Books

Conservation Green Philosophy Searching for truths Roger Scruton (Atlantic Books, £22, *£18.50) Jason Goodwin applauds a book that avoids the usual dogma In his preface, Roger Scruton and reminds us of the excitement of scientific inquiry offers his arguments to reclaim the environmental high ground Science for the Right, ‘drawing on philo- The Science Delusion sophy, psychology and economics, Rupert Sheldrake (Coronet, as well as on the writings of eco- £19.99, *£16.99) logists and historians’. Nothing has harmed the environment so cientists are taught— much as revolutionary Social- we are taught—that science ism, he says, and points to the Shas been a triumphant semantic connection between march into the light, straining first conservation and Conservatism. against religious dogma, then Yet no Government can effect- abandoning it altogether as an ively legislate for the global prob- empty husk on the roadside. We lems that face us, and the ‘same live in a material world, which people who promise vast schemes has been successively likened to for clean energy... also promise a clock, a telephone exchange and vast schemes to expand air- a computer programme. Science ports’. To blame big business for can pull the machinery apart and destroying the environment, how- find out how it works, like an ever, is to ‘mistake the effect for exploded diagram. Duly labelled, the cause’, which lies in our own the parts are inert and unchang- Experiments, with homing pigeons or not, are the key to science consumer demands. And if State ing, for matter has no conscious- intervention does more harm than ness. has no purpose. of radical enquiry that produced finally, the secrets of who we are, good, Prof Scruton reserves most As life churns on, the proper scientific breakthroughs in the and the origin of our diseases. In scorn for the questionable policies scientific view is that everything first place, and suggests new ways the event, the results were limi- of unaccountable non-govern- that is can be ultimately explained, of looking at the world around us. ted. Genes don’t ‘explain’ Mozart. mental organisations (NGOs). and all that is left for scientists He shows how narrow science has They don’t even explain why Accountability is at the core is to fill in some of the details. become, when results are mas- we’re so different from a banana of Prof Scruton’s argument: he saged and averaged to fit current or a chimpanzee. supports the ‘fundamental moral theories, or even the demands Are memories really stored in idea to which conservatives attach This book of big business, and scientific the brain? Is mechanical? great importance: the idea that ‘explanations’ are given as Holy Is matter unconscious? Dr Shel- those responsible for damage brings energy Writ—when such explanations turn drake shares Prof Dawkins’s should also repair it’. The cost of back to science out, on investigation, to be inade- reverence for Darwin, but points mistakes should be returned to ‘ quate metaphors for processes out that he—with his openness those who make them, he says, science itself cannot understand. to amateur observation and bold but accountability also lies with Rupert Sheldrake is himself The book’s title is, of course, curiosity—is exactly the sort of each one of us, in our daily lives. a brilliant and respected scien- a swipe at , one scientist we find hard to produce Salvation lies in ‘oikophilia’, tist, who thinks that this ’atti- of the high priests of nowadays. There are places where from the Greek for ‘love of home’, tude is wrong—for science and in science, which claims that science refuses to go, with signs and the championing of Conser- humanity. He has spent 30 years everything in nature and the mind already that the trumpeting of vative values of tradition and demonstrating, time and again, has a material basis—genes, scientific omniscience is a kind heritage. Oikos is the root of that scientists are in the grip of memes, particles, chemical reac- of self-delusion, like any other our own ‘eco’, but in using this dogma: his own first book on tions. Man, says Prof Dawkins, bubble in stocks or housing. term, Prof Scruton divests it of the question, The New Science is simply a Golem cooked up by Dr Sheldrake wants to bring its leftist accretions. Similarly, of Life, was long ago reviewed his genes, insensibly drawn to do energy and excitement back into he praises what Burke called in Nature in just those terms: as their bidding. It’s a point of view, science. With his popular experi- ‘little platoons’ and ‘civil asso- a book ‘fit for burning… heresy’. but not certified scientifically or ments about homing pigeons, or ciations’ such as the WI. In The Science Delusion, he otherwise; genes, Dr Sheldrake dogs that seem to know when Ultimately, ‘we solve environ- has written a fascinating, humane observes, ‘are not really programs; their masters are coming home, mental problems... by creating the and refreshing book that any they are not selfish, they do not he has already done more than incentives that will lead people layman can enjoy, in which he mould matter, or shape form, or any other scientist alive to to solve them for themselves’. takes 10 supposed scientific ‘laws’ aspire to immortality’. Biologists broaden the appeal of the disci- Green Philosophy is a tour de and turns them, instead, into fell with delight on the genome pline, and Country Life readers force that places the burden of questions. He shows how scien- project, promising that mapping should get their teeth into this responsibility on us all.

NHPA/Photoshot tific orthodoxy stifles the kind the genetic code would reveal, important and astounding book. Teresa Levonian Cole

82 Country Life, March 7, 2012 www.countrylife.co.uk