The Tangled Bank: Darwin, Marx, Frazer and Freud as Imaginative Writers by Stanley Edgar Hyman. Atheneum Publishers, $10.00.
The Tangled Bank begins by asserting that all science is affected by its own rhetoric and ends by claiming that science is in fact metaphor itself. The best thing about this book is its examination of the language of scientists. The worst is the illusion it fosters about the analogical and mythical “function” of science. Mr. Hyman conceives of Darwin, Marx, Frazer, and Freud as really developers of metaphor—the “tangled bank” itself comes from Darwin’s insight into the swarming life of nature:
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