The Unnatural Nature of Science Page 22

  Most education in science avoids personalities. It also excludes insight into the process of science. Much biology is learned at school (and even at university) in the same way as one learns irregular verbs in a foreign language – by rote. Little would be lost if less science were taught but some insight were gained into the processes of science. Learning about creativity in science, with an emphasis on psychic courage and failure, may well be very much more valuable than some of the science itself.

  Whether or not non-scientists like it, science is part of our culture. Most people’s views are in some way influenced by scientific ideas – that the earth goes round the sun, that genetic defects cause disease, that radioactivity can be dangerous – even if they have a very poor understanding of the validity or basis of the ideas. Understanding the processes of science and scientific ideas is hard. Ironically, some of the ideas that have been popularized, like chaos and the peculiar features of quantum mechanics, have been used in a magical way in novels such as Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time. We need to find ways in which to make science less alien, exciting, but not mystical. Somehow we must find a way to remove the humiliating wound to their intellectual self-esteem that non-scientists like Lionel Trilling (page xi) experience by not understanding science. This is a central problem to be faced at all levels in the education system.

  Science is bound to play a central role in our lives. It is to science and technology that we shall have to look for help to get us out of some of the mess in which we now all find ourselves – a mess that involves both environmental pollution and overpopulation. Of course not all the solutions will be science-based, but science can make a crucial contribution. I cannot offer specific solutions, for the nature of discovery precludes that, but knowing how the world works may be an essential requirement for helping to save it.

  Finally, we should always remember the origin of science in Greece. Even though we do not understand why it should have had its origins there, the Greek commitment to free and critical discussion was essential for science to flourish. And the same is true today. While at present science flourishes, we must be aware how easily it might wither: witness the disastrous effects Lysenko’s dogmas, supported by the state, had on Soviet genetics. Those who dislike the ideas of science and think they have had a malevolent effect on our spiritual life should realize that once one rejects understanding and chooses dogma and ignorance, not only science but democracy itself is threatened. Science is one of humankind’s greatest and most beautiful achievements and for its continuation, free and critical discussion, with no political interference, is as essential today as it was in Ionia.

  References

  Key references are marked with an asterisk.

  1: Unnatural Thoughts

  * Holton, G., and Brush, S. G. (1973) Introduction to concepts and theories in physical science. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.

  Toulmin, S. (1961), Foresight and understanding: an enquiry into the aims of science. Indiana University Press, Bloomington

  MOTION

  * Gentner, D. and Stevens, A. L. (eds.) (1983), Mental models. L. Erblaum, Hillsdale, NJ

  Sorabji, R. (ed.), (1987) Philoponus and the rejection of Aristotelian Science. Duckworth, London

  CHILDREN

  * Adey, P. (1987), ‘Science develops logical thinking – doesn’t it?’ Part 1. School Science Review, 68, 622–30

  * Driver, R. (1988), ‘Restructuring the science curriculum: some implications of studies on learning for curriculum development’. In Innovation in Science and Technology, D. Layton (ed.), pp. 59–84. UNESCO

  Kuhn, D., Amsel, E. and O’Loughlin, M. (1988), The development of scientific thinking skills. Academic Press, San Diego

  Kagan, J. (1984), The nature of the child. Basic Books, New York.

  Leslie, A. M. and Keeble, S. (1987), ‘Do six-months old infants perceive causality?’ Cognition 25, 265–88

  * Piaget, J. (1929), The child’s conception of the world. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London

  COMMON-SENSE THINKING

  * Bannister, D. and Fansela, F. (1971), Inquiring man: the theory of personal constructs. Penguin, Middlesex

  Furnham, A. F. (1988), Lay theories. Pergamon Press, Oxford

  * Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1988), The computer and the mind. Fontana, London

  * Kahneman, D., Slovic, P. and Tversky, A. (1982), Judgement under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Cambridge University Press, New York

  Kuhn, D. (1991), The skills of argument. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  * Matlin, M. W. (1989), Cognition. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York

  * Paulos, J. A. (1990), Innumeracy. Penguin, Middlesex.

  di Sessa, A. (1988), ‘Knowledge in pieces.’ In Constructivism in the Computer Age, G. Forman and P. B. Pufall (eds.), pp. 49–70. Lawrence Erblaum: Hillsdale, NJ

  Waldrop, M. M. (1987), ‘Causality, structure and common sense.’ Science, 237, 1297–9

  Wason, P. C. and Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1972), Psychology of reasoning: structure and content. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

  2: Technology is not Science

  * Basalla, G. (1988), The evolution of technology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  * Boorstin, D. J. (1984), The Discoverers. Random House, New York

  * Ferguson, E. S. (1977), ‘The mind’s eye: nonverbal thought in technology’. Science, 197, 829

  Heyman, J. (1987), ‘The structural analysis of gothic architecture.’ Proc. Royal Institution of Great Britain, 59, 215–26.

  * Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966) The savage mind. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London

  Toulmin, S. and Goodfield, J. (1965), The architecture of matter. Penguin, Middlesex

  3: Thales’s Leap: West and East

  * Galileo, G. (1953), Dialogues concerning two new sciences. S. Drake (ed.) University of California Press, Berkeley

  * Kuhn, T. (1957), The Copernican revolution. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

  * Lloyd, G. E. R. (1987), The revolution of wisdom: studies in the claims and practice of ancient Greek science. University of California Press, Berkeley

  Neugebauer, D. (1979), A history of ancient mathematical astronomy. Springer Verlag, Berlin

  Sarton, G. (1959), A History of Science. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

  Weber, M. (1968), Economy and society. G. Roth and C. Wittick (eds.) Bedminster Press, New York

  CHINA

  Graham, A. C. (1989) Disputers of the Tao philosophical argument in ancient China. Open Court, La Salle, Ill.

  * Needham, J. (1969), The grand titration: science and society in east and west. Allen & Unwin, London

  RELIGION

  Funkenstein, A. (1986), Theology and the scientific imagination. Princeton University Press, New Jersey

  * Jaki, S. L. (1986), Science and creation. Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh

  * Thomas, K. (1971), Religion and the decline of magic. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London

  Willey, B. (1934), The seventeenth-century background. Chatto & Windus, London

  PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES

  * Ashley Montagu (1974), Coming into being among the Australian aborigines. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London

  * Horton, B. (1967), ‘African traditional thought and Western science.’ Africa, 38, 50–71 and 153–87

  EVOLUTIONARY CONTINGENCY

  Gould, S. J. (1989), Wonderful Life. Norton, New York

  4: Creativity

  Borkowski, J. C. and Peck, V. A. (1986), ‘Causes and consequences of metamemory in gifted children.’ In Conceptions of Giftedness, R. J. Sternberg and J. Davidson (eds.), pp. 182–200. Cambridge University Press, New York

  * Cohen, I. B. (1980), The Newtonian revolution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  Cole, J. R. and Cole, S. (1972), ‘The Ortega hypothesis.’ Science, 178, 368–75

  Davidson, J. (1986), ‘The role of insight in giftedness.’ In Conceptions of Giftedness, R. J. Sternberg and J. Davidson (eds.), p
p. 201–22. Cambridge University Press, New York.

  Feynman, R. (1965), The character of physical law. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

  De Groot, A. D. (1969), Thought and choice in chess. Mouton, The Hague

  Gruber, H. E. (1986), ‘The self-construction of the extraordinary.’ In Conceptions of Giftedness, R. J. Sternberg and J. Davidson (eds.), pp. 247–63. Cambridge University Press, New York

  Medawar, P. (1984), Pluto’s republic. Oxford University Press, Oxford

  * Merton, R. K. (1973), ‘Singletons and multiples in science.’ In The Sociology of Science, N. W. Storer (ed.), pp. 343–70. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  * Miller, A. I. (1992), ‘Scientific creativity: a comparative study of Henri Poincaré and Albert Einstein.’ Creativity Research Journal (in press)

  Sayers, D. L. (1927), Unnatural death. Gollancz, London

  Simonton, D. K. (1988), Scientific genius: a psychology of science. Cambridge University Press, New York

  * Weisberg, C. (1986), Creativity: genius and other myths. Freeman, New York

  * Wolpert, L. and Richards, A. (1988), A Passion for Science. Oxford University Press, Oxford [interviews with Brenner, Crick and Zeeman]

  COMPUTER MODELS

  Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988), ‘Motivation and creativity: towards a synthesis of structural and energistic approaches to cognition.’ New Ideas in Psychol., 6, 159–76

  * Langley, P., Simon, H. D. and Zytkow, J. M. (1987), Scientific discovery. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

  DARWIN

  * Mayr, E. (1982), The growth of biological thought. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

  * Gruber, H. (1981), Darwin on man: a psychological study of scientific creativity. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

  MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

  * Hilts, P. J. (1982), Scientific temperaments. Simon & Schuster, New York

  Jacob, F. (1988), The statue within. Basic Books, New York

  * Judson, H. F. (1979), The eighth day of creation: the makers of the revolution in biology. Jonathan Cape, London

  SERENDIPITY

  Kohn, A. (1989), Fortune or failure. Blackwell, Oxford

  * Roberts, R. M. (1989), Serendipity. Wiley, New York

  Maurois, A. (1959), The life of Sir Alexander Fleming. Jonathan Cape, London

  5: Competition, Cooperation and Commitment

  * Brush, S. G. (1989), ‘Prediction and theory evaluation: the case of light bending.’ Science, 246, 1124–9

  Djerassi, K. (1990), Cantor’s dilemma. Macdonald, London

  Gaston, J. (1973), Originality and competition in science. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  * Hallam, A. (1983), Great geological controversies. Oxford University Press, Oxford

  * Holton, G. (1978), The scientific imagination. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  Hull, D. L. (1988), Science as a process: an evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  Keller, E. F. (1983), A feeling for the organism. Freeman, New York [a biography of McClintock]

  * Kuhn, T. S. (1970), The structure of scientific revolutions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  * Lightman, A. and Gingerich, O. (1992), ‘When do anomalies begin?’ Science, 255, 690–95

  * Merton, R. K. (1973) ‘The normative structure of science.’ In The sociology of science, N. W. Storer (ed.), pp. 267–78, University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  Mitroff, I. I. (1974), The subjective side of science: a philosophical inquiry into the psychology of the Apollo moon scientists. Elsevier, New York

  Racker, E. (1989), ‘A view of misconduct in science.’ Nature, 339, 91–3

  Shapin, S. and Schaffer, S. (1985), Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life. Princeton University Press, NJ

  Toulmin, S. E. (1967), ‘The evolutionary development of natural science.’ American Scientist, 55, 456–71

  * Wolpert, L. and Richards, A. (1988), A passion for science. Oxford University Press, Oxford [interviews with Epstein and Salam]

  6: Philosophical Doubts or Relativism Rampant

  * Barrow, J. D. (1988), The world within the world. Clarendon, Oxford [the nature of physics]

  Gooding D. (1990), Experiment and the making of meaning. Kluver, Dordrecht [Faraday’s method]

  * Holton, G. (1978), The scientific imagination: case studies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  Merton, R. (1973), The sociology of science: theoretical and empirical investigations. N. W. Storer (ed.), University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  Root-Bernstein, R. S. (1989), Discovering: inventing and solving problems at the frontiers of scientific knowledge. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

  Weber, M. (1968), On charisma and institution building. S. N. Eisenstadt (ed), University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  Ziman, J. (1968), Public knowledge: an essay concerning the social dimension of science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

  Bernard, C. (1927), An introduction to experimental medicine. Macmillan, New York

  Magee, B. (1973), Popper. Fontana, London

  * Newton-Smith, W. H. (1981), The rationality of science. Routledge, London [good introduction to the problems]

  Popper, K. R. (1963), Conjectures and refutations. Routledge, London

  Putnam, H. (1987), The many faces of realism. Open Court, La Salle, Ill.

  Rorty, R. (1991), Objectivity, relativism and truth. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  Ziman, J. (1984), An introduction to science studies: the philosophies and social aspects of science and technology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  RELATIVISTIC SOCIOLOGY

  * Barnes, B. (1985), About science. Blackwell, Oxford

  Barnes, B. and Edge, D. (eds.) (1982), Science in context: readings in the sociology of science. Open University Press, Milton Keynes

  Gross, A. G. (1990) The rhetoric of science. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

  Hesse, M. (1980), Revolutions and reconstructions in the philosophy of science. Harvester Press, Brighton

  * Hollis, M. and Lukes, S. (1982), Rationality and relativism. Blackwell, Oxford

  Latour, B. (1987), Science in action: how to follow scientists and engineers through society. Open University Press, Milton Keynes

  * Pickering, A. (1984), Constructing quarks: a sociological history of particle physics. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

  * Woolgar, S. (1988), Science: the very idea. Horwood, Chichester & Tavistock, London

  Ziman, J. (1985), ‘Deconstructing the physical world.’ Minerva, pp. 517–22 [review of Pickering’s book]

  MENDEL

  * Brannigan, A. (1981), The social basis of scientific discoveries. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  Jacob, F. (1974), The logic of living systems: a history of heredity. Allen Lane, London

  * Mayr, E. (1982), The growth of biological thought. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

  PHRENOLOGY

  * Cantor, G. (1975), ‘The Edinburgh phrenology debate 1803–1828.’ Annals Science, 32, 195–218

  * Shapin, S. (1979), ‘The politics of observation: cerebral anatomy and social interests in the Edinburgh phrenology disputes.’ In On the margins of science: the social construction of rejected knowledge, R. Wallis (ed.), pp. 130–38. Sociological Review Monogr. 27, Keele University, Keele

  SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSIES

  Close, F. (1991), Too hot to handle: the race for cold fusion. Princeton University Press, NJ

  * Franks, F. (1982) Polywater. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

  ANTHROPOLOGY

  Douglas, M. (1980), Evans-Pritchard. Fontana, London

  Leach, E. (1982), Social anthropology. Fontana, London

  Lévi-Strauss, C. (1968), Structural anthropology. Penguin, Middlesex

  O’Keefe, D. (1982), Stolen lightning: the social theory of magic. Martin Rober
tson, Oxford

  7: Non-Science

  Gardner, H. (1987), The mind’s new science. Basic Books, New York

  Jay, P. (ed.) (1981), The Greek anthology and other ancient epigrams. Penguin, Middlesex

  Medawar, P. (1963), ‘Is the scientific paper a fraud?’ Listener, 12 September

  EMBRYOLOGY

  Cole, F. J. (1930), Early theories of sexual generation. Clarendon Press, Oxford

  Roe, S. A. (1981), Matter, life and generation: 18th-century embryology and the Haller-Wolff Debate. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge