ‘any philosophical account of laws needs a good deal in the way of metaphysics.. . and (that they) come to grief.. . in their attempts even to meet the most basic criteria relating to science and explanation’ (p. 130). Having shown that laws do not play a role in scientific reasoning, he proceeds to develop an account of knowledge and science independent of any belief in the laws of nature. Central to this philosophy of science is the view that empirical adequacy is the criterion for theory choice and that explanation consists of providing the right information at the right time rather than in showing that the explanandum fits under the rubric of some purported law. This empiricist account of scientific theories is consistent with a nominalist metaphysics. Accordingly, Van Fraassen argues that a proper analysis of science should take a semantic approach and focus on questions about models rather than questions about laws. It follows that philosophy of science will attend to the theories and models of science. A central discovery resulting from this approach is that ‘at the most basic level of theorising, sive model construction, lies the pursuit of symmetry’ (p. 233). For this reason, Van Fraassen devotes the second half of the book to a technical analysis of the concept of symmetry and its role in scientific discourse, with particular attention to probabilistic reasoning in science.