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Pluto's Republic: Incorporating The Art of the Soluble and Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought
Essays exploring the nature of science include discussions of topics, such as psychoanalysis, evolution, genetics, and the role of imagination in scientific discoveries
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 12, 2013
This is another of the precious ones I would lock away. Only very valued and trusted students would be allowed to get their paws on it. Medawar is brilliant. My son, who emailed recently after hearing a seminar to say that "Apparently winning a Nobel Prize does not mean you give a good presentation" will be set the task of reading the essays of Medawar, a deserving Nobel winner, on his return home.
April 26, 2020
This volume comprises witty, insightful reflections into how science is actually done by Medawar, and thoughtful Nobel winner.
Medawar reminds the reader that science, as understood and practiced by actual scientists, is not the plodding, tedious search for unchanging truths that many non-scientsts think it to be. Forming hypotheses, designing experiments, presenting results, and paying attention to the world, are characteristics of scientists as much as they are of artists and other humanists.
Medawar does not descend into “humanities envy”, as several popular science writers do. Science is not just another form of art, nor are scientists romantic figures who follow their inspiration above all else. Science requires remarkable patience, doggedness, and tolerance for failure, as well as mastery of technique. Of course, those are also characteristics of successful artists, contrary to the popular image of the artist as a romantic. But science does require imagination and creativity that any practicing artist would recognize.
As Medawar puts it, in the essay “Science and Literature”, science is “an interaction between two episodes of thought — a dialogue between two voices, the one imaginative and the other critical; a dialogue bewteen the possible and the actual…between what might be and what is in fact the case.”
The essay “The art of the soluble” is a particularly interesting read. The basic argument is that science cannot pursue some form of absolute, ultimate, unchanging truth. That isn’t available. Rather, scientists must identify a bite-sized part of the world that can be tested with the tools and techniques at hand.
Some of the essays feel dated. Medawar’s criticism of psychoanalysis seems obvious today, though it wasn’t at the time. His criticism of IQ testing also feels obvious. It is important to place Medawar’s observations in context. His analysis was novel in his day. They are still insightful.
Ultimately, I wish I could have Medwar over for some drinks and a long, long conversation. Sadly that isn’t possible. This collection of essays is the next best thing.
Medawar reminds the reader that science, as understood and practiced by actual scientists, is not the plodding, tedious search for unchanging truths that many non-scientsts think it to be. Forming hypotheses, designing experiments, presenting results, and paying attention to the world, are characteristics of scientists as much as they are of artists and other humanists.
Medawar does not descend into “humanities envy”, as several popular science writers do. Science is not just another form of art, nor are scientists romantic figures who follow their inspiration above all else. Science requires remarkable patience, doggedness, and tolerance for failure, as well as mastery of technique. Of course, those are also characteristics of successful artists, contrary to the popular image of the artist as a romantic. But science does require imagination and creativity that any practicing artist would recognize.
As Medawar puts it, in the essay “Science and Literature”, science is “an interaction between two episodes of thought — a dialogue between two voices, the one imaginative and the other critical; a dialogue bewteen the possible and the actual…between what might be and what is in fact the case.”
The essay “The art of the soluble” is a particularly interesting read. The basic argument is that science cannot pursue some form of absolute, ultimate, unchanging truth. That isn’t available. Rather, scientists must identify a bite-sized part of the world that can be tested with the tools and techniques at hand.
Some of the essays feel dated. Medawar’s criticism of psychoanalysis seems obvious today, though it wasn’t at the time. His criticism of IQ testing also feels obvious. It is important to place Medawar’s observations in context. His analysis was novel in his day. They are still insightful.
Ultimately, I wish I could have Medwar over for some drinks and a long, long conversation. Sadly that isn’t possible. This collection of essays is the next best thing.
July 24, 2017
The book is a series of essays on various scientific topics. In the first part, Medawar argues that science is about this-worldly phenomena. Truth is tentative, subject to experiment and verification, and it is always open to new challenges. He contrasts this with “assertions of truth” (“a higher insight”) and “the literary syndrome in science” that operate outside established scientific methodology.
Medawar writes that there is “a sense in which physics comprehends biology, and biology in its turn the social sciences, as the more general sciences comprehend the more particular,” but then he seems to qualify this with the concept of emergence, which allows us to operate largely separate from biology, chemistry and physics. (1) We are physical matter but we operate in a meme world. (2) This means, he argues, that we are free to create a future “in which the whole human ambience – the human house – is of our own making and becomes as we intend it should be: a product of human thought ….”
But Medawar says nothing about underlying motivation - the impulses that come from our genetic history - that go a long way to influence why we choose the way we do. For those who deviate from his vision for the future, Medawar points the finger at nurture, writing that “it has always been possible to pervert or corrupt human beings by coercion, propaganda or evil indoctrination. Science has not yet improved these methods nor have scientists used them. They have, however, been used to great effect by politicians, philosophers and priests.” Though his science doesn’t help us much (see footnote 1), evolutionary psychology and ethology might go a long way to posit and document reasonable explanations for why we make the choices we do – for example, the self-interest drive; our need for place and value; our need to be social (e.g., tribal I); our dislike and distrust and hatred for differences (e.g., tribal II); and our need for freedom and power to get what we want and defend what we have, including our capacity to seek and defend.
In addition to his discussion of Spencer (3), the best part of the book was his discussion of the state of biological science that, he says, has “no theory of variation.” While we think in terms of species classes (4), Medawar argues that we are individuals through and through, and only at the “population level” do we share the same general characteristics. (5) This is an enlightening discussion until it is realized that Medawar defines individual variation not in terms of behavioral motivations and dispositions, but rather, primarily, in terms of physical-chemical-structural differences. (6)
(1) From an earlier article, he quotes himself: ‘“It is no great new truth that human beings are ambitious; what is interesting about ambition is why in one person it should take the form of wanting to become a great musician and in another of wanting to raise a large family, and in a third (for this, too, is an ambition) of wanting to do nothing at all.’ These questions seem to me to belong to the domain of psychology and not to ethology at all.”
(2) He uses "communication," not "meme." He does refer to Popper’s World 3, “the world of actual or possible objects of thought, the world of concepts, ideas, theories, theorems, arguments and explanations – the world, let us say, of all artefacts of the mind.”
(3) Though he vehemently disagrees with Spencer’s system theory (i.e., evolution moves from the simple to the complex), Medawar states: “And what a formidable man Spencer was!”
(4) He said that biologists “use the old language of universals in speaking of the evolution of the dogfish, the horse, the elephant, and needless to say of Man.”
(5) “[T]he end-product of an evolutionary episode is not a new genetic formula enjoyed by a group of similar individuals, but a new spectrum of genotypes, a new pattern of genetic inequality, definable only in terms of the population as a whole.”
(6) “It could be said of every character trait whatsoever that its determination is partly natural and partly nurtural, yet we do know of character differences that are wholly genetic in determination in the usual sense of the term – for example, a human being carrying the blood-group gene associated with group A….”
Medawar writes that there is “a sense in which physics comprehends biology, and biology in its turn the social sciences, as the more general sciences comprehend the more particular,” but then he seems to qualify this with the concept of emergence, which allows us to operate largely separate from biology, chemistry and physics. (1) We are physical matter but we operate in a meme world. (2) This means, he argues, that we are free to create a future “in which the whole human ambience – the human house – is of our own making and becomes as we intend it should be: a product of human thought ….”
But Medawar says nothing about underlying motivation - the impulses that come from our genetic history - that go a long way to influence why we choose the way we do. For those who deviate from his vision for the future, Medawar points the finger at nurture, writing that “it has always been possible to pervert or corrupt human beings by coercion, propaganda or evil indoctrination. Science has not yet improved these methods nor have scientists used them. They have, however, been used to great effect by politicians, philosophers and priests.” Though his science doesn’t help us much (see footnote 1), evolutionary psychology and ethology might go a long way to posit and document reasonable explanations for why we make the choices we do – for example, the self-interest drive; our need for place and value; our need to be social (e.g., tribal I); our dislike and distrust and hatred for differences (e.g., tribal II); and our need for freedom and power to get what we want and defend what we have, including our capacity to seek and defend.
In addition to his discussion of Spencer (3), the best part of the book was his discussion of the state of biological science that, he says, has “no theory of variation.” While we think in terms of species classes (4), Medawar argues that we are individuals through and through, and only at the “population level” do we share the same general characteristics. (5) This is an enlightening discussion until it is realized that Medawar defines individual variation not in terms of behavioral motivations and dispositions, but rather, primarily, in terms of physical-chemical-structural differences. (6)
(1) From an earlier article, he quotes himself: ‘“It is no great new truth that human beings are ambitious; what is interesting about ambition is why in one person it should take the form of wanting to become a great musician and in another of wanting to raise a large family, and in a third (for this, too, is an ambition) of wanting to do nothing at all.’ These questions seem to me to belong to the domain of psychology and not to ethology at all.”
(2) He uses "communication," not "meme." He does refer to Popper’s World 3, “the world of actual or possible objects of thought, the world of concepts, ideas, theories, theorems, arguments and explanations – the world, let us say, of all artefacts of the mind.”
(3) Though he vehemently disagrees with Spencer’s system theory (i.e., evolution moves from the simple to the complex), Medawar states: “And what a formidable man Spencer was!”
(4) He said that biologists “use the old language of universals in speaking of the evolution of the dogfish, the horse, the elephant, and needless to say of Man.”
(5) “[T]he end-product of an evolutionary episode is not a new genetic formula enjoyed by a group of similar individuals, but a new spectrum of genotypes, a new pattern of genetic inequality, definable only in terms of the population as a whole.”
(6) “It could be said of every character trait whatsoever that its determination is partly natural and partly nurtural, yet we do know of character differences that are wholly genetic in determination in the usual sense of the term – for example, a human being carrying the blood-group gene associated with group A….”
November 14, 2017
I don't want to say too much about this, but here's my two pen'orth: most of this book seems to attack straw men. It's not that the targets of Medawar's scepticism don't deserve criticism so much as that they get the wrong kind of criticism because he fails to inhabit the minds of the people who have the perspectives to which he's opposed. A case in point is Teilhard de Chardin. The chief problem with Teilhard de Chardin is not his vitalism but his attempt to recreate the great chain of being and project it onto evolution, but Medawar completely misses this point.
To be honest, this isn't really worth reading. It's not that he's wrong so much as that he misses his target obliviously and presents his subject matter simplistically just so he can knock it down.
To be honest, this isn't really worth reading. It's not that he's wrong so much as that he misses his target obliviously and presents his subject matter simplistically just so he can knock it down.
September 13, 2022
It is difficult to give Medawar anything but 5 stars, so smart and sharp and relevant still. He does not shy from applying his judgment, and though occasionally a tiny bit of a snob it adds depth and heft to the threshing.
December 3, 2017
A. Good thoughts on science and science writing.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews