This unusual but interesting book comes from prolific author and astrophysicist Mario Livio. He profiles the lives of five important scientists who made powerful contributions in the understanding of our world. He does not go too far back- the middle of 19th century, starting with Charles Darwin. The others are Lord Kelvin, Albert Einstein, Fred Hoyle, and Linus Pauling. The common theme uniting these five scientists were their ideas about evolution at various levels. Evolution of life on Earth, evolution of the Earth itself, and evolution of Universe. However, instead of focussing on achievements as done by authors usually, he discusses the blunders made during their lifetimes. A few may not qualify as true blunders as lack of information of those times was truly restricting to some. In contrast, Fred Hoyle and Linus Pauling made severe blunders in the truest sense; but the former stuck to his guns till the very end despite evidence to the contrary and the latter gracefully accepted his.
Rationality is expected in all humans especially scientists; and expect science to progress in a neat line from a theory to proof. Nothing of that sort happens. Scientists are very much human, and their rationality is many times clouded by emotion. The pre-frontal cortex of the human brain, the seat of all reasoning, has considerable influences from emotional components of the brain. The author sets out the reasons for the blunders great scientists made and how they responded when faced with contrary findings. He uses the arguments of Daniel Kahneman in assessing the psychology of some of these scientists. Daniel Kahneman is the most quoted author nowadays and it would be important for everyone to read his classic, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’. Mario Livio before starting on the blunders gives a brief refresher on the work of each, and that was indeed illuminating.
Charles Darwin gave us the most important theory of evolution which completely and radically overturned any intelligent design ideas of creation. His theory rested on the four pillars of evolution, gradualism, common descent, and speciation. Living species evolve and they are not immutable. Our ancestors were not like us. This happens extremely slowly allowed by the billions of years of Earth’s existence. All the living species have a common origin way back in time. At various times, a species splits into two different forms; and then again; and again, leading to the development of a wide variety of species. An amazing 8 million species are supposed to exist and counting. The bedrock of these mechanisms is natural selection. Natural selection says that as species evolve, some who are capable of good reproduction and a better adaptation to a changing environment, survive and propagate their species. A species not good at adapting to a changing environment goes extinct. Similarly, a species which does not reproduce well has a lower chance of survival. This is how the concept of ‘survival of the fittest’ came about.
The problem came with the understanding of the mechanism of natural selection, the most beautiful theory described ever in any branch of science according to some. Darwin is blame free because scientific knowledge had not yet made genes popular as a unit of heredity. The prevailing theory of heredity of those times was a ‘mixing or blending theory’ where like paints, the characteristics of parents get mixed and in fact diluted in the offspring. A black and a white parent should produce gray offspring. The blunder which lay in a perfect theory of Darwin in an imperfect understanding of genetics is that natural selection does not work with a blending theory of heredity.
Had Darwin been aware of Mendel’s work, his contemporary, who worked on peas and produced a particulate theory of heredity, the theory of evolution would have been on firmer footing. The question is whether Darwin was aware of Mendel. Mendel had published his results in an obscure journal, but Darwin had in his possession two books which quoted Mendel. Unfortunately, one book was extremely brief in the description of Mendel’s work, and the other had uncut pages mentioning Mendel which Darwin completely missed! In those days, books came with uncut pages at the top and one had to literally cut them to read the pages. The proof of somebody having read a page would be it being cut. Someone might argue that a cut page may be inadequate proof of one having read a page. However, an uncut page is a clearer proof of someone not having read it! The author investigates this in a detective like manner and concludes that Darwin had indeed no clue of Mendel’s work. Some of Darwin’s thoughts on the nature of heredity in later years made some suspicious of influence by Mendel without acknowledgement. Not true, says the author emphatically. However, surprisingly Mendel was completely aware of Darwin’s work and it is indeed a big mystery why he did not choose to communicate with him and improve the understanding of evolution. His silence was likely because he was training to be a bishop, and it would not be prudent as a man of Church to publicly defend evolution!
Lord Kelvin or William Thomson, a great scientist, did exemplary work in physics and geology. He published more than six hundred papers and should have been right in the ranks of Newton and Galileo. However, he went terribly wrong in some instances. The age of the Earth calculation was his biggest blunder. He had some problems with Darwin’s theory of evolution too. Kelvin did not object to the theory of evolution per se, but he rejected natural selection by saying that the true explanation of evolution was not in biology but some form of design. He believed that species came about by some intelligence, and the time scales of Earth did not support the natural selection proposal of Darwin. He used geological calculations to estimate the age of Earth which turned out in millions of years only. The true value we know today is around 4 billion years.
He used assumptions about the state of Earth’s interior and its temperatures to conclude Earth’s age to be ninety-eight million years. Information of those times limited his calculations. However, his own student made some more solid assumptions based on the findings of the Earth’s interior to produce calculations proving Lord Kelvin wrong. Similarly, the discovery of radioactivity as a source of energy inside the core of the planet was a death knell to Lord Kelvin’s estimate.
However, Lord Kelvin did not accept the findings till the very end. Unfortunately, even after sinking into irrelevance and with accumulating evidence to the contrary, he stuck literally to his guns. He refused to give up on the wrong calculations of the age of Earth. The author says that this could be perhaps due to cognitive dissonance. This is the feeling of discomfort that people experience when presented with information inconsistent with their beliefs. Lord Kelvin sought a premise to calculate something and in the face of changing premises, he refused to alter the calculations. The calculations were perfect and glorious given the information, but he should have changed the parameters of the calculations in the face of additional information. However, he went to extraordinary lengths to deny this. This simply goes to prove that great scientists are greatly human with the well-recognized trait: the more committed we are of a certain opinion, the less likely we are likely to relinquish it even if confronted with huge contradictory evidence.
Linus Pauling was the greatest chemist of his times. He practically wrote the textbook of chemistry, and the gigantic personality won two individual Nobel prizes in chemistry and physics. He discovered the alpha-helix model of proteins which was a brilliantly successful model. He took thirteen years to perfect the model of proteins before publication. Such was his zest for perfection. However, he went terribly wrong in modelling the DNA, and the honours went to Watson and Crick. Pauling, who took thirteen years for the protein model worked on the DNA model for only a month. The terrible rush was only because he was worried that scientists in UK having better X-Ray diffraction labs could pip him in the publishing game. He was very human here. He forgot the basic rules of DNA structure which demanded complementarity of the two strands allowing for replication. Chargaff’s rule stated that the DNA of any cell of any organism must have a 1:1 ratio (base Pair Rule) of pyrimidine and purine bases and, more specifically, that the amount of guanine should be equal to cytosine and the amount of adenine should be equal to thymine. A rule formulated in the 1940s much before Pauling’s hypothesis; and it was amazing to note that Pauling knew about the rule but had completely forgotten about it when creating his model. This rule is the bedrock on which Watson and Crick created their double-helix model of DNA. Maybe, the author guesses, Pauling did not like Chargaff!
The final blunder in the model of DNA which took him only a month to design was that it was not even an acid. That was the biggest blunder coming from the greatest chemists perhaps of all times. As the name says it all about the nature- DNA is Deoxyribonucleic acid. How did Pauling manage to do all this? Initially, Pauling was all bravado defending his structure, not only built inside out, and had everything wrong by way of chemistry. However, later he gracefully accepted his model as wrong and that of Watson as correct. The discovery of DNA structure at Cambridge is another story by itself. The story of Watson, Crick, Wilkins, and other scientists is of competition, jealousy, subterfuge, bitterness, and a triumph which spurned a revolution in the understanding of life. However, Watson wrote about Pauling, ‘Failure hovers uncomfortably over greatness. What matters now are his perfections, not his past imperfections. I most remember Pauling from 50 years ago, when he proclaimed that no vital forces, only chemical bonds, underlie life. Without that message, Crick and I might never have succeeded’.
Fred Hoyle was one of the greatest astrophysicists of his time. The author says that the characterization of a Victorian scholar Benjamin Jowett could be adopted clearly to Hoyle, ‘What he did not know was not knowledge’. Hoyle’s work on synthesis of elements in the stars and supernovae puts him right at the top of the physics charts. There are 118 known elements today of which 94 elements occur naturally on Earth. Hoyle showed that the first six elements up to iron occurs within the nuclear furnaces of the stars. This includes carbon too which is the most essential element for life. Beyond iron, the elements are created in the exploding stars or supernovae, the places of extreme temperatures facilitating these reactions. This stardust spreads around in the galaxy. Our bodies are literally made up of stardust. However, he blundered in large scale state of the universe.
He believed in the steady state of the Universe and that it was always the way it has been. This contrasted with the Big Bang theory which states that space, matter, and time had a distinct origin around 14 billion years back. Hoyle fiercely fought this theory and his explanation of a steady state also made him conclude that new matter is continuously created as the universe expanded. This was clearly not shown by experiments. He said famously once, ‘Things are the way they are because they were the way they were’. An expanding universe which was proved by experimentation and observation starting with Hubble proved Hoyle’s theory wrong. He was the first to coin the word ‘Big Bang’ for the cosmic creation moment in one of his radio shows and the name stuck. The author says that this was not definitely in a derogatory manner as the story is usually told. The term was applied to make the concept clear to the listeners and the lay public.
This was the biggest blunder of Hoyle because he was proved very wrong by evidence to the contrary. He was an advocate of the panspermia theory of the origin of life on Earth; a theory which states that life forms and viruses are literally injected into the Earth through comets and meteors kickstarting life. He firmly disbelieved that Darwin’s theory of evolution could be the final word on the origin of life. Also, the limited time of Earth does not allow for the formation of complex enzymes and proteins in probabilistic terms. The author says, ‘Hoyle’s blunder was in his stubborn and infuriating refusal to acknowledge his theory’s demise even as it was smothered by accumulating contradictory evidence, and in his use of asymmetrical criteria of judgement with respect to the big bang and steady state theories’. Finally, it was his belief that biological origins required an unlimited time-frame which could be achieved by a steady state of the universe and not when it has definite origin in the past. Unfortunately, he was adamant right till the very end of his life becoming more idiosyncratic in his beliefs and sinking into irrelevance. Denial was in the end what characterized the great scientist Hoyle.
The final scientist profiled must be the greatest of all times- Albert Einstein. The author says that 20% of all his papers contained mistakes, but the conclusions were right in most of them. Even his celebrated paper giving the equation E=mc2 contained mistakes of some sort. His ‘greatest blunder’ was related to the theory of gravitation, one of the brilliant insights into the nature and structure of the universe. The author claims that Einstein himself never said that way but was the colourful Gamow who had a habit of exaggerating! Einstein called it a mistake, Gamow created a story of ‘biggest blunder’.
Briefly, Einstein’s theory of gravity explains how mass warps space around it and gives rise to gravity. Simultaneously, the warped space decides the movement of any other mass. The oft repeated example is to visualize a trampoline with a heavy mass (an iron ball for instance) at the center. The bending of the trampoline sheet around the mass is akin to the warping of space and creation of gravity. A dropped marble ball would move around the central mass not because of any inherent attraction to the mass, but because of the bent trampoline sheet. Though strictly not a correct model, it helps one to understand the movement of planets around the Sun and the phenomenon of gravity.
Now during the time Einstein described this revolutionary theory, the universe was supposed to be static or in a steady state. Einstein to account for this, inserted a cosmological constant into the equation. This was an energy given at every point of space acting against gravity in an outward fashion. Gravity should be pulling all objects closer in a steady state universe, and Einstein gave this constant to give equilibrium and achieve a steady state. The problem was that it was an unstable equilibrium, like a pencil standing vertical on its tip, ready to blow over at the slightest disturbance. Yet, Einstein persisted. Later, proofs came up for an expanding universe which conclusively destroyed the steady state theory. Einstein now pulled out the constant from his equation allegedly calling it his biggest blunder. But, here was a brilliant blunder. Without the constant in the equation, Einstein’s theory predicted correctly an expanding universe. However, Einstein did not want to go too far in its implications and succumbed to the prevailing thought of the day. Even revolutionaries play safe sometimes.
The twist in the story is that now we have discovered that the universe is not only expanding but is accelerating outwards by anti-gravity energy called ‘dark energy’. Dark Energy constitutes an amazing 70% of the total energy content of the universe. It is a complete mystery to scientists today. However, the cosmological constant is back in the explanation of this energy in what might be considered as the greatest comebacks of physics. All blunders do not have happy endings, but this seems to be one of the rare ones.
Science progresses not in a smooth line from a point to another. It is a journey filled with many twists, turns, wrong turns, blind-alleys, disasters, and accidents. The final course of science is upward, but mistakes and blunders form an important component. It spurs people into questioning and quest for constant improvement. Blunders which do not arise from sloppy work or shortcuts are perfectly acceptable in science. Karl Popper says famously that science progresses by a concept called falsifiability. A good theory is one which can be proved false. That has been the biggest problem with the latest superstar of physics-string theory. It is a fantastic theory of anything and everything, however, it cannot be proved even wrong by any means! The energies required are simply beyond human capacities today. Finally, a wrong theory in science should not dishearten a scientist. One should have the grace to accept proofs against a pet theory because that is how science is done in the benefit of humanity.
To end the summary on some personal thoughts, all scientists are humans and so are film stars, models, writers, sport stars, musicians, singers, and achievers of any kind. An achievement in one sphere of human activity is the triumph of just one aspect of the physical or mental abilities. For the large part, all humans share the same positive and negative qualities. Desire, greed, anger, lust, envy, fear, pride, denial, irrationality forms the negative list just as sympathy, love, acceptance, humility, simplicity and so on are the positives in the ‘bucket list’. All humans are a mix of the good, bad, and ugly; and a professional achievement in one aspect of life should not cloud the judgement of people into believing that we are dealing with gods. Our dealing with idols and celebrities is enough proof of this imbalance. We make them gods and then turn them into demons (more so in these days) with the slightest hint of any wrong doing. Newton was a very mean personality and Einstein ran multiple affairs. Thankfully, they lived an era of no social media and instant messaging, hence their professional credentials remained intact. The world today is more unforgiving where heroes staying as gods is becoming increasingly difficult. The public and the media both should stay balanced in the assessment of triumphant personalities.
The book is a wonderfully easy read going into the deepest recesses of the minds of the greatest scientists of relatively contemporary times. The language is easy, and for any person interested in the history of science, this book is a memorable journey. No regrets if you have a copy of your own.
RANDOM MUSINGS 