Foreword
WILLIAM COOPER
I must say, clever men are fun. It struck me afresh, just reading a
sample The Institute of Physics sent me in advance of contributions
to A random walk in science. (Naturally the sample was representative.)
Fun-that’s not, necessarily, to say funny; though some
of the contributions are very funny. Fun, as I’m defining it for the
moment in my own lexicon, arises from a play of intellectual high
spirits, or high intellectual spirits. (I’m not fussy about which
order the words come in, being neither Wittgensteinian about what
can and can’t be said, nor French about linguistic precision-lots
of things worth saying can only be said loosely.)
In fact spiritedly high intellect also goes for what I’m trying to
get at. With high intelligence there’s nearly always an overflow of
intellectual energy, free energy available for vitalizing any old
topic that comes up, or, better still, for incarnating new ones out of
the empyrean. It’s the play of this free intellectual energy that
makes the person who generates it fun to read, fun to be with. Perhaps
I ought to confess, now, that my private subtitle for this
volume is ‘Physicists At Play’.
So while readers of A random walk in science are being promised
fun, the contributors find themselves being called clever. Well,
there’s something in that. It has always seemed clear to me that
level of intelligence is much more decisive in the sorting-out of
scientists than it is in the sorting-out of, say, writers. (I’ve chosen
writers for comparison with scientists so as to keep sight of the
‘creative’ element in what they both do.) My general impression,
for instance in moving between a group of scientists and a comparable
group of writers, comparable in distinction of talent and
reputation, is of a drop in the average IQ. To take a specific case:
I should have thought you simply couldn’t be a first-rate physicist
without a first-rate intellectual equipment; whereas you can be a
first-rate novelist-quite a few have been.
Such as who ? you ask. Trying to avoid the most obvious dangers
in the present circumstances, by going to the top flight in distinction
and choosing a scientist who’s not a physicist and a novelist
who’s not alive, I suggest juxtaposing Jacques Monod and D H
Lawrence. (I know that the possession of highest intellect is not
what we primarily require of a novelist; that’s not what this argument’s
about.) I feel that by any of the criteria we normally accept
for judging intellectual power and range, Lawrence, though he’s
pretty well bound to be placed in the top flight of novelists, simply
has to come in a flight below Monod as a mind. (It’s particularly
amusing to imagine the rage of Lawrencians at the demotion of
V
Foreword
their prophet as a mind-when the message which they receive
from him with such reverence and passion is patently anti-mind !)
And if one comes down the flights from the top, I think a similar
juxtaposing on almost any of them would most frequently give the
edge to the scientist, certainly to the practitioner of the ‘exact’
sciences.
Having then fulfilled the two prime requirements for a Foreword-
writer-(i) to promise the readers and (ii) to flatter the
authors-I can get on with saying something more about the contributions.
For instance, what sort of fun is it that characterizes
physicists at play? It’s the fun of playing tricks with conceptual
thought-misapplying concepts, parodying them, standing them
on their heads. I have a special weakness, myself, for tricks being
played with the concepts of mathematics and symbolic logic-‘A
Contribution to the Mathematical Theory of Big Game Hunting’,
which shows how to trap a lion in the Sahara sheerly by manipulating
ideas, suits me excellently.
But the whole book is far from being confined to playing with
mathematics and symbolic logic. There’s a selection of in-jokes by
physicists at their most worldly-in-jokes that can readily be understood
by non-physicists, since a lot of them are making sarcastic
fun of how the world works, on which physicists cast a very beady
eye as a result of having to cope with it-where ‘cope’ usually
means ‘crash through it in order to get some physics done.’ 0 & M
wreaking their uncomprehending will at the Festival Hall; ‘Why
we should go to the Moon’ (because ‘the world is running dangerously
short of unprocessed data’); a ‘Proposal for a Coal Reactor’.
And jokes at their own expense-the gamesmanship of physicists;
cynical glossaries of the professional terms they use, and so on.
Very funny and, indeed, very worldly.
Yet this fun is still essentially located more in the realm of the
conceptual than of the human. (If you asked me now to explain in
one sentence what I mean by the ‘human’, I should say it had
something to do with seeing the fun-and the pathos, as well-in a
single fellow mortal’s being wholly and sheerly himself.‘) And
worldliness, when you come to think about it, incorporates a high
degree of conceptualizing, of abstracting from general human behaviour
within narrow, if amusing, terms of reference. So the
expression of physicists at play hangs together quite remarkably.
A random walk in science keeps one startlingly within a perimeter,
a perimeter within which a set of clever men are having a high old
time with rational concepts. Their high spirits and confidence are
vi
particularly startling to anyone who spends much time outside
the perimeter, especially in the part of the culture which is occupied
with the arts.
Why is it startling? What is it that enables a set of clever men to
live way out there, having a high old intellectual time, on their
own ? I can only put forward a personal interpretation-at the risk
of provoking rage on another front. Let me put it this way: it’s
easy to say what’s inside the perimeter and it’s pretty stunning, at
that. What is not inside it, as it strikes me, is what I should call a
deep sense of the darker side of existence, of the tragic nature of
the single human being’s fate-and, in this context, all that hinges
on a sense of how slight, how desperately slight is the hold of
rationality on the way we behave.
There are two things I don’t mean by that. The first is that
physicists don’t have a sense of cosmic danger: they do. Once
upon a time, The Bomb: now, Ecological Disaster. But a sense of
cosmic danger is a totally different thing from a tragic sense of life.
The second is that physicists are unaware of irrationality in the
individual behaviour of other men and even, at a pinch, of themselves:
they are-but in the impatient, exasperated manner of men
who have not comprehended that irrationality is our basic
natural state.
They recognize that the crucial step on the way to scientific
discovery is not rational, but intuitive. Of course. But the scientific
discipline teaches one how to evaluate one’s intuitions. ‘The
student of physics has his intuition violated so repeatedly,’ writes
one of the contributors, with a sort of careless starkness, ‘that he
comes to accept it as a routine experience.’ I take it that all
physicists would more or less agree with him. I wonder if they
have any intimations of the growing proportion of people in the
world now, certainly in the culture we ourselves are living in, who
would regard that statement as arising from a view oflife which to
them is anathema ? The devaluation of intuition by mind-evil.
A random walk in science begins with a challenge, at once playful
in expression and sound at heart, about the Two Cultures. It
recognizes the polarization that has taken place, and suggests that
it would have been less likely to have taken place round scientific
and non-scientific elements in the culture-or having done so, it
would be more likely to disappear-if we English had used the
word (and the idea of) ‘science’ broadly to include all scholarship,
as the Dutch use the word ‘wetenschappen’. It’s an amusing idea.
But if we used ‘science’ as he suggests, we should dilute the meanvii
Foreword
ing of the word and have to find a new one to signify what we
currently call science. What’s more, the Two Cultures polarization
happens unfortunately to be just as serious in Holland, anyway.
On the other hand, the idea jives unexpectedly with the
argument I’m leading up to. The polarization into the Two Cultures
exists; but in my view the form in which it is now manifesting
itself is deeper and more alarming than appeared when the poles
were seen to be science and non-science. They are now manifesting
themselves in a form that shows our situation to be more grave
than it would be if the poles were even wetenschappen and nonwetenschappen.
They are mind and anti-mind.
The situation is not Alexandrian, because history doesn’t happen
twice in the same form; but to think about ancient Alexandria and
now is deeply disturbing. In the earlier culture they had marvellous
science going on, within its perimeter scientists in high spirits
and high confidence; and outside . . . a lapse into complex and
arcane fatuity. What do we have now? Excellent science and
technology, its practitioners within its perimeter sparkling with
high spirits and confidence, living by mind; and elsewhere . . .
lapse into the fatuity of headless exaltation of the instinctual life,
the irrational life-or, to use the current terminology, the ‘authentic’
life-anti-mind.
Lawrence was devoting his art to it fifty years ago. Things have
moved on since then. In the present we have, for example, the
turning away from learning history, because knowing what happened
in the past inhibits one from acting according to instinct
now; the regarding of a schizophrenic’s madness as his sanity-to
live with him we must enter it; the idiot reverence for drugexperiences,
or any other experiences, that ‘blow’ the mind. And
so on, and on.
Thus I summarize my argument. Only men who have a sense of
the darker side of human existence, who know in their bones how
slight is the grasp of rationality on the instinctive forces that drive
us and have intiations of the steride fatuity that would ensue from
being overwhelmed by them-ody such men can truly cope with
the danger that faces the intellectual world. Reading A random
walk in science I was entertained, pleased, stimulated, roused to
admiration-and troubled. Physicists at play. Are they unconscious
of their fate ?
Foreword William Cooper
Introduction Robert L Weber and Eric Mendoca
When does jam become marmalade ? HB G Casimir
In defence of pure research JJ Thomson
Keeping up with science L Feleki
Sir Francis Simon NKurti
Cuts by the score Anon
The theorist
The theory ofpractical joking-its relevance to physics R YJones
New university-1229 Lynn Thorndike
The Smithsonian Institution Lewis Selye
Atmospheric extravaganza John Herapath
Little Miss Muffet F Winsor
The Academy Jonathan Sw@
The triumph of reason Bert Liston Taylor
American Institute of Useless Research
Remarks on the quantum theory of the absolute zero of
temperature G Beck, H Bethe and W Riezler
A contribution to the mathematical theory of big game hunting
H Pitwd
Fission and superstition HMK
The uses of fallacy Paul YDunmore
Basic science Anon
On the nature of mathematical proofs Joel E Cohen
Arrogance in physics Laura Fermi
What do physicists do ?
Physics terms made easy Anon
Humphry Davy’s first experiments HumphyDavy, EN&CAnd.a&
Maxwell’s aether James Clerk Maxwell
Style in physics Ludwig Boltzmann
An Experiment to prove that Water is more elastic than Air
John Clayton
Three jolly sailors F Winsor
H A Rowland Paul Kirkpatrick
Confrontation Maurice Caullery and Andie Titry
Getting bubble chambers accepted by the world of professional
physicists DonaldA Glaser
Bunsen burner Henry Roscoe
Rutherford and Nature’s whispers A S Russell
The organization of research-1920 W M Wheeler
Solar eclipse Reinhold Gerhaq
How Newton discovered the law of gravitation James E Miller
Graduate students P M S Blackett
Epigrams Alexander Pope and SirJohn Collins Squire
Take away your billion dollars Arthw Roberts
Standards for inconsequential trivia Philip A Simpson
How radar began A P Rowe
Building research R YJones
Perils of modem living H P Fwth
Predictions and comments
Little Willie Dorothy Rickard
Which units of length ? Pamela Anderton
Alpher, Bethe and Gamow R A Alphr and R H e m
Electromagnetic units : I
Electromagnetic units: 2 HB G Cmimir
British Units
Therapy JPJoule
Infancy of x-rays G E MJauncey
Faraday lectures Michael Farachy
Nrays R WWood
My initiation L Rosenfeld
Frank Jewett Paul E Klopsteg
Inertia of a broomstick Gaston Tissandier
Pneumatic experiment Lady Holland, James Gillray
The high standard of education in Scotland Sir W L Bragg
Theoretical zipperdynamics HJ Zipkin
Atomic medicine John HLawrence
100 authors against Einstein A von Brunn
Ultraviolet catastrophe HPoincad
Flatland : a romance of many dimensions Edwin A Abbott
Schools of physics
How a theoretical physicist works YBere<insky
The art of finding the right graph paper SA Rudin
On the imperturbability of elevator operators: LVII John Sykes
The analysis of contemporary music using harmonious oscillator
wave functions HJLipkin
Researchers’ prayer Anon
Turboencabulator J H Quick
Heaven is hotter than Hell
On the feasibility of coaldriven power stations 0 R Fhch
Bedside manner
A theory of ghosts D A Wright
A stress analysis of a strapless evening gown
Two classroom stories Robert Weinstock
Murphy’s law D L Klipstein
Thermoelectric effect
A glossary for research reports C D GrahamJr
Why we must go to the Moon Charles G Tiemy
Face to face with metrication Norman Stone
Life on Earth (by a Martian) PaulA Weiss
The high energy physics colouring book HJLipkin
Snakes and Ladders PJ Duke
Do-it-yourself CERN Courier writing kit
Gulliver's computer Jonathan Sw@
Haiku
Textbook selection MalcolmJohnson
Computer, B.Sc. (failed) E Mendoca
Collective names in basic sciences Anon
The Chaostron. An important advance in learning machines
J B Cadwallader-Cohen, l7 WZysiqk andR R Donelley
Physics is too young William Thewell
Yes, Virginia Y E Eaton
How to learn Lewis Carroll
The nature of evidence Isaac Todhunter
School leaving exam
Where to hold nuclear spectroscopy conferences in Russia
Typical examination questions as a guide to graduate students
studying for prelims HJLipkin
Big Science and Lesser Sciences P M S Blackett
Oral examination procedure S D Mason
Fluorescent yield Arthur HSneZl
Slidesmanship D H Wilkinson
A conference glossary David Kritchevsky and RJ Van Hr Wal
Valentine from a Telegraph Clerk 8 to a Telegraph Clerk
James Clerk Maxwell
Enrico Fermi Emilio Segr2
The parrot and the carrot R W Wood
xii
20 I
202
203
204
The bee, the beet and the beetle R W Wood
Absent-minded Henry Roscoe
The Mason-Dixon line
Toothed wheels
The transit of Venus Jeremiah Horrox
Lines inspired by a lecture on extra-terrestrial life J D G M
Postprandial: Ions mine JJE Dwack
The trial of Galileo FShwood Taylor
Newton and Facts D Bentley
John Dalton’s discovery of his colour blindness
Paris, May I 832 Ian Stewart, Hippolyte Carnot
Pulsars in poetry Jay M Pasuchof
Clouds, 19Lo rdKelvin
An awkward incident Sir WL Bragg
Shoulders of giants Robert K Merton
Rotating dog William Gamett
Answer man
Home run
The pulsar’s Pindar Dietrick E Thomsen andJonathan Eberhart
Walter Nernst Edgar WKut.pcher
Self-frustration R YJones
Unsung heroes-I : J-B MoirC Simplicius
Unsung heroes-I1 : Juan Hernandez Torsi6n Herrera Col.
Douglas Lindsay and Capt.James Ketchum
Wolfgang Pauli Eugene P W i p r
Scientific method Adolph Baker
Pebbles and Shells Isaac Newton
Acknowledgements
... Xlll
Introduction
It is sad that it should seem necessary today to rescue scientists
from the unattractive stereotypes and caricatures with which they
are encumbered. Physics, the basic science, seems most in need of
humanizing. Older philosophies of science pretended that physics
proceeds from certainty to certainty through the performance of
critical experiments unambiguously interpreted. This created the
impression that physicists themselves have no room for doubt,
that they have no emotions and no time for laughter-in short,
that they are inhuman.
Much of the misunderstanding of scientists and how they work
is due to the standard format of articles in scientific journals. With
their terse accounts of successful experiments and well-supported
conclusions they show little of the untidy nature of research at the
frontiers of knowledge. In self defence, there has grown up a
derisive, sometimes cynical attitude of self criticism by scientists,
a subculture which transcends geographical and political barriers.
Experimenters’ gibes at the uselessness of theoreticians, glossaries
of the real meanings behind well-worn phrases, disillusion at the
corruptbg effect of the vast sums of money lavished on government
research laboratories, can be found in articles from Russia or
America, Britain or continental Europe. On the other hand Rutherford’s
sensitivity to Nature’s whispers, Boltzmann’s sense of the
sublime in Maxwell’s work, or poor William Crabtree’s emotion
on seeing the transit of Venus, these are attitudes and feelings
which every scientist knows are at the centre of scientific research.
They rarely show through the language of our reports.
A flourishing underground press has grown up in science. A
typical journal is the Worm Runner’s Digest. ‘It started,’ says Dr
J V McConnell, as ‘my own personal joke on the Scientific Establishment
although it has turned out to be more of a joke on me.
I’ve lost grants because of the Digest . . .’. After twelve years of
uninhibited life, the Digest is published in two parts. The front half
records bona fide research under an acceptable title, TheJoumal
of Biological Research; it is noticed in Psychological Abstracts, Bio-
Zogical Abstracts, and Chemical Abstracts. But the second half of the
Digest remains ‘the Playboy of the scientific world,’ its pages
printed upside down to help distinguish fact from fantasy. It is
the house organ of an anti-Scientific movement. McConnell’s convlction
is that ‘most of what is wrong with science these days can
be traced to the fact that scientists are willing to make objective
and dispassionate studies of any natural phenomen at all-except
their own scientific behaviour. We know considerably more about
xv
Introduction
flatworms than we do about people who study flatworms. The
Establishment never questions its own motives; the true humorist
always does.’
In this book I have drawn heavily on such journals and on other
informal writings by scientists. It is a collection of comments,
both lighthearted and serious, by scientists. They reveal their
intensely human ambitions, frustrations and elation; they record
some changing attitudes within science and mirror the interactions
of science with society.
I hope you find as much pleasure in reading these pages as I did
in assembling them.
Professor Eric Mendoza, who kindly consented to serve as The
Institute of Physics’ Honorary Editor for this book, has been an
enthusiastic and careful editor and has brought additional items to
the collection. It has been a pleasure to work with him, though at a
distance; I express my gratitude for his substantial help.
ROBERT L WEBER
This anthology started life as a collection of jokes about physics.
Physicists, thought Professor Weber, took themselves too seriously
and would benefit from the opportunity to laugh at themselves.
But it was not long before he added another more serious
ingredient and broadened the scope to include other subjects close
to physics. The manuscript came to be entitled ‘Humour and
Humanism in Science’ and it was in this form that it was submitted
to The Institute of Physics. It seemed to me, however, that a
collection overwhelmingly drawn from the twentieth century
lacked those deeper notes-the graver modes, Rayleigh would
have called them-with which physics, with its long and turbulent
history, so resonates. The character of the book gradually changed
as many cynical wisecracks from today’s whizz kids gave place to
more measured pronouncements from the giants of our history,
and the more obscure in-jokes were discarded in favour of dramas
and tragedies from the past.
This is not a scholarly book; it has been arranged for dipping
into, for casual reading, and many of the articles have been condensed.
To that end, it has not been formally divided into sections
or chapters as textbooks are; rather each article is loosely related
xvi
to the ones near it. It is hoped that if the book loses in orderliness
it will gain in freshness, and that perhaps the specialist physicist,
the earnest sociologist, and the young reader may thereby be
lured into browsing over topics they might otherwise ignore.
Dr Dorothy Fisher and the editorial staff at The Institute of
Physics in Bristol have been both stimulating and patient. Mr Hall
and Dr Emerson in particular have guided production and accumulated
the copyright permissions, which for a manuscript of
about 150 separate items is no light undertaking. The designer,
Bernard Crossland, evolved a design of sufficiently great adaptability,
at first a seemingly impossible task. To all these people,
and to the librarians who have helped us trace obscure material
and those authors who have contributed special articles, Professor
Weber and I are deeply grateful.
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