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On the Wild Side
"I have always been intrigued by fringe science," writes Martin Gardner in the preface to this book, "perhaps for the same reason that I enjoy freak shows and circuses. Pseudoscientists, especially the extreme cranks, are fascinating creatures for psychological study. Moreover, I have found that one of the best ways to learn something about any branch of science is to find out where its crackpots go wrong."
A unique combination of horse sense and drollery has made Martin Gardner the undisputed dean of the critics of pseudoscience. This bountiful collection of essays and articles will be wholeheartedly greeted by Gardner's fans, as well as by new readers.
This collection of articles - many of which first appeared in the Skeptical Inquirer , the New York Review of Books , and Free Inquiry - explores pseudoscience and strange religious beliefs with the author's trademark wit and verve. Destined to be a classic of skeptical literature, this book covers a wide range of topics - including UFOs, rainmaking, ghosts, the Big Bang, ESP, Oral Roberts, as well as the early history of spiritualism and today's bizarre "trance channeling" cults.
A unique combination of horse sense and drollery has made Martin Gardner the undisputed dean of the critics of pseudoscience. This bountiful collection of essays and articles will be wholeheartedly greeted by Gardner's fans, as well as by new readers.
This collection of articles - many of which first appeared in the Skeptical Inquirer , the New York Review of Books , and Free Inquiry - explores pseudoscience and strange religious beliefs with the author's trademark wit and verve. Destined to be a classic of skeptical literature, this book covers a wide range of topics - including UFOs, rainmaking, ghosts, the Big Bang, ESP, Oral Roberts, as well as the early history of spiritualism and today's bizarre "trance channeling" cults.
- GenresNonfictionEssays
257 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
4 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Martin Gardner
498 books511 followersMartin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, and published over 70 books.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 22, 2014
This is a collection of short essays that debunk the things many of us would like to believe in.
Magic,
ESP,
Levitation,
Psychic Ability,
LGM*,
Homeopathy,
they are all here.
Mr. Gardner has been making his life as a rationalist and author for decades. These slim essays take aim at current and past fancies that do not survive the cold hard light of reason.
In some cases the evidence for something seemed strong at the time, but later was revealed to be false or inaccurate. We may all have a secret desire to use a time machine and, "make it didn't happen", but that is just as likely as anything in this book.
Fast and easy to read, but richly detailed. It's not what you might consider "fair and balanced", but, then again, Mr. Gardner is only interested in getting the real truth out not some other fantasy.
4.0 easy stars.
*LGM = Little Green Men
July 28, 2019
Fascinating excursions into science and pseudoscience
In this vintage collection of essays and reviews Gardner goes after pseudoscience and seeks to enlighten us about various delusions and mistaken ideas in science. As usual the old guy displays a most engaging and exciting style while countenancing no fuzzy thinking and especially no BS. He begins with parapsychologist Joseph Rhine of Duke University, who, half a century ago, tried to establish extrasensory perception. One recalls that Rhine used cards with five different symbols that one person would concentrate on while another at a distance would attempt to guess. Dr. Rhine used a statistical analysis of hits and misses to demonstrate that extrasensory perception had taken place. Last I heard, some decades ago, Rhine's methods and stats were considered highly suspect, and he and his work have gradually faded into oblivion. Now Martin Gardner adds a further criticism: Rhine failed to expose cheating in experiments that he knew about. Rhine thought that no good purpose would be served by exposing the maleficence and those practicing it. Gardner argues in this essay, "The Obligation to Disclose Fraud" that the contrary is a better rule, if for no other reason than not to disclose fraud is to mislead later researchers.
The second essay, "Occam's Razor and the Nutshell Earth," deals with the strange, but apparently non-refutable idea that the earth is hollow and we live on the inside. It seems that it is mathematically possible to describe such a universe. Gardner asks on page 19, "Why then does science reject it?" The answer lies in Occam's Razor, one of the truly beautiful ideas in science, which states that given alternative explanations of phenomena, we must choose the one that is simplest. In this regard I must mention again my (fanciful!) idea that it is not space-time that is expanding, but matter that is contracting. I wonder if it is possible to chose which is really correct, or if such a choice has any meaning--or if, as Gardner's text might suggest, Occam's Razor might be applied.
Other essays deal with such delectable subjects as President Reagan and First Lady Nancy's reliance on astrologers for the timing of certain presidential events; the scientific basis of homeopathy, or actually, the lack thereof; geneticist (and author of the much anthologized essay, "On Being the Right Size") J. B. S. Haldane's embarrassing support of Stalin and the crackpot genetics of Lysenko; some stuff on Linus Pauling and the very weird Wilhelm Reich, etc. My favorite essays were on Frank Tipler's fantastic Omega Point "theology," which doesn't sit well with Gardner, and the essay "Relativism in Science" (Chapter 10), remarkable for the fairness that Gardner extends by reproducing astronomer Bruce Gregory's very effective rebuttal to Gardner's criticism of his book, Inventing Reality: Physics as a Language (1989).
But where I find myself in rare disagreement with Gardner is in his treatment of James E. Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis in the chapter entitled, "Gaiaism." His technical objection is stated on page 48, namely that Lovelock broadens the meaning of "alive" to the point where it is "what philosophers like to call a category mistake"; however Gardner's tone suggests that what really bothers him is the use of the Gaia hypothesis to further New Age pseudoscience, a concern I can certainly identify with. However, I think that Lovelock's hypothesis raises an interesting point that might be examined more closely, namely that our definition of life is needlessly restrictive. We humans, who exist at a certain narrow span and level of awareness have definitions of what is alive and what isn't that are heavily dependent upon our limited experience. Of course we have nothing else to go on, but a little imagination might suggest that life could take some very diverse forms. The stars, for example, might be "alive" in ways that we cannot appreciate. After all, they are born, grow, evolve, and die. And their life span dwarfs ours. They even reproduce themselves in the spewing of their elements into space (or in their nurturing of us!). To me it makes as much sense, maybe more, to say that the stars are "alive" than to say that viruses are alive. And there might even be something "beyond" being "alive," something marvelous that happens to matter and energy that we cannot yet imagine. Furthermore, our definitions of life, e.g., something that has a metabolism, that grows and reproduces, or, a more modern definition, "something that undergoes Darwinian evolution," break down at the extremes, and we can easily imagine entities outside our definitions that we may want to say are alive. Lovelock chose to include the entire earth within the definition of being alive. I don't think it's so far fetched.
This superior collection of essays reveals Gardner's extraordinary breath of learning and the lively frolic of his very fine intelligence.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
In this vintage collection of essays and reviews Gardner goes after pseudoscience and seeks to enlighten us about various delusions and mistaken ideas in science. As usual the old guy displays a most engaging and exciting style while countenancing no fuzzy thinking and especially no BS. He begins with parapsychologist Joseph Rhine of Duke University, who, half a century ago, tried to establish extrasensory perception. One recalls that Rhine used cards with five different symbols that one person would concentrate on while another at a distance would attempt to guess. Dr. Rhine used a statistical analysis of hits and misses to demonstrate that extrasensory perception had taken place. Last I heard, some decades ago, Rhine's methods and stats were considered highly suspect, and he and his work have gradually faded into oblivion. Now Martin Gardner adds a further criticism: Rhine failed to expose cheating in experiments that he knew about. Rhine thought that no good purpose would be served by exposing the maleficence and those practicing it. Gardner argues in this essay, "The Obligation to Disclose Fraud" that the contrary is a better rule, if for no other reason than not to disclose fraud is to mislead later researchers.
The second essay, "Occam's Razor and the Nutshell Earth," deals with the strange, but apparently non-refutable idea that the earth is hollow and we live on the inside. It seems that it is mathematically possible to describe such a universe. Gardner asks on page 19, "Why then does science reject it?" The answer lies in Occam's Razor, one of the truly beautiful ideas in science, which states that given alternative explanations of phenomena, we must choose the one that is simplest. In this regard I must mention again my (fanciful!) idea that it is not space-time that is expanding, but matter that is contracting. I wonder if it is possible to chose which is really correct, or if such a choice has any meaning--or if, as Gardner's text might suggest, Occam's Razor might be applied.
Other essays deal with such delectable subjects as President Reagan and First Lady Nancy's reliance on astrologers for the timing of certain presidential events; the scientific basis of homeopathy, or actually, the lack thereof; geneticist (and author of the much anthologized essay, "On Being the Right Size") J. B. S. Haldane's embarrassing support of Stalin and the crackpot genetics of Lysenko; some stuff on Linus Pauling and the very weird Wilhelm Reich, etc. My favorite essays were on Frank Tipler's fantastic Omega Point "theology," which doesn't sit well with Gardner, and the essay "Relativism in Science" (Chapter 10), remarkable for the fairness that Gardner extends by reproducing astronomer Bruce Gregory's very effective rebuttal to Gardner's criticism of his book, Inventing Reality: Physics as a Language (1989).
But where I find myself in rare disagreement with Gardner is in his treatment of James E. Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis in the chapter entitled, "Gaiaism." His technical objection is stated on page 48, namely that Lovelock broadens the meaning of "alive" to the point where it is "what philosophers like to call a category mistake"; however Gardner's tone suggests that what really bothers him is the use of the Gaia hypothesis to further New Age pseudoscience, a concern I can certainly identify with. However, I think that Lovelock's hypothesis raises an interesting point that might be examined more closely, namely that our definition of life is needlessly restrictive. We humans, who exist at a certain narrow span and level of awareness have definitions of what is alive and what isn't that are heavily dependent upon our limited experience. Of course we have nothing else to go on, but a little imagination might suggest that life could take some very diverse forms. The stars, for example, might be "alive" in ways that we cannot appreciate. After all, they are born, grow, evolve, and die. And their life span dwarfs ours. They even reproduce themselves in the spewing of their elements into space (or in their nurturing of us!). To me it makes as much sense, maybe more, to say that the stars are "alive" than to say that viruses are alive. And there might even be something "beyond" being "alive," something marvelous that happens to matter and energy that we cannot yet imagine. Furthermore, our definitions of life, e.g., something that has a metabolism, that grows and reproduces, or, a more modern definition, "something that undergoes Darwinian evolution," break down at the extremes, and we can easily imagine entities outside our definitions that we may want to say are alive. Lovelock chose to include the entire earth within the definition of being alive. I don't think it's so far fetched.
This superior collection of essays reveals Gardner's extraordinary breath of learning and the lively frolic of his very fine intelligence.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
November 24, 2017
This is pretty classic Gardner, warts and all, but I have to say that the topics here feel really, really dated, as of 2017.
November 27, 2011
A collection of essays debunking nut-cases. Orgone energy, Urantia, speaking in tongues, lots of extra-sensory perception (ESP) like mediums and psychokinesis. At first, the kooks were funny. Then, it was unexpected how many there are in the world. Finally, it was boring. Sadly, the boredom came halfway through the book. The problem is the format. A collection of short essays has no broader arc to pull you through the entire work. Thus, if each essay isn't absolutely compelling, the rhythm is wearying. Well, copious, 20-page detail on some crazy cult you don't believe in gets tedious.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews