Lucidity and science III: Hypercredulity, quantum mechanics, and scientific truth

Interdisciplinary Science Reviews

Volumn 23, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 29-70

  McIntyre, Michael E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 0039594248     PISSN: 03080188     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1179/isr.1998.23.1.29     Document Type: Article

References (227)

1. The late Michael Tippett wrote these words, and set them to music of great simplicity, power, and beauty, during the dark years around the beginning of the Second World War. The words and the music express a vision of hope that is still needed today, and is the theme of this article. See pp. 136-149 of M. TIPPETT: 'A Child of Our Time: oratorio for soli, chorus and orchestra'; 1944, London, Schott, 157 pp.
2. 161,168-171,204,205 My personal and, I believe, strong reply to the architect's concerns is given in the present article, in the sections labelled 'Respect and humility' and 'An optimist's millennium'. Science does not say that we are simple machines; and I argue that it gives us more reason than ever 'to aspire to better things'.
3. 162 are the first serious steps in becoming one with God' (also Science, 1998, 279, 315, Nature, 1998, 391, 211 and 218-219, and many newspaper reports around mid January 1998). The announcement seemed to show no awareness of the possible psychosocial consequences of such a thing, nor of safety considerations, as indicated by the high failure rate, 1 in 400, with sheep, nor of the other huge uncertainties in the early days of a one off experimental success (e.g. Science, 1998, 279, 635-636, and refs. therein). Professional scientists were quick to distance themselves from the individual concerned.
4. 162 are the first serious steps in becoming one with God' (also Science, 1998, 279, 315, Nature, 1998, 391, 211 and 218-219, and many newspaper reports around mid January 1998). The announcement seemed to show no awareness of the possible psychosocial consequences of such a thing, nor of safety considerations, as indicated by the high failure rate, 1 in 400, with sheep, nor of the other huge uncertainties in the early days of a one off experimental success (e.g. Science, 1998, 279, 635-636, and refs. therein). Professional scientists were quick to distance themselves from the individual concerned.
5. 162 are the first serious steps in becoming one with God' (also Science, 1998, 279, 315, Nature, 1998, 391, 211 and 218-219, and many newspaper reports around mid January 1998). The announcement seemed to show no awareness of the possible psychosocial consequences of such a thing, nor of safety considerations, as indicated by the high failure rate, 1 in 400, with sheep, nor of the other huge uncertainties in the early days of a one off experimental success (e.g. Science, 1998, 279, 635-636, and refs. therein). Professional scientists were quick to distance themselves from the individual concerned.
6. 196 note the evidence in this last paper that population control is a case in which market forces and legal pressures have had a clear negative effect. During the period 1965-74 of a review sponsored by the Ford Foundation, for instance, support by the pharmaceutical industry for research on improved contraception methods was 'cut by more than half', from 34 to 16% of the total support, 'apparently as a result of the revised assessments of the potential profitability of new contraceptive methods'.
7. 196 note the evidence in this last paper that population control is a case in which market forces and legal pressures have had a clear negative effect. During the period 1965-74 of a review sponsored by the Ford Foundation, for instance, support by the pharmaceutical industry for research on improved contraception methods was 'cut by more than half', from 34 to 16% of the total support, 'apparently as a result of the revised assessments of the potential profitability of new contraceptive methods'.
8. 196 note the evidence in this last paper that population control is a case in which market forces and legal pressures have had a clear negative effect. During the period 1965-74 of a review sponsored by the Ford Foundation, for instance, support by the pharmaceutical industry for research on improved contraception methods was 'cut by more than half', from 34 to 16% of the total support, 'apparently as a result of the revised assessments of the potential profitability of new contraceptive methods'.
9. J. DAVIES: 'Bacteria on the rampage', Nature, 1996, 383, 219-220. Also cited as Ref. 74 of Part II, this is one of a continuing stream of reports on MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and other emerging 'superbugs' showing resistance to increasing numbers of antibiotics; for a more recent commentary, see Ref. 276. Such resistance, now spreading both inside and outside hospitals - a natural result of the profligate use of antibiotics - can be passed from one bacterium to another in genetic packages called plasmids consisting of loops of DNA. [I should not, incidentally, have spoken of plasmids, as such, as 'model fitters' in the Part II version of this note; rather, it is the whole ensemble of vast numbers of bacteria and plasmids that could be said to do model fitting, i.e. to behave, collectively, somewhat like mammalian immune systems - with the variability and versatility to adapt to environmental pressure from antibiotics or from anything else (J. E. SULSTON: personal communication).] There is now, furthermore, good evidence that the evolution of bacterial populations is not the only kind of evolutionary adaptation giving rise to new or more intractable disease agents; see for instance Refs. 138 and 139.
10. J. DAVIES: 'Bacteria on the rampage', Nature, 1996, 383, 219-220. Also cited as Ref. 74 of Part II, this is one of a continuing stream of reports on MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and other emerging 'superbugs' showing resistance to increasing numbers of antibiotics; for a more recent commentary, see Ref. 276. Such resistance, now spreading both inside and outside hospitals - a natural result of the profligate use of antibiotics - can be passed from one bacterium to another in genetic packages called plasmids consisting of loops of DNA. [I should not, incidentally, have spoken of plasmids, as such, as 'model fitters' in the Part II version of this note; rather, it is the whole ensemble of vast numbers of bacteria and plasmids that could be said to do model fitting, i.e. to behave, collectively, somewhat like mammalian immune systems - with the variability and versatility to adapt to environmental pressure from antibiotics or from anything else (J. E. SULSTON: personal communication).] There is now, furthermore, good evidence that the evolution of bacterial populations is not the only kind of evolutionary adaptation giving rise to new or more intractable disease agents; see for instance Refs. 138 and 139.
11. 154
12. J. HORGAN: 'The end of science'; 1996, London, Little Brown, 324 pp. This contribution to the age old 'Götterdämmerung genre' is permeated by what the author himself calls 'metaphysical anxiety', an anxiety or disquiet that I take to be of the kind discussed in Ref. 174, and whose likely origins I discuss further here. The author associates it with a personal experience, a visionary experience of cosmic ecstasy then despair, described in an epilogue entitled 'The terror of God'. He shows a strange mixure of scepticism about, and obsession with, the powerful and dangerous myth that science is a quest for absolute or ultimate truth. The book is of interest for its collection of interviews with some of the world's most prominent scientists. It illustrates in countless ways what I mean by today's 'widespread, profound, and dangerous confusion' about science, and the undermining of respect for the scientific ideal.
13. 206 documents, in some detail, just how 'widespread, profound, and dangerous' is the current confusion about science, and how it is being worsened by the market driven dissemination of pseudoscience: 'Demons sell; hoaxers are boring and in bad taste' (p. 76, end of Chap. 4, about the crop circle hoax and the public testimony of the hoaxers). Not all busy scientists and science policymakers seem to have appreciated the full significance of this confusion, whose origins, reasons for growth, and implications for democracy I try to expose here. Among many important features of Sagan's book is its incorporation and expansion of material that first appeared in Parade magazine, together with extensive and eye opening verbatim reactions to it from members of the public. As he aptly puts it on p. 28, after mentioning our dependence on science and technology, 'We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.' See also the discussion in Chap. 3 of Ref. 247 of the rise to political power of 'a most wilful and determined ignorance', and the allusion, at the end of Ref. 261, to a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon making the same point. Understanding, and self understanding, might yet rescue us - 'All science asks is ... the same levels of scepticism we use in buying a used car' (Sagan, end of Chap. 4) - but it is going to be a close run thing.
14. 277 The 'heteroactive barber', who by definition shaves those and only those who do not shave themselves, is discussed on p. 205 of Part I. To see that this is a self contradictory definition, a conscious effort is required; the language instinct does not automatically check for self consistency. The unconscious drive to prune combinatorial trees of possibilities is discussed on p. 291 of Part II. The distinction between humility and apology is discussed in Part II, in the section on epistemology and final theories.
15. 277 The 'heteroactive barber', who by definition shaves those and only those who do not shave themselves, is discussed on p. 205 of Part I. To see that this is a self contradictory definition, a conscious effort is required; the language instinct does not automatically check for self consistency. The unconscious drive to prune combinatorial trees of possibilities is discussed on p. 291 of Part II. The distinction between humility and apology is discussed in Part II, in the section on epistemology and final theories.
16. 235 So also does N. D. MERMIN: 'What's wrong with this reading?', Physics Today, 1997, 50, (10), 11-13, giving a scientist's viewpoint. Both articles plead for care in using the highest professional standards of argument, with clear examples of how misunderstanding can arise in discussions of science and its cultural and sociological aspects.
17. 235 So also does N. D. MERMIN: 'What's wrong with this reading?', Physics Today, 1997, 50, (10), 11-13, giving a scientist's viewpoint. Both articles plead for care in using the highest professional standards of argument, with clear examples of how misunderstanding can arise in discussions of science and its cultural and sociological aspects.
18. R. BARKER: 'And the waters turned to blood: the ultimate biological threat'; 1997, New York, Simon and Schuster, 352 pp. (ISBN 0684831260). A single celled organism, Pfiesteria piscicida, has recently destroyed fisheries in the Chesapeake Bay region of the USA and made the water too dangerous for humans to swim there. It is suspected that this sudden development, thought to be unprecedented, was an adaptation triggered by the buildup of chemical pollution, perhaps destroying whatever the organism used to feed on. If confirmed, this would illustrate what is self evident, in any case, from the slightest knowledge of biological systems, namely that when you change an environment then you must expect to see evolutionary adaptations of one kind or another. See also Note 139:
19. 138 - if you are prepared to regard the feeding of meat products to herbivores as 'pollution' in the relevant sense, that of exerting new and unknown selective pressures on disease agents.
20. M. PIATTELLI-PALMARINI: 'Inevitable illusions: how mistakes of reason rule our minds'; 1994, New York, Wiley, 242 pp. Includes comments on sales pitches and 'positioning'; see the example in Note 35 of Part I. See also Note 188.
21. 278 see also, for instance, Note 279 below, Note 34 of Part I, and the essay by P. MEDAWAR: 'Hypothesis and imagination', in 'Pluto's Republic'; 1982, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 351 pp. (Also in 'The art of the soluble'; 1967, London, Methuen.) This last is a spirited defence of the role of imagination and intuition - the crucial importance of the unconscious side of scientific thinking - at all points of the problem solving continuum: 'The belief that great discoveries and little everyday discoveries have quite different methodological origins betrays the amateur.'
22. 278 see also, for instance, Note 279 below, Note 34 of Part I, and the essay by P. MEDAWAR: 'Hypothesis and imagination', in 'Pluto's Republic'; 1982, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 351 pp. (Also in 'The art of the soluble'; 1967, London, Methuen.) This last is a spirited defence of the role of imagination and intuition - the crucial importance of the unconscious side of scientific thinking - at all points of the problem solving continuum: 'The belief that great discoveries and little everyday discoveries have quite different methodological origins betrays the amateur.'
23. 280 The essence of the matter can be seen from the example of children's model houses, boats, and trains. As well as being real objects these are models, not only in the child's intuitive sense, but also in the general sense used here and throughout science: they are - more precisely, they can be used as - partial and approximate representations of reality. A model house, whether simple or elaborate, represents some aspects, though not others, of a 'real' house. Some models are more accurate than others, and emphasise some aspects of real houses more than others. (Models with electric lighting delighted me as a small child; I never saw one with foundations or plumbing.) Models need not be made of solid materials: they can be made of neuromolecular patterns or of computer code, as 'virtual reality' displays remind us. Such displays are generated by computer codes, but are very like children's models. They are visually equivalent to three-dimensional objects that represent, in a simplified way, some aspects, though not others, of real houses, or real anything else. The equivalence would not be obvious from inspecting the computer code, and this is a crucial point: the same model can have very different representations, whose equivalence may be anything but obvious. Since models can be made of computer code they can also be made of mathematical equations, as already implied by the arguments in Part II. Mathematical equations can be looked on as a kind of generalised computer code - as instructions to perform some computation, such as finding the elements of a set (cf. perceptual grouping). In some ways, mathematics takes us far beyond what computers can do, because mathematics has ways of dealing with infinite numbers of cases simultaneously, and with notional computations that have infinite numbers of steps. All these considerations apply, in particular, to the great models, the great theories, of classical and quantum physics. A single model or theory can be expressed in many different forms whose equivalence may well be far from obvious on inspection. Examples include the equivalence of various differential and integral formulations - as Richard Feynman once said in a famous interview, 'psychologically very different'. These go all the way from geometrical optics and Hamilton's principle to quantum theory and so called path integrals. Another example, perhaps the most famous of all, is the equivalence of Heisenberg and Schrödinger representations of quantum dynamical systems, an equivalence recognised only after a year or so of 'driving in the fog' by some of the greatest scientists of the day.
24. 255 Afterwards, I recommend reading Refs. 137 and 224.
25. Y. FERN: 'Gene Roddenbury: the last conversation - a dialogue with the creator of Star Trek'; 1994, University of California Press, 228pp (reviewed by L. J. SAGE: Nature, 1995, 372, 141). Makes an interesting case for the role of science fiction in helping with the public understanding of science. Roddenbury and his character Spock 'take a positive delight when someone says "I disagree with you because ..." ' - the delight of serious discussion and argumentation with no thought of personal rancour, with no thought other than to get a problem solved. (This for me is exactly what makes life as a scientist worth living.)
26. Y. FERN: 'Gene Roddenbury: the last conversation - a dialogue with the creator of Star Trek'; 1994, University of California Press, 228pp (reviewed by L. J. SAGE: Nature, 1995, 372, 141). Makes an interesting case for the role of science fiction in helping with the public understanding of science. Roddenbury and his character Spock 'take a positive delight when someone says "I disagree with you because ..." ' - the delight of serious discussion and argumentation with no thought of personal rancour, with no thought other than to get a problem solved. (This for me is exactly what makes life as a scientist worth living.)
27. L. WOLPERT: The unnatural nature of science'; 1992, London, Faber, 191 pp. See also Note 48 of Part I. Gives a very clear explanation of the difference between commonsense knowledge and scientific knowledge, with emphasis on the intellectual courage required to reach the latter, the courage required to take the scientific ideal seriously.
28. J. S. BELL: 'Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics'; 1987, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 212 pp. A classic collection of lucid and penetrating discussions about quantum mechanics and its incompleteness (see also main text above). As often happens, some of the trouble in developing scientific theories comes when (pp. 165-166) we fail to ask which experiment? or which thought experiment? In the latter connection see also Chap. 9, 'How to teach special relativity'. This beautifully shows the desirability of getting more than one angle on a problem before claiming good understanding.
29. 148 Chap. 13 gives an excellent characterisation of the scientific ideal and ethic in action (pp. 325-327): 'You need only attend a research seminar in any fundamental field in the "hard" sciences to see how strongly people's behaviour as researchers differs from human behaviour in general ...' This has been exactly my own professional experience.
30. K. POPPER: 'Unended quest', revised edn; 1992, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 276 pp., and refs. therein. This is Popper's personal overview of his own philosophical development, including development of the notions of 'closeness to the truth' and of science and ordinary perception as model fitting, equivalently 'conjecture and refutation'. See also Ref. 147, and Note 45 of Part I.
31. 277 and in the Appendix to Part II.
32. S. WEINBERG: 'Dreams of a final theory - the search for the fundamental laws of nature'; 1993, London, Vintage Books, 260 pp. This is one of the most eloquent and cogent non-specialist discussions I have read on just how far we have come in physics by using the power of mathematics - using the requirement for self consistency in model building together with the strongest form of Occam's razor: the assumption, or faith, that the relevant simplicity includes aesthetic considerations of elegance and beauty. See also Ref. 265. The book also reminds us, together with Ref. 147, how deeply embedded is the inclination, in some of our most brilliant physicists' minds, to make an absolute distinction, a false dichotomisation, between 'mere models' and 'true theories' - as distinct from a judgment of the goodness of a model or theory in terms of its accuracy, beauty, economy, and insightfulness.
33. 277
34. B. MARTIN et al.: 'The relationship between publicly funded basic research and economic performance -an SPRU review [report prepared for HM Treasury by the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University]'; 1996, London, Her Majesty's Treasury (fax +44 (0) 171 270 5244). The terms of reference were to review the literature on the relation between basic research and economic performance, the same question as from science minister Ian Taylor earlier in 1996: 'What does Britain gain from ... money spent on funding basic research?', meaning commercial gain. The report points out that 'current methodologies for measuring such benefits are seriously flawed', and why. For instance, beyond published output, 'Research is also a learning process, yielding "tacit" knowledge in terms of the skills and routines without which it is not possible to make use of state of the art ideas and techniques.'
35. R. MILNER: 'Semantic ideas in computing', in 'Computing tomorrow: future research directions in computer science', (ed. I. Wand and R. Milner), 246-283; 1996, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 373 pp. This surveys a research programme that promises deep, general, and practically useful insights into what is involved, conceptually, in building reliable and maintainable computer software. Today's typical haphazard, and hazardous, short term or hand to mouth approach could be superseded, in future, by one in which we have a deeper understanding of what is done with computers and how to use them safely.
36. 281 but it does seem to be working against ordinary totalitarian tendencies, against total censorship and control by particular commercial interests or by small groups of politicians. Arguably, this is a wholly unprecedented situation in human history, and part of what might allow democracy, in some form, to survive against the odds.
37. 281 Along with Refs. 156 and 255 'Factor four' also shows, on the other hand, with detailed examples, how market forces can be - and have been - put to work constructively and sustainably. Such a change in the use of market forces illustrates what I mean by organic cultural change, helped by respect for the scientific ideal in the sense I am using the phrase: respect for coherence and self consistency, for what hangs together and makes sense.
38. 155,247
39. 155,247
40. 204
41. S. O. ANDERSEN and A. MILLER: 'Ozone layer: the road not taken', Nature, 1996, 382, 390. This briefly but cogently argues for the enormous benefits, political and economic, of allowing technologies and markets to respond early to environmental change - the benefits of keeping our collective heads out of the sand. The 'ozone wars' of the 1970s and 1980s and their resolution provide a telling example, and reason for hope. Once the scientific picture became clear enough, 'industry helped policy-makers to choose schedules that were technically feasible and allowed time for wise choice' while, conversely, a late start would have forced industry and customers 'to select from among the very first technologies available', reducing cost effectiveness as well as public confidence. Earlier action would have been still more beneficial.
42. J. KEATS: 'On first looking into Chapman's Homer'; 1817.
43. E.g. K. POPPER: 'The open society and its enemies', 5th edn, Vol. 2; 1966, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 420 pp. See also, among very many others, Refs. 135, 172, 191, 229, and 247.
44. 171 - for a most intimate and subtle interplay between nature and nurture, between biological and cultural evolution. Further comments in Note 13 of Part I. See also Ref. 171 and S. JONES: 'In the blood'; 1996, London, HarperCollins, 302 pp., a witty and insightful extended essay, by a professional geneticist, on what we know and do not know about human genetics and its social relevance. Jones takes good care to debunk the simplistic racist, eugenics, nature-nurture and genetic engineering myths. On these last points see also, for instance, among many others, Refs. 169-171 and Note 162:
45. 171 - for a most intimate and subtle interplay between nature and nurture, between biological and cultural evolution. Further comments in Note 13 of Part I. See also Ref. 171 and S. JONES: 'In the blood'; 1996, London, HarperCollins, 302 pp., a witty and insightful extended essay, by a professional geneticist, on what we know and do not know about human genetics and its social relevance. Jones takes good care to debunk the simplistic racist, eugenics, nature-nurture and genetic engineering myths. On these last points see also, for instance, among many others, Refs. 169-171 and Note 162:
46. 186
47. There could be no more telling example of such underestimation than the US State Department's mistake over Bosnia, in thinking of the Bosnian and other Balkan problems as 'only religious' - as if that made them minor problems. According to a lecture by Conrad Russell on BBC Radio 3 (8 August 1995), this showed a profound ignorance not only of human nature but also of the historical record, for instance of the meticulous factual studies of past 'religious' turmoil by the respected historian Dame (Cicely) Veronica Wedgwood. See also, for instance, Refs. 166 and 195.
48. P. J. WILLIAMS: 'The geneology of race - towards a theory of grace', Reith Lectures, British Broadcasting Corporation, London, July 1997.
49. On medieval witch hunting, see Chaps. 7 and 24 of Ref. 135, also p. 29. Thomas Ady is mentioned in Chap. 7, and Chap. 24, written in collaboration with Ann Druyan, mentions, and extensively quotes from, Friedrich von Spee. Ady and von Spee dared to publish, in 1656 and 1631 respectively, exposés of witch mania. See also Note 194.
50. 283
51. 277
52. 129 1976 book, 'The selfish gene'; see also, for instance, R. DAWKINS: 'The blind watchmaker'; 1986, London, Longman/ 1988, London, Penguin, 332 pp., and, for instance, O. R. GOODENOUGH and R. DAWKINS: 'The "St Jude" mind virus', Nature, 1994, 371, 23-24. See also the brief but magnificently lucid discussion in Ref. 174.
53. 129 1976 book, 'The selfish gene'; see also, for instance, R. DAWKINS: 'The blind watchmaker'; 1986, London, Longman/ 1988, London, Penguin, 332 pp., and, for instance, O. R. GOODENOUGH and R. DAWKINS: 'The "St Jude" mind virus', Nature, 1994, 371, 23-24. See also the brief but magnificently lucid discussion in Ref. 174.
54. P. MEDAWAR: 'Science and the sanctity of life', in 'Pluto's Republic', 311-323; 1982, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 351 pp.
55. K. E. DAVIES, A. J. CLARKE, and P. S. HARPER: 'The genetic revolution and medicine in the 21st century', Europ. Rev., 1997, 5, 39-54. 'Is having the wrong genes going to become an acceptable line of defence in a court of law in cases of violence? Fortunately, ... the biological basis of behaviour ... is unimaginably complex, and is open to modification by numerous environmental influences.'
56. 161
57. M. WALZER: 'On toleration'; 1997, London, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 126 pp. A wise, deeply thoughtful, humane, and practical view of the relevant history and its implications - of the several ways in which the human societies of the last two and a half millennia have, rarely, found it possible to tolerate different belief systems within them, and of the social conditions that might be crucial to such toleration in the future. The last two chapters explore ways toward what might be called constructive tribalism; see also Ref. 273. In his discussion of the most recent kinds of relatively tolerant society, what we call the free market democracies, dependent on the separation of church and state and on having a secular 'civil religion' of national stories, heroes, celebrations etc., hence national identity, Waltzer points out that 'toleration is most likely to work well when the civil religion is least like a ... religion' (p. 77), and furthermore that 'Democracy requires yet one more separation, one that is not well understood: that of politics itself from the state ... The winning party, though it can turn its ideology into a set of laws, cannot turn it into the official creed of the civil religion; it cannot make the day of its ascension to power into a national holiday, insist that party history be a required course in the public schools, or use state power to ban the publications or the assemblies of other parties. This is what happens in totalitarian regimes, and is exactly analogous to the political establishment of a single monolithic church' (pp. 81-82). See also M. PERUTZ: 'By what right do we invoke human rights?', Europ. Rev., 1997, 5, 123-133, and refs. therein.
58. M. WALZER: 'On toleration'; 1997, London, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 126 pp. A wise, deeply thoughtful, humane, and practical view of the relevant history and its implications - of the several ways in which the human societies of the last two and a half millennia have, rarely, found it possible to tolerate different belief systems within them, and of the social conditions that might be crucial to such toleration in the future. The last two chapters explore ways toward what might be called constructive tribalism; see also Ref. 273. In his discussion of the most recent kinds of relatively tolerant society, what we call the free market democracies, dependent on the separation of church and state and on having a secular 'civil religion' of national stories, heroes, celebrations etc., hence national identity, Waltzer points out that 'toleration is most likely to work well when the civil religion is least like a ... religion' (p. 77), and furthermore that 'Democracy requires yet one more separation, one that is not well understood: that of politics itself from the state ... The winning party, though it can turn its ideology into a set of laws, cannot turn it into the official creed of the civil religion; it cannot make the day of its ascension to power into a national holiday, insist that party history be a required course in the public schools, or use state power to ban the publications or the assemblies of other parties. This is what happens in totalitarian regimes, and is exactly analogous to the political establishment of a single monolithic church' (pp. 81-82). See also M. PERUTZ: 'By what right do we invoke human rights?', Europ. Rev., 1997, 5, 123-133, and refs. therein.
59. 161
60. 161
61. 134 giving rise to 'all myths, all religions, all philosophies and science itself.'
62. C. BLAKEMORE: 'Mechanics of the mind'; 1977, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 208 pp.
63. E.g. M. GOPNIK, J. DALALAKIS, S. E. FUKUDA, S. FUKUDA, and E. KEHAYIA: 'Genetic language impairment: unruly grammars', Proc. Br. Acad., 1996, 88, 223-249. Reprinted in: W. G. RUNCIMAN, J. MAYNARD SMITH, and R. I. M. DUNBAR (eds.): 'Evolution of social behaviour patterns in primates and man'; 1996, Oxford, Oxford University Press/British Academy, 297 pp. This presents strong psychophysical evidence that the impairment of syntactic or grammatic function, such as the ability to form regular plural nouns from newly encountered singular
64. E.g. M. GOPNIK, J. DALALAKIS, S. E. FUKUDA, S. FUKUDA, and E. KEHAYIA: 'Genetic language impairment: unruly grammars', Proc. Br. Acad., 1996, 88, 223-249. Reprinted in: W. G. RUNCIMAN, J. MAYNARD SMITH, and R. I. M. DUNBAR (eds.): 'Evolution of social behaviour patterns in primates and man'; 1996, Oxford, Oxford University Press/British Academy, 297 pp. This presents strong psychophysical evidence that the impairment of syntactic or grammatic function, such as the ability to form regular plural nouns from newly encountered singular nouns, as with 'wugs' from 'wug', can be a heritable genetic defect.
65. 161 p. 249.
66. J. KEGL, A. SENGHAS, and M. COPPOLA: 'Creation through contact: sign language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua', in 'Comparative grammatical change: the intersection of language acquisition, creole genesis, and diachronic syntax', (ed. M. DeGraff); 1998, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, in press. See also J. A. KEGL and J. MCWHORTER: 'Perspectives on an emerging language', in Proc. 28th Annual Child Language Research Forum (Stanford), (ed. E. V. Clark), 15-38; 1997, New York and Cambridge, Cambridge University Press/ Palo Alto, CA, Center for the Study of Language and Information.
67. J. KEGL, A. SENGHAS, and M. COPPOLA: 'Creation through contact: sign language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua', in 'Comparative grammatical change: the intersection of language acquisition, creole genesis, and diachronic syntax', (ed. M. DeGraff); 1998, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, in press. See also J. A. KEGL and J. MCWHORTER: 'Perspectives on an emerging language', in Proc. 28th Annual Child Language Research Forum (Stanford), (ed. E. V. Clark), 15-38; 1997, New York and Cambridge, Cambridge University Press/ Palo Alto, CA, Center for the Study of Language and Information.
68. 180,222 could well have been an important aid to a tribe's memory of past climate oscillations and how to survive them. See also Note 185.
69. The UK Society for Storytelling has plenty of evidence for this. Given a little encouragement, children will 'automatically' create and tell their own stories ... 'one form of Let's Pretend' ... 'everyone can do it' ... 'just a matter of boosting confidence' ... 'eye contact is important' ... 'when the imagination is engaged, people come alive' ... 'everyone has a story ...', etc. (BBC1 Television, 14 August 1997). I have a clear recollection of improvising stories myself, as an 11 year old, for my younger brother and sister, and even writing them down.
70. Not surprisingly from this viewpoint, 'rhetorical and poetic speech forms', as well as music, have been noted in many so called primitive cultures, e.g. by the anthropologist Donald E. Brown (Ref. 167, p. 413).
71. For further examples of the ever changing usage of the English language - accelerated, one presumes, by today's amplified political and newsmedia pressures -see D. CRYSTAL: 'The Cambridge encyclopaedia of the English language'; 1995, London, BCA, by arrangement with Cambridge University Press, 489 pp. See also the remarks about ever changing scientific usage in Notes 11 and 66 of Part I and in the Appendix to Part I.
72. 286
73. 286
74. Our closest living non-human relatives, the chimpanzees, have been observed to go to war in the sense that, when living freely under natural conditions, one small community of chimpanzees exterminated another and took over their territory. See Chap. 10, 'War', of J. GOODALL: 'Through a window: my thirty years with the chimpanzees of Gombe'; 1991, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 268 pp.
75. G. BOND et al. : 'Correlations between climate records from North Atlantic sediments and Greenland ice', Nature, 1993, 365, 143-147, and refs. therein to celebrated work by Dansgaard and Oeschger ('Rates of change in ... ocean temperatures must have been ... several degrees within decades' in the North Atlantic region). See also, for instance, J. P. SEVERINGHAUS et al.: 'Timing of abrupt climate change at the end of the Younger Dryas interval from thermally fractionated gases in polar ice', Nature, 1998, 391, 141-146. This shows very clear evidence from a Greenland ice core, obtained using a new technique, for a steplike temperature rise 'in less than a decade', of magnitude tentatively estimated at 5-10°C, marking the end of the so called Younger Dryas cold interval eleven and a half millenia ago. This event appears to have been the last of many abrupt warmings before the climate became relatively stable around ten millennia ago. I am grateful to Lonnie Thompson and Nicholas Shackleton for expert advice on these matters.
76. G. BOND et al. : 'Correlations between climate records from North Atlantic sediments and Greenland ice', Nature, 1993, 365, 143-147, and refs. therein to celebrated work by Dansgaard and Oeschger ('Rates of change in ... ocean temperatures must have been ... several degrees within decades' in the North Atlantic region). See also, for instance, J. P. SEVERINGHAUS et al.: 'Timing of abrupt climate change at the end of the Younger Dryas interval from thermally fractionated gases in polar ice', Nature, 1998, 391, 141-146. This shows very clear evidence from a Greenland ice core, obtained using a new technique, for a steplike temperature rise 'in less than a decade', of magnitude tentatively estimated at 5-10°C, marking the end of the so called Younger Dryas cold interval eleven and a half millenia ago. This event appears to have been the last of many abrupt warmings before the climate became relatively stable around ten millennia ago. I am grateful to Lonnie Thompson and Nicholas Shackleton for expert advice on these matters.
77. I. STEWART: 'Does God play dice?', 2nd edn; 1997, London, Penguin, 401 pp. A good introduction to the so called chaos theory of Poincaré and his successors. Along with Ref. 171, this book also gives an insightful view of how science works as a model fitting process, and why mathematics is relevant: 'To criticise mathematics for its abstraction is to miss the point entirely' (p. 363). My remarks in Part II about the unconscious power of abstraction (last two sections and Appendix) are, in effect, an elaboration of this point.
78. 129
79. M. L. J. ABERCROMBIE: 'The anatomy of judgment: an investigation into the processes of perception and reasoning'; 1989, London, Free Association Books, 156 pp. See also Note 34 of Part I. Also, e.g., Ref. 140 above, and E. DE BONO: 'Practical thinking'; 1971, London, New York, Penguin (republished 1976), 189 pp. See also Note 36 of Part I.
80. M. L. J. ABERCROMBIE: 'The anatomy of judgment: an investigation into the processes of perception and reasoning'; 1989, London, Free Association Books, 156 pp. See also Note 34 of Part I. Also, e.g., Ref. 140 above, and E. DE BONO: 'Practical thinking'; 1971, London, New York, Penguin (republished 1976), 189 pp. See also Note 36 of Part I.
81. 270)
82. 287 contrary to impressions that might be given by, for instance, Ref. 134.
83. J. BRONOWSKI: 'The ascent of man'; 1973, London, British Broadcasting Service/New York, Boston, Little Brown, 448 pp.
84. 277 e.g. on the mythology of the Hippocratic Oath, which most doctors do not take.
85. 192 home state. This lobbying group not only campaigns against assisted suicide but also has many members -as many as 50%, by the officials' estimates - who approve of the death penalty. Such approval was put forward, by the same officials, as justifying the group's decision - contradicting its own name, 'Right to Life' - to condone a move to repeal Michigan's 'present [as of March 1997] constitutional ban on capital punishment'.
86. 165 e.g. 'No longer God or Nature, but witches are responsible for everything ...' (from an extensive translated quotation from von Spee in Chap. 24, pp. 382ff.). The situation was worsened by a system of financial incentives functionally equivalent to some of today's 'performance indicators' - tied to numbers of convictions, discounting the question of whether convictions were safe - and the incentives drove an exponential growth in the number of convictions. In more recent times, the best known examples include the McCarthyism in the USA of the 1950s -'communists' being responsible for everything - and, with apt irony, the Cultural Revolution in communist China in the mid 1960s. This last is documented through eyewitness accounts in, for instance, David Hinton's BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Award winning television documentary 'Children of the Revolution'. The witch hunting process becomes self limiting when too many of the hunters become the hunted, but only after terrible devastation. David Hinton's film contains moving scenes of remorse in later years.
87. T. KENEALLY: 'Schindler has much to tell us', The Times, 22 March 1994, 20. Thomas Keneally's suggestion that 'people discover race hatred the way lovers discover love ...', seems to put its finger on the essential phenomenon and to describe what is repeatedly observed within many cultures. Keneally describes himself as 'an Australian of Irish Catholic background', and is the author of the book 'Schindler's list', also known as 'Schindler's ark'.
88. 155,156 It is the belief or feeling that they are the Answer to Everything - a belief that is often unspoken, but well illustrated for instance by Ref. 245 - that is dangerous.
89. 244 If the authors' strictures were to be put into universal practice, as seems to be demanded by their phrase 'All scientists must ...' - see also Ref. 245 - then there would be no longer be significant numbers of independent scientists and there would no longer be credible, independent scientific opinion on any matter of public concern.
90. 244 If the authors' strictures were to be put into universal practice, as seems to be demanded by their phrase 'All scientists must ...' - see also Ref. 245 -then there would be no longer be significant numbers of independent scientists and there would no longer be credible, independent scientific opinion on any matter of public concern.
91. 199,200 and Notes 152 and 197.
92. G. NEAVE: 'On looking both ways at once: scrutinies of the private life of higher education', Europ. Rev., 1997, 5, 305-321. This takes a puckish pan-European view of what is happening to university systems, acknowledging cross-national heterogeneities but also mincing no words about the ironies, and limitless cost, of replacing trust and reponsibility by 'mutual recrimination' and limitless pseudoaccountability (main text above, and Ref. 198). One consequence is that 'very few university management models have been tried and weighed in the balance before being put into place'. Our failure, so far, to cope with the hypercredulous aspects of the audit culture has put us, in nautical language, 'at sea with our sails all ahoo and our sheets a-drabble'.
93. A major news feature in the 11 September 1997 issue of Nature (389, 113-115) reports that the belief in publication counting, and impact factor counting, is now taking hold in the Asian Pacific Rim countries and causing vast confusion: one physics professor is quoted as directly conflating quality with quantity: 'Without enough quantity [sic] as a base [sic], high academic quality can rarely if ever be achieved.' This is building the Taj Mahal by dumping rubbish.
94. 202 a former high ranking official in the Unification Church (Moonies):
95. S. HASSAN: 'Combatting cult mind control'; 1990, Wellingborough, Aquarian, 226 pp. First published in 1988. Since the publication of Ref. 201, there has been an important move to replace the old, partly coercive technique of 'deprogramming' by the strictly non-coercive exit counselling, or 'exit counseling' as it is spelt in US publications and, for the most part, in Internet search engines.
96. I agree with those who think the sacred can be rediscovered in ways that can be authentic in our time, as something personal and not absolute. Within a vast literature see, e.g., Refs. 204, 259, 273, 278, 282, and 283.
97. S. KAUFFMAN: 'At home in the universe: the search for laws of self-organisation and complexity'; 1995, New York and London, Viking Penguin, 321 pp. Also Notes 1-4 and 71 of Part I. Kauffman provides cogent reasons why a deeper understanding of, and respect for, the nature of biological systems can be hoped for in the near future, along with many practical spinoffs, unforeseen until recently, such as entirely new weapons against the new disease epidemics. It is a question of putting hypermassive parallelism to work to solve combinatorially large problems, perhaps the beginnings of being able, one day, to beat disease agents at their own game.
98. 204,291 Such considerations belie the oft repeated idea that computers will soon outstrip the human brain in every respect, an idea repeated, for instance, in Ref. 70 of Part I.
99. 135 includes an eloquent and perfectly apt use of the words 'true', 'real', and 'provable', in the scientist's shorthand sense discussed in the main text above: '... for all his pizzazz and charisma, Carl always spoke for true science against the plethora of irrationalisms that surround us. He conveyed one consistent message: Real science is so ... exciting, transforming, and provable, why would anyone prefer the undocumentable nonsense of astrology, alien abductions, and so forth?' Stephen Jay Gould, who is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University, also uses the editorial to comment on the 'narrow-minded error', on the part of some scientists, of 'equating popularisation with trivialisation, cheapening, or inaccuracy', and of downgrading 'the professional reputation of colleagues who can convey the power and beauty of science to the hearts and minds of a fascinated, if generally uninformed, public.' I agree with Gould that, on the contrary, we should remember the seriousness of the crises in public understanding and democracy, and give far more recognition to scientists like Sagan who succeed in the difficult art of clear and accurate 'popularisation' - which can also, at the same time, be a significant aid to interdisciplinary communication among professional scientists working in different specialist fields, whether they admit it or not.
100. 135 includes an eloquent and perfectly apt use of the words 'true', 'real', and 'provable', in the scientist's shorthand sense discussed in the main text above: '... for all his pizzazz and charisma, Carl always spoke for true science against the plethora of irrationalisms that surround us. He conveyed one consistent message: Real science is so ... exciting, transforming, and provable, why would anyone prefer the undocumentable nonsense of astrology, alien abductions, and so forth?' Stephen Jay Gould, who is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University, also uses the editorial to comment on the 'narrow-minded error', on the part of some scientists, of 'equating popularisation with trivialisation, cheapening, or inaccuracy', and of downgrading 'the professional reputation of colleagues who can convey the power and beauty of science to the hearts and minds of a fascinated, if generally uninformed, public.' I agree with Gould that, on the contrary, we should remember the seriousness of the crises in public understanding and democracy, and give far more recognition to scientists like Sagan who succeed in the difficult art of clear and accurate 'popularisation' - which can also, at the same time, be a significant aid to interdisciplinary communication among professional scientists working in different specialist fields, whether they admit it or not.
101. 263
102. 263
103. 209 The resulting correspondence, in Nature (1997, 387, 543-546, 388, 13, 389, 538, ...) gives Pickering's replies plus some clear and specific examples of goodness of fit, the aspect of science often ignored or downplayed in the sociological studies; see also Fig. 3 above.
104. 209 The resulting correspondence, in Nature (1997, 387, 543-546, 388, 13, 389, 538, ...) gives Pickering's replies plus some clear and specific examples of goodness of fit, the aspect of science often ignored or downplayed in the sociological studies; see also Fig. 3 above.
105. 208 this book tends to convey, to a non-specialist reader, the notion of 'Science as Mere Opinion'.
106. A. J. LEGGETT: 'The problems of physics'; 1987, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 192 pp. Page 20 mentions a lecture given by Lord Kelvin in 1900, in the course of describing late nineteenth century attitudes - '... how unthinkable the idea that their whole conceptual framework might be in error ...' See also Ref. 265.
107. 277
108. 265
109. 212 'Quantum mechanics for cosmologists', with more technical detail. For the latest experimental checks on Bell's inequalities and EPRB (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm) effects, see Refs. 292 and 293.
110. D. BOHM: 'On Bohr's view concerning the quantum theory', in 'Quantum theory and beyond', (ed. T. Bastin), 33-40; 1971, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 345 pp. More detailed comments in Note 50 of Part I.
111. 219]', Science, 1997, 275, 1893-1894, and other papers at http://math.rutgers.edu/~oldstein. Also S. GOLDSTEIN: 'Quantum philosophy: the flight from reason in science', in 'The flight from science and reason', (ed. P. R. Gross, N. Levitt, and M. W. Lewis), Ann. NY Acad. Sci., 1996, 775, and other papers at http://math.rutgers.edu/~oldstein.
112. 219]', Science, 1997, 275, 1893-1894, and other papers at http://math.rutgers.edu/~oldstein. Also S. GOLDSTEIN: 'Quantum philosophy: the flight from reason in science', in 'The flight from science and reason', (ed. P. R. Gross, N. Levitt, and M. W. Lewis), Ann. NY Acad. Sci., 1996, 775, and other papers at http://math.rutgers.edu/~oldstein.
113. N. D. MERMIN: 'Is the moon there when nobody looks? Reality and the quantum theory', Phys. Today, 1985, 38, (4), 38-47. A lucid and cogent discussion of the original example of quantum nonlocality, called Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm correlation; see reference to Einstein's relativity in Note 212. For more recent developments, see for instance Refs. 292 and 293.
114. This vagueness is well brought out in M. GELL-MANN: The quark and the jaguar: adventures in the simple and the complex'; 1994, New York, Freeman; London, Little Brown, 392pp. See the section 'Measurement situations and measurements' and the first half of the following section, i.e., pp. 154-155, and note for instance, regarding fission tracks in 'rocks that are hundreds of thousands of years old', the statement that, according to the standard principles of quantum mechanics, 'the actual measurement could have been carried out by a cockroach or any other complex adaptive system. It consists of "noticing" that a particular alternative has occurred ...' (p. 154). There is no explicit description of how, why, or in what sense the cockroach could have 'noticed' the fission track, nor discussion of the implications for radioactive decay of rocks on lifeless planets or for nuclear reactions within the Sun.
115. D. BOHM: 'On the role of hidden variables in the fundamental structure of physics', in 'Quantum theory and beyond', (ed. T. Bastin), 95-116; 1971, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 345 pp.
116. 215 by Sheldon Goldstein, and in Physics Today, 1997, 50, (3), 77-78 by James T. Cushing: '... this book does make a prima facie case for Bohm as a fascinating and important scientist ... But it probably has not given David Bohm his due.'
117. 215 by Sheldon Goldstein, and in Physics Today, 1997, 50, (3), 77-78 by James T. Cushing: '... this book does make a prima facie case for Bohm as a fascinating and important scientist ... But it probably has not given David Bohm his due.'
118. 215 by Sheldon Goldstein, and in Physics Today, 1997, 50, (3), 77-78 by James T. Cushing: '... this book does make a prima facie case for Bohm as a fascinating and important scientist ... But it probably has not given David Bohm his due.'
119. 215 by Sheldon Goldstein, and in Physics Today, 1997, 50, (3), 77-78 by James T. Cushing: '... this book does make a prima facie case for Bohm as a fascinating and important scientist ... But it probably has not given David Bohm his due.'
120. T. M. SAMOLS: 'A stochastic model of quantum field theory', J. Statist. Phys., 1995, 80, 793-809. 'To a realist, ... a space of objectively defined events must be restored to the theory.' The model is discrete ('light-cone lattice theory'), and there is no claim to have overcome the difficulty of going to the continuous limit. 'One may think of the model as simply ... [the Bell-Everett theory] ... but with its two defects -absence of sensible histories and frame-dependence -simultaneously cured.'
121. 213,221 tells me that, to his knowledge, the position has not changed as this goes to press.
122. 277
123. D. J. FIXSEN, E. S. CHENG, J. M. GALES, J. C. MATHER, R. A. SHAFER, and E. L. WRIGHT: 'The cosmic microwave background spectrum from the full COBE FIRAS data set', Astrophys. J., 1996, 473, 576-587. This is the paper from which Fig. 3 above is taken. COBE stands for 'cosmic background explorer', and FIRAS for 'far infrared absolute spectrophotometer', where 'absolute' has its technical experimental meaning, that measured values contain no undetermined additive constant: there is no freedom to shift the points plotted in Fig. 3 up or down relative to the scale at the left. It is difficult to imagine the vast effort involved in conceiving, designing, building, using, and cross-checking the exquisitely precise yet robust instrumentation that made these measurements possible, from a spacecraft bombarded by high temperature photons and other particles from the Sun, and by cosmic rays. Such considerations, and the paper itself - if you have the patience to follow its closely argued detail - gives some inkling, at a level accessible to a physics or chemistry undergraduate, of what may be involved in trying to approach the 'scientific ideal one of whose demands is that the whole edifice of experiment and theory should be self consistent', as discussed in Parts I and II. There is nothing in the paper about absolute truths or final answers.
124. M. J. REES: 'Before the beginning: our universe and others'; 1997, London, Simon and Schuster, 282 pp. One of today's most respected scientists discusses, with great insight and lucidity - and marvellous succinctness - what we know, what we do not know, and what it might be well to know, about the world we live in especially in its smallest and largest scale aspects. Any thoughtful person reading this book will see why giving up the pursuit of such knowledge would be a dangerously head in sand attitude. The book also shows, perhaps more clearly than any other I have read, how to use the working scientist's shorthand terms 'knowledge', 'proof, 'decisive evidence', 'fact', 'truth', etc., in plain, simple, and apt ways that respect the scientific ideal and that distance themselves from hypercredulous belief. Indeed it well illustrates what respect for the scientific ideal means in practice: both the astonishing power to advance our understanding of the outside world through experiment, observation, and appropriate theorising or model fitting, and also, equally, the implied respect for the limitations of science, and the humility in the face of the unknown.
125. I. C. PERCIVAL: 'Quantum spacetime fluctuations and primary state diffusion', Proc. R. Soc. Lond., 1995, A451, 503-513.
126. T. N. PALMER: 'A local deterministic model of quantum spin measurement', Proc. R. Soc: London, 1995, A451, 585-608. The idea is to replace quantum non-locality by algorithmic non-computability arising from 'riddled basins' of attractors in phase space. For an excellent lay person's description see Ref. 186, 2nd edn, pp. 348-356.
127. J. L. CASTI: 'Paradigms lost'; 1989, London, Little, Brown, 567 pp. This massive but entertaining book takes us on a romp through many of the fashionable philosophical debates and is useful for getting a quick idea of what the fuss is about. It vividly shows the dichotomisation instinct at work.
128. A. F. CHALMERS: 'What is this thing called science? An assessment of the nature and status of science and its methods'; 2nd edn; 1982, Milton Keynes, UK, Open University Press, 179 pp. This book gives a useful quick introduction to recent thinking among historians and philosophers of science, carrying on from naive inductivism to Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn, and Feyerabend. In Chalmers' own admirably honest words, 'We start off confused and end up confused on a higher level' (p. xix).
129. 230,283 Referring to 'philosophies' in the sense of theories of knowledge, Russell remarks on p. 592 that, at the time of writing, 'No one has yet succeeded in inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consistent.' On the origin of 'instrumentalism' see pp. 775ff., also, however, Ref. 230, p. 293. For current fashions as to what 'instrumentalism' means - and the term seems to have fallen victim to dichotomisation, the emphasis on model fitting while seeming to ignore the reality to which models are fitted - see for instance Refs. 147, 227, and 228.
130. B. MAGEE: 'The great Western philosophers'; 1987, Oxford, University Press, 352 pp. This gives an excellent introduction to the classical philosophical background, in the form of an unusually clear, wide ranging, and accessible discussion, more up to date than Ref. 229. On Nietzsche, see also the remarks in Note 283.
131. +-ATP synthase could be called the world's smallest electric motor.
132. +-ATP synthase could be called the world's smallest electric motor.
133. 235
134. 235
135. Take for instance, among countless examples, the attempt to confuse the
136. That the unconscious drive to prune trees of possibilities is an inevitable part of how perception and cognition work was argued, I hope convincingly, in Parts I and II. It is a way of coping with the combinatorial largeness of such trees of possibilities.
137. H. BELLOC: Sonnet 31 of 'Sonnets and verse' (posthumous collection); 1954, London, Duckworth, 183 pp., republished 1978. It was first published in 1938 and is given the date 1938 in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th edn. The next sonnet touches a similar chord: '... For all believing's but a dance of shades.' Belloc (1870-1953) was a professing Roman Catholic Christian, a humanist and a polemicist for civilised values, and an astute observer of human nature and of 'things as they are'. He seems to have tried hard to clarify what I am calling the distinction between personal faith and hypercredulous belief.
138. 266-268 Good examples of high quality discussion are being quietly set here and there; see e.g. the thoughtful and reconcilatory discussions cited in Note 137, and see e.g. the news item in the 3 January 1997 issue of Science (1997, 275, 29) about students' and others' interest in a programme of lectures and seminars run by Dr Helena Cronin, an evolutionary biologist and Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economics (http://www.blpes.lse.ac.uk). There are many other such efforts. Further relevant discussion situation may be found for instance in Refs. 143, 145, 160, 167, 208, 224 (briefly and quietly), and 228, 236, 275, and 294. I found the last chapter of Ref. 167 particularly helpful in getting over my own first shocked reaction, which was exactly that recorded in Ref. 236:
139. 266-268 Good examples of high quality discussion are being quietly set here and there; see e.g. the thoughtful and reconcilatory discussions cited in Note 137, and see e.g. the news item in the 3 January 1997 issue of Science (1997, 275, 29) about students' and others' interest in a programme of lectures and seminars run by Dr Helena Cronin, an evolutionary biologist and Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economics (http://www.blpes.lse.ac.uk). There are many other such efforts. Further relevant discussion situation may be found for instance in Refs. 143, 145, 160, 167, 208, 224 (briefly and quietly), and 228, 236, 275, and 294. I found the last chapter of Ref. 167 particularly helpful in getting over my own first shocked reaction, which was exactly that recorded in Ref. 236:
140. 266-268 Good examples of high quality discussion are being quietly set here and there; see e.g. the thoughtful and reconcilatory discussions cited in Note 137, and see e.g. the news item in the 3 January 1997 issue of Science (1997, 275, 29) about students' and others' interest in a programme of lectures and seminars run by Dr Helena Cronin, an evolutionary biologist and Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economics (http://www.blpes.lse.ac.uk). There are many other such efforts. Further relevant discussion situation may be found for instance in Refs. 143, 145, 160, 167, 208, 224 (briefly and quietly), and 228, 236, 275, and 294. I found the last chapter of Ref. 167 particularly helpful in getting over my own first shocked reaction, which was exactly that recorded in Ref. 236:
141. 232 of the polarised 'science wars' literature.
142. 132,276 See also Science, 1997, 275, 41, suggesting that the asthma epidemic is a revenge effect, perhaps from the battle against tuberculosis.
143. 132,276 See also Science, 1997, 275, 41, suggesting that the asthma epidemic is a revenge effect, perhaps from the battle against tuberculosis.
144. 198,248
145. 198,248
146. 198,248
147. 194,197,198
148. A. B. PIPPARD: 'Footnote to history', Nature, 1991, 350, 29. Argues from the cold fusion debate that 'the institution of science is robust' - despite some very conspicuous human lapses.
149. 207,253 I also agree with him about (i) the very high uncertainty in our present conceptual and numerical models of global environmental change, (ii) the possibly serious and potentially catastrophic consequences of such change, and (iii) the 'outrageous' yet widely reported public claims by a few scientists that (p. 154) 'their special knowledge of the future allows them to know with high certainty something virtually everybody else in the expert community disputes: that the probability of any non-negligible outcomes' of anthropogenic global change 'is virtually zero'. This again is the driver on the foggy road 'who shuts his eyes and blocks his ears and claims infallible prior knowledge' of what lies ahead. Cases of powerful newsmedia support for such irresponsibility are documented in Ref. 247 and in S. K. AVERY, P. D. TRY, R. A. ANTHES, and R. E. HALLGREN: 'An open letter to Ben Santer', Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., Sept. 1996, 77, 1961-1966. See also Note 258 for one aspect of future sea level change regarding which the scientific uncertainty can now be argued to be practically negligible.
150. 207,253 I also agree with him about (i) the very high uncertainty in our present conceptual and numerical models of global environmental change, (ii) the possibly serious and potentially catastrophic consequences of such change, and (iii) the 'outrageous' yet widely reported public claims by a few scientists that (p. 154) 'their special knowledge of the future allows them to know with high certainty something virtually everybody else in the expert community disputes: that the probability of any non-negligible outcomes' of anthropogenic global change 'is virtually zero'. This again is the driver on the foggy road 'who shuts his eyes and blocks his ears and claims infallible prior knowledge' of what lies ahead. Cases of powerful newsmedia support for such irresponsibility are documented in Ref. 247 and in S. K. AVERY, P. D. TRY, R. A. ANTHES, and R. E. HALLGREN: 'An open letter to Ben Santer', Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., Sept. 1996, 77, 1961-1966. See also Note 258 for one aspect of future sea level change regarding which the scientific uncertainty can now be argued to be practically negligible.
151. 207,253 I also agree with him about (i) the very high uncertainty in our present conceptual and numerical models of global environmental change, (ii) the possibly serious and potentially catastrophic consequences of such change, and (iii) the 'outrageous' yet widely reported public claims by a few scientists that (p. 154) 'their special knowledge of the future allows them to know with high certainty something virtually everybody else in the expert community disputes: that the probability of any non-negligible outcomes' of anthropogenic global change 'is virtually zero'. This again is the driver on the foggy road 'who shuts his eyes and blocks his ears and claims infallible prior knowledge' of what lies ahead. Cases of powerful newsmedia support for such irresponsibility are documented in Ref. 247 and in S. K. AVERY, P. D. TRY, R. A. ANTHES, and R. E. HALLGREN: 'An open letter to Ben Santer', Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., Sept. 1996, 77, 1961-1966. See also Note 258 for one aspect of future sea level change regarding which the scientific uncertainty can now be argued to be practically negligible.
152. 207,253 I also agree with him about (i) the very high uncertainty in our present conceptual and numerical models of global environmental change, (ii) the possibly serious and potentially catastrophic consequences of such change, and (iii) the 'outrageous' yet widely reported public claims by a few scientists that (p. 154) 'their special knowledge of the future allows them to know with high certainty something virtually everybody else in the expert community disputes: that the probability of any non-negligible outcomes' of anthropogenic global change 'is virtually zero'. This again is the driver on the foggy road 'who shuts his eyes and blocks his ears and claims infallible prior knowledge' of what lies ahead. Cases of powerful newsmedia support for such irresponsibility are documented in Ref. 247 and in S. K. AVERY, P. D. TRY, R. A. ANTHES, and R. E. HALLGREN: 'An open letter to Ben Santer', Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., Sept. 1996, 77, 1961-1966. See also Note 258 for one aspect of future sea level change regarding which the scientific uncertainty can now be argued to be practically negligible.
153. 270 and the resulting wealth destruction in the UK underlines the same point: it was clear from the outset, to anyone aware of the scientific uncertainties about spongiform encephalopathies, that respect for the scientific ideal was needed - not least humility in the face of the unknown - but in the event political pressures gave these little chance. Addendum: Progress toward securing independence for the US Academy Complex through a special bill of Congress has been reported in Nature, 13 Nov. 1997, 390, 104.
154. 270 and the resulting wealth destruction in the UK underlines the same point: it was clear from the outset, to anyone aware of the scientific uncertainties about spongiform encephalopathies, that respect for the scientific ideal was needed - not least humility in the face of the unknown - but in the event political pressures gave these little chance. Addendum: Progress toward securing independence for the US Academy Complex through a special bill of Congress has been reported in Nature, 13 Nov. 1997, 390, 104.
155. 270 and the resulting wealth destruction in the UK underlines the same point: it was clear from the outset, to anyone aware of the scientific uncertainties about spongiform encephalopathies, that respect for the scientific ideal was needed - not least humility in the face of the unknown - but in the event political pressures gave these little chance. Addendum: Progress toward securing independence for the US Academy Complex through a special bill of Congress has been reported in Nature, 13 Nov. 1997, 390, 104.
156. 270 and the resulting wealth destruction in the UK underlines the same point: it was clear from the outset, to anyone aware of the scientific uncertainties about spongiform encephalopathies, that respect for the scientific ideal was needed - not least humility in the face of the unknown - but in the event political pressures gave these little chance. Addendum: Progress toward securing independence for the US Academy Complex through a special bill of Congress has been reported in Nature, 13 Nov. 1997, 390, 104.
157. 270 and the resulting wealth destruction in the UK underlines the same point: it was clear from the outset, to anyone aware of the scientific uncertainties about spongiform encephalopathies, that respect for the scientific ideal was needed - not least humility in the face of the unknown - but in the event political pressures gave these little chance. Addendum: Progress toward securing independence for the US Academy Complex through a special bill of Congress has been reported in Nature, 13 Nov. 1997, 390, 104.
158. 270 and the resulting wealth destruction in the UK underlines the same point: it was clear from the outset, to anyone aware of the scientific uncertainties about spongiform encephalopathies, that respect for the scientific ideal was needed - not least humility in the face of the unknown - but in the event political pressures gave these little chance. Addendum: Progress toward securing independence for the US Academy Complex through a special bill of Congress has been reported in Nature, 13 Nov. 1997, 390, 104.
159. C. K. GUNSALUS: 'Ethics: sending out the message', Science, 1997, 276, 335. This editorial is one of countless public statements by scientists that call attention to the importance of respect for the scientific ethic. It reminds us too that such respect will be in jeopardy unless university students, in particular, perceive their mentors as respecting the ethic, rather than being wholly driven by the commercial and other narrow forms of self interest that scientists are now under pressure to espouse. This in itself is a strong argument not to push too far the reliance on funding by commercial industry, or by research funding councils whose priorities are dictated by politics or commerce.
160. 253 whose timescale is that of the quarterly financial report and whose practitioners, including financial advisers, economists, and market analysts, consume a very substantial fraction of the world's total business turnover (J. J. WALLIS and D. C. NORTH: in 'Long term factors in American economic growth', (ed. S. L. Engerman and R. E. Gallman), 95-163; 1986, Chicago, IL, Chicago University Press) - far greater than the resources of any present day institution that is trying to think on longer timescales, including even the military. Kurland reminds us that forces of such magnitude pose, in particular, one of the gravest threats to the openness of academic research and hence, by implication, to the survival of the scientific ethic and the credibility of public statements by tomorrow's scientists. See also Refs. 197 and 245, to the first of which Kurland's article was in part a reply, and S. L. PIMM: 'The value of everything', Nature, 1997, 387, 231-232. This points out that unconstrained market forces, being blind to 'overarching moral issues', would be likely, on their own, to ensure the reintroduction of, for instance, child labour where it is not already established, especially if the forces are those brought into play by the kind of opinion poll run by market analysts, reinforcing market force hypercredulity by asking questions of the type 'What would you personally pay each year to prevent the reintroduction of child labour?'
161. 253 whose timescale is that of the quarterly financial report and whose practitioners, including financial advisers, economists, and market analysts, consume a very substantial fraction of the world's total business turnover (J. J. WALLIS and D. C. NORTH: in 'Long term factors in American economic growth', (ed. S. L. Engerman and R. E. Gallman), 95-163; 1986, Chicago, IL, Chicago University Press) - far greater than the resources of any present day institution that is trying to think on longer timescales, including even the military. Kurland reminds us that forces of such magnitude pose, in particular, one of the gravest threats to the openness of academic research and hence, by implication, to the survival of the scientific ethic and the credibility of public statements by tomorrow's scientists. See also Refs. 197 and 245, to the first of which Kurland's article was in part a reply, and S. L. PIMM: 'The value of everything', Nature, 1997, 387, 231-232. This points out that unconstrained market forces, being blind to 'overarching moral issues', would be likely, on their own, to ensure the reintroduction of, for instance, child labour where it is not already established, especially if the forces are those brought into play by the kind of opinion poll run by market analysts, reinforcing market force hypercredulity by asking questions of the type 'What would you personally pay each year to prevent the reintroduction of child labour?'
162. 253 whose timescale is that of the quarterly financial report and whose practitioners, including financial advisers, economists, and market analysts, consume a very substantial fraction of the world's total business turnover (J. J. WALLIS and D. C. NORTH: in 'Long term factors in American economic growth', (ed. S. L. Engerman and R. E. Gallman), 95-163; 1986, Chicago, IL, Chicago University Press) - far greater than the resources of any present day institution that is trying to think on longer timescales, including even the military. Kurland reminds us that forces of such magnitude pose, in particular, one of the gravest threats to the openness of academic research and hence, by implication, to the survival of the scientific ethic and the credibility of public statements by tomorrow's scientists. See also Refs. 197 and 245, to the first of which Kurland's article was in part a reply, and S. L. PIMM: 'The value of everything', Nature, 1997, 387, 231-232. This points out that unconstrained market forces, being blind to 'overarching moral issues', would be likely, on their own, to ensure the reintroduction of, for instance, child labour where it is not already established, especially if the forces are those brought into play by the kind of opinion poll run by market analysts, reinforcing market force hypercredulity by asking questions of the type 'What would you personally pay each year to prevent the reintroduction of child labour?'
163. 248 - a technique extensively used in Kealey's book.
164. 260,261 - though like Refs. 197 and 245 it still seems to ignore society's need for a science base that is independent of commercial interests.
165. R. GELBSPAN: 'The heat is on: the high stakes battle over Earth's threatened climate'; 1997, New York, Addison-Wesley, 278 pp. This book is a substantial and courageous piece of investigative journalism, documenting, as far as corporate secrecy permits, the politics and financing of, and newsmedia collaboration with, the fossil fuel industry's propaganda campaign on global environmental change aimed at keeping the heads of the US public, Congress, and Senate firmly in the sand. This is a clear case of the scientific ideal and ethic, and scientists personally, coming under direct attack by short term commercial interests wielding supranational economic power (see also Nature, 1997, 390, 649). Gelbspan's book includes transcripts from hearings of the US Congress, and important factual material (e.g. pp. 232-236) whose publication was suppressed by one of the major collaborating newspapers, the Wall Street Journal; further details of such suppression is documented in the publicly available article by Avery et al. referred to in Note 241. Although the book contains extensive quotations from testimonies by respected scientists, it is an intelligent lay person's view and does not itself purport to be scientifically definitive; in particular, I do not think it puts enough emphasis on the uncertainties. For the scientific aspects see, rather, Notes 256 and 257.
166. R. GELBSPAN: 'The heat is on: the high stakes battle over Earth's threatened climate'; 1997, New York, Addison-Wesley, 278 pp. This book is a substantial and courageous piece of investigative journalism, documenting, as far as corporate secrecy permits, the politics and financing of, and newsmedia collaboration with, the fossil fuel industry's propaganda campaign on global environmental change aimed at keeping the heads of the US public, Congress, and Senate firmly in the sand. This is a clear case of the scientific ideal and ethic, and scientists personally, coming under direct attack by short term commercial interests wielding supranational economic power (see also Nature, 1997, 390, 649). Gelbspan's book includes transcripts from hearings of the US Congress, and important factual material (e.g. pp. 232-236) whose publication was suppressed by one of the major collaborating newspapers, the Wall Street Journal; further details of such suppression is documented in the publicly available article by Avery et al. referred to in Note 241. Although the book contains extensive quotations from testimonies by respected scientists, it is an intelligent lay person's view and does not itself purport to be scientifically definitive; in particular, I do not think it puts enough emphasis on the uncertainties. For the scientific aspects see, rather, Notes 256 and 257.
167. R. GELBSPAN: 'The heat is on: the high stakes battle over Earth's threatened climate'; 1997, New York, Addison-Wesley, 278 pp. This book is a substantial and courageous piece of investigative journalism, documenting, as far as corporate secrecy permits, the politics and financing of, and newsmedia collaboration with, the fossil fuel industry's propaganda campaign on global environmental change aimed at keeping the heads of the US public, Congress, and Senate firmly in the sand. This is a clear case of the scientific ideal and ethic, and scientists personally, coming under direct attack by short term commercial interests wielding supranational economic power (see also Nature, 1997, 390, 649). Gelbspan's book includes transcripts from hearings of the US Congress, and important factual material (e.g. pp. 232-236) whose publication was suppressed by one of the major collaborating newspapers, the Wall Street Journal; further details of such suppression is documented in the publicly available article by Avery et al. referred to in Note 241. Although the book contains extensive quotations from testimonies by respected scientists, it is an intelligent lay person's view and does not itself purport to be scientifically definitive; in particular, I do not think it puts enough emphasis on the uncertainties. For the scientific aspects see, rather, Notes 256 and 257.
168. 198,200
169. 139,270 is described - see also Note 250 - as being 'switched on and off like a tap'.
170. T. BLUNDELL: 'The Foresight Saga and other stories from the science budget', Science and Public Affairs, Spring 1997, 2-4. This commentary is by an eminent scientist who was in a position of national responsibility (Head of the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) at the time of a sudden research priority switch imposed from above, followed by even more sudden budget cuts imposed on the research councils and universities - sudden in the sense that their announcement broke previous promises and left little-time to plan for damage limitation. The general picture of wastage by political interference is corroborated by much other anecdotal material, including my own personal experience on a policy-making committee of another UK research council, the Natural Environment Research Council.
171. R. ELLIOT: 'Threats to full and open access to scientific data', ICSU Focus, Autumn 1997, 10, 3-4. Further information from Dr Peter Collins, Science Advice Section, The Royal Society, 6 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG, UK, tel. +44 (0) 171 451 2584.
172. A. MICHAELS, D. MALMQUIST, A. KNAP, and A. CLOSE: 'Climate science and insurance risk', Nature, 1997, 389, 225-227. A well argued example of how open, credible science can benefit business, in this case the insurance and reinsurance business, with emphasis on the essential role of openness and peer review. See also Ref. 247.
173. 152,194,198,199,239,248 then the results of an experiment are what you say they are - offering, too, the 'efficiency gain' of not having to do the experiment at all.
174. D. KENNEDY: 'Academic duty'; 1997. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 310 pp, (ISBN 0 674 00222 9). A passionate and well informed plea for taking professional responsibility seriously, with emphasis on university teaching, the other side of the 'academic freedom' bargain.
175. E. F. SCHUMACHER: 'Good work'; 1979, London, Cape, 148 pp. See Chap. 2 for the Gandhi quote about civilisation being 'a good idea', and Chap. 4 for the 'third great illusion' of our time, the illusion that 'science can solve all problems' (the first and second great illusions being that there is room for infinite exponential growth and that society has an infinite supply of mindless labour). The book describes some successful yet humane small business enterprises, some of them meeting Third World needs. Schumacher also, in his best known book 'Small is beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered' (1973), finds words that capture very well the phenomenon I am calling market force hypercredulity: 'Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation of man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations: as long as you have not shown it to be 'uneconomic' you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper.'
176. 2-warmed climate', Science, 1998, 279, 1018-1020. Predicted increases in wind speed are 5-12%, corresponding to a 10-25% increase in forces on trees and buildings.
177. 2-warmed climate', Science, 1998, 279, 1018-1020. Predicted increases in wind speed are 5-12%, corresponding to a 10-25% increase in forces on trees and buildings.
178. 2-warmed climate', Science, 1998, 279, 1018-1020. Predicted increases in wind speed are 5-12%, corresponding to a 10-25% increase in forces on trees and buildings.
179. 138 Another, more subtle reason for uncertainty is cogently argued in Ref. 269. For more technical detail see Ref. 256, for a basic point about sea level rise Ref. 258, and for more about the politics Ref. 247.
180. 296
181. 129 and on acknowledging that questions about subjective experience near death are questions of personal faith and not science.
182. 198,248
183. S. JASANOFF et al. : 'Conversations with the community: AAAS at the millennium', Science, 1997, 278, 2066-2067. A useful summary of recent thinking by the AAAS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, about the crisis in public understanding and the role of science in society. There is a web site for an open forum on these issues:
184. J. LUBCHENKO: 'Entering the century of the environment: a new social contract for science', Science, 1998, 279, 491-497. A followup to Ref. 260, written by the President of the Association, making the case for a new social contract for science - meaning mainly its financial support - in return for a commitment by scientists to something that is unprecedented, namely to recognise that 'we now live on a human-dominated planet' and that this requires something else that is unprecedented: serious attention to what is happening to our planetary life support system. At present, for instance, 'only a few of the thousands or so new chemicals released each year are monitored; the biological effects of most are unknown ...'
185. G. EASTERBROOK: 'Science and God: a warming trend?', Science, 1997, 277, 890-893. This extended news article usefully summarises the confusion and conflation between questions about spiritual health on the one hand, and questions about explaining natural phenomena on the other. 'In postmodern academic culture, the majority of scientists think that to be taken seriously they must scoff at faith.' If such scoffing is considered to be part of professional scientific behaviour, then we, the human species, are indeed heading for trouble.
186. 189 'what idiots we all have been!'
187. 149,297 and an increasing number of other experts today) that '... we face a contradiction between quantum field theory and general relativity similar to the contradictions that led to quantum mechanics', containing 'the seeds of an upheaval as profound in its own way as the discovery of quantum mechanics or relativity'.
188. 149,297 and an increasing number of other experts today) that '... we face a contradiction between quantum field theory and general relativity similar to the contradictions that led to quantum mechanics', containing 'the seeds of an upheaval as profound in its own way as the discovery of quantum mechanics or relativity'.
189. S. YEARLEY: 'Restoring respect for science', Science and Public Affairs, Spring 1997, 42-45. The author, a sociologist, highlights the role of 'trust and judgment' in successful and credible science and argues that their role - and, by implication, the role of the scientific ideal and ethic - needs to be made publicly clearer.
190. 268 give sensible discussions of the usefulness and limitations of science, showing very clearly why scientists, and politicians, must resist the pressures to conflate science and politics.
191. D. FISK: 'Sound science and the environment', Science and Public Affairs, Spring 1997, 46-49.
192. 186 implies still greater uncertainty than one might gather from Ref. 257, especially about early warning signals. Palmer's paper uses simple but apt analogies to bring out these points.
193. 139 The second was, and still is, the great scientific uncertainty about the particular disease agent involved. Both basic points were missed, or ignored, by the UK government and civil service until years after the first moves in the 1980s to regulate cattle feed. This was a case of being unwise after the event. It took the best part of a decade to achieve official recognition of the need to avoid contamination of the food chain as a real need, implied by the large scientific uncertainty - not just a 'public relations need' as those in power perceived it. This last perception, as evidenced by the pattern of government action and inaction, by the large shortfall in compensation payments for instance, and by the making of cattle feed regulations while not enforcing them, sent a strong message that the risks and uncertainties were not taken seriously. That message must have influenced those farmers who, for instance, eschewed compensation and sold manifestly infected cattle, as I have seen on video recordings, or fed cattle with pig or poultry feed, unregulated at the time. None of this could have happened in a society that had good lines of communication and significant respect for the scientific ideal. Notes 242, 245, and 249 comment further on the political aspects and their implications for the points I am making here. See also the remarks on the gambling instinct in Note 189 and in the main text. It is quite possible that those who said that Beef is Absolutely Safe, and cut costs by not enforcing such regulations as there were, knew perfectly well that they were gambling.
194. N. LEBBRECHT: 'When the music stops ... managers, maestros and the corporate murder of classical music'; 1996/97, London, Simon and Schuster/Pocket Books, 455 pp. Illustrates the 'winner take all' culture and the damage it does. There is a glimmering of hope at the end, from the small music festivals and recording companies that manage to escape the clutches of the strongest supranational market forces, e.g. 'Marlboro radiates a moral counter-culture', p. 411.
195. B. LEVIN: 'The pendulum years: Britain and the sixties'; 1977, London, Pan Books/1989, Sevenoaks, Sceptre, 447 pp. The quotation is from Chap. 4.
196. E.g. S. BIDDULPH: 'Manhood: an action plan for changing men's lives', 2nd edn; 1995, Sydney, Finch Publishing, 261 pp., ISBN 0 646 26144 4. The publication of this lucid and insightful book about 'the women's movement's missing half by Steve Biddulph, an Australian family psychologist, is one among many signs of the sort of organic cultural change that is possible, and is already happening. 'To get real, we have to dig down deeper.' For one thing, the tendency for industrial revolutions to separate fathers from sons has led to dangers that are obvious once thought of, yet only just beginning to be widely recognised.
197. J. D. BARROW: 'Theories of everything: the quest for ultimate explanation'; 1992, London, Vintage, 223 pp. (first published 1990, Oxford, Oxford University Press).
198. 205
199. R. J. WILLIAMS and D. L. HEYMANN: 'Containment of antibiotic resistance', Science, 1998, 279, 1153-1154. This summarises the latest perspective from the World Health Organisation. E.g. 'Twelve million antibiotic prescriptions to adults in the United States in 1992 were for upper respiratory tract infections and bronchitis, on which these drugs have little or no effect ...' Again, market forces are exacerbating what is now recognised as a serious and costly problem: 'There must be a distinction between prescribers and providers so that the prescribers (or their institutions) make no financial gain from the prescription ... at present, prescribers receive much of their continuing education from the pharmaceutical industry'.
200. Fuller notes and references are available on the Internet at the web and ftp sites http://www.atmosdynamics.damtp.cam.ac.uk/ and ftp://ftp.damtp.cam. ac.uk/pub/papers/mem/, together with two MPEG (.mpg) files illustrating the 'walking lights' phenomenon (see Note 31 of Part I), for download in binary mode. All relevant file names begin with the eight characters lucidity. In addition, a 'walking lights' demonstration is now displayed automatically on my web home page, as an animated GIF file viewable through most browsers.
201. 279 Pirsig writes of the typical experience in which a seemingly unimportant 'little fact' becomes noticeable some time after getting stuck on a problem. It becomes noticeable, at least, if you are patient enough to give it a chance. It is 'asking in a timid, humble way if you are interested in it'. Pirsig continues, 'Be interested in it. At first try to understand this new fact not so much in terms of your big problem as for its own sake. That problem may not be as big as you think it is. And that fact may not be as small as you think it is. It may not be the fact you want but ... often ... has friends who are right next to it and are watching to see what your response is. Among the friends may be the exact fact you are looking for.'
202. The creation of anything worth creating, in the arts and sciences equally, always seems to involve an intricate interplay between conscious and unconscious construction. This is well described on pp. 191-196 of Ref. 16 of Part I, the new edition of Littlewood's 'Miscellany' (1986, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press): there are of course the celebrated 'eureka moments' - to quote, 'illumination, which can happen in a fraction of a second, is the emergence of the creative idea into the conscious' - but, less famously but crucially, there is the arduous preparation for such moments, impossible without 'an intense conscious curiosity about the subject ... a craving to exercise the mind on it, quite like physical hunger' lasting for many years. There is the need to find ways, different for different individuals, of 'giving the subconscious every chance'; see also Note 34 of Part I. There is the 'devastating experience' of losing the curiosity and the drive to undertake such arduous labour. All this should be required reading for science policymakers.
203. Chapter 11 of 'The astonishing hypothesis' by Francis Crick (1994, London, New York, Simon and Schuster; see also Note 32 of Part I), on the visual cortex of primates, is enough to show the existence of 'hierarchies or ensembles of models having different accuracies and different purposes'. What I have simplistically been calling the brain's internal model of the outside world includes, even in those parts of it most closely constrained by purely visual sensory data, what neuroscientists call different 'maps' representing different, and coarser or finer, aspects of what we see - coarse grain configuration, edges and fine detail, motion, colour, and so on.
204. 153,154
205. 130,162 A brilliant and well meaning scientist tries to save the world through a superhuman power whose workings he does not fully understand, leading to uncontrolled carnage.
206. 166,298 and he seems to have suffered, in Tippett's words, 'from the clear consciousness of the disintegration of our spiritual sensibility within an insatiable materialism'. Nietzsche may yet be remembered as one of the great visionaries and teachers about human nature - including some of its less congenial aspects whose existence has to be taken seriously, as I am arguing here, whether we like them or not. It seems, incidentally, that some of the more superficially belligerent ideas attributed to Nietzsche were originated not by him but by his sister Elisabeth, who survived him and became involved with the Nazi movement (e.g. recent updates in the Encyclopaedia Britannica). The book 'Der Wille zur Macht [The will to power]', attributed to Nietzsche, seems to have been put together entirely by Elisabeth, after his death, combining unauthorised selections from his unpublished notes with her own unacknowledged additions. I am grateful to Oliver Bühler for pointing this out.
207. 299 The complete DNA sequence is now known for the K-12 strain of E. coli (F. R. BLATTNER et al. : Science, 1997, 277, 1453-1474), and appears to imply that the bacterium is potentially able to manufacture up to 4288 different kinds of protein. The conformations or ways of folding, hence detailed functioning, of many of these protein molecules are unknown, nor have we yet the means to predict them reliably. Note also that the E. coli bacterium has less than a thousandth of the volume of a single human neuron (Ref. 32 of Part I), a far more complicated (eukaryotic) type of cell.
208. R. A. HINDE: 'War: some psychological causes and consequences', Interdisc. Sci. Rev., 1997, 22, (3), 229-245. An eminent animal and human behaviourist analyses the nature and cost of modern warfare, and the cultural and institutional aspects of its perpetuation. Complements Ref. 166's insight into the 'predisposing factors' and 'eliciting factors'.
209. 183 it might well have been seen as frivolous - as an unaffordable luxury and an impediment to migration - and probably sacrilegious as well. As a tribal elder might have said, suitably translated: 'If God had meant us to fool with beads and bracelets, he wouldn't have given us poetry and dance.' Or, more likely perhaps, 'Violate not the sacred shapes of our ancestral tools, lest their magic be dissipated and we be doomed.'
210. 295), it contains a wise, lucid, and cogent warning about the limitations of science. On Final Theories, see also, for instance, my discussion in Part II and discussions in Ref. 171, pp. 363-365, and in R. P. FEYNMAN, R. B. LEIGHTON, and M. SANDS: 'The Feynman lectures on physics', Vol. II, 'Mainly electromagnetism and matter'; 1964, New York, Addison- Wesley, p. 25-10.
211. 295), it contains a wise, lucid, and cogent warning about the limitations of science. On Final Theories, see also, for instance, my discussion in Part II and discussions in Ref. 171, pp. 363-365, and in R. P. FEYNMAN, R. B. LEIGHTON, and M. SANDS: 'The Feynman lectures on physics', Vol. II, 'Mainly electromagnetism and matter'; 1964, New York, Addison-Wesley, p. 25-10.
212. 276 provides fertile ground for the ever faster evolution of today's and tomorrow's dangerous viruses and bacteria. For instance medical professionals have already noticed a resurgence of syphilis in the West, emanating from Eastern European sources, and expect the usual consequence of increased HIV infection thence AIDS to follow (BBC news item of 4 April 1997; updates should be available on the World Health Organisation's web pages, http://www.who.ch/).
213. E.g. T. BEHAN: 'The Camorra'; 1996, London, New York, Routledge, 225 pp. A historical study of the development over nearly two centuries of a powerful and politically sophisticated crime organisation, whose first opportunity to establish itself came from the high unemployment in the slums of Naples in the early nineteenth century. This is one of the unintended effects of unregulated market forces in action, in a manner whose history appears to be repeating itself in Russia and Eastern Europe.
214. A brilliant and famous scientist, in 1997, said on the record that 'I don't think there's any doubt that one can simulate an earthworm's brain on a computer'. What was meant was, presumably, not a real earth-worm's brain but a model brain made of textbook neurons and synapses - quite a different thing, as Notes 205 and 284 remind us.
215. Q. OUYANG, P. D. KAPLAN, S. LIU, and A. LIBCHABER: 'DNA solution of the maximal clique problem', Science, 1997, 278, 446-449.
216. D. BOUWMEESTER, J.-W. PAN, K. MATTLE, M. EIBL, H. WEINFURTER, and A. ZEILINGER: 'Experimental quantum teleportation', Nature, 1997, 390, 575-579. See also Note 293:
217. D. BOSCHI, S. BRANCA, F. DE MARTINI, L. HARDY, and S. POPESCU: 'Experimental realisation of teleporting an unknown pure quantum state via dual classical and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen channels', Phys. Rev. Lett., 1998, 80, 1121-1125. See also the news item in Nature, 11 Dec. 1997, 390, 551-552 and in Phys. Today, 1998, 51, (2), 18-21.
218. D. BOSCHI, S. BRANCA, F. DE MARTINI, L. HARDY, and S. POPESCU: 'Experimental realisation of teleporting an unknown pure quantum state via dual classical and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen channels', Phys. Rev. Lett., 1998, 80, 1121-1125. See also the news item in Nature, 11 Dec. 1997, 390, 551-552 and in Phys. Today, 1998, 51, (2), 18-21.
219. D. BOSCHI, S. BRANCA, F. DE MARTINI, L. HARDY, and S. POPESCU: 'Experimental realisation of teleporting an unknown pure quantum state via dual classical and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen channels', Phys. Rev. Lett., 1998, 80, 1121-1125. See also the news item in Nature, 11 Dec. 1997, 390, 551-552 and in Phys. Today, 1998, 51, (2), 18-21.
220. A. BLOOM: 'The closing of the American mind: how higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students'; 1987, London, Penguin, 392 pp. A substantial and erudite discussion of the significance and history of various kinds of cultural relativism, seen from the humanities' side.
221. -1. The associated diffusion timescales for downward heat penetration range from 3 to 30 centuries, in rough order of magnitude, when depth scales are taken in the range 1-3 km. Such timescales furthermore are indifferent, in their rough order of magnitude, to whether or not the so called thermohaline circulation is weakened or shut off, a feature of some global change scenarios that is highly significant for global and regional climate but not, for the reasons just given, highly significant for the underlying sea level inflation rate.
222. R. A. WARRICK, C. LE PROVOST, M. F. MEIER, J. OERLEMANS, and P. L. WOODWORTH: 'Changes in sea level', in Ref. 256, Chap. 7, 361-405. See Fig. 1.9, p. 385.
223. S. W. HAWKING and R. PENROSE: 'The nature of space and time'; 1996, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 41 pp.
224. 'Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, daß er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.' Roughly translated, this reads 'He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.' Oliver Bühler has told me that the word 'monster' only partly captures the meaning of 'Ungeheuer', which along with 'Abgrund' evokes feelings of deeper mysteries. The quote is from Nietzsche's 'Jenseits von Gut und Böse'; 1886, Chap. 4, §146.
225. 277
226. W. MUNK and C. WUNSCH: 'The moon and mixing: abyssal recipes II', Deep Sea Res., 1998, to be published.
227. R. M. SAMELSON and G. K. VALLIS: 'Large-scale circulation with small diapycnal diffusion: the two-thermocline limit', J. Marine Res., 1997, 55, 223-275.