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The Sacred Beetle & Other Great Essays in Science

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The Sacred Beetle & Other Great Essays in Science THE SACRED BEETLE & OTHER GREAT ESSAYS IN SCIENCE Chosen and Introduced by Martin Gardner From Darwin on evolution to Einstein on relativity covering subjects as diverse as science and literature, the sea, the laws of physics, the beautiful woman, logic, the bee, and the moon, this is a lively and lucid collection of essays by thirty-two leading interpreters of science. The essays are drawn together and provided with an entertaining and perceptive commentary by Martin Gardner, who explains that his selection was governed not by a desire to teach, or to bring us up to date on new trends and discoveries, but 'to spread before the reader, whether his interest in science be passionate or mild, a sumptuous feast of great writing--absorbing, thought-disturbing pieces that have something important to say about science and say it forcibly and well'. His explanatory and biographical sketches make this book not only a rich collection of good reading, but also an informal history of the people and ideas that have shaped our culture and moulded our everyday lives. Martin Gardner is a mathematician whose numerous books on science, mathematics, and philosophy include Science: Good, Bad and Bogus and Order and Surprise (both available in Oxford Paperbacks). In 1983 he was named Science Writer of the Year by the American Institute of Physics. Contents FRANCIS BACON The Sphinx (1609) CHARLES DARWIN Recapitulation and Conclusion (1859) JOHN DEWEY The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy (1909) STEPHEN JAY GOULD Nonmoral Nature (1982) WILLIAM JAMES The Problem of Being (1911) HAVELOCK ELLIS What Makes a Woman Beautiful (1905) JEAN HENRI FABRE The Sacred Beetle (1918) GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON The Logic of Elfland (1908) CARL SAGAN Can We Know The Universe? Reflections on a Grain of Salt ( 1979) JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH The Colloid and the Crystal (1950) JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET The Barbarism of "Specialization" (1932) THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY Science and Culture (1893) JOHN BURROUGHS Science and Literature (1889) ISAAC ASIMOV Science and Beauty (1983) ERNEST NAGEL Automation (1955) JONATHAN NORTON LEONARD Other-Worldly Life (1953) J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER Physics in the Contemporary World (1955) ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD Religion and Science (1925) JOHN DOS PASSOS Proteus (1930) JULIAN HUXLEY An Essay on Bird-Mind (1923) ARTHUR STANLEY EDDINGTON The Decline of Determinism ( 1934 ) ALDOUS HUXLEY Science in the Brave New World (1932) RACHEL CARSON The Sunless Sea (1951) MAURICE MAETERLINCK The Nuptial Flight (1901) H. G. WELLS The New Source of Energy (1914) Science and Ultimate Truth (1931) LAURA FERMI Success (1954) SAMUEL GOUDSMIT The Gestapo in Science (1947) ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Pan's Pipes (1876) SIGMUND FREUD Dreams of the Death of Beloved Persons ( 1900) BERTRAND RUSSELL The Science to Save Us from Science (1950) The Greatness of Albert Einstein (1955) ALBERT EINSTEIN E = mc2 (1946) LEWIS THOMAS Seven Wonders (1983) Preface IN 1955 Herbert Alexander, then president of Pocket Books, asked me to edit an anthology to be titled Great Essays in Science. The paperback edition (it never saw hard covers) came out in 1957. This expanded and revised edition, with its new title, brings the book back in print after a lapse of more than a decade. Most of the small changes made in the introductions have been occasioned by the deaths of contributors. The computer revolution has moved much faster than anyone anticipated when Ernest Nagel wrote about automation, but I am allowing that essay to remain, with my introduction unaltered, because the coming of the industrial robots has made Nagel's piece as timely and as accurate as it was in 1957. The only selection I removed was a long chapter on the moon that first appeared in Sir Robert Ball's classic work of 1885, The Story of the Heavens. Although this chapter was written more than seventy years before I put it in my anthology, it contained surprisingly little that was then out of date, and indeed one can still learn much from it. "Significant new knowledge." I wrote in my introduction, "will have to wait upon the first lunar explorers." I was right in predicting that "soon the artificial satellites will be whirling around the earth" and that the moon is "certain to be the first spot visited by our spacemen." Unfortunately, I added another guess that was far too cautious. "Our children." I wrote, "may well live to see a rocket ship circle or land on the moon and return." Four new essays have been added. I wish there could have been more, but the size of a book is limited and I decided with reluctance to limit my choices to essays by four Americans who began their distinguished science- writing careers after the date of the first edition of this collection: Isaac Asimov, Stephen Jay Could, Carl Sagan. and Lewis Thomas. By an astonishing coincidence, all four of these men grew up in Brooklyn! I like to think of the Brooklyn Bridge as a giant symbol of the joining of C. P. Snow's "two cultures." It is a bridge that all four writers travel back and forth in their books as easily and often as they must have once travelled back and forth between Manhattan and Brooklyn. As I said in my original preface, I had hoped that every major branch of science might be represented in this anthology, but it was not possible. Medicine and the social sciences, for example. are not here, although many of the book's essays raise momentous political questions. A limit also had to be placed on the age of the selections. For many reasons I decided to include nothing published earlier than 1859, the pivotal year of Darwin's Origin of Species. (The prologue by Francis Bacon is the sole exception.) Only the piece by Havelock Ellis has been cut. The others are reprinted in full, with no textual alterations. As a literary form the essay has always had irresponsible boundaries, and in this collection its definition becomes no clearer. There are "essays" here that are chapters, or segments from chapters, not written to be read apart from the book in which they first appeared. Several were originally lectures. Two are from works of fiction. Some are brief enough to be called sketches, others long enough to be called treatises. Some are heavy with scientific erudition, others glance at science casually over a shoulder. Some are wandering, informal expressions of opinion; others labour a thesis with the systematic vigour of a medieval schoolman. Even the cardinal rule that a great essay must be beautifully written has been violated in one or two instances. Nothing could be further from my intent than to hand the reader a volume designed primarily to teach him science or bring him up to date on the latest trends and discoveries. There is no end to the making of such anthologies and even the best of them have a distressing way of becoming out of date before the pages are bound. Rather, the purpose of this book is to spread before the reader, whether his or her interest in science be passionate or mild, a sumptuous feast of great writing--absorbing, thought-disturbing pieces that have some- thing important to say about science and say it forcibly and well. Martin Gardner Prologue FRANCIS BACON The Sphinx SPHINX, says the story, was a monster combining many shapes in one. She had the face and voice of a virgin, the wings of a bird, the claws of a griffin. She dwelt on the ridge of a mountain near Thebes and infested the roads, lying in ambush for travellers, whom she would suddenly attack and lay hold of; and when she had mattered them, she propounded to them certain dark and perplexing riddles, which she was thought to have obtained from the Muses. And if the wretched captives could not at once solve and interpret the same, as they stood hesitating and confused she cruelly torn them to pieces. Time bringing no abatement of the calamity, the Thebans offered to any man who should expound the Sphinx's riddles (for this was the only way to subdue her) the sovereignty of Thebes as his reward. The greatness of the prize induced (Edipus, a man of wisdom and penetration, but lame from wounds in his feet, to accept the condition and make the trial: who presenting himself full of confidence and alacrity before the Sphinx, and being asked what kind of animal it was which was born four-footed, afterwards became two- footed, then three-footed, and at last four-footed again, answered readily that it was man; who at his birth and during his infancy sprawls on all fours, hardly attempting to creep; in a little while walks upright on two feet; in later years leans on a walking-stick and so goes as it were on three; and at last in extreme age and decrepitude, his sinews all failing, sinks into a quadruped again, and keeps his bed. This was the right answer and gave him the victory; whereupon he slew the Sphinx; whose body was put on the back of an ass and carried about in triumph; while himself war made according to compact King of Thebes. The fable is an elegant and a wise one, invented apparently in allusion to Science; especially in its application to practical life. Science, being the wonder of the ignorant and unskilful, may be not absurdly caned a monster. In figure and aspect it is represented as many-shaped, in illusion to the immense variety of matter with which it deals. It is said to have the face and voice of a woman, in respect of its beauty and facility of utterance.
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