Pluto's Republic: Incorporating the Art of the Soluble and Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought

by Peter Medawar

Book Overview

A definitive collection of the work of the most distinguished popular scientific essayist writing today. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192177265
• ISBN13: 9780192177261
• Release Date: November 1982
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 362 Pages
• Weight: 1.29 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

A good book for skeptics

Peter Medawar was once asked by a Customs official when he landed in USA "Do you intend to overthrow the Constitution of the United States of America?". To which he replied that he did not intend to do so, and he hoped that he would not do so by accident.This irreverent tone is apparent in several of the essays in this collection, notably in his review of Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man" and Koestler's "The Act of Creation". He had a highly skeptical attitude to pretence of all kinds, and was not hesitant to speak out. Medawar won a Nobel Prize for medicine and he took a broad view on science and its relation to society. Everyone with an interest in science, especially biological science, will find many items of interest in this collection.

A master of science and English prose

This is a superb collection of essays by a Nobel Prizewinner in medicine who was also one of the best popular writers on science in recent times. Pluto's Republic contains the essays in two previous collections, The Art of the Soluble and The Hope of Progress, both currently out of print. It also contains essays on induction and intuition in scientific thought, several pieces not previously collected in book form and some new items. The contents range far and wide, including some vigorous polemics with Arthur Koestler following Medawar's review of The Act of Creation, comments on some recent books on the state of the art in cancer research and an essay on 'type A' behaviour and heart disease.Medawar has forthright views on the use of technology to improve the world. He also considers that the traditional division of "pure" and "applied" science is unhelpful, probably deriving from the same perverse cast of mind that created the "romantic versus rational" dichotomy between imaginative and critical thinking, allied with the old Anglo-Saxon class distinction between science (for amateur "gentlemen") and technology (for grubby professional "players"). The traditional view, preserved jealously by pure scientists, is that researchers of high caliber should be allowed to follow their interests wherever they will, either in the belief that this is what the universities and the life of the mind are all about, or in the confident expectation that eventually fundamental work will pay off at the practical level. Medawar concedes "This procedure works; that is, it works sometimes, and it may be the best we can do, but might not the converse approach be equally effective, given equal talent? That is, to start with a concrete problem, but then to allow the research to open out in the direction of greater generality...I can see no reason why this approach if it were to be attempted by persons of the same ability, should not work just as well as its more conventional counterpart. Research done in this style is always in focus, and those who carry it out, if temporarily baffled, can always retreat from the general into the particular."It is increasingly accepted that science should have some strategic role to play in education but misconceived ideas about science have made it hard to work out what that role might be. A vacuum is waiting to be filled in the theory and practice of education, and Medawar's book should help to fill it. The "piling up the data" theory has to be put in its place (the dust-bin of history) because it promotes over specialisation, as though the person who spends the most time digging the most narrow trench will get further in the field. At the same time outsiders are discouraged from trying to find out what the scientists are up to, for how can they ever find the time to get into the trenches and master the accumulated store of information?The alternative "hot air balloon" view of science may be more helpful and realistic. Rival theories