The Celebrity Scientists: a Collective Case Study
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The Celebrity Scientists: A collective case study Declan Fahy, B.A. M.Sc. Submitted for the award of Ph.D. Dublin City University School of Communications Supervisor: Professor Helena Sheehan Submitted: May 2010 One Volume Declaration I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of Ph.D., is entirely my own work, that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge breach any law of copyright, and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed: _________________________________________ ID No.: 95023976 Date: 17 May 2010 Acknowledgements I would like to express my deep and lasting gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Helena Sheehan, for her intellectual guidance, supportive encouragement, and constructive criticism throughout the six years of this project. As I said at the seminar held in 2009 to mark her retirement, I will never again finish a piece without, mentally at least, first passing it across her desk. My thanks also to Brian Trench, for his help and support over the past six years. Thanks also to Pat Brereton for his comments on a draft chapter, and to my friends and colleagues Pádraig Murphy, Yvonne Cunningham and Mark O’Brien. My sincere thanks for their constructive comments to my examiners Dr. Aileen Fyfe, Professor Massimiano Bucchi and Professor Michael Cronin. This dissertation is dedicated to Louisa, for her endless patience, support and understanding throughout this project, and in so much else. Table of Contents SECTION 1. CONCEPTS....................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1. THE POP SCIENTISTS OF THE NINETIES...........................................................................2 CHAPTER 2. INTELLECTUALS, CELEBRITIES, POPULARISERS............................................................13 2.1. The British scientific intellectual...........................................................................................13 2.2. The celebrity intellectual.......................................................................................................22 2.3. The populariser and the public scientist ...............................................................................30 CHAPTER 3. A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC CELEBRITY ...............................................................44 3.1. Isaac Newton: Constructing scientific genius.......................................................................44 3.2. Charles Darwin: The mass market naturalist .......................................................................49 3.3. Albert Einstein: Newspaper man...........................................................................................53 3.4. Robert Oppenheimer: Self-crafted scientific intellectual......................................................60 3.5. Carson, Sagan, Gould: Their views of science .....................................................................64 CHAPTER 4. METHODOLOGY AND THEORETICAL MODELS................................................................72 4.1. Science communication, the collective case study and intellectual history ..........................72 4.2. Theoretical models ................................................................................................................87 SECTION 2. CASE STUDIES...........................................................................................................93 CHAPTER 5. STEPHEN HAWKING: SCIENCE INCARNATE ..................................................................94 5.1. “The Hawking phenomenon”................................................................................................95 5.2. “Who knew where his mind was?” .....................................................................................104 5.3. A “worthy successor to Galileo, Newton and Einstein”.....................................................111 5.4. A home “turned into a circus by his fame”.........................................................................116 5.5. “Science’s unofficial public spokesman”............................................................................119 5.6. The “bizarre re-enactment of a mythical event”.................................................................124 CHAPTER 6. RICHARD DAWKINS: THE SELF-FASHIONED RATIONALIST.........................................127 6.1. The Selfish Gene or The Immortal Gene or The Cooperative Gene..................................128 6.2. The Darwin wars and academic celebrity...........................................................................133 6.3. Darwin’s bulldog: Challenging creationism, pseudo-science and anti-science.................136 6.4. The “Dirty Harry of science” .............................................................................................143 6.5. “The most public and private of scientists”........................................................................149 6.6. “The famous atheist” ..........................................................................................................152 6.7. The social function of Richard Dawkins .............................................................................161 CHAPTER 7. SUSAN GREENFIELD: FAME AND THE FEMALE SCIENTIST .........................................167 7.1. “A Groucho Club for scientists”.........................................................................................168 7.2. “When they said ‘Stand by for cameras’ I felt I had come home” .....................................171 7.3. “The public face of gender issues in science” ...................................................................177 7.4. “Britain’s most glamorous, flamboyant and fashion-conscious scientist”.........................182 7.5. “The ‘Greenfield problem’” ...............................................................................................190 7.6. “A mind that is essentially and rigorously conservative” ..................................................196 7.7. “Susan who?” .....................................................................................................................200 CHAPTER 8. JAMES LOVELOCK: THE ECOLOGICAL MAVERICK.......................................................205 8.1. “A British maverick” ..........................................................................................................206 8.2. “If you intend to put forward so large an idea you must give it a proper name”...............208 8.3. “The abominable no-men of the peer-review system”........................................................215 8.4. “To pay homage to Gaia is certainly to pay homage to Lovelock”....................................221 8.5. “A confused and babbling community of Green politicians and philosophers” ................228 8.6. “I’m not Dr Strangelovelock”.............................................................................................236 8.7. “The Renaissance rustic” ...................................................................................................240 SECTION 3: CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................243 CHAPTER 9. THE CELEBRITY SCIENTISTS........................................................................................244 9.1. The late modern scientific celebrity ....................................................................................244 9.2. The particular differences between Hawking, Dawkins, Greenfield and Lovelock ............253 9.3. The celebrity scientists and contemporary science .............................................................257 SECTION 4. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES.................................................................262 List of Illustrations Page 52: Charles Robert Darwin by Julia Margaret Cameron © National Portrait Gallery, London. Reproduced with kind permission of National Portrait Gallery, London. Page 56: Chaplin and Einstein, 1931. The Granger Collection, New York. Reproduced under license from TopFoto, UK. Page 59: Cover from TIME magazine, 7/1/1946 © 1946 Time Inc. Used under License. TIME and Time Inc. are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of, Licensee. Page 66: (left) Rachel Carson, 1960 © Erich Hartmann/Magnum Photos. Reproduced under license from Magnum Photos. Page 66: (centre) Rachel Carson, 1962 © Erich Hartmann/Magnum Photos. Reproduced under license from Magnum Photos. Page 66: (right) Rachel Carson Looking Through a Microscope © Underwood & Underwood/Corbis. Reproduced under license from Corbis. Page 94: Stephen William Hawking by David Gamble, 1988 © David Gamble. Reproduced under license from TopFoto, UK. Page 101: Covers of the 1988 and 1995 editions of A Brief History of Time used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. Page 111: Stephen Hawking photographed by Murdo Macleod © Murdo Macleod and reproduced with kind permission of Murdo Macleod. Page 111: Sir William Herschel by James Godby © National Portrait Gallery, London. Reproduced with kind permission of National Portrait Gallery, London. Page 127: (Clinton) Richard Dawkins by Carolyn Djanogly © Carolyn Djanogly. All rights reserved. Reproduced under license. Page 148: Covers of The Enemies of Reason, Voices