The Lives of Scientists

13ritish Scientists of the Nineteenth Century. By J. G. Crowther. (Kogan Paul. 12s. Eid.) MR. CROWTHER has put together a curious book. He has

chosen five of the leading physical scientists of the nine- teenth century (Davy, Faraday, Joule, Thomson and Maxwell) and written an account of each according to the same pattern : a simple and clear description of their fundamental dis- coveries, interspersed with explanations of their thoughts and actions on the basis of Marxian social psychology, and here and there a comment of the author's own, sometimes irrelevant and often penetrating. The result is a rather bewildering patchwork, as for example (immediately after a few paragraphs on Joule's researches in 1848-50) :

" After the publication of this work in 1850 Joule was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, at thirty-one years of age. The importance of his work was recognized quickly, but not immediately. Faraday was thirty-two years of age before he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. It is possible that Joule's social position as a son of a rich brewer assisted his early election. By 1850 Joule's scientific reputation was made. He continued to live for thirty- nine years, but the results of the scientific researches made during this period, though numerous and important, are not of the same supreme quality as those made in the first twelve years of his studies. This is due to the improbability that he would find another region of research which would provide such important results and simul- taneously suit his particular genius so well. It may also be due to his friendship with William Thomson, Joule had too much respect for Thomson's mathematical abilities . . ."

The style, with its short sentences, staccato rhythm and frequent long words such as " ideological," is much the same throughout the book, and resembles that of a good deal of Marxian literature. The disjointed paragraphs are irritating, and help to make the book difficult to read with any comfort. Though they sound more naive than they really are because of the way they are written, the psychological interpretations seem to me on the whole both machine-made and wrong. Yet I warmly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of science or the psychology of scientists.

The book is, in fact, very much like a conversation with someone of 'a Provoking but interesting mind, well equipped with his scientific facts, rather uncritically acceptant of their Marxian interpretation—but when away from' his textbooks full of ingenious ideas. If one is prepared to put up with the inconsecutiveness, one gains three kinds of profit, all valuable in their way. The first is the pure information ; Most of us know too little of the lives 'of scientists, largely because they are not, in the ordinary sense, " interesting " lives. (Davy was an exception ; but by the side of Faraday and Maxwell, he was not a great scientist at all.) Unless one has a taste for' the ordinary in lives, so to speak, there is not much to be found in scientific biographies ; apart from Carden and a handful of others, they are lacking in the

more obvious formS of colour ; by the nature of things, their ambitions and successes are on a somewhat reflective scale, and in private they have invariably lived in respectable domesticity, varying towards asceticism. Mathematicians sometimes go mad ; but that spice of variety is rare in experi- mental scientists. Such lives are bound to seem dull, if one thinks in terms of mistresses, spectacular triumphs and

failures, of Baudelaire, Dostoevski, Jay Gould or F. E. Smith : and, as a rule, the greater the scientists, the duller they will seem. It is a pity. For, however one regards it, science is playing a dominant part in our culture ; and, although it is the most anonymous of human activities, one misses something unless one has a nodding acquaintance with its chief practitioners. • That is the accepted reason for reading the lives of scientists ; but I am not sure it is the best. Just because it takes a little imaginative effort to realize that there were moments of excitement in these lives, that the men who lived them had their passionate experiences, I am inclined to think it is valuable to read about them, in order to subtilize one's interest in human beings. I cannot develop the point here, but I suggest that, while anyone can appre- ciate that Dostoevski felt strongly when they bandaged his eyes before the firing squad, it is the beginning of—what shall I call it ?—a cultivation in human insight to have a sense of the relations between Davy and Faraday, at the time when Davy was enviously trying to persuade his • .protégé to withdraw his candidature for the Royal Society. Anyway, for one reason or another, it is probably a good

thing to know the facts of scientists'- lives and 'learn a smatter- ing of their scientific achievement. These facts Mr. Crowther supplies admirably, so far as I can judge ; that is, of the three lives I knew anything about he provided everything I knew

and a good deal more besides (except a few scandalous anec- dotes of Davy). Naturally, I received his evidence on the other two, Joule and Thomson, with complete confidence in his accuracy. The scientific discussions and descriptions areas lucid and reliable as one would expect from one of the best scientific journalists of the day.

So that, for its information alone, the book is well worth reading. When it comes to Mr. Crowther's interpretationi, it is still worth reading, but in a different fashion. For unless one has already accepted Mandan materialism as the final solution, reading the book turns into an exasperated argu- ment, with Mr. Crowther hurling out his propositions froth. the Kremlin wall.

" Ma. CaowTHER Faraday's permanent acceptance of class distinction probably reinforced his tendency to individual research. READER : Henry Cavendish was the most marked example. of individual research that ever lived; showed all Faraday's nega- tive qualities (about which Mr. C. as some sensible things to say) carried to a neurotic extreme. Henry Cavendish was an aristc■Crat and very wealthy : whet about this acceptance of class distinction ?

MR. CROWTHER . His (James Clerk Maxwell's) father helped James to escape the ideology of the territorial class and become acquainted with the spirit of the culture of capitalist industrialism. READER : It could be better expressed ; but it means, if it means anything; that father and son had a set of interests unlike those of most Scottish lairds. And the reason for those interests depends about as much on their class as on the colour of their hair.

MR. CROWTHER : Faraday hicl been much affected by the culture of the governing class of the eighteenth century. . . . Thomsbn and Joule grew up in the Glasgow and Manchester districts respect- ively, chief centres of industrial development. They had matured in the culture of leaders of industrialism. Perhaps this helped Thomson to know Joule more easily than Faraday. READER (impatiently) : Mr. C. has compiled hundreds of facts about Faraday. Surely he must realize by now that no one could know him very easily. And that Thomson would have sheered off anyone of Faraday's make-up, whether he was a duke or a grocer. Why won't Mr. C., in a spirit of scientific observation, make notes of all the pairs of people he knows who have (a) an intuitive sym- pathy (b) an intuitive antipathy ? He may then begin to believe that there are likes and dislikes, just as there are loyalties, which have their roots in something more individual than class."

In that way one reads on, in a state of interested annoyance. It is all, as I said before, like a controversy with an opponent who has no doubts about his ground ; like one of those under- graduate controversies, when in the middle of the uncertainties and the fine vague dreams, a voice came, as from the further shore, of someone with a concrete and unshakeable system of

beliefs. He was wrong, everyone felt : but how exactly was he wrong ? A good many people will feel like that over Mr.

Crowther's biographies. Sometimes, usually in generaliza- tions about groups of people, these ex cathedra judgements seem to strike home : sometimes there is really something in them : and sometimes, unless one is in the habit of debating with Mr. Crowther's bloc, one is at a loss for the right argument although one feels that it exists.

There is a general impression that remains, however, if the reader is at all sceptical and empirically minded : which is, that it seems slightly remarkable, even for those who believe in Marxian materialism as the ultimate explanation of human movements in the mass, to try to explain the details of personal life by the Same process. Mr. Crowther is a highly intelligent man : why does this faith take away all grasp of huinan reality?

It is unfair not to repeat that Mr. Crowther is a highly intelligent man ; and the third, and chief, pleasure of the book owes itself simply to that. For information palls and argument is an indoor game of which one soon grows tired; but intelligent commentary is too rare in any book not to be rejoiced over whenever it comes. Mr. Crowther's book has a great deal of it ; in the midst of the facts, side.by, side with the conventional Mandan "explanations," there is a continuous bright-eyed observation which redeems the rest. There are acute comments on almost every page ; they are not always beyond question, but they are delightful in themselves' and as evidence of a writer alert, travelled, interested in most things, combative and humorous. These qualities, which force themselves out at odd corners, ought to have made a better book ; but, however fervently he tries to suppress them, they will illuniinate anything Mr. Crowther cares to write. C. P. SNoW.