Fail again. Fail better.
A non-scientist’s book on science’s forgotten cul-de-sacs attacks straw men and fails to note the path from failure to discovery
Tucker’s previous book was on Great British Eccentrics, and this one is really Great (Vaguely) Scientific Eccentrics. Science is presented as a freak show in which we are invited to ridicule absurd beliefs. The problem is that absurd beliefs often turn out to be true. “We are all agreed that your theory is crazy,” physicist Neils Bohr famously told his colleague Wolfgang Pauli. “The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.”
Tucker mocks 18th century ‘cow house therapy’ with the patient living alongside cows, but later admits that harmless cowpox from cows turned out to be an effective inoculation against smallpox. He laughs at Galvin’s followers for seeking to revive corpses with electric shocks, but mentions that defibrillators restart hearts with the same effect. Early experiments with blood transfusion between humans and animals were ridiculous… but paved the way for life-saving transfusion.
The conventional view of science is that it progresses, and mistaken ideas are replaced by new theories backed by experimental data. Tucker is having none of this: he attacks the ‘myth of progress’. This frequently shades into attacks on the idea of social progress, which he sees as a delusion perpetrated by “liberal humanists”, an amorphous group located somewhere to the left of centre. There is plenty of heat, but little light. Tucker has fun with the many eccentricities of Soviet, Nazi, Islamic and even feminist science (“Still, what do you expect from a woman?” he quips daringly). In spite of these lessons in how the political distortion of science breeds monsters, Tucker denies that liberal democracy may produce better science. As evidence, he advances the fact that North Korea has atom bombs and liberal Scandinavia does not.
The book weaves around uncertainly, often with no very obvious connection to science. The stranger ideas of mystics, Creationists, homeopaths, Wilhelm Reich and even Strindberg are aired, however unscientific they might have been considered when first expressed. The section on hoaxes perpetrated by Brass Eye show the public ignorance of science, but has little to do with science, forgotten or otherwise.
Modern science comes in for numerous attacks: if science from centuries ago turned out to be wrong, so may our present ideas. Tucker does not deny climate change – unlike every other topic, it is “beyond the capacity of laymen” so he cannot comment. He is suspicious of climate change scientists. He scorns the idea that methane from cows may cause global warming without explaining why and spends half a page on a joke story from the Sport newspaper about climate change making breasts bigger, suggesting that this is on the same level as research on the effects of methane from livestock. He declares that science is a modern religion, an idea that is hardly original and given no new support. Even Tucker has to admit that it is self-correcting, though it may take a while.
Apart from liberal humanists and their insidious belief in social progress, Tucker’s other pet hate is immortality. He sees the idea that it may be possible as a myth peddled by the religion of science, and seems genuinely disturbed that anyone might achieve it. Some of this fire is directed at those who wish to upload their brains to computers. Again, he gives no indication of why their ideas are wrong, beyond the fact that previous attempts at immortality have failed. It would be unfair to observe that there were many failures before success was eventually achieved with powered flight, because this would imply some sort of progress. Tucker gives approving mentions to pseudoscientist Rupert Sheldrake, mainly because Sheldrake annoys scientists. He does not look too closely at Sheldrake’s own, widely-rejected work. He describes Russian biologist Paul Kammerer’s theory of Seriality as “basically incomprehensible”, when it resembles Sheldrake’s idea of morphic resonance, that nature has a memory.
Tucker is not a scientist, and many of his statements do not stand up to scrutiny; for example, how is harnessing insect power perpetual motion? He criticises Tesla for believing that lighting can cause downpours, when this is widely accepted by meteorologists. A section on Paligenesis that looked good was largely borrowed from FT. Science is a bizarre and wonderful field. Scientists have strange ideas about some things, just like everyone else. But an openness to new and crazy ideas is a rich source of discovery, and this book does a disservice to science and scientists, especially those on the further and more interesting shores.