science, art, snobbery
[Image of a generic research scientist. Source: https://biotechtimes.org/2018/01/23/research-scientist-crispr-protien-job-reliance-industries-limited/]
I wrote this in 2002, about a popular science book by John Maynard Smith, called Did Darwin Get It Right? (1989).
*
The author would agree, I’m sure, that this is in no sense
an “important” book. Indeed, it’s a purely manufactured book, just a gathering
up of recent reviews and a few other bits and pieces. Sometimes whole
paragraphs get repeated in almost the same words. A couple of highly technical
pieces are included to gain our respect, but cannot seriously expect to be absorbed
by the general reader (a supposedly obsolete term which returns energetically
to life in the context of popular science books).
Nevertheless, there’s a certain appropriateness in all this
since one of the general problems with science books for a general readership
is that the author doesn’t altogether take them seriously. He (it usually is
“he”) is perceptibly doing something that he thinks is rather fun, but it isn’t
the real business and he is all too humbly aware that he isn’t a professional writer.
(It’s quite the opposite of humble, really.)
This is an attitude that has developed slowly. It was not
there when Darwin
wrote. Even in the early “New Naturalists”, speckled with quotations from Keats and the
Georgians, it was apparent that the authors considered themselves part of the
human race. A narrow and educated part, no doubt; but the writer and the reader
are both assumed to belong to it. Since that time, a bridge has collapsed.
It’s impossible to imagine anyone brought up on a diet of
the arts writing like this: “First, to give an accurate account of one’s part
in great events it is not sufficient to be frank; it is also necessary to be
self-critical.” (This is in a review of James Watson's account of the discovery of DNA.) Maynard Smith produces the sentence with
a flourish, the semi-colon is clinching. He expects, all too obviously, a
little ripple of applause. But in this matter of truthtelling we arts students would be much
more circumspect. “Self-critical”, like “frank”, is a term we don’t use
with much confidence. If anything, we believe that to be “self-critical” is
likely to be self-deception, while “frankness” can at least “betray” a truth.
Or perhaps we don’t believe that, but that’s the sort of thing that, being arts students, we feel impelled
to say.
He continues: “The other reason why this account must be
taken with a grain of salt is that the author is a natural raconteur. I like
telling stories myself and I recognize the technique. The best stories are true
stories which have been bent a little to meet the requirements of art...” etc.
If I suggest that before you reached that last sentence you already saw it
coming, perhaps that sufficiently defines the mode of discourse that's being
employed here. We don’t feel surprised that the forms of literature with which
Watson’s book is favourably compared are science fiction and the whodunnit. In a minute he'll start quoting Alice in Wonderland, we say to ourselves (though in this case
we have to wait until page 183).
But does any of this matter at all? Why should anyone have Bartok
and Beckett and Derrida in their repertoire? (Would you demand it from your friends?) Isn’t it
cherishable enough that Maynard Smith knows his biology, is strong in mathematics and
has clearly identified certain rather tricky problems with which he has tussled
illuminatingly and at length?
I think it does matter. Consider this argument: “One way of
being silly is to suggest that those engaged in fundamental research should at
the same time worry about the possible applications of their as yet unmade
discoveries. This suggestion would make some sense if the scientist were
presented with a little box containing the secret of DNA. He could then devote
his energies to thinking about the possible consequences of opening the box.
But life is not like that. Scientific discovery is difficult. No one who reads
Professor Watson’s book will regard it as a sensible suggestion that he ought
to have been thinking about the social consequences of his discovery, in the
unlikely event of his getting there before Pauling.”
When I first read this paragraph, I felt sure that the argument must
actually be hidden in there somewhere, but it really isn’t. “Difficulty”
cannot alter the moral question: as if it made a difference whether the box had
a flip-lid or was padlocked. (Our civilisation's battery of intelligence and resources could
manage a little extra difficulty.) Nor does the idea that Watson (in this case)
did not know he was going to make a great discovery. He was trying for
it and being paid to try -- What else was he doing, discovering by accident? And
why should it be assumed that Watson think out the consequences all on his own?
In fact, the passage reveals quite openly that secrecy and urgency are inherent
in the competitive game, assuming you choose to take part. Scientific research
is conducted according to the rules of capitalism. I can’t make this passage
into anything more respectable than a selfish lament: But if we have to be
responsible, we can’t get on with playing our game!
Now that I’ve been critical, I must say that Maynard Smith’s is
quite an agreeable voice. He even makes a good point about the problem of TV
voiceovers on science programs (his own fingers were rather badly burnt) -- so
he does see that there is a problem with communication between scientists and
the rest of us.
I think he is rather too untroubled by his own statement,
that “species are real entities” (p. 9). A species is not real in the same way
that an individual is real - and even the latter is problematic. Some of his
unhappiness with the concept of “group selection” could have been more
decisively expressed if he had kept this clearly in view.
As often, I reflect that it’s unfortunate that most prominent
evolutionists are zoologists. He seems to agree that parthenogenesis is more
likely to lead to extinction, but dandelions and brambles do not seem to make a
good case. (He knows this, of course, but doesn’t pursue the complexities of
the issue.)
A book such as this (we take it for granted, of course) is
not a book about nature. It isn't full of rolling meadows and humming insects. There’s
no reason why it should be, I know. But this really rather remarkable fact does
show that Smith is quite wrong to characterize science in general as “the most
successful attempt yet on the part of mankind to satisfy their curiosity about
themselves and the world they live in”. As if the whole process were
sufficiently driven by mere passive desire to understand the world around us
-- how beautiful that would be, a society of wonderstruck nature-lovers! But no, if those engaged in
“fundamental research” are paid to allow their curiosity free rein, it isn’t so
that the rest of us can satisfy our curiosity. No -- molecular biology
has always been about assembling the techniques to make genetic
engineering possible.
Labels: James Watson, John Maynard Smith
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