AUTUMN PAPERBACKS
Guides to a Revolution
B y GERALD LEACH
IT T has been said often before, but it can never be said often enough: anyone who cares about the future direction of our society must care about the present directions of science. Now no one really doubts this—indeed, since August 6, 1945, no one could doubt it. And yet, the majority of us, we have not yet come to believe it, to act on it. The paragraph in the papers reporting that someone has learnt how to grow vegetables in sea water still goes unno- ticed among the day's trivialities.
There is, of course, a good reason for this: when it comes to science the outsider is more truly outside than with any other aspect of our culture. The trouble is not so much that he does not know but that he does not know what to know. The intelligent non-scientist has no handy critical labels like the ones he carries to the con- temporary art gallery or the concert of modern music. He is lost, surrounded by voices urging him to look at this, take note of that: all he gets are isolated titbits. And the result, inevitably, is indigestion—or worse still, loss of appetite.
I say all this not to lead up to any magical solution—until a generation has grown up which accepts science as naturally and critically as, say, fiction, there are none—but merely to point out that if one is interested the guides do exist, and that some of the best are to be found in this selection of paperbacks.
It is a striking paradox that from a batch of eleven science books the one which has most relevance to our society should be about an episode which took place three centuries ago. The tangled webs of motives and pressures, of power groups and intriguers, which Giorgio de Santillana so brilliantly traces out in The Crime of Galileo (Mercury Books, 10s. 6d.) are very far from being dead issues. The tragedies of the Russian geneticists and the physicists under Hit- ler were faithful rehearsals of the Galileo story; so, too, was the infamous Oppenheimer affair (for 'Societas Jesu' read 'Strategic Air Com- mand'). The conflicts which must arise when the scientific mind 'with its free-roaming curi- osity, its unconventional interests, its detach- ment, its ancient and somewhat esoteric values' meets the unrelenting interests of society and State will be worrying us for some time.
In this book the whole sorry story of Galileo's rise and fall is set down with utter objectivity and with a fascinating attention to detail (in- cluding extracts from all the relevant docu- ments, some of them little known). The tor- tuously unfolding plot is as gripping as any psychological thriller. As de Santillana sees it. the plot was in fact far thicker than other his- torians have supposed, with a third faction— `the voice of the streamlined, the efficient, and the new'—deliberately and successfully stepping in and ambushing both Galileo, with his at- tempts to bring his culture to an awareness of the new scientific ideas, yet seeking support in established custom and tradition, and Urban VIII, the organiser of power and authority. De Santillana's book raises the question of the scientist's role in society. The Art of Scien- tific Investigation, by W. I. B. Beveridge (Mer- cury Books, 7s. 6d.), reveals what sort of creature he is. Originally written for the research student, this brilliant and justly famous book is perhaps the most comprehensive (and read- able) map of the scientific mind yet written. In chapters on experimentation, chance, hypothesis, intuition, reason, observation, difficulties and strategy, the author has explored every facet of the ways the scientific creative mind goes to work. It should fascinate the non-scientist, for it not only catches the elusive spirit of research but also includes hundreds of the personal re- flections and anecdotes which go to make up the folklore of science, from Shaw's 'reading rots the mind' to Darwin's credo, 'I must begin with a good body of facts, and not from prin- ciple, in which I always suspect some fallacy'— a motto for every politician's parlour.
In Science and Common Sense (Oxford, 1 Is. 6d.) the famous American scientist and educator James B. Conant covers roughly the same ground, but this time with a historical approach. The stated aim of the book is to give non-scientists some understanding of the way scientists operate and of the tactics and strategy of science from the individual researcher up to the university and international groups. The technique, largely, is to take a series of case histories of various developments, and within its limits the attempt has come off. But it does assume a fairly devoted reader—do you pale at the thought of reading quite a lengthy account of the growth of a concept such as atmospheric pressure or the development of Boyle's air pump? Bi-culturally speaking, you shouldn't; but there it is.
There should be no need to introduce this re- issue of The Evolution of Physics, by Einstein and Infeld (Cambridge, 13s. 6d.)—it should be on everyone's shelves already. The marvellous lucidity and simplicity of Einstein's mind shine out on every page, and this is all the more pointed by the fact that much of the book is about his own great contributions to the revolu- tionary ideas which have entered physics (and our culture?) in this century, notably relativity. Briefly, the book describes the rise and fall of the mechanistic viewpoint, stemming from New- ton, which has now been replaced by the con- cepts of fields of force, of relativity, of quanta and the essentially bitty, nature of matter and energy and modern ideas of probability.
The Nature of Thermodynamics, by P. W. Bridgman (Harper Torchbooks, Hamish Hamil- ton. I5s.), is another layman's must in any quick 'two cultures' course. This is not just because of the hoary old comparison between the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Hamlet (or what- ever). The substance of this book—entropy and the tendency for all closed systems to run down in time to a dead level, featureless uniformity-
really is of the profoundest importance and, yes, fascination. It is the one physical quantity which allows us to tell which way time is running; it is one of the supreme characteristics of life that it can locally reverse this general trend. Pro- fessor Bridgman has grasped the subject firmly and explained it with a masterful touch.
The Universe Around Us, by Sir James Jeans (Cambridge, 13s. 6d.), became one of the great classics of popular astronomy and atomic phy- sics when it first appeared in 1929. This paper- back is the book's fifth edition and very welcome, too. Unfortunately, however, time has at last caught up with Sir James and his revisions (the last-1943), so that many of the facts in the text are now almost hopelessly wrong. For a more recent and equally perceptive glimpse at astronomy one can strongly recommend The Individual and the Universe (Oxford, 5s.)—an unillustrated reprint of Professor A. C. B. Lovell's 1958 Reith Lectures. Those who heard this memorable series can recapture in the text the extraordinary mixture of humility, wonder and expectancy with which this gentle-voiced man described the new vistas of the universe being opened up by the lusty young science of radio astronomy. Introduction to Astronomy, by C. Payne-Gaposchkin (Methuen, University Paperbacks, 16s.), is more prosaic, though far more full of that fairly essential stuff—facts. A standard though unusually comprehensive ac- count of current astronomical knowledge, from the earth, sun and planets up to the evolution of stars and the universe, it is marred by some poor layouts and atrocious reproductions.
It would take a long, long time to count the number of books that have appeared on the history of mathematics. Makers of Mathematics, by Alfred Hooper (Faber, 12s. 6d.), is definitely near the top of this vast and very variable class. Going only as far as Gauss and Leibnitz (that is, the seventeenth century) it goes a good deal further than most people went at school (for example, it introduces the elements of differential calculus and complex numbers). This is a valuable, readable and, yes, exciting book, though one strongly suspects that the average innumerate eager for enlightenment who picks it up and leafs through it will put it down again quickly. It is no fault of the author's, but pages of equations and diagrams must look as intimi- dating as a plain page of writing must look pointless to a mathematician.
Lastly, a strong recommendation to get hold of one of the great books on human behaviour and the brain—The Evolution of Human Nature, by C. Judson Herrick (Hamish Hamil- ton, 18s.). With thirty-four chapters covering every conceivable aspect of the brain and ner- vous system, from their evolution to the impli- cations of current work on social organisation and the social sciences, Professor Herrick has made a notable contribution to science popu- larisation.
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