and anthropogenic climate change (as well as second-hand smoke and the dangers of pest icides). We read of the television, radio and Internet ‘shock jocks’ who chase ratings by giving equal weight to The Madhouse Effect: How scientific consensus Climate Change and denialist rhetoric. Denial is The power of vested Threatening Our interests in US politics Planet, Destroying and implications for Our Politics, and state and federal action Driving Us Crazy MICHAEL E. MANN on climate change are AND TOM TOLES made abundantly clear, Columbia University with Mann an amiable, Press: 2016. if rather despairing, guide. He begins with an overview of the scien- tific method, the science of global warming and key uncertainties — such as feedback mechanisms, whereby warming can itself boost greenhouse-gas emissions and so CLIMATE SCIENCE cause even more warming. He and Toles then explore the “six stages of denial”, ranging from ‘it’s not happening’ through ‘it’s self- correcting’ to ‘geoengineering will fix it all’. Denialism Where this book shines is in its exploration of the debate in the United States, and a veri- table who’s who of denial. As the November presidential election looms, it’s useful to learn deciphered about key players’ stances. Unsurprisingly, most of the contenders for the Republican nomination when the book was finished back Dave Reay enjoys a wry history of US climate-science in July emerge as outspoken critics of climate obfuscation. science and international action. The party’s current candidate, Donald Trump, wants to renegotiate or leave the 2015 Paris climate s an iconic climate-change image, the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli- agreement joined by President Barack Obama ‘hockey-stick graph’ by geophysicist mate Change; and still elicits invective from in September, and has called climate change Michael Mann — showing global deniers (S. Lewis Nature 483, 402–403; 2012). a hoax. But Mann suggests that several can- Atemperature change over the past 1,000 years Who better than Mann, then, to explore the didates were influenced by cryptic political — is up there with the greats. Others include history of climate-change denial, and its poli- and financial forces in the fossil-fuel industry, the Keeling curve of changing atmospheric tics, personalities and implications? which apparently bankroll denialist activity carbon-dioxide concentrations and the ‘boil- The Madhouse Effect is a breezy, engag- and lobbying to protect their interests. ing frog’ metaphor from Al Gore’s 2006 docu- ing read, interspersed with wry illustrations The authors discuss how Republican sena- mentary An Inconvenient Truth. Mann’s figure courtesy of cartoonist Tom Toles of The Wash- tor Jim Inhofe (Oklahoma) is waging a “war” (from a seminal paper: M. E. Mann et al. Geo- ington Post. It offers many excellent insights on climate science by using hearings of the phys. Res. Lett. 26, 759–762; 1999) appears in into life on the front line battling US climate- Senate environment committee that he chairs ‘Climate Science 101’ lectures the world over; science obfuscation. We learn about the cadre to try and debunk climate change. Mann’s was a touchstone of the 2001 third assessment of contrarian scientists routinely rolled out to writing is subjective in places — such as when cast doubt on issues such as ozone depletion discussing former Virginia attorney-general NEW IN Richter’s Scale: Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a Man PAPERBACK Susan Hough (Princeton Univ. Press, 2016) Charles Richter’s eponymous, logarithmic scale of earthquake classification made Highlights of this him globally famous. In this illuminating biography, seismologist Susan Hough season’s releases describes Richter’s accidental arrival at the Seismolab of the California Institute of Technology, and the colleagues there who resented his fame. A surprising selection of Richter’s poetry surfaces, reflecting his sentiments on married life and mortality (see Gregory Beroza’s review: Nature 445, 599; 2007).
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Ken Cuccinelli, an erstwhile alleger of data MEMOIR manipulation, now an oyster farmer on an island threatened by rising sea levels. But he generally manages to avoid score-settling. In 2009, Mann’s work was caught up in Love and uncertainty the ‘Climategate’ scandal (nature.com/ climategate). This was the unauthorized Werner Heisenberg’s wartime letters to his wife record release of more than 1,000 e-mails from the scientific and personal privations, finds Ann Finkbeiner. Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK — many con- taining private correspondence, some to or erner Heisenberg is a conun- My Dear Li: from Mann. Excerpts were published by cli- drum. He won the 1932 Nobel Correspondence, mate sceptics to smear scientists and cloud Prize in Physics for creating the 1937–1946 public and political judgement. Mann gives Wfoundations of quantum mechanics and his WERNER HEISENBERG AND this seismic event just a couple of pages. He uncertainty principle, which describes how ELISABETH HEISENBERG; explains briefly how the e-mails were taken it is impossible to know a particle’s location ED. ANNA MARIA HIRSCH- HEISENBERG, TRANSL. out of context and that references to a “trick” and its momentum simultaneously. During IRENE HEISENBERG used to “hide the decline” referred simply to the Second World War, directed by the Nazi Yale University Press: 2016. a trick of the trade: combining direct meas- government, he headed Germany’s unsuc- urements of global temperature with proxy cessful efforts to create an atomic bomb. estimates. Given that Mann was bombarded Why didn’t he succeed? Why did he try? with threats and abuse following Climategate, There are no unambiguous answers a fuller exploration — as in Fred Pearce’s The here, although clarifying Heisenberg’s Climate Files (Guardian Books, 2010) — motives is one reason that his daughter, would have been good to see. Anna Maria Hirsch-Heisenberg, gives for Despite the political tensions, Mann and publishing the letters between him and Toles strike a positive tone in the final section. her mother. What the letters do illustrate They highlight action being taken at com- is Hirsch-Heisenberg’s other reason for munity, city and state levels, and the poten- publishing (in German in 2011, and now tial of the Paris agreement to avoid the most in English for the first time): how a couple damaging effects of climate change. And they much in love lives through a war. find hope in the power of individual choice Werner begins his letters with “My dear to shift the most recalcitrant hangovers from Li”. Li is Elisabeth, née Schumacher; they our carbon-intensive history. Their key rec- met in 1937 at a musical evening. The two ommendations are for each of us to support talked — a conversation, Werner wrote, renewable energy and carbon pricing, to vote that seemed to have begun so long ago for politicians who do the same and to stop that continuing it for the rest of their lives equivocating on climate science. felt natural. Two weeks later, they were As Mann points out, denialists are not engaged; four months later, they began a likely to read this book. For climate research- 40-year marriage. But Heisenberg had to ers outside the United States, it is an eye- travel for research and was rarely at home, opening primer (despite its baffling references thus the letters. This collection spans the to baseball stars) on the vested interests with tumultuous years from 1937 to 1946. which their US colleagues must do battle. For The letters, necessarily discreet about a wider readership, it makes clear just how politics and the military, contain mostly unencumbered and jolly.” Werner makes a high the stakes are. If tackling climate change the quotidian — frighteningly so, this being long lecture trip to the United States, where is indeed a war, then Mann and Toles have Germany during that war. By 1939, Werner he finds the audiences receptive and the certainly earned their stripes. I salute them. ■ lives in Leipzig and Li has moved to their students bright. He tells his US colleagues safe country house in southern Germany. who offer him jobs that he needs to stay in Dave Reay is chair in carbon management Li has had twins; she will have four more Germany “so that I might also be here after- and assistant principal for global environment children in the next five years. The war has ward and help”; as he writes to Li, “we are & society at the University of Edinburgh, UK, started. “I get caught up pondering the dark just not at home here”. and author of Nitrogen and Climate Change. picture everybody is painting,” Li writes, Over the next few years, Werner alter- e-mail: [email protected] “how fortunate that the children ... are so nates between Berlin, where “it is quite
How to Clone a Mammoth Future Arctic: Field Notes from a World on the Edge Beth Shapiro (Princeton Univ. Press, 2016) Edward Struzik (Island, 2016) Ecologist Beth Shapiro parses possible impacts Arctic journalist Edward Struzik compresses of the “unextinct”. Reintroducing mammoths to 30 years of circumpolar observation in this Siberia, for example, could restore grasslands portrait of a thawing world. As warmer oceans and keep carbon trapped in the permafrost induce powerful storms that hasten the ice’s (see Henry Nicholl’s review: Nature 521, 30–31; retreat, ecological anomalies surface, such as the 2015). grizzly bear–polar bear hybrid.
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striking these days how everybody THEORETICAL PHYSICS becomes thinner”, and Leipzig, where newspapers carry obituaries of young people dying. “I myself am often so sad and downcast,” he writes to Li, “without The emperor’s you I would not quite be able to cope”. Food is scarce; Werner preserves cherries from his Berlin garden. His work, direct- ing research on nuclear fission, “makes new physics no sense”. In 1945, between air raids, Werner advises Li that as the front moves closer Richard Dawid examines a critique of quantum to southern Germany, she should watch mechanics, string theory and inflationary cosmology. for attack planes and the children should practise throwing themselves to the ground near a wall. Li makes her own he eminent theoretical physicist settle on one strategy yeast and worries about getting enough Roger Penrose is worried about the of dealing with a prob- flour for bread. They tell each other that current path of physical research. In lem before severely they are thinner and more exhausted. TFashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Phys- testing the theory’s “Love,” he writes, “stay well and prepare ics of the Universe, he argues that the epony- empirical predictions. for the more difficult times.” mous triad of trends has become overly Penrose views string Near the war’s end, Heisenberg and powerful in contemporary fundamental theory (a theory of other German nuclear scientists are physics. This core message is delivered in quantum gravity) arrested by the Allies. They are held for language that demands some mathematical as the pre-eminent Fashion, Faith, six months in England; few letters are sophistication of the reader. Penrose also and Fantasy in the example. allowed. For lack of food, Li puts two discusses some of his own ideas, such as New Physics of the The final trend in of the children into a home. She cares twistor theory — his take on a synthesis of Universe Penrose’s triad is fan- for Heisenberg’s dying mother and cuts quantum theory and general relativity. ROGER PENROSE tasy — that is, a wildly their firewood. He’s released in January Penrose claims that even well-confirmed Princeton University speculative idea that 1946. “I want to build a containing wall theories, such as quantum mechanics, are Press: 2016. goes far beyond what around you from all the love I have in ‘oversold’ with respect to their presump- is implied by the my heart,” writes Li. The letters end that tive stability. Quantum physics has had an known data. Penrose assigns that category June, with the family reunited and liv- impressive record of predictive success, to inflationary cosmology, which he argues ing in Göttingen; in 1950, they have a ranging from quantum chemistry to ele- is treated as an established theory despite a seventh child. mentary particle physics. But it faces a deep lack of evidence. Hirsch-Heisenberg writes that the conceptual problem. Whereas quantum Of these three, Penrose’s discussion of letters were chosen and edited for rel- mechanics has a perfect internal consist- quantum mechanics (‘faith’) is the most suc- evance and concision. We cannot know ency when it describes a system that evolves cessful. On the basis of an inspired presenta- what other filters, if any, children apply without being measured, the way in which it tion of quantum mechanics, he makes a case to the publication of their parents’ letters. represents measurements is not coherently that the theory’s enormous scientific success Hirsch-Heisenberg gives no sources, but embedded in that description. To Penrose, does not remove serious doubts about the makes the case that her father’s motives this indicates that the fundamental prin- finality of its basic principles. His discussions for working on a German atomic bomb ciples of quantum mechanics have not yet of fantasy and fashion, however, are prob- were to control atomic research and been found and will rely on the elusive full lematic. He paints an exaggerated picture of to convert it to peaceful uses, but that integration of gravity into quantum phys- their role and systematically underrates the building an actual bomb was “out of the ics. He argues that the success of quantum merits of the theories he criticizes. question”. Judging from these letters, mechanics tends to make physicists insensi- Fashion and fantasy are presented in sepa- Heisenberg was doing what it took to wait tive to the theory’s conceptual problem and rate chapters as independent influences that out the dreadful storm so that he could generates an unjustified degree of faith in have become too powerful. But, as Penrose get on with his life with physics and Li. ■ its basic principles as a solid foundation of acknowledges, fantasy has always been at physics. the root of new theories. Just think about the Ann Finkbeiner is a science writer in Another source of undue trust in a theory, atomist speculations that led to the kinetic Baltimore, Maryland. Penrose asserts, is the physics community’s gas theory in the nineteenth century. For e-mail: [email protected] tendency to follow fashion — that is, to Penrose, the trouble arises when fantasy
Eternal Ephemera Huxley’s Church & Maxwell’s Demon Niles Eldredge (Columbia Univ. Press, 2016) Matthew Stanley (Univ. Chicago Press, 2016) Palaeontologist Niles Eldredge presents an The context of Victorian science swung smoothly insightful history of evolutionary biology, from from the theistic to the naturalistic, shedding transmutation’s forefather, Jean-Baptiste supernatural causality along the way. Matthew Lamarck, comparing fossil molluscs in 1801, Stanley attributes the relative amity between to the theory of punctuated equilibria, whereby Christian and atheist scientists to shared ideals rapid speciation disrupts periods of stasis. such as intellectual freedom.
36 | NATURE | VOL 538 | 6 OCTOBER©20 201616 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. is given too much credit before a theory is string theory’s influential position. His who is cited in the book, provided a general empirically tested. This occurs, he says, when analysis of its problems is not up to the task understanding of the reduced number of a theory becomes the subject of fashion. In of debunking proponents’ physics-based degrees of freedom in quantum gravity with- this light, it is difficult to see the independent reasons for confidence. Penrose’s main com- out any reference to string theory, before cases role of ‘fantasy’ in Penrose’s argument. plaint about string theory is that it lacks a of gauge–gravity duality were conjectured Inflationary cosmology is, moreover, not a clear specification of its number of degrees of in the context of string theory (G. ’t Hooft. good illustration of fantasy, even by Penrose’s freedom. He tries to show this in several con- https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9310026; 1993). own account. As he acknowledges, recent texts. However, he tends to omit information In this light, by generating examples of gauge– precision measurements of the cosmic micro- that could make the situation less confus- gravity duality, string theory does not, as wave background agree with typical predic- ing than he takes it to be. For example, he Penrose maintains, make one more prima tions of inflationary cosmology, so it seems expresses unease about ‘gauge–gravity dual- facie implausible claim, but opens up perspec- difficult now to call it a mere flight of fancy. ity’, the claim that string theory is empirically tives for a more thorough understanding of Penrose presents his important criticism that equivalent to a quantum field theory in a a characteristic of quantum gravity that had inflation generically does not explain the lower-dimensional space. (If generally valid, already been suggested. low initial entropy of the Universe (although that would mean that a string theory in three It is always inspiring to read Penrose’s explanations have been suggested in certain extended spatial dimensions was empirically uncompromisingly independent perspec- models; see S. M. Carroll and J. Chen. https:// equivalent to a quantum field theory in two tive on physics. He seems more at home arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0410270; 2004). But spatial dimensions.) Such a claim looks with developing visionary ideas than with he presents the case against inflation in a startling, because one would naively expect detailed criticism of prevalent theories. way that hides the independent significance that a three-dimensional theory has more Unfortunately, this book offers too few of of problems that can be solved by it, such as degrees of freedom than a two-dimensional the former and too much of the latter. ■ explaining the homogeneity and flatness of one. Penrose presents this as one of many the observed Universe. questionable implications of string theory. Richard Dawid is a philosopher of science There are similar issues with Penrose’s Curiously, however, he presents his case at the University of Stockholm. claim that fashion is the main reason for without mentioning that Gerard ’t Hooft, [email protected]
Spooky Action at a Distance We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in George Musser (Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and the Space Program Giroux, 2016) Richard Paul and Steven Moss (Texas Univ. Press, 2016) Bending time, space and minds, George Musser Profiling NASA’s first ten black employees, investigates nonlocality — two distant particles acting Richard Paul and Steven Moss show what the in harmony. With lessons in photon entanglement, space age meant for African Americans. In 1962, particle teleportation and string theory, he ponders NASA granted US$181,000 to a study of the how space evolved after the Big Bang. space programme’s impact on race relations.
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also had a predilection for sedatives such as the opiate Eukodal (oxycodone). But the extent to which he took any of these drugs remains controversial. Ohler has effectively written two separate books, one focusing on the military; the other on Hitler and Morell. There is a thin con- necting thread attributing Hitler’s military misjudgements to drugs, such as Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union when he overstretched German troops. Ohler’s descriptions of military operations, such as the Blitzkrieg against Poland and France, are very generalized. By contrast, the treatment of Hitler as a patient is a detailed study based on Morell’s diary and personal records. Called ‘Patient A’ by Morell, Hitler is depicted as increasingly stooped and tremor- ridden. Ohler attributes this decline to drug dependency rather than Parkinson’s disease HISTORY (mooted as early as 1945 by the Nazi neurolo- gist Max de Crinis). And Ohler goes further. He argues that drug consumption initially boosted the Reich’s military success, but then Addiction and the Reich undermined it as widespread addiction set in — a focus that ignores corrosive factors Paul Weindling ponders a study of drug use among the such as anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the Nazi leadership and military. drive to secure Lebensraum (territorial living space). Ohler presents some staggering statis- tics on drugs supplied to individual units, but orman Ohler’s Blitzed depicts the meth) and cocaine. fails to provide statistics on Pervitin produc- pervasive drug culture that alleg- German military tion, fluctuations in its supply to the military, edly developed in Germany’s Third units and aviators were or the extent and duration of its use. Nor is NReich. From 1933 to 1945, Adolf Hitler, dosed with the patent there a detailed analysis of individual soldiers many Nazi officials and a proportion of the methamphetamine- to determine the impact on health. If military military rank and file were — he contends based drug Pervitin operations were so saturated by drugs, more — in thrall to prescription and recreational (manufactured in evidence should be forthcoming. drugs. Ohler’s is a vivid account; whether it Germany from 1937) Ohler draws on the same sources as other convinces is less certain. to improve operational books and papers on the Nazi consumption Historians now recognize that despite Nazi Blitzed: Drugs in efficiency. And drugs of crystal meth and cocaine, and on Hitler’s Nazi Germany racial and political persecution of German such as Pervitin and medical predilections. These include Giles NORMAN OHLER scientists, Hitler’s Reich offered immense Allen Lane: 2016. metabolic stimulants Milton’s When Hitler Took Cocaine and opportunities to many. There was an upswing were tried out on on Lenin Lost His Brain (Picador, 2016) and the of research in pharmacology during prepa- students, military recruits and, eventually, paper ‘Speed in the Third Reich’ (S. Snelders ration for total war, and new drugs were in concentration camps. Questions remain, and T. Pieters Soc. Hist. Med. 24, 686–699; hailed as additions to the armoury of high- however, over precisely how the drugs were 2011). Some material countering Ohler’s performance medicine. However, drugs were tested, prescribed, distributed and used. argument is not referenced. In Was Hitler viewed paradoxically in the Reich. The Nazi Meanwhile, Hitler’s façade was that of a Ill? (Polity, 2012), Henrik Eberle and Hans- ideology of fitness meant that users of opiates vegetarian and non-smoker, but he became Joachim Neumann argue that Morell was a such as morphine were branded ‘psycho increasingly dependent on patent vitamin competent diagnostician, albeit compliant pathic personalities’, and serious addicts tonics produced from bovine thyroid glands, in prescribing. And Ohler does not draw on could be compulsorily sterilized. Yet Nazi livers and bones. (His favoured physician, witness studies such as that of SS nutrition- officials took high-performance drugs such Theodor Morell, claimed exclusive rights to ist Ernst-Günther Schenck on Hitler as a as methamphetamine hydrochloride (crystal process these in occupied Ukraine.) Hitler patient. Finally, Pervitin was known by the
The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Evolving Ourselves: How Unnatural Selection and Reconciliation After the Genome Nonrandom Mutation Are Changing Life on Earth Alondra Nelson (Beacon, 2016) Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans (Current, 2016) Geneticist Alondra Nelson analyses the rise in DNA In this study of the evolution of evolution, Juan ‘roots’ testing among African Americans seeking Enriquez and Steve Gullans ponder the potential their lost identity. Race, politics and science emerge of genome editing and synthetic life. Could pig as intertwined as the double helix itself (see Fatimah lungs, ‘humanized’ by the addition of our genes, Jackson’s review: Nature 529, 279–280; 2016). obviate human transplants?
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1980s to be a crucial component of Nazi CYBERNETICS high-performance medicine. Ohler pays more attention to the perpe- trators of Nazi drug experiments than to their victims. He cites experiments with A mathematician mescaline, trying to create a ‘truth’ drug, from the perspective of the Dachau doc- tor Kurt Plötner, for instance. My book Victims and Survivors of Nazi Human of mind Experiments (Bloomsbury, 2014) draws on original findings from more than 15,000 prisoners’ narratives of coerced Manuel Blum examines a biography of cybernetics medical testing — including of mescaline pioneer Warren McCulloch and his revolutionary times. — at Auschwitz and Dachau, but is not referenced. Nor does Ohler mention the victims of another notorious experiment. n 1958, in my junior year at the Rebel Genius: Seven British Royal Navy commandos Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Warren S. endured experimentation with stimulants, Richard Schoenwald — whose tutorial McCulloch’s including cocaine and amphetamines, at Ion Sigmund Freud I was taking — encour- Transdisciplinary Life in Science the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. aged me to meet the anti-Freud, Warren TARA ABRAHAM After a forced, three-day march carrying McCulloch. Where Freud had written The MIT Press: 2016. heavy loads, five were executed in 1945. Future of an Illusion (1927), a critique of reli- Ohler mentions only a German survivor. gion, McCulloch countered with The Past of But my key issue is with Ohler’s central a Delusion (1953), a reference to Freud (the claim that Pervitin and Eukodal induced title says it all). I dropped into McCulloch’s McCulloch insisted that the ‘magic’ of the a sense of invincibility, first enhancing basement lab and found myself facing a tall, brain lay in what electrical networks can operational boldness, then destroying the striking character: long beard, coarse Scot- do (nowadays, chemistry would count for Nazis’ ability to engage with military col- tish wool suit, books piled to the ceiling. I more). He asserted that the magic would lapse. He also concludes that addiction to confided that I wanted to understand how arise whether the networks were constructed ever-stronger doses of patent medicines the brain works. He handed me a sheaf of from neurons, which he called software clouded Hitler’s judgement on strategic his ‘Research Laboratory (later, meatware) or issues concerning Dunkirk and Crimea. of Electronics’ publica- vacuum tubes, which he He reduces every twist and turn of the war tions. These showed how called hardware. on the German side to addiction. Yet the to construct neural net- THE Like mathematician US and UK military used amphetamines works of formal (model) and computer scientist as part of a highly successful scientific and neurons that could con- ‘MAGIC’ John von Neumann, technological war effort without apparent trol for errors in those OF THE BRAIN LAY IN McCulloch was inter- issues with addiction. neurons. Weeks later, I ested in errors. Neurons, Ohler ends at what he dubs the “Last stated and proved a theo- WHAT like vacuum tubes, were Exit Bunker”, with Hitler addicted to rem that his formal neu- unreliable. The prob- Eukodal. That title encapsulates my rons could be configured ELECTRICAL lem, he pointed out, was problem with Blitzed. It strings the reader to do what his networks that neuronal thresh- along with facile phrases such as “High needed. With that, I was NETWORKS olds, which affect what Hitler” and “One Reich, One Dealer”, call- in, mentored and inspired CAN DO. neurons compute, are ing the bunker-bound Führer a “super- by McCulloch for the next constantly changing. junkie”. This is a text full of short cuts and six years and counting. “Thresholds fall when speculation rather than a balanced syn- In Rebel Genius, we drink coffee. They thesis of a mass of literature and sources to science historian Tara Abraham offers a rise when we drink alcohol. Yet we can still date, rendered readable and accessible. ■ biography of McCulloch (1898–1969) that talk; we can still walk.” At least, he could. shines a light on the twentieth-century Computers were then, as now, designed to Paul Weindling is research professor in revolution in the mind sciences and cyber- work with components that make virtu- the history of medicine at Oxford Brookes netics — the scientific study of automatic ally no errors. But at that time, a computer University, UK. control in animals (including humans) and could run for only minutes before errors e-mail: [email protected] machines. crept in. How the brain manages with
One Plus One Equals One The Brain Electric John Archibald (Oxford Univ. Press, 2016) Malcolm Gay (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) Exuberantly describing the greening of Earth People enduring amputations, once subject 500 million years ago, John Archibald vivifies to messy surgery, are now at the forefront of the origins of complex life. His microbiologist neuroprosthetics research. Malcolm Gay explains predecessors star, including Carl Woese, who first the science behind an evolving technology that sequenced rRNA to track evolution (see Nancy binds brain impulse to exoskeletons, enabling Moran’s review: Nature 510, 338–339; 2014). people with paralysis to move.
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faulty neurons was a big ques- version of the event is accurate, tion. (And as transistors drop to the but misses the soul of it. What I size of atoms, errors again become recall McCulloch saying is that the a serious problem in computing.) president of Haverford, Quaker McCulloch held sway in a philosopher Rufus Jones, asked, phenomenal period for many fields “Warren, what wilt thee be?” to of science. His multitude of friends which McCulloch answered, “I and colleagues included neuroscien- don’t know.” “What wilt thee do?” tist Jerry Lettvin, who would drop “I don’t know. But,” McCulloch by to demonstrate one of Hermann added, “I do have a question: ‘What von Helmholtz’s extraordinary is a number that a man may know experiments on the eye. Artificial- it, and a man that he may know a intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky number?’” To which Jones rolled showed McCulloch how to con- back his head and roared, “Thee struct Venn diagrams of any number wilt be busy for the rest of thy life!” of variables (to represent neurons Not everything about McCull- with many inputs). And Manuel och comes up roses, and Abraham Cerrillo convinced McCulloch that is critical of certain aspects of his he was a genius at filter-design with approach. She quotes neurophysi- a self-built hi-fi set that could sepa- ologist Ralph Gerard’s critique on rate musical instruments from the the Macy conferences on cyber human voice in a recording. netics — where McCulloch aimed McCulloch bubbled with ideas. to get psychologists, neurophysi- In one co-written paper, ‘A Logi- ologists, mathematicians and engi- cal Calculus of Ideas Immanent in neers talking. Gerard’s words were Nervous Activity’ (W. S. McCulloch very much a critique of McCulloch and W. Pitts Bull. Math. Biophys. 5, himself. He noted how the group 115–133; 1943), he argued that neu- began “in the ‘as if’ spirit. Everyone rons must be capable of inhibition as was delighted to express any idea well as excitation. If not, they would that came into his mind, whether compute only a very small class of it seemed silly or certain or merely ‘monotonic’ functions. McCulloch a stimulating guess that would told me that neurophysiologists of affect someone else … Then, rather his time rejected this idea because sharply it seemed to me, we began to inhibition had never been observed. talk in an ‘is’ idiom. We were saying His prediction — that inhibition much the same things, but now say- exists in the brain — was later proved ing them as if they were so.” experimentally. McCulloch was a polymath: a Abraham appraises the McCulloch I knew Clark Hull reveals Hull to be another neurophysiologist who was also a physi- knowledgeably, accurately and insightfully. enormously interesting individual — a cian, psychiatrist, poet, writer, architect, For example, she writes: “McCulloch’s scien- proponent of behaviourism who worked in engineer and mathematician. His was the tific life at its heart was less a philosophical motivation and learning, and who thought all-encompassing intellect that could and project and much more about transcend- that the problem of mind is solvable through did bring these disparate fields together — ing disciplines, the power of science to do scientific theory. both in the Macy meetings and in his lab. away with metaphysics, and the power of a What Abraham does not capture enough Through its discussions of McCulloch in the neurophysiological, biological psychiatry to of, for my taste, is the striking impression round, Rebel Genius is an excellent portrait eliminate dualist accounts of the mind and that McCulloch made on his audience — of the man and his time, and a significant non-biological practices in psychiatry.” This intellectually, through his astute obser- contribution to the history of science. ■ is both perceptive and accurate. vations, and visually, through his erudite There are also many aspects of McCulloch Scottish bearing. Abraham describes a Manuel Blum is the Bruce Nelson in Abraham’s book that I did not know, a lot formative experience of McCulloch’s: when University Professor of Computer Science at that I wanted to know and got, and a lot that he was “a student at Haverford College in Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, I did not even know I wanted to know. For Pennsylvania in 1917, a teacher asked him Pennsylvania. example, Abraham’s account of psychologist what he planned to do with his life”. Her e-mail: [email protected]
Population Wars: A New Perspective on Sustainability: A History Competition and Coexistence Jeremy L. Caradonna (Oxford Univ. Press, 2016) Greg Graffin (Thomas Dunne, 2016) Historian Jeremy Caradonna chronicles the arc Zoologist, geologist and punk rocker Greg of sustainability from its roots in eighteenth- Graffin explores how an “us vs them” attitude century European forestry to contemporary has infiltrated human consciousness and driven local food and zero-waste movements, and its populations to war, despite our unique power to emphasis on balance and the long view over plan our future by reflecting on the past. economic growth. Emily Banham
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