Medawar on Johnson on Milton on Science
Have recent events left you with a sinking feeling that science isn’t valued in today’s modern world? Are you aggrieved that the great and the good nowadays seem to be so unimpressed by research for research’s sake and require us instead to divert our energies into “useful things” (whatever they are)?
Looking for something to optimistic to say I turned to Peter Medawar‘s book Advice to a Young Scientist and found, to my disappointment, that actually there’s nothing new about this attitude. For example, Medawar explains, no less a character than Dr Samuel Johnson, in his Life of Milton offered the following rant about Milton’s daft idea of setting up an academy in which the scholars should learn astronomy physics and chemistry as well as the usual school subjects:
But the truth is that the knowledge of external nature, and the sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and Justice are virtues and excellences of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary and at leisure. Physiological learning is of such rare emergence that one man may know another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostaticks or astronomy, but his moral and prudential character immediately appears.
Medawar attempts to cheer up his readers by responding with the following feeble platitude
Scientists whose work is prospering and who find themselves deeply absorbed in and transported by their research feel quite sorry for those who do not share the same sense of delight; many artists feel the same, and it makes them indifferent to – and is certainly a fully adequate compensation for – any respect they think owed to them by the general public.
Tripe. Delight doesn’t put your dinner on the table. It’s not enough to feel smug about how clever you are: we need to convince people that science is worth doing because it’s worth doing for its own sake, and worth funding by the taxpayer for the same reason. Feeling sorry for people who don’t get the message is a sickeningly patronising attitude to take.
I should point out that the rest of the book isn’t all as bad as this, but the mood I’m in today the best advice I could offer a young scientist at the moment wouldn’t require a whole book anyway:
Don’t!
In the Dark 
October 2, 2009 at 1:57 am
Medawar wrote an over-rated polemic called “Is the scientifc paper a fraud?” because write-ups do not reflect how science is actually done; his Advice to a Young Scientist was as bad as you say (it was hammered in Physics Bulletin); and he approved of Popper’s philosophy of science. I think he was over-rated as an essayist, although a magnificent scientist. But I will grant him one superb comment about the Arts/Science divide, with van Gogh in mind: “Nobody thinks more of a scientist if he cuts off his ear.”
Anton
October 2, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I don’t believe I ever felt delight at finding a new result in science. New results were always very interesting, but not a source of delight. Indeed, I have always been concerned that the kind of person who does get a sense of elation from being the only person to know something does so for egotistical reasons.
Basic science is worth doing, and worthy of support by governments, for cultural reasons alone. It is surprising that British scientists have tended not to push this argument more strongly when confronted by politicians who argue that all funded science should have immediate economic or societal benefit.
My policy has been neither to encourage nor to discourage undergraduate and masters students who enquired about PhD work or careers in astronomy. I was always realistic about the very poor career prospects, but told them that pursuing full-time research for a short period in their lives might be worthwhile if they were motivated by a genuine personal interest in their field. The disadvantage of doing so might be that their future career options could be compromised somewhat.
As for a reason to pursue scientific research, the final paragraph of Stephen Weinberg’s The First Three Minutes does manage to express one nicely; I do not have a copy of the book to hand to quote here.
October 2, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Bryn,
Give me Weinberg over Medawar any day!
Did you mean
It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t the piece you meant, because it’s great anyway. I also like the end of the afterword for the 1983 edition:
Peter
October 2, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Peter,
Yes, it’s the first that I was thinking of. It hadn’t occurred to me that later editions might have different text.
Bryn.
October 2, 2009 at 3:22 pm
The text of the later edition is identical but there is a short “Afterword” added to take account of things that happened between 1976 and 1983.
October 2, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Weinberg’s last para is deeply depressing, and about the only bit of that superb book with which I do not agree.
Anton
October 3, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Anton: I don’t know that Weinberg’s statement need be depressing. The sheer clear-eyed honesty of what he writes is inspiring in a strange and almost defiant way, and I agree with it. It’s basically just David Hume again, who roughly (I think) said that existence was completely meanigless, but this wasn’t going to stop him enjoying wine, tobacco, and the company of friends.
October 3, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I find the notion that existence is meaningless to be deeply depressing, and I’m very glad I don’t believe it. Doubtless some shrink would tell me that my belief system has been constructed precisely to comfort me and that it is in fact nonsense. I would reply that it is people who claim not to find meaninglessness depressing who are in denial. Nietzsche was honest enough to stare into that void rather than retreat into hedonism, and it drove him mad – literally.
Anton
October 3, 2009 at 8:35 pm
I don’t see any evidence that Weinberg is a hedonist, nor that his sanity has suffered. I think it’s possible to acknowledge that the void is there, but then not spend all day staring into it.
October 3, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Hedonism was a reference not to Weinberg but to Hume’s comment. To disagree with Hume’s position is not to be a killjoy, but if you *really* acknowledge that life has no meaning then I think you won’t be able to get pleasure from friends and food and drink. Contemporary Western culture definitely believes there is no meaning, and its retreat into hedonism is obviously failing to act as a satisfactory replacement. It might be possible to acknowledge that the void is there and not spend all day thinking about it, but such questions will come back to you on your deathbed if you die slow and lucid. I once asked an army chaplain who had accompanied troops fighting through Italy during WW2 what questions dying men asked, and he said they were the same ones children ask. You don’t have to agree with his (and my) answers to find that fact striking.
Anton
October 4, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Anton,
I agree with John on this. I don’t find Weinberg’s comment depressing. On the contrary, it’s almost inspirational. The message I take from it is to stop looking for the meaning of life in external things, and concentrate instead on making your life mean something by actually living it. The pleasure we make for ourselves is a deeper pleasure than that gained by acting out the roles written for us in some kind of celestial circus.
Peter
October 4, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Weinberg wrote: “The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.”
Tragedy can indeed be inspirational, but it is not happy. And farce is neither of those.
Anton