On the Wild Side

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating excursions into science and pseudoscience
Review: In this vintage collection of essays and reviews Gardner goes after pseudoscience and seeks to enlighten us about various delusions and mistaken ideas in science. As usual the old guy displays a most engaging and exciting style while countenancing no fuzzy thinking and especially no BS. He begins with parapsychologist Joseph Rhine of Duke University, who, half a century ago, tried to establish extrasensory perception. One recalls that Rhine used cards with five different symbols that one person would concentrate on while another at a distance would attempt to guess. Dr. Rhine used a statistical analysis of hits and misses to demonstrate that extrasensory perception had taken place. Last I heard, some decades ago, Rhine's methods and stats were considered highly suspect, and he and his work have gradually faded into oblivion. Now Martin Gardner adds a further criticism: Rhine failed to expose cheating in experiments that he knew about. Rhine thought that no good purpose would be served by exposing the maleficence and those practicing it. Gardner argues in this essay, "The Obligation to Disclose Fraud" that the contrary is a better rule, if for no other reason than not to disclose fraud is to mislead later researchers.

The second essay, "Occam's Razor and the Nutshell Earth," deals with the strange, but apparently non-refutable idea that the earth is hollow and we live on the inside. It seems that it is mathematically possible to describe such a universe. Gardner asks on page 19, "Why then does science reject it?" The answer lies in Occam's Razor, one of the truly beautiful ideas in science, which states that given alternative explanations of phenomena, we must choose the one that is simplest. In this regard I must mention again my (fanciful!) idea that it is not space-time that is expanding, but matter that is contracting. I wonder if it is possible to chose which is really correct, or if such a choice has any meaning--or if, as Gardner's text might suggest, Occam's Razor might be applied.

Other essays deal with such delectable subjects as President Reagan and First Lady Nancy's reliance on astrologers for the timing of certain presidential events; the scientific basis of homeopathy, or actually, the lack thereof; geneticist (and author of the much anthologized essay, "On Being the Right Size") J. B. S. Haldane's embarrassing support of Stalin and the crackpot genetics of Lysenko; some stuff on Linus Pauling and the very weird Wilhelm Reich, etc. My favorite essays were on Frank Tipler's fantastic Omega Point "theology," which doesn't sit well with Gardner, and the essay "Relativism in Science" (Chapter 10), remarkable for the fairness that Gardner extends by reproducing astronomer Bruce Gregory's very effective rebuttal to Gardner's criticism of his book, Inventing Reality: Physics as a Language (1989).

But where I find myself in rare disagreement with Gardner is in his treatment of James E. Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis in the chapter entitled, "Gaiaism." His technical objection is stated on page 48, namely that Lovelock broadens the meaning of "alive" to the point where it is "what philosophers like to call a category mistake"; however Gardner's tone suggests that what really bothers him is the use of the Gaia hypothesis to further New Age pseudoscience, a concern I can certainly identify with. However, I think that Lovelock's hypothesis raises an interesting point that might be examined more closely, namely that our definition of life is needlessly restrictive. We humans, who exist at a certain narrow span and level of awareness have definitions of what is alive and what isn't that are heavily dependent upon our limited experience. Of course we have nothing else to go on, but a little imagination might suggest that life could take some very diverse forms. The stars, for example, might be "alive" in ways that we cannot appreciate. After all, they are born, grow, evolve, and die. And their life span dwarfs ours. They even reproduce themselves in the spewing of their elements into space (or in their nurturing of us!). To me it makes as much sense, maybe more, to say that the stars are "alive" than to say that viruses are alive. And there might even be something "beyond" being "alive," something marvelous that happens to matter and energy that we cannot yet imagine. Furthermore, our definitions of life, e.g., something that has a metabolism, that grows and reproduces, or, a more modern definition, "something that undergoes Darwinian evolution," break down at the extremes, and we can easily imagine entities outside our definitions that we may want to say are alive. Lovelock chose to include the entire earth within the definition of being alive. I don't think it's so far fetched.

This superior collection of essays reveals Gardner's extraordinary breath of learning and the lively frolic of his very fine intelligence.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating excursions into science and pseudoscience
Review: In this vintage collection of essays and reviews Gardner goes after pseudoscience and seeks to enlighten us about various delusions and mistaken ideas in science. As usual the old guy displays a most engaging and exciting style while countenancing no fuzzy thinking and especially no BS. He begins with parapsychologist Joseph Rhine of Duke University, who, half a century ago, tried to establish extrasensory perception. One recalls that Rhine used cards with five different symbols that one person would concentrate on while another at a distance would attempt to guess. Dr. Rhine used a statistical analysis of hits and misses to demonstrate that extrasensory perception had taken place. Last I heard, some decades ago, Rhine's methods and stats were considered highly suspect, and he and his work have gradually faded into oblivion. Now Martin Gardner adds a further criticism: Rhine failed to expose cheating in experiments that he knew about. Rhine thought that no good purpose would be served by exposing the maleficence and those practicing it. Gardner argues in this essay, "The Obligation to Disclose Fraud" that the contrary is a better rule, if for no other reason than not to disclose fraud is to mislead later researchers.

The second essay, "Occam's Razor and the Nutshell Earth," deals with the strange, but apparently non-refutable idea that the earth is hollow and we live on the inside. It seems that it is mathematically possible to describe such a universe. Gardner asks on page 19, "Why then does science reject it?" The answer lies in Occam's Razor, one of the truly beautiful ideas in science, which states that given alternative explanations of phenomena, we must choose the one that is simplest. In this regard I must mention again my (fanciful!) idea that it is not space-time that is expanding, but matter that is contracting. I wonder if it is possible to chose which is really correct, or if such a choice has any meaning--or if, as Gardner's text might suggest, Occam's Razor might be applied.

Other essays deal with such delectable subjects as President Reagan and First Lady Nancy's reliance on astrologers for the timing of certain presidential events; the scientific basis of homeopathy, or actually, the lack thereof; geneticist (and author of the much anthologized essay, "On Being the Right Size") J. B. S. Haldane's embarrassing support of Stalin and the crackpot genetics of Lysenko; some stuff on Linus Pauling and the very weird Wilhelm Reich, etc. My favorite essays were on Frank Tipler's fantastic Omega Point "theology," which doesn't sit well with Gardner, and the essay "Relativism in Science" (Chapter 10), remarkable for the fairness that Gardner extends by reproducing astronomer Bruce Gregory's very effective rebuttal to Gardner's criticism of his book, Inventing Reality: Physics as a Language (1989).

But where I find myself in rare disagreement with Gardner is in his treatment of James E. Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis in the chapter entitled, "Gaiaism." His technical objection is stated on page 48, namely that Lovelock broadens the meaning of "alive" to the point where it is "what philosophers like to call a category mistake"; however Gardner's tone suggests that what really bothers him is the use of the Gaia hypothesis to further New Age pseudoscience, a concern I can certainly identify with. However, I think that Lovelock's hypothesis raises an interesting point that might be examined more closely, namely that our definition of life is needlessly restrictive. We humans, who exist at a certain narrow span and level of awareness have definitions of what is alive and what isn't that are heavily dependent upon our limited experience. Of course we have nothing else to go on, but a little imagination might suggest that life could take some very diverse forms. The stars, for example, might be "alive" in ways that we cannot appreciate. After all, they are born, grow, evolve, and die. And their life span dwarfs ours. They even reproduce themselves in the spewing of their elements into space (or in their nurturing of us!). To me it makes as much sense, maybe more, to say that the stars are "alive" than to say that viruses are alive. And there might even be something "beyond" being "alive," something marvelous that happens to matter and energy that we cannot yet imagine. Furthermore, our definitions of life, e.g., something that has a metabolism, that grows and reproduces, or, a more modern definition, "something that undergoes Darwinian evolution," break down at the extremes, and we can easily imagine entities outside our definitions that we may want to say are alive. Lovelock chose to include the entire earth within the definition of being alive. I don't think it's so far fetched.

This superior collection of essays reveals Gardner's extraordinary breath of learning and the lively frolic of his very fine intelligence.

Rating:
Summary: The Skepticial view on several subjects
Review: Martin Gardner takes the skeptical view on several subjects in this book. He critizes many in the paranormal and Christian fundamentist movements. Basically, he treats them almost as symoptioms that are caused by the larger problem of people looking for answers without knowing what the heck the question is. So, they grab onto irrational beliefs in paranormal or religious faith. You challange both the believers in the paranormal or those with fundamentist religious belief systems and you get pretty much the same standard response. Things like "you can't disprove this" or "and how would you know?" stuff that is more or less, lacking in real intellicual thought or commentary.

Gardner exposes them for what they are: frightened little people who don't want to think for themselves.

Rating:
Summary: The Skepticial view on several subjects
Review: Martin Gardner takes the skeptical view on several subjects in this book. He critizes many in the paranormal and Christian fundamentist movements. Basically, he treats them almost as symoptioms that are caused by the larger problem of people looking for answers without knowing what the heck the question is. So, they grab onto irrational beliefs in paranormal or religious faith. You challange both the believers in the paranormal or those with fundamentist religious belief systems and you get pretty much the same standard response. Things like "you can't disprove this" or "and how would you know?" stuff that is more or less, lacking in real intellicual thought or commentary.

Gardner exposes them for what they are: frightened little people who don't want to think for themselves.