Abusing Science, The Case Against Creationism by Philip Kitcher (review)

Leonardo, Vol. 17, No.2, pp. 129-137, 1984. Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in Great Britain. BOOK REVIEWS Readers are invited to send book reviews as well as suggestionsfor booksfor review to the Book Review Board at the Main Editorial Office. The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature. Heinz R. Pagels. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1982.350 pp., illus. Cloth, $17.50. ISBN: 0-553-23128-6. Heinz Pagels is an able theoretical physicist. He has a serious interest in and a talent for philosophy, as well as an appealing knack for making the complex and abstruse seem intelligible without doing violence to its essentials. In this book he sets out to "bring the excitement of physics to a larger public", conveying as he goes about it a great deal of the spirit and substanoe of the modern relativity and quantum revolutions, and of much that has gone on in physics during the latter half of the twentieth century. The book isin three sections. In the first, titled 'The Road to Quantum Reality', Pagels comes to grips with the conundrums and paradoxes to which the essential "weirdness" of quantum theory has led. His presentation includes many of the more famous paradoxes, critical concepts, and experimental results now part of the interpretive debating lore, including Schroedinger's cat, the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky thought experiment, hidden-variable theory, Bell's inequality, and nonlocal causality (which he manages rather convincingly to reject). Pagels presents his own position, starting from a postulational affirmation of the "God that plays dice" whom Einstein rejected, but he is careful to present other points of view in a manner calculated to give the reader broader insights and some sense of choice. The second section, 'The Voyage into Matter', goes forward through the abstract but dramatic developments of the last 30 years. Pagels performs a signal service for the general reader who feels left behind by such intriguing innovations as quarks, color, charm, gluons, contemporary unified field theory, and the anticipated (but so far still undetected) decay of the proton. Pagels' knack lies in his ability, by clever use of ingenious metaphor and common-sense analogy, to capture the essentials of difficult and tricky ideas for the lay reader. His explanations should appeal to a large group of readers of varied backgrounds, although some may offend an occasional purist. In the third and final section, Pagels presents a thoughtful essay on (I) the nature of scientific law, (2) what twentieth-century science has revealed to devotees such as himself about the nature of our universe, and (3) whether modern science is "hostile to humanity". The world view embodied in the second of these themes provides the section, and the book, with its title: 'The Cosmic Code'. In the last four centuries, modern science has infiltrated human culture to an increasing degree, leading to recurring tension and debate over what role science should properly play in human life. In our current state of social complexity, political polarization, and philosophical ambiguity, this tension is more acute and the demands for solutions are more pressing than in earlier, more optimistic periods. Present-day scientists have generally neglected such questions or given them conventional and shallow attention tinged with disciplinary chauvinism. This posture is the product of a complicated historical process in which scientists have not always been at fault. Nor does their scientific competence and intellectual ingenuity guarantee wisdom or soundness of judgment in larger social and philosophical matters. However, they are in a uniquely privileged position to comment on scientific process. When scientists do speak up and are worth hearing, it is an occasion for applause. It is both cheering and helpful to find a scientist of Pagels' professional stature who so ably combines expository skill and honest philosophical concern. He has written a frank, up-to-date, and unequivocal exposition and statement about where modern science is heading and what potentialities its hard-won knowledge and insight may carry for the future of the human race. Reviewed by Waldo E. Haisley, Professor of Physics emeritus, Phillips Hall 039A, UNC at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, U.S.A. The Aesthetic Dimension of Science: The Sixteenth Nobel...