BOOKS & ARTS NATURE|Vol 445|15 February 2007 they plug directly into the ‘socket’ normally occupied only by the most basic high-status rewards. If we humans have indeed learnt NASA KSC such a powerful trick, it is no surprise that it fuels so much that is both good (creative and expansive) and ill (pathological and restric- tive) in our species. Montague begins by lay- ing out this possibility, then follows it deep into the fascinating territories of creative thought, addiction, obsessive–compulsive disorder, Parkinson’s disease, and then on to the psycho- social realms of trust and regret. Despite its attractions, there are some impor- tant mechanistic gaps in the story, as Montague acknowledges. For example, it isn’t clear why or how one idea might win out over another in the bid to occupy a high-status reward socket, or how the occupation itself is accomplished. Nor is it really clear when such occupation should be deemed pathological rather than creative. I was also left wondering whether the basic idea of each symbol and each computation carrying its own value ‘tag’ — the difference, Montague argues, between standard compu- James Webb (second left, with President John F. Kennedy) led NASA’s Apollo space programme. tational models using ‘meaningless symbols’ and the hyper-efficient, value-rich compu- tations said to be characteristic of biological nervous systems — is sufficiently clear and Shooting for the Moon workable. Exactly how do these computation- value or symbol-value pairs work, and how do The Man Who Ran the Moon: James Harry Truman, Webb accepted the NASA posi- they transform mere symbol processing into Webb, JFK, and the Secret History of tion after as many as 17 other prospects had meaning? Do they compose? Two computa- Project Apollo turned it down. He ran NASA (not the Moon) tions whose individuals values are low might by Piers Bizony like a chief executive, handling the politics of together constitute a complex computation Thunder’s Mouth/Icon Books: 2006. external relations and leaving the technical whose value to the organism is high, but Mon- 256 pp. $24.95/£16.99 management of the programme to trusted sub- tague suggests no way of systematically pre- ordinates. He survived power struggles, budget dicting such combined values from the values Alex Roland battles and conflicts with two presidents, John assigned to the parts. James Webb was the antithesis of the enter- F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, over main- Perhaps I am missing something, but it prise that made him famous. Administrator of taining an overall space programme balanced repeatedly struck me that Montague’s overall NASA during the Apollo space programme, between manned and unmanned activities. vision is both rather more radical, and rather Webb commanded a sprawling, anonymous And he won the right to distribute some of less mechanistically clear, than his book sug- team of 400,000 workers. Yet he himself was NASA’s money to support socially constructive gests. The prospective reader should be aware colourful, singular, eccentric even — a poli- programmes such as university development. that the story on offer actually departs quite a tician and an individualist leading an army Smart, energetic, gregarious and iconoclastic long way from the basic computational theory of technicians. Apollo was ‘big science’, what — his official limousine was a Checker cab — of the mind. It builds in value and computa- Webb and others called ‘large-scale technology’. he cut a colourful swath through the bureau- tion right down to the cellular level, and (more It dwarfed the Manhattan Project, for example, cratic maze of Washington. generally) systematically blurs the usual dis- in cost, size and complexity. In contrast to the Then came the Apollo 204 tragedy. On tinctions between life, mind and information Wright brothers, who achieved atmospheric 27 January 1967, three astronauts died in a processing. This blurring is evident, for exam- flight using equipment from their bicycle shop, gruesome fire during a routine ground test of ple, in the puzzling idea that each individual the flight to the Moon integrated civil servants the Moon capsule at Cape Canaveral. In the neuron, in the quest for efficient interneural and industry contractors in a nationwide web ensuing investigation, an internal NASA report communication, might need to contain up to of activity. They built unprecedented facilities came to light that criticized the capsule manu- 100 million ‘dynamic models’ of other neurons such as the launch centre at Cape Canaveral facturer, North American Aviation (NAA), for and neuronal subsystems. and the manned-spacecraft centre at Houston shoddy work. Caught out on the witness stand These are not really complaints, however. Texas, and dispensed some $25 billion (worth without foreknowledge of the report, Webb The book spans several seldom-bridged worlds, several times as much today) over a decade or began to lose control of events. Worse still, he from neuroscience to psychiatry, economics more. Such undertakings demand the subor- appeared to misrepresent the fact that he and and social psychology, and does so with wit, pre- dination of the individual to the cause. Webb his leading deputies had overturned the rec- cision and elegance. It succeeds in many of its was certainly a team player, but he was also the ommendation of their own review panel and goals. Above all, it left me feeling I had actually pilot who steered his own course and imposed awarded NAA the contract in the first place. learnt something about myself: a thinking, his personality on Apollo. This revelation tarred him with the brush of feeling, choosing, yet painfully vulnerable Webb’s background and the purportedly the Bobby Baker scandal, a rat’s nest of lobby- chemically modulated learning machine. ■ “secret history” revealed in The Man Who Ran ing, bribes and even organized crime. Andy Clark is at the School of Philosophy, the Moon by Piers Bizony have long been well Webb survived the hearings but his reputa- Psychology and Language Sciences, known. An accomplished Democratic opera- tion was damaged and his power diminished. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9JX, UK. tive and former budget director for President New executives were brought in to restore

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technical order in the programme, and Webb the Apollo 204 crisis, followed by an impres- character. He worships his mum, falls in love, had less authority to impose his will on them. sionistic survey of NASA history since Webb. visits prostitutes, and has children who dis- His determination to maintain a balanced The book is reasonably accurate and the appoint him. programme and channel NASA funding into undocumented opinions are plausible, but the Humboldt is a cipher. This also has the effect socially beneficial schemes was being over- account is unreliable on the details and silent of making Gauss’s way of doing science seem taken by the budget and political crises of the on the complexity of Webb and the times in more noble and authentic than Humboldt’s. It Vietnam war. When he mentioned retirement which he operated. Similarly, Webb’s system of isn’t, but this is a neat twist, as mathematicians to President Johnson in 1968, the president ‘management by exception’ is not discussed at are usually the ones portrayed as weirdos. hastily called a press conference and practi- all. Even so, it is an entertaining introduction It would be just as silly to complain that cally pushed Webb out of the door. Both men to Webb, but it should be supplemented with Gauss and Humboldt probably weren’t much were to attend the launch of Apollo 11 the next W. Henry Lambright’s Powering Apollo (Johns like this as it would be to object to Peter Shaffer’s summer, but took less joy in the achievement Hopkins University Press, 1995), Arnold Lev- play Amadeus on the grounds that Salieri than they might have otherwise. ine’s Managing NASA in the Apollo Era (NASA, probably didn’t aim to bump off Mozart. I Bizony tells this familiar story clearly and 1982) and Webb’s own Space Age Management will, however, make one point in Humboldt’s engagingly. To the existing literature he adds (McGraw-Hill, 1969). These books offer further defence. Kehlmann is truthful to the facts of some interviews, primarily with Robert Sea- insight into whether complex scientific and his biography, and Humboldt was an enigmatic mans, deputy administrator of NASA under engineering projects on the scale of Apollo, man, who tried to destroy documents pertain- Webb. He quotes extensively from these with all their conflicting political, budgetary ing to his early life, and who might have sub- sources, occasionally without making clear and technical demands, are manageable in any stituted work for emotional fulfilment. (There who is speaking. The result is ‘Webb light’, a sense that Webb would have understood. ■ has been speculation, to which Kehlmann fast-paced, breezy account weak on substance Alex Roland is in the Department of History, Duke briefly alludes, that this is because Humboldt and contextualization. The book climaxes with University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA. was homosexual.) But he knew how to do the right thing. Bonpland returned south to Amer- ica but was caught in disputed border territory and imprisoned. Kehlmann’s Humboldt wrings his hands; the real Humboldt, in contrast, sold Opposites attract his world-class collection of plant specimens to provide his friend with financial support. of cold rationality, a Gradgrind who, lacking Kehlmann skilfully stops Measuring the Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann, any personality or inner life, builds one out World becoming a highbrow tale of nutty pro- transl. by Carol Brown Janeway of facts and measurements. He’d rather stare fessors. For a start, his professors are more mel- Pantheon: 2006. 259 pp. $23. To be down his sextant than look at a solar eclipse, ancholic than nutty. Gauss’s prodigious abilities published in the UK by Quercus in April. and rather study a woman’s lice than have sex — and his decision to be true to them, even at with her. He chases up rivers and mountains, the cost of his own and others’ happiness — cut John Whitfield oblivious to hardship, with French botanist him off from people, and everyone else’s stu- Quite often, it strikes me that being a scientist Aimé Bonpland as his Sancho Panza. pidity depresses him. Humboldt’s political, is an odd way to spend your time. We all ask Gauss, on the other hand, hates going any- administrative and official duties gradually the same questions. Where do I come from? where. But then, he doesn’t need to — from overwhelm his opportunities to take measure- Where am I going? What does it all mean? childhood, revelation comes to him, in an ments, and in old age he reprises his American Yet few — and only relatively recently — have unbidden stream of mathematical genius. He journey in Russia, as farce. Each learns that no chosen the scientific method as the means to sees science as “a man alone at a desk, a sheet of degree of cleverness or immersion in science answer them. And for those who have, many paper in front of him”. This is also novel writ- grants immunity from, or even helps much of their answers seem as impenetrable and ing, so perhaps it is not surprising that Kehl- with, the messy business of life and death. marginal as avant-garde poetry or ‘squeaky mann makes Gauss the more sympathetic and, Kehlmann also avoids naffness by telling gate’ music. despite his freakish abilities, the more human Daniel Kehlmann’s neat novel Measuring the World, a bestseller in Germany last year under the title Die Vermessung die Welt and now translated into English, provoked these thoughts once more. The book is set in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the structures of science, and

THE ART ARCHIVE/M. CHARVET ARCHIVE/M. THE ART the job of being a scientist, began to take on something like their present form. It weaves together the stories of two of the giants of the time: the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and the explorer, geographer and biologist LIBRARY BERLIN/BRIDGEMAN ART NATIONALGALERIE, Alexander von Humboldt. Kehlmann deploys the two men as arche- typal and opposite examples of how to be a scientist. The core of Humboldt’s story is his five-year journey to the Americas, which made him famous and had a huge influence on nine- teenth-century naturalist travellers including Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. But the journey makes no apparent impression on Carl Friedrich Gauss (left) and Alexander von Humboldt Kehlmann’s Humboldt. He is the embodiment had very different views of how science should be done.

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