Man and the Stars by Hanbury Brown (review)

Leonardo, Vol. 13, pp. 157-173. Pergamon Press 1980. Printed in Great Britain BOOKS Readers are invited to recommend books to be reviewed. In general, only books in English and in French can be reviewed at this stage. Those who would like to be added to Leonardo's panel ofreviewers should write to the FounderEditor , indicating their particular interests. The Mysteries of Modern Science. Brian M. Stableford. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1977.270 pp. £4.95. Reviewed by Berol Robinson* Stableford is a science fiction novelist and a onetime sociology lecturer who claims to explore and criticise contemporary science and technology from the point of view of a sceptic. His chapters on relativity, atomic physics, astronomy and cosmology are historical summaries with little structure and occasional non sequiturs. He confuses the principle of special relativity with the theory of general relativity; he attacks the extension of physics from the laboratory to the cosmos as an act of faith that is not necessarilyjustifiable; and, writing in 1975,he was not yet aware that the discovery 10 years earlier of the cosmic microwave background at three degrees absolute had already clearly distinguishedbetween the 'big bang' universe and F. Hoyle's ingenious hypothesis of continuous creation. The second part of the book deals with biological evolution and the structure and function of the brain. Stableford makes an occasional interesting observation: 'Man invented tools and tools invented man.' But he confounds the biological sciences and the human sciences(sic)and regrets that they 'have advanced these last hundred years in an intellectual climate of faith rather inquiry'. He then turns to 'man and the machine' where he delivers a staggering metaphor: 'Machines, in collaboration with the Wright brothers, learned to fly!' Finally, he discusses the aberrations of I. Velikovsky's astronomy and of J. B. Rhine's extrasensory perception (ESP). The understanding of Rhine's ESP experiments depends on a not very subtle statistical argument that Stableford entirely fails to grasp. Although Stableford presents a lot of facts, the strategy and philosophy of contemporary science remain for him a mystery: 'Science-the assumption that there is one set of systematic ordering principles: rational, unchanging and universally applicable-may be just one more myth, whose exponents are claiming it as absolute truth in exactly the same way that the Christian Church proclaimed its beliefs in endeavouring to convert the heathens and pagans of the world.' The description inside the dust jacket promises much much more than the book delivers. It is pretentious to suggest that the book becataloged as 'Science-History', The publishers are a very reputable firm and they should know better. Man and the Stars. Hanbury Brown. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1978. 185pp., illus. £5.95. Reviewed by Halton Arp** Even as an astronomer, I am astonished at how closely astronomy is interwoven with the history of human accomplishments and the present understanding of the world and of themselves. It is edifying to read in more detail how important *1 rue du General Gourand, 92190 Mendon, France. **Hale Observatories, 813 Santa Barbara St., Pasadena, CA 91101, U.S.A. 157 astronomy was to the exploration and mapping of the Earth in ancient times. Even the seeminglysimpleprocess of navigation at sea depended so critically on knowledge of stellar positions, the correct radius of the Earth and timekeeping being globally accurate to a fewseconds. It is quite explicable that ancient- and middle-history governments supported observatories and astronomers as an important part of their activities. But even more fundamentally, astronomy transformed human primitive, anthropomorphic beliefs of a world controlled by demons and angels into a view of a world run by marvellously complex and interrelated laws of nature. This book is very gently written, but it is a very scholarly and clearly written book. It explains complicated concepts of planetary orbits, the measurement of time, geometry and modern physics. But it does so sparely and transmits a sense of why the concepts are important. The exposition of the early history of astronomy is leisurely, with interesting anecdotes about some of the better known actors in that drama. An example is Galileo Galilei holding a thread up in front of a star to measure its angular sizes...