Disturbing the Universe by Freeman Dyson (review)

246 Books Disturbing the Universe. Freeman Dyson. Harper & Row, London, 1979.283 pp. €6.96.ISBN: 0-06-337004-6. Reviewed by Barry Barnes* The problems this book sets for a reviewer are quite the opposite of the usual ones. To evaluate it is easy: it is simply excellent; nobody will regret reading it; everybody should try to do so. But as to why it is excellent, agd what kind of a book it is, this is peculiarly difficult to say. Dyson speaks of his life, his friends, his work, his ideas about the world and its future. The life, the friends, the work, the ideas all compel our interest: some will admire the speech also, and perhaps through it the man who speaks. There are altogether too many ways of reading this book. Let me solve my problems by adopting a single narrow perspective. For all his unmistakeable individuality, Dyson is someone who has spent his career immersed in the esoteric culture of mathematical physics: his work mirrors that culture in its narrative and in its attitudes. He loathes bureaucracy (the book is one long catalogueofits follies); he expresses a marked distaste for the so-called social sciences and other intellectual excrescences; he radiates affection for the creative arts, in particular, music and poetry; and he betrays not simple respect, but altogether excessive reverence for men of science themselves: ‘anyone who is transcendentally great as a scientist is likely also to havepersonal qualities that ordinary people would consider in some sense superhuman’ (p. 9). Wherever Dyson goes, whatever he does, one is all the time conscious that he is quintessentially a man of science, a scientist of as pure and refined a form as we ever find today. Yet he has worked in many places, and at many kinds of task, with politicians and political advisors, with the military, with engineers and industrialists. Accordingly, to read of his life is to read of how as a scientist he sees a diversity of institutions and occupations, and how he cooperates and compromises with the men in these institutions and occupations: his life is a microcosm of the social relations of science. Thus, even where his views are found exotic and unconvincing, their significance will be recognised, even if only on the principle of ‘know your enemy’. And exotic they very often are. For example, Dyson suggests that the present difficulties of the nuclear power industry stem from the stifling of innovation and creativity, so that we are now trapped by our vested interests into continuing with just a very few kinds of reactor, and have correspondingly less hope of overcoming the technical and social problems of the technology. ‘Sometime between 1960 and 1970, the fun went out of business. The adventurers, the experimenters, the inventors. were driven out, and the accountants and managers took control. ... It took thousands of attempts, most of which ended in failure, to evolve the few kinds of motorcycle that are now on the roads. . .. Contrast this.. . with the history of commercial nuclear power’ (pp. 104-105). Dyson writes with a sense of personal involvement: he was one of the adventurers who were driven out. It is invariably when writing of his own life, and the particular memories he has retained and pondered upon, that Dyson is most thought-provoking. The cosmological speculations and large visions of man’s future which follow in the later part of the book are less profound-although they too are leavened with memories and other bric-a-brac of the mind. It is curious how our modern scientists, who have indeed disturbed the universe, nonetheless fail to inspire reflection with their reports of its vastness and complexity. It is small things which can be used to fire the imagination and challenge the intellect, and in this book small things do just that. Roger Fry: Art and Life. Frances Spalding.Granada, London, 1980.304 pp.. illus. €9.95.ISBN: 0-236-401278-5. Reviewed by Donald Brook** There has been no biography of Roger Fry published since Virginia WoolTs. in 1940,so that Ms Spalding’s book fills a gap in the literature that is usefully complemented by another new publication (Donald...