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).

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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.