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."