Book Review
PD Smith
The Guardian,
The Guardian,
Saturday September 21 2002
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas S Kuhn tried to break free from the traditional view of scientific discovery as resulting from the heroic achievements of the great men of science. Kuhn announced a "historiographic revolution", arguing that the history of science was not merely the story of a steadily accumulating body of facts, but a complex activity embedded in a historical, social and philosophical context.
In his latest book, the astrophysicist and prolific science writer John Gribbin rejects Kuhn's view and reverts to exploring the progress of science through the lives of scientists. He admits that such an "old-fashioned" approach will be unpopular among "professional historians", but argues that "the two keys to scientific progress are the personal touch and building gradually on what has gone before. Science is made by people, not people by science."
His journey through the history of science begins in 1543, the publication date of two seminal texts: Vesalius's On the Structure of the Human Body and Copernicus's On the Revolutions of Celestial Bodies. Both works radically transformed our view of ourselves and our place in the universe: they caused (to use Kuhn's apt phrase) a paradigm shift in our understanding of the world.
From the origins of western science in the Renaissance, Gribbin plots his course for the present day, travelling via the Newtonian and Darwinian revolutions, astronomy, chemistry, geology, and atomic theory, before arriving in the modern era with the New Physics, genetics and the Big Bang.
Gribbin aims at giving his reader "a feel for the full sweep of science", and he succeeds brilliantly. There are some omissions though: the attempts of Freud and others to explain the workings of the mind are ignored, and meteorology (charted so wonderfully in Richard Hamblyn's The Invention of Clouds) is barely mentioned. But even scientists have to be selective in their choice of data.
Gribbin presents science as a cumulative process. He agrees with Newton that scientists make their discoveries "by standing on the shoulders of giants". But as the story behind this phrase shows, the history of science can also be a very human, not to say petty, affair.
The comment appears in what was supposed to be a letter of reconciliation to Robert Hooke, who had been justifiably annoyed by Newton's failure to acknowledge his contribution to the theory of light. Newton's ambiguous phrase also implies he was a "mental pygmy" and definitely not one of the giants of science on whose shoulders Newton stood. But Hooke recognised the true value of science when he told Newton that, despite their personal animus, they were united in their commitment to "the discovery of truth" and had "minds equally inclined to yield to the plainest deductions of reason from experiment".
As in the arts, individual achievement is undoubtedly an important part of science. But it is the scientific method for discovering the truth through rational discourse and experiment that makes science (to quote Gribbin) "arguably the greatest achievement" of the human mind. It seems Newton, "a nasty piece of work" who "always harboured grudges", rather missed the point.
Einstein once tried to warn off biographers by saying that what is essential in the life of a scientist is "what he thinks and how he thinks, and not what he does or suffers". Surprisingly, given his biographical approach, Gribbin is also rather dismissive of personal details, commenting brusquely at one point that Darwin's family life "is not what matters". As Randal Keynes showed in Annie's Box, Darwin's family life can cast light on his science.
But if he is rather unadventurous in exploring individual psychology, Gribbin excels at making complex science intelligible to the general reader. His chapter on atoms and molecules is a model of clarity. Similarly, his account of Faraday's ground-breaking exploration of electricity is charged with the excitement of discovery. Gribbin has a real passion for his subject, and is at his best describing the development of physics. If you're looking for a book that captures the personal drama and achievement of science, then look no further.
