Sociology as an Art Form by Robert Nisbet (review)

250 Books often progressed because of the strange, unexpected, distasteful, if’not frankly immoral, choice of subjects of research by gifted and free-thinking scientists. But it ispointed out in the book that social authorities are often involved in choices involving monetary cost. instrumentation and manpower needs and, as recent events show, in the reaction of public opinion. The cause of recombinant DNA is explicitlymentioned here, but experimentation on live animals and human brain research involve similar choices. The book is so rich in diverse considerations of the aspects of the relation between science and ethics and science and social problems that in a short review I cannot do better than recommend reading the book itself. Again, it does not pretend to offer adequatesolutions for the many problems, but at least it draws attentionto their complexity and importance and refersto a number of authoritative opinions offered by scientists, philosophers, moralists and statesmen. Edisoo: The Man Who Made the Future. Ronald W. Clark. Macdonald & James, London, 1977. 256 pp., illus. E6.95. Reviewed by J. C. Knpur* Edison was evidently born with the brain of an inventor, and he died asoneat the age of 84.Just about everything elsethat he did or that happened to him was incidental to this one compulsive trait. Many a time in his long and fruitful life he drifted into becoming an entrepreneur and an industrialist (a millionaire), but he always returned to his inventions, often poorer, disillusioned and compromised. While moving through the labyrinthine world of the ‘robber barons’ in the U S A . and getting compromised by their manipulations, he kept his humanity and social conscience. And then, untouched, he rose again to search for new truths. ‘What distinguished him from the rest was an outsize bump of curiosity, and instinct to test the truth of what people told him, and a double dose of energy and impertinence.’ And these qualities wereevident from hisearly teensas a tramp telegraphist and already an inventor-he became one of the greatest inventors of his country and one of the fathers of the age of electricity. Clark describes in this intimate biography of Edison the inventor’s early untutored upbringing, his struggle in the industrial jungle that developed in the aftermath of his country’s Civil War (1861-1865), his successful inventing of the phonograph (forerunner of the gramophone), his vital early contribution to the cinema industry and the hundreds of other inventions and contributions to the development of the ideas of others. ‘There is no doubt that Bell invented the telephone; its spread across the world would have come far more slowly without the basic revolutionary inprovements that Edison devised.’His unrelenting effort was reflected in his applyingfor a patent about every two weeks of his life. ‘My studies and experiments have been conducted entirely with the object of inventing which willhave commercial utility. I suppose I might be called a scientific inventor’, he said. His enthusiasm combined with ability and boisterous spirit, kept his staff in a perpetual state of high endeavour:He evoked hero worship of an almost tribal quality. ‘Preoccupation with development of a specificinvention to meet a specificneed was a feature of Edison’s entire working life, and with it there went a contempt, barely concealed at times, for men who dealt in theories rather than the practical application. Edison well knew that inventors would rest on foundations built by the scientist. He employed them when necessary, just as he employed mathematicians and metal workers and glass blowers.’ There were no apparent limits to Edison’s inventive genius. While many of his inventions followed a logical route (the manipulation of electricity and magnetism and the joining of sound to pictures in motion) he also turned his attention to industrial problems that had no connection with his previous activities. Though his project for the concentration of low-grade iron ore was a financial disaster. it was in response to an important national need. Henry Ford accepted his support of the French concept of mass production (whichlater formed the basis of U.S. American industrial predominance in the 20th century), which Edison applied to the layout of an ore-crushing mill. According to one of Ford...