A Passion for Science

Many will lend this book but few will get it back. It contains the heavily edited transcripts from a series of interviews conducted by Lewis Wolpert on BBC Radio 3 and it maintains the high standard set by Bryan Magee who pioneered the art of extended interviews with men of ideas on the BBC. The result is a treasure-trove of insights into the world of science at the highest level. The book itself is beautifully designed and printed.The thirteen interviews are grouped in five sections. 'First and Last Things' introduces the theoretical physicists Abdus Salam and Michael Berry, the cosmologist Martin Rees and the mathematician Christopher Zeeman. 'Molecules of Life' offers the chemist Dorothy Hodgkin and three molecular biologists - Francis Crick, Sydney Brenner and Gunther Stent. 'Evolving Ideas' presents John Maynard Smith and Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionary biologists. 'The Search' contains Anthony Epstein, a virologist, and the geneticist Walter Bodmer. Richard Gregory the neuropsychologist has a section to himself titled 'Cunning Mechanisms'.The challenge for a book like this is to find people who can talk about their field in simple terms. They also need to convey some insights into the activities that are involved in their work, and the "feel" of it all. This book suceeds handsomely because all the subjects are interesting and coherent, at least in the edited form provided to us. Deep philosophical thoughts do not feature in the dialogues apart from Wolpert's occasional recourse to Kuhn's language of paradigm shifts. Despite this, useful insights abound. Martin Rees draws a contrast between his own pluralistic approach to rival theories - "running the horses against each other" to see if any fall by the wayside, and the more dogmatic approach of the "advocates" who feel obliged to defend their pet ideas against all criticisms. Richard Gregory points out that the academic battles between rival dogmatists are "very much fought by forgetting half of the counter-evidence". He prefers to maintain friendly relations with opponents, "not working in cupboards and getting amazingly aggressive about other people who think a bit differently" (page 197). Francis Crick, as one would expect from reading The Double Helix, displays a thoroughly "Popperian" perspective - 'It's getting rid of false ideas which is the most important thing in developing the good ones...You should not get bogged down with experimental details. You should make some sort of bold assumptions, and try them out' (pp 94-5). This contrasts with the compulsive experimentalist Anthony Epstein who states 'I don't understand any of that [talk of theory]. I think just sort of messing about is the answer. You've just go to keep messing about at the bench...You make a little bit of apparatus...You see how to change this just a little bit...and you want to tinker with something'(p 165).Only one of these scientists (Gunther Stent) has been touched by the current vogue for the "social cons