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An Emotional History of Science
Mike King January 1993
A response to Stephen W. Hawking's "A Brief History of
Time"
"SCIENTISTS STRUGGLE TO FIND UNIFIED THEORY"
"THEY STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND!"
"£4BN RESEARCH PROJECT FAILS TO PROVE THE NON-EXISTENCE OF
MASSLESS MATTER"
It's a summer evening and you are sitting on the sofa after a good meal,
glancing at this article. The birds are tweeting outside and a taxi rumbles
past; a dog barks in the distance and you can hear your flat-mate doing
the washing up. As you settle into the sofa a slight feeling of discomfort
in the small of your back reminds you that you were going to take up exercise,
but your fingers, with a life of their own, creep towards the remote. Stop!
I cry. Read this article instead! "Why should I?" you ask: "What
have the problems of scientists got to do with me?" Well, I answer,
they are trying desperately to unite the General Theory of Relativity with
Quantum Mechanics. "Huh," you splutter, "so what?" Well,
the first theory makes sure that your satellite TV satellite is in the right
place instead of three miles to the left, and the second theory makes your
telly work in the first place. "Humph. I suppose we should be grateful
or vaguely interested then: will the unified theory turn my telly into a
satellite?" Very funny. No it won't. "Anyway scientists are a
cold, uninteresting aloof bunch of intellectuals in white coats." The
fingers move towards the remote. No they're not, I say, - they are emotional
irrational people, full of extraordinary conceits, vanities and intrigues
- they make the Borgias look like county librarians. "Really?"
Really. Read on.
Some of the ancient Greeks decided that the world was round because they
saw the masts of ships coming over the horizon before they saw the hull,
but believed that the moon, sun and stars went round the earth. Copernicus
thought that the earth went round the Sun, and in 1609 Galileo found evidence
of this with his invention, the telescope. The Pope didn't like the idea
at all. So much so that Galileo was put under house arrest, and threatened
with a rather unpleasant form of central heating. From the story of Galileo
we have an archetypal picture of a new type of hero: the scientist fighting
for truth against the irrational Catholic Church; a picture of the rational
inquirer with his shiny instruments discovering painful truths that only
the superstitious and emotional would reject. Why is this truth painful
anyway we may ask? Apparently the ancients were arrogant enough to consider
themselves at the centre of the universe, and it hurt their pride to be
told otherwise: they were like children, afraid of the cold dark empty spaces,
afraid of their insignificance. Modern man has got used to the idea by now,
a small sacrifice to pay for the benefits brought by the scientific tradition
that Galileo saw the birth of.
In the late 20th century we imagine all the scientists to be in this great
tradition - fighting for truth against the irrationally held beliefs of
the establishment of the day. Phooey, I say! There is no such tradition!
They were and still are just like you and me! Full of prejudices and irrational
likes and dislikes! They kept getting it wrong! In fact:
"HUGE CENTURIES-OLD COVER-UP EXPOSED!"
We will start with Kepler, who modified the theory of Copernicus and Galileo:
he discovered that the planets moved in elliptical orbits, but he didn't
like the idea at all. He just plain didn't like ellipses, he preferred
circles, because they were more perfect. No better than the Pope was he?
He neither had the power nor the inclination to condemn himself to death,
but that is no excuse: he busted the great scientific tradition wide open!
And he was only the second person in the tradition.
Let us look at Sir Isaac Newton next, whose laws of motion you may have
learned in school (their can't be a better character reference than that
can there?), and see if he did any better. Nope, afraid not. Picking up
on the work of Kepler, Newton developed the mathematics to show that orbits
were elliptical, proving at the same time how clever he was, and how much
he didn't mind ellipses. He more or less invented gravity (personally I
think it was around a lot longer), which shows that everything attracts
everything else, but then rejected the only logical outcome: the
Universe would have to rush towards itself and squash up very uncomfortably
indeed. (I'm very sorry, but if you invent gravity, you have to accept the
idea of a cramped future.) No, Newton wasn't having it so he invented the
spurious argument that the universe was infinite (which he could prove neither
one way nor the other), and therefore there was no suitable place for everything
to collapse towards, because how could all the bits and pieces decide where
the centre was to collapse to? Collapse on your sofa laughing more like!
We won't mention how Newton used his position of power as president of the
Royal Society to discredit his rivals, or how he sent many men to their
deaths by hanging. Newton probably made the single greatest contribution
to science, but the idea that he was a more rational being than you, I,
or the Pope, is pure myth.
Let's skip a few hundred years, and many hundred scientists, and see if
the most famous scientist of our century, Albert Einstein, does any better
than Kepler and Newton. Einstein is famous for his General theory of Relativity,
which (amongst other things) predicts the Big Bang. Well it does now, but
practically over Einstein's dead body! His earlier theories predicted, like
Newton's, that the Universe would have to collapse, which he didn't like.
He managed to cope with losing the concept of time as we know it, but just
like Newton he desperately wanted the Universe to be static. Why, one asks?
Why do scientists want circles instead of ellipses, and static universes
instead of collapsing or expanding ones? To prevent himself facing the truth
Einstein invented some completely wrong physics to stop the collapse - at
least Newton only came up with a silly argument! Worse is to come. Einstein
made considerable contribution to quantum mechanics, but could not bear
the uncertainty principle, which is one of its cornerstones and provoked
this famous response from him: "God does not play dice." (If Einstein
had read Nietzsche he would have known that God was dead anyway, with or
without quantum mechanics.)
Of course, largely despite scientists, science does get it right in the
end, which means you can watch the Movie Channel if you so wish (it's a
free country). A Russian scientist called Friedmann explained Einstein's
theories without the need for the wrong bits, predicting an expanding universe,
followed by a possible contraction. He started with two assumptions: firstly
that the universe looks the same (disregarding local irregularities) looking
out in any direction, and secondly (because this first theory is too much
like the old ideas of the Catholic Church, placing us at the centre of the
universe) that this is true if you observe the universe from anyplace else.
Friedmann seems to be in the right scientific tradition: he accepts the
results of unpalatable theory, and gives two fingers to the Church in the
process. Can we look to the Russians for more examples of the true scientific
tradition? Possibly, but it is just as easy to find the opposite: the Russians
on the whole opposed the Big Bang theory because of one of its predictions:
the laws of science break down in what is called a singularity -
an event where matter is so compressed that space-time is infinitely curved.
Why did they oppose this theory (even supposing that it does actually mean
anything)? Because of the Marxist belief in scientific determinism. This
is irrationality twice removed - Marxism is based on the ideas of scientific
determinism put forward by Laplace, so Marxist scientists won't reject Laplace's
now discredited ideas because Marx (who wasn't a scientist) was emotionally
committed to them!
Einstein invents relativity but rejects the Big Bang and the uncertainty
principle, Newton can't believe in the result of gravity, and Kepler doesn't
like ellipses. What has the poor old Catholic Church decided about all this?
After keeping quiet for more than three centuries it decided in 1951 to
throw in its tuppence-worth again: the Big Bang theory is okay, because
it agrees with the Creation, but scientists shouldn't try to work out what
happened during the Big Bang itself, because that was the workings of God.
Sigh.
This makes me think of a Hungarian painter who was looking at some air-brush
illustrations of atoms and electrons that I had been working on. "I
don't like atoms," he said. You mean you don't believe in them? "No,
I don't like them," he said. At the time I scorned his remark as unscientific
and emotional, but now I know that he is in the great scientific tradition:
you don't like ellipses, Big Bangs, or the uncertainty principle? No problem;
myself I don't like atoms.
The truth is now out: the history of science that we are told to believe
in is a cover-up! It is only because the next biggest kick in science after
inventing a brilliant theory is proving the previous brilliant theory wrong,
that we have any correct science at all.
"Hmm," you say, "I shall think of scientists in a new
light now." As the uncertainty principle leaves undecided you about
what sort of exercise you should really take up, your fingers finally reach
the remote. You reflect, as the tube crackles and warms up, that like after
any other exposed cover-up, the birds will still be tweeting and the taxis
rumbling past, and the wicked perpetrators will carry on as before. "...
clock news. Scientists have finally announced the unified theory. EVERTHING
IS NOW EXPLAINED. We go over to the Joint European Torus where Dr. Haagendaas
will explain the importance of the new theories. Dr Haagendaas, perhaps
you could explain the apparatus behind you. Indeed. We have 4 billion gallons
of water in this mountain which we have been looking at for fifteen years,
and have found not a single massless particle interaction, thus proving
that the radiation from black holes to be as predicted..." You stare
with only mild disbelief as the television sprouts wings and floats up and
out of the open window, vanishing to a small glowing point of light in the
deep-blue haze of the early evening sky. "Jogging," you decide
to yourself, "I think I'll take up jogging."
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