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Brilliant Blunders From Darwin to Einstein Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe
Mario Livio Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2014 ISBN: 978-1-4391-9237-5 |
At its core this book attempts to show that even great scientific geniuses display lapses in judgement. I suppose that this simply helps reassure the rest of us (and by that I mean non-geniuses) that it is permissible to make mistakes without necessarily forfeiting potential future successes. For this I laude the book as it gives the rest of us hope. And in a more lurid vein, who doesn’t enjoy to see how the greats occasionally flounder? But perhaps clarification is in order, especially for younger students who might misinterpret the title of the book.
Make no mistake that by “blunder” what the author means is a great big and embarrassing mistake. Unfortunately, what is not emphasized in the book is the fact that these blunders really are a natural result of pioneering a scientific field. The reader should be aware that in the process of discovery the path to the truth is not obvious, and any researcher is necessarily going to take many false steps. As the word “blunder” might imply a careless mistake, here I want to make sure the reader understands that he/she should view them as honest oversights. The blunders that were committed by these preeminent scientists (Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle and Albert Einstein) are really only obvious with the gift of hindsight so we should be gentle with our judgement. Yes, the author will argue that in some instances these blunders perhaps persisted for longer than necessary by the obstinacy of our geniuses, but this is also not unexpected as defending radical new ideas often requires passion and tenacity, the kind that can temporarily blind a person.
As highly as I recommend this book, I would advise the reader that he/she view these scientists as curious humans who dared establish new paradigms to explain the universe. Along the way there were missteps, but how could there not? Wouldn’t a researcher with a perfect record imply access to an answer key? And wouldn’t the presence of this answer key defeat the purpose of science, which is ultimately the process by which we forge these answer keys? In essence science is nothing more than the process by which we fumble in a dark room, and inevitably bump into the vase and knock it over, before we find the light switch and finally see the truth. This book beautifully displays this. Are you now really wondering what the blunders are all about? Well, grab yourself a copy of the book and dive right in.
