SOURCE: “The Idealism of Giovanni Gentile,” in ISIS, Vol. XXIX, No. 79, November, 1938, pp. 366-76.

In the following essay, de Santillana contrasts the thinking of “scientific philosophers” with Gentile's actualist idealism.

Whatever we do know about the ways of knowing, and whatever clarification the scientific philosophers may have reached in their endeavors, one thing seems fairly certain, i. e. that common sense goes on being at a discount. Theoretical physics in the past thirty years has done much to discourage the simple-minded type of scientist who approached theory in the state of mind of the gadgeteer. A recent attempt at rigorous thinking—we refer to Professor Dingle's latest book—ends in a kind of reluctant idealism; all the more significant in that it proceeds from a physicist who has never been reconciled at heart even to relativity. All in all, and notwithstanding the brilliant punitive forays of a certain...