Three Scientific Revolutions: How They Transformed Our Conceptions of Reality, Richard H. Schlagel, Humanity Books, 2015. $39.00 paper (250 pp.). ISBN 978-1-63388-032-0 Buy at Amazon
The history of science used to be fairly sedate. Emeritus professors spent their golden years listing their respective disciplines’ triumphs and linking each scientific achievement to heroic dead white males who overcame foes gripped by terror, superstition, malice, or plain stupidity. Johannes Kepler and Nicolaus Copernicus demonstrated heliocentricity; Galileo Galilei faced down the Inquisition; God said “Let Newton be!” and all was light; Louis Pasteur demolished spontaneous generation; and Charles Darwin divorced life from divinity. In sum, science was a series of heroic efforts that piled truth upon truth. For the political record, a parallel approach depicting the past as inexorably leading to the perfection of Victorian England is called “Whig history.” Up to a half century ago, “Whig science” was the standard approach.
Then Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (U. Chicago Press, 1962), and science history suddenly got more interesting. It opened the door to a new discipline: the social study of science, which examined the past in a radically new way. Galileo, it turned out, had no problem presenting his cosmology as astrology and extolling his thug patrons, the Medici family. Darwin’s Origin of Species was used as a blunt instrument by Thomas H. Huxley and his pals to advance their careers; and the sainted Pasteur fudged data to counter Félix-Archimède Pouchet’s claims that he experimentally observed spontaneous generation.
The new analytical approach to science studies has extended to the present, with interesting revelations. Today’s science routinely abridges its putative formality of hypothesis, investigation, and verification: Few experiments are ever replicated, the overwhelming majority of papers are read by no one but authors and reviewers, scientific paradigms rest on unstable human alliances as much as on correspondence with nature, and results that contradict accepted paradigms are usually tossed away. Science past and present seems less the unavoidable unveiling of Platonic absolutes than a human enterprise that frequently about-faces on its definitions of facts, terms, and theories. For all its impressive achievements science is not, and never has been, wholly what it would seem to be.
All the post-Kuhnian developments seem to be news to Richard Schlagel, an emeritus professor of philosophy at George Washington University and author of Three Scientific Revolutions: How They Transformed Our Conceptions of Reality. Schlagel begins the book with the emergence in classical Ionia of various schools of systematic rational analysis, a protracted series of events that he terms the First Transition. He follows up by examining the scientific revolution in early-modern Europe, which culminated with Isaac Newton (the Second Transition). Then, after a high-speed review of 18th- and 19th-century science, Schlagel presents the Transition to the Third (or present-day) Reality via 20th-century physics. It is an ambitious undertaking, but unhappily one in which Schlagel’s Whig approach falls short. His aim—the defense of rationality from the monstrous regiment that now besets it, including anti-vaxxers and biblical literalists—is admirable, but he patrols his scientific citadel with outmoded weapons.
To begin with, Schlagel falls into the prime error of the would-be popularizer: assuming that what is clear to him is equally clear to his readers. Thus his initial sections descend at random intervals into ontological-epistemological discussions of great density and, for the lay reader, alienating opacity. One of his key difficulties is in identifying, investigating, and characterizing his intended audience. First-rate popularizers such as the late Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins have mastered that task. Their language is direct and simple, their examples are numerous and relevant, their analogies demystify without presuming to be exact, and their logic is crystalline. The net effect is one of great rhetorical and factual persuasiveness; even if one disagrees with them, one can admire the skill of their performance. Schlagel’s new work is not in the same league.
In fairness, the fault is not all Schlagel’s. His publisher appears to have dispensed with editing, both substantive (leaving untouched arguments of embarrassing silliness) and copy (80-word paragraphs done as single sentences; its confused with it’s). Given that editorial handicap, Schlagel deserves kudos for occasionally producing text of accuracy, clarity, and concision. For example, his discussion on the emergence of modern atomic theory is masterful, and his section on Niels Bohr rises to greatness. One can only imagine how much better this book might have been had it received intelligent editorial guidance and disciplined review.
Unfortunately, Schlagel’s moments of glad grace are undermined by the book’s Whiggish ending, in which he extrapolates present science to envision its near future—an Impending Fourth Transition. Schlagel seizes on genetic technoscience, including genomics and proteomics, to limn a world in which humanity identifies its defective DNA and snips it out. From envy to aggression, every human failing will be mapped onto a specific nucleotide sequence—one sin, one gene—and permanently scoured away. The true name for this cringe-inducing notion is eugenics, whose assumption of man’s perfectibility condemned the 20th century to unprecedented woe.
Let me temper the severity of this review with a heartfelt tribute. Even a flawed book is notable coming from a scholar in his 10th decade. One rejoices to see a honed mind refusing to go gentle into that good night. Seen in that way, Three Scientific Revolutions is a tribute to the human spirit. As Nikos Kazantzakis noted, “When the spirit is proud it stands erect and does not permit the years to touch it.” Well done, Professor Schlagel. Now go find a publisher fit for you.
William Atkinson is a former science writer and professor of English writing. He is currently taking a doctorate in science and technology studies at York University in Toronto.
