'To write good essays in popular science is almost as rare as to win the Nobel Prize; and the professor ... has achieved both distinctions.' Sunday Times 'Few if any chimera-killers since Heracles have had Medawar's style and range ... he has a unique and important inability to write or tolerate nonsense which has few parallels in scientific-philosophic writing.' Alex Comfort, Guardian 'Don't you just adore Pluto's Republic?' exclaimed a neighbour of Sir Peter Medawar's on hearing of his interest in philosophy. This struck Sir Peter as a perfect name for the intellectual underworld which so many of his essays explore- the realm of scientific reasoning, and of misconceptions about science. What is science? What sort of person is a scientist? What kind of act of reasoning leads to scientific discovery? These are the central questions to which Sir Peter constantly returns in these wide-ranging studies. The answers are often surprising. Conventional wisdom pictures the scientist as a book-keeper of nature, methodically working towards general scientific laws by objective research and painstaking observation. But scientific creation, Sir Peter shows, is more complex and more inspiring than this. It depends upon an imaginative leap akin to that of the poet. Furthermore there is no such animal as 'the scientist', and 'the scientific method' does not exist. Pluto's Republic is the definitive collection of the author's work. It includes not only the whole of his best-known book, The Art of the Soluble, unavailable for some years, but also Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought, the bulk of The Hope of Progress (also out of print), and several other pieces not previously collected, as well as a recent essay on expectation and prediction published here for the first time. A new introduction links the essays and describes the denizens of Pluto's domain: IQ psychologists, practitioners of 'scientism' and 'poetism', mystical theolo ians, futurolo ists and the rest. PLUTO'S REPUBLIC By the same author The Uniqueness of the Individual The Future of Man Advice to a Young Scientist with]. S. Medawar The Life Science PLUTO'S REPUBLIC PETER MEDAWAR Incorporating THE ART OF THE SOLUBLE and INDUCTION AND INTUITION IN SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT Oxford New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford ox~ 6DP London Glasgow New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calculla Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associates in Beirut Berlin Ibadan Mexico City Nicosia © Peter Medawar 1958, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1972, 1974. 1975. 1982 'Technology and Evolution' by Sir Peter Medawar appeared in the Smithsonian magazine, May 1973. Copyright© 1973, 1974, 1975 by Doubleday & Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc. 'Lucky Jim', '].B.S.', 'Victims of Psychiatry', 'Unnatural Science' and 'The Crab' reprinted from the New York Review of Books copyright© 1968, 1975, 1977 NYREV, Inc. 'Ind11ction 1111d Intuition in Scientific Thought' © American Philosophical Society 1969 'Does ethology throw any light on human behaviour?' © Cambridge University Press 19 76 For details ~(previous publication see Acknowledgements, p. vii All rights resen•ed. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmilled, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford Unil'ersity Press British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Medau•ar, Peter Pluto's republic 1. Science I. Title 500 Q158.5 ISBN o-19-217726-5 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Medawar, P. B. (Peter Brian), 1915- Pluto's Republic. 'Incorporating The Art of the soluble and Induction and intuition in scientific thought.' Includes index. 1. Science - Philosophy - Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title. Q175.3.M4 501 81-22333 ISBN o-19-217726-5 AACR2 Set by Western Printin.~ Services Ltd Printed in Great Britain by Butler and Tanner Ltd TO JEAN ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I SHOULD like to thank the original publishers of these essays for their per­ mission to include them in this volume. The following list gives details of their relevant prior publication. Essays marked with an asterisk were previously collected in The Art of the Soluble (London, 1967: Methuen), those marked with a dagger in The Hope of Progress (London, 1972: Methuen). 'Introduction: Pluto's Republic' is newly written, but includes passages from the Introduction to The Art of the Soluble. *'Two Conceptions of Science': 'Anglo-Saxon Attitudes', Henry Tizard Memorial Lecture, Encounter 143 (August 1965). t 'Science and Literature': Romanes Lecture for r968,Encounter 32 no. r (January 1969). t 'Further Comments on Psychoanalysis': in The Hope of Progress. 'Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought': Jayne Lectures for 1968 (Philadelphia, 1969: American Philosophical Society; London, 1969: Methuen). *'Hypothesis and Imagination': Times Literary Supplement, 25 October 1963; repr. in expanded form in The Art of the Soluble. 'Victims of Psychiatry': review of I. S. Cooper, The Victim is Always the Same, New York Review of Books, 23 January 1975· * 'Darwin's Illness': review of Phyllis Greenacre, The Quest for the Father, and Gavin de Beer, Charles Darwin, New Statesman, 3 April 1964. 'Type A Behaviour and Your Heart': Introduction to Meyer Friedman and Ray H. Rosenman, 'Type A Behaviour and Your Heart' (London, 1974: Wildwood House). 'The Crab': review of Thelma Brumfield Dunn, The Unseen Fight Against Cancer, Larry Agran, The Cancer Connection: And What We Can Do About It, Priscilla Laws, X-rays: More Harm Than Good?, Lawrence LeShan, You Can Fight For Your Life: Emotional Factors in the Causation of Cancer, and Jane E. Brody and Arthur I. Holleb, You Can Fight Cancer and Win, New York Review of Books, 9 June I977· 'Unnatural Science': review of Leon J. Kamin, The Science and Politics of IQ, and N.J. Block and Gerald Dworkin (eds), The IQ Controversy, New York Review of Books, 3 February 1977. 'Technology and Evolution': in Technology and the Frontiers of Knowledge, Vlll ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS the Frank Nelson Doubleday Lectures, 1972-3 (New York, 1975: Doubleday). 'Does ethology throw any light on human behaviour?': in P. P. G. Bateson and R. A. Hinde (eds), Growing Points in Ethology (Cambridge, 1976: Cambridge University Press). 'Taking the Measure of Man': review of D. W. Forrest, Francis Galton: The Life and Work of a Victorian Genius, Times Literary Supplement, 24 January 1975· *'Herbert Spencer and the Law of General Evolution': 'Onwards from Spencer: Evolution and Evolutionism', Spencer Lecture for 1963, Encounter 120 (September 1963). * 'D'Arcy Thompson and Growth and Form': 'Postscript: D'Arcy Thompson and Growth and Form', in Ruth D'Arcy Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, The Scholar-Naturalist, 1860-1948 (London, 1958: Oxford Uni­ versity Press). * 'The Phenomenon ofMan': review of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenom­ enon ~f Man, Mind 70 (1961). * 'The Act of Creation': 'Koestler's Theory of the Creative Act', review of Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, New Statesman, 19 June 1964; Koestler's reply and P.B.M.'s further comments, ibid., 10 July 1964. t 'J.B.S.': 'AJohnsonian Scientist', New York Review ofBooks, 10 October 1968. t 'Lucky Jim': review ofJ. D. Watson, The Double Helix, New York Review of Books, 28 March 1968. 'House in Order': review of Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos, Only One Earth, and John Maddox, The Doomsday Syndrome, World, 12 September 1972. *'A Biological Retrospect': Presidential Address to Section D of the British Association, Nature, 25 September 1965. 'Expectation and Prediction' appears here for the first time. t 'Science and the Sanctity of Life': Encounter 27 no. 6 (December 1966). t 'On "The Effecting of All Things Possible"': Presidential Address to the British Association, 1969, in The Hope Of Progress. I renew my thanks to Mr Arthur Koestler for allowing me to reprint his reply to my review of The Act of Creation. My secretary and assistant Mrs Joy Heys has given me invaluable help in the preparation of this book for press, and I have received more editorial assistance from Dr Henry Hardy - an officer of the Press - than any author is entitled to expect. P.B.M. Octobt•r 1981 CONTENTS Introduction: Pluto's Republic I Two conceptions of science 28 Science and literature 42 Further comments on psychoanalysis 62 Induction and intuition in scientific thought 73 I The problem stated 73 n Mainly about induction 85 III Mainly about intuition 99 Hypothesis and imagination II5 Victims of psychiatry 136 Darwin's illness 141 Type A behaviour :..nd your heart 148 The crab 154 Unnatural science 167 Technology and evolution 184 Does ethology throw any light on human behaviour? 191 Taking the measure of man 203 Herbert Spencer and the law of general evolution 209 D' Arcy Thompson and Growth and Form 228 The Phenomenon of Man 242 The Act of Creation 252 ].B.S. 263 Lucky Jim 270 House in order 279 A biological retrospect 287 X CONTENTS Expectation and prediction Science and the sanctity of life 311 On 'the effecting of all things possible' 324 Index 341 INTRODUCTION: PLUTO'S REPUBLIC A GOOD many years ago a neighbour whose sex chivalry forbids me to disclose exclaimed upon learning of my interest in philosophy: 'Don't you just adore Pluto's Republic?' Pluto's Republic has remained in my mind ever since as a superla­ tively apt description of that intellectual underworld which so many of the essays in this volume explore. We each populate Pluto's Republic according to our own prejudices: for me its most prominent citizens are IQ psychologists, and all psychotherapists who apply psycho­ therapy to the victims of organic diseases of the nervous system. With them I include all who share Dr David Cooper's sneering depreciation of the notion of cure (p.