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Warring with Chaos BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT of quantum mechanics. He also sets HISTORY OF SCIENCE Fermi’s work as an adviser and ad hoc problem solver at Los Alamos against the full drama of the Manhattan Project. In those intense and hectic days, Fermi’s Warring with chaos door was always open to provide on-the- fly solutions to any technical problem Jordi Cat on a history of the Vienna Circle, which experienced by an engineer or a physi- wielded science to counter the turmoil of the 1930s. cist designing the weapons. At the same time, Fermi and Laura heartily joined in the social life of Bathtub Row, the street arl Sigmund is alarmed. In Exact standards through where J. Robert Oppenheimer and other Thinking in Demented Times, the book series, the philo- project members lived. (Schwartz notes, Viennese mathematician and pio- sophical journal Erk- however, that Fermi watched the square Kneer of evolutionary game theory identifies enntnis, conferences dancing with some puzzlement, while sustained threats to rationality today, from and lectures. The Laura joined in.) religious fundamentalism to a “debilitating model they conceived The book is rich in political, historical flood of trash culture” and public ennui. was, first, based on for- and technical detail. But its prose style is Sigmund worries that many scientists ignore mal concepts and rules awkward. And I was irked by Schwartz’s these risks to their world view and work. — linguistic, logical or tendency to dwell on an issue, puzzling Sigmund compares our times with Austria Exact Thinking mathematical — simi- through various philosophical considera- between the world wars. Here, between in Demented lar to mathematician tions and conflicting interpretations. In 1918 and 1938, economic and socio political Times: The Vienna David Hilbert’s attempt my view, for instance, there is no need to turmoil paved the way for Adolf Hitler’s Circle and the to unify and formal- ponder whether Fermi should be called invasion and the Second World War. Against Epic Quest for the ize his field through the father of the nuclear age. His work that grim backdrop, a number of philosophi- Foundations of axioms. But any such Science with the first reactor clearly qualifies as cally inclined scientists and scientifically KARL SIGMUND models had to be a seminal event in the development of trained philosophers formed the Vienna Basic: 2017. backed up by empirical nuclear power, even if Fermi was not, as Circle. This intellectual powerhouse devel- evidence and be given Schwartz notes, an architect of the first oped the scientific world view known as empirical meaning. For instance, theories bombs. logical empiricism — an assertion of the about human emotion had to be reducible Eventually, however, I learnt to appre- pre-eminence of scientific knowledge and a to precise, objective, observable descrip- ciate the wrangling with Fermi’s perso- rejection of metaphysics. After the war, a less tions of behaviour or physiological states, nae and legacy. Like other biographers, ambitious version of this philosophy came to countering ideas then prevalent in biology Schwartz shows Fermi’s sweet side: his dominate approaches to science. and psychology, such as vital forces or the ego. loyalty to friends and family, humour and The public group, loosely based at the Along with Hilbert, luminaries who quiet dignity. This is a man who accepted University of Vienna, was a starry one. influenced the Vienna Circle included physi- his own abrupt diagnosis of terminal can- It included mathematicians Hans Hahn, cists Albert Einstein and Ludwig Boltzmann, cer in 1954 without fuss, noting that the Karl Menger and their student Kurt scientist-philosophers Ernst Mach and Henri timing of his death would probably boost Gödel; physicist Philipp Frank; political Poincaré, and philosopher of mathemat- sales of his wife’s book. But we also meet economist and sociologist Otto Neurath; ics Bertrand Russell. The circle argued that the Fermi who could be cold and lost in physics-trained philosophers Edgar Zilsel, Einstein’s ideas on space-time, for instance, his work, to the detriment of relation- Gustav Bergmann, Moritz Schlick and sounded the death knell for philosopher ships, particularly with his family — as Rudolf Carnap; and philosopher Friedrich Immanuel Kant’s concept of space and time Graham Farmelo noted in his review Waismann. (Philosopher Rose Rand, as the as forms of intuition. The charismatic, reclu- of The Pope of Physics. This is the man group’s recorder, deserves special mention.) sive logician Ludwig Wittgenstein was both who did little to help his wife adjust to Sigmund reveals how circle members a revered and a polarizing influence. The the United States after their immigration, sought to counter their era’s dogmatic ide- group mulled over his ideas, such as the lim- and later alienated his son Giulio. ologies and propaganda, even in science, by its of expressible thoughts, and viewed his In short, Schwartz’s blunt style cuts articulating and communicating scientific 1922 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a through the gauze of hero worship. And ironically, that unflinching gaze accentu- ates Fermi’s stature. The Last Man Who Knew Everything yields an intimate and engaging portrait of an extraordinary physicist who was also very human. ■ Catherine Westfall is a visiting professor in the history of science at Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State University in East Lansing. She has co-authored two L–R: GRANGER HISTORICAL PICTURE ARCHIVE/ PICTURE L–R: GRANGER HISTORICAL books — Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos During the ALAMY; PAUL FEARN/ALAMY; VIENNA UNIV. ARCHIVE. VIENNA UNIV. FEARN/ALAMY; PAUL ALAMY; Oppenheimer Years, 1943–1945 and Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience. e-mail: [email protected] Vienna Circle members (left to right) Moritz Schlick, Otto Neurath and Hans Hahn. ©2017 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. ©2017 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri 7gh tDECEMBERs reserved. 2017 | VOL 552 | NATURE | 29 COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS CORBIS VIA GETTY Nazis bar Jews from the University of Vienna in 1938. touchstone. Wittgenstein himself refused personal heroes; many have featured in his often began or ended in darkness. Sigmund’s to engage in their discussions. previous works. But that focus can divert litany of breakdown is sobering: Boltzmann’s The circle’s impact extended beyond the readers from the full story of the Vienna depression and suicide; Schlick’s murder by a intellectual. For Neurath in particular, the Circle and its significance. The preface and former student; Russell’s haunting “dread of movement was socially relevant. Exact think- some additions to the main text, by cognitive mental illness”; and Menger’s megalomania. ing in education and public intellectual life scientist Douglas Hofstadter, have a similar This is a gripping, yet cautionary history. was a tool for fighting theological dogma effect by emphasizing the work of Gödel and The group’s strict scientific standards proved and social prejudice. Neurath’s interest in mathematician Alan Turing; the reader would elusive in theory and practice. There were this area led him to spearhead city plans for do well to treat the preface as an afterword. internal divisions in the circle over this; sub- workers’ housing and to establish the Social The book is informed by Sigmund’s work sequent histories and research have chal- and Economic Museum in Vienna, which in statistical mechanics and game theory lenged the descriptive and prescriptive force sought to democratize learning and promote — detailed in his The Calculus of Selfishness of its organizing idea. Logical positivism has adult education through statistics-based (Princeton Uni- not aged well enough to qualify as a model of pictographs — a precursor to infographics. versity Press, 2010) “The pressured change and reform for our own disrupted era. Sigmund portrays the groups’ intellectual — such as his idea metropolis had So, how should we solve the problems cur- and social lives vividly. Vienna’s multitude that public vir- a dynamic of rently besetting science, society and govern- of cafés became arenas for heated argu- tues follow almost love and death, ance? How can we counteract climate -change ments, discussions and orations over cof- exclusively from madness and denial or the spread of controversial medical fee, cake, liqueurs and tobacco smoke. But personal vices. civilization.” treatments? Or, within science, how can we by the mid-1930s, the circle had broken, as Accordingly, the head off the misuses of ‘exact thinking’ and the rise of Nazism aligned Austrian con- broader framing is psychological. In 1935, scientism — from the replication crisis in servatives with the Third Reich. Most of the Russell declared that “‘Vienna’ is a term of some fields to the introduction of algorithms group was propelled dramatically into exile. psychology, not of geography”; certainly, that enforce racial prejudice in criminal jus- Carnap, by then employed in Prague, sailed psycho analyst Sigmund Freud had left his tice? Ultimately, Exact Thinking in Demented to the United States; Neurath, in Moscow on mark on the city. And Exact Thinking in Times does not provide a blueprint for change. picture-language business, fled ultimately to Demented Times deploys quasi-Freudian Rather, it constitutes a salient reminder of Britain; others moved to Turkey. In Britain, terminology. It describes the pressured the ongoing need for collective rationality in exiled Viennese philosopher Karl Popper metropolis as a dynamic of love and death, times of ethical and methodological crisis. ■ would gain celebrity for finding alternative madness and civilization, where the “wild solutions to the circle’s intellectual and social fanaticism and maniacal stupidity” of so many Jordi Cat is a philosopher and historian of problems. stood in stark contrast to the rationalism of science at Indiana University Bloomington. The mathematicians are Sigmund’s the Vienna Circle.
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