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Summary
Summary
WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. Nobody's perfect. Not even some of the greatest geniuses in history, as Mario Livio tells us in this marvelous story of scientific error and breakthrough.
Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein were all brilliant scientists. Each made groundbreaking contributions to his field-but each also stumbled badly. Darwin's theory of natural selection shouldn't have worked, according to the prevailing beliefs of his time. Not until Gregor Mendel's work was known would there be a mechanism to explain natural selection. How could Darwin be both wrong and right? Lord Kelvin, Britain's leading scientific intellect at the time, gravely miscalculated the age of the earth. Linus Pauling, the world's premier chemist (who would win the Nobel Prize in chemistry) constructed an erroneous model for DNA in his haste to beat the competition to publication. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle dismissed the idea of a "Big Bang" origin to the universe (ironically, the caustic name he gave to this event endured long after his erroneous objections were disproven). And Albert Einstein, whose name is synonymous with genius, speculated incorrectly about the forces that hold the universe in equilibrium-and that speculation opened the door to brilliant conceptual leaps. These five scientists expanded our knowledge of life on earth, the evolution of the earth itself, and the evolution of the universe, despite and because of their errors. As Mario Livio luminously explains, the scientific process advances through error. Mistakes are essential to progress.
Brilliant Blunders is a singular tour through the world of science and scientific achievement-and a wonderfully insightful examination of the psychology of five fascinating scientists.
Author Notes
Mario Livio was born in 1945 in Romania. When he was 5 years old, he immigrated with his grandparents to Israel. He received undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a M.Sc. degree in theoretical particle physics at the Weizmann Institute, and a Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics at Tel-Aviv University. He was a professor of physics at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology from 1981 until 1991. He is a senior astrophysicist at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute.
He has published over 400 scientific papers. He has also written several books including The Accelerating Universe, The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved, Is God a Mathematician?, and Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe. The Golden Ratio received the International Pythagoras Prize and the Peano Prize.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Astrophysicist and award-winning author Livio (The Golden Ratio) analyzes ruinous errors of five great scientific minds in the wake of their most prominent discoveries and how those errors have not only propelled scientific breakthroughs, but provide "insights...into the operation of the human mind." Summoning Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein, Livio argues there is no progress without lessons in humility. These thinkers succumbed to moments of fear, pride, stubbornness, and doubt common to all "mere mortals"-to the benefit of elucidating the evolution of life and the universe. Two-time Nobel prize-winning chemist Pauling's flub of basic chemistry catalyzed the discoveries of Watson and Crick; Hoyle, a cosmologist who displayed "pigheaded, almost infuriating refusal" to give up his thoroughly refuted "steady state theory", energized advanced studies of how we exist in space with his controversial ideas; and Einstein, "the embodiment of genius", refused to give up on his cosmological constant, "the most famous fudge factor in the history of science." With humor and precision, Livio reminds us: "Even the most impressive minds are not flawless; they merely pave the way for the next level of understanding." (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
New York Review of Books Review
IN a letter to a fellow physicist in 1915, Albert Einstein described how a scientist gets things wrong: "1. The devil leads him by the nose with a false hypothesis. (For this he deserves our pity.) "2. His arguments are erroneous and sloppy. (For this he deserves a beating.)" According to his own rules, Einstein should have been pitied and beaten alike. "Einstein himself certainly committed errors of both types," the astrophysicist Mario Livio writes in his enlightening new book, "Brilliant Blunders." Much of what we read about science is some version of a success story: Scientists just discovered the oldest human fossil; how did they do it? Success is certainly part of the story, but this version of Whig history blinds us to how people actually do science. Science is a mess. It's shaped by the time and place in which scientists work. Scientists choose to do a certain experiment or interpret an observation for many reasons. "More than 20 percent of Einstein's original papers contain mistakes of some sort," Livio writes. "In several cases, even though he made mistakes along the way, the final result is still correct. This is often the hallmark of great theorists: They are guided by intuition more than by formalism." For many people, however, being a great scientist means being above error. That's why it is so common to see a magazine cover headline declaring, in screaming type, EINSTEIN WAS WRONG, or its weasel-word variant, WAS EINSTEIN WRONG? Livio's book is a valuable antidote to this skewed picture. He profiles five great scientists - Einstein, Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Linus Pauling and Fred Hoyle - each of whom made major discoveries and major mistakes. All five put their chips down on the wrong number, even as others prevailed. Thanks to his deep curiosity, Livio turns "Brilliant Blunders" into a thoughtful meditation on the course of science itself. When Charles Darwin presented his theory of evolution in 1859, he built a foundation for all of modern biology. Crucial to his theory was the fact that animals and plants inherited traits from their ancestors. Natural selection favored some traits over others, giving rise to long-term change. But Darwin didn't know how heredity worked. He devoted a lot of time to developing ideas that, in hindsight, seem daft. "Darwin had been educated according to the then widely held belief that the characteristics of the two parents become physically blended in their offspring," Livio writes, "as in the mixing of paints." By this logic, each ancestor's genetic contribution would be halved in each generation. This idea wasn't just wrong. It undermined Darwin's own theory of evolution. If our traits are just a result of blended particles, it shouldn't be possible for natural selection to change traits over the generations. But try as he might, Darwin couldn't figure out a better explanation. Yet right around the time that Darwin published "On the Origin of Species," the Czech monk Gregor Mendel was discovering genetics. Crossing pea plants in his garden, he got a glimpse at how heredity actually does work. Darwin apparently never became aware of Mendel's work, nor did he discover Mendel's results for himself. Today biologists can track evolution at the molecular level because they know what genes are made of. In the early 1950s, Francis Crick and James Watson worked out the double-helix structure of DNA. They worked quickly, because they knew that the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Linus Pauling was trying to solve the puzzle as well. Pauling came very close, but stumbled just as Watson and Crick were making their breakthrough. He got stuck on the idea that DNA forms three intertwined spirals, rather than two, and worse, he made an elementary error in the chemistry - his nucleic acid molecule was actually not an acid. Shortly after Crick and Watson published their discoveries in 1953, Pauling paid them a visit at Cambridge and examined their model of DNA. He acknowledged that they were right and he was wrong, and soon afterward he made the same declaration in public. That kind of graciousness is not universal among Livio's blunderers, though. The great physicist Lord Kelvin held firm, until his death in 1907, to his conviction that the Earth was only millions of years old. Kelvin believed that life had been designed, and he investigated the age of the Earth in part to rebut Darwin's theory of natural selection. If Darwin's theories were right, then the Earth must be very old, but geologists had no way to precisely measure the planet's age. Kelvin had the brilliant insight that the temperature of rocks might hold the answer. The Earth, Kelvin rightly reasoned, had started out as a ball of molten rock. It took a straightforward mathematical exercise to calculate how long it had taken for the Earth to cool to its current temperature. And when Kelvin did the math, he concluded that the Earth was fairly young, roughly 100 million years (we now know it to be about 4.567 billion years old). He carried out similar calculations to work out the comparable age of the Sun. If the Sun had indeed formed billions of years ago, Kelvin believed it would have burned out long ago. Kelvin was wrong for two reasons. As a former student of his pointed out, Kelvin assumed that the Earth's interior was fixed and transports heat at the same rate everywhere. In fact, it roils like boiling water, transporting heat to the surface. The other reason for Kelvin's error was quantum physics. Radioactivity helps keep the Earth warm, and nuclear fusion has allowed the Sun to burn for 4.567 billion years. Kelvin's critics brought both these counterarguments to his attention, but he seems to have viewed them with contemptuous indifference. Nuclear fusion doesn't just power stars, it also creates new elements like carbon and iron. The British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle made this tremendous discovery in the 1940s and '50s. Unfortunately, Hoyle might be better known for promoting a flawed theory about the origin of the universe: He was convinced that the universe was in a continual state of creation. As evidence for the Big Bang mounted, he became an increasingly embarrassing crank. Livio chooses Einstein as the fifth member of his blundering quintet. Einstein was puzzled as to why the universe didn't cave in on itself. Empty space, he suggested, contained a mysterious energy pushing outward, resisting the universe's inward collapse. After he published this idea - what came to be known as the cosmological constant - he regretted it. He said it didn't emerge naturally from his equations; he'd tacked it on like a cheap piece of plywood over a hole in a roof. Einstein eventually denounced the cosmological constant. And that, it turns out, was his big mistake. In the 1990s, physicists discovered dark energy, something very similar to that mythical force. Livio brings the care of a historian to his nimble narratives, avoiding heroic clichés. He's less adept at explaining why these great scientists made their mistakes, too often trotting out pop psychology to demonstrate why people stubbornly cling to ideas even when they see evidence to the contrary. The psychology of bad science is a fascinating topic, but it requires a broader look at how the entire scientific community operates. Five scientists - no matter how great - cannot shoulder that load. 'More than 20 percent of Einstein's original papers contain mistakes of some sort.' Carl Zimmer writes the "Matter" column for The Times and is the author of books including "A Planet of Viruses."
Choice Review
Everyone makes mistakes, but when giants of science make errors, they often have far-reaching consequences. Here, writer/astrophysicist Livio (Space Telescope Science Institute) looks at five scientists, their errors, and how they dealt with them. Darwin's great theory of natural selection could not work given current beliefs on the subject. He either did not know of Mendel's concurrent work on heredity or ignored it. Lord Kelvin gave a date for Earth's age based on cooling, and refused to change it despite geological evidence to the contrary. Fred Hoyle put forward the "steady state" theory of the universe, dismissing Gamow's rival, and ultimately correct, big bang theory. Linus Pauling put forward an incorrect structure for DNA in order to beat Watson and Crick to print, but graciously acknowledged later that they were correct. Perhaps the biggest error was made by the greatest mind of them all, Albert Einstein, when he inserted a cosmological constant "fudge factor" into his equations that he later removed and termed the "greatest blunder" of his career. This is a highly readable account of scientists' lives and what leads them to make errors. Chapter notes provide further opportunities for exploration of the subject. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates and general audiences. C. G. Wood formerly, Eastern Maine Community College
Kirkus Review
Astrophysicist and popular science writer Livio (Is God a Mathematician?, 2009, etc.) delivers entertaining accounts of how five celebrated scientists went wrong. Darwin proposed that if one individual has a heritable advantage, such as strength, speed or brains, more of its offspring will survive, so the species will acquire this advantage and evolve. This would be impossible if, as almost everyone believed in Darwin's day, inherited traits blended, so that a black cat and a white cat produced a gray kitten. Luckily, Mendelian genetics revealed that traits reside in distinct genes that are transmitted intact. The famous 19th-century physicist Lord Kelvin calculated erroneously that the Earth was about 100 million years old, too young for evolution to occur. Linus Pauling published an incorrect structure of DNA in 1953, the year before James Watson and Francis Crick got it right. For Livio, this was perhaps the most inexcusable of blunders: a mixture of poor-quality data, haste and egotism. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle stuck stubbornly to his 1940s steady-state theory of the universe even as evidence favoring the Big Bang accumulated, ultimately passing the last half of his life as a widely respected crank. Einstein's 1917 theory of general relativity described an expanding universe. Since everyone considered the universe static, he added a "cosmological constant" to his equations to achieve this, discarding it when astronomers discovered expansion a decade later. Historians quote Einstein calling this his "greatest blunder," but Livio doubts that he said it. Most of these stories are familiar, but the author's emphasis on major errors by distinguished scientists, including their reasons and consequences, provides a thoroughly satisfactory experience even for educated readers. An absorbing, persuasive reminder that science is not a direct march to the truth.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Astrophysicist, prolific writer, and blogger Livio (Space Telescope Science Inst.; The Golden Ratio) succeeds in his aim to demonstrate that science progresses by fits and starts, with oversights, or conceptual errors (aka blunders), as part of the process. Livio sees blunders as very dependent upon a scientist's milieu-the theories, prejudices, and culture within which the scientist exists. He examines the world-changing key works of Charles Darwin, physicist Lord Kelvin, Linus Pauling, astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein via detailed descriptions of the contexts within which their oversights occurred. His placement of these scientists' work within their historical context makes the technical details of their research more accessible to lay readers and is a narrative approach reminiscent of George Pendle's Strange Angel, his study of rocketeer Jack Parsons. Livio aims to link the men's work under the notion of environment and evolution, defined so broadly that they seem useless and unnecessary threads, the only notable shortcoming of this engaging work. Verdict An entertaining and different take on the work of pivotal Western scientists. Recommended.-Sara R. Tompson, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Lib., Pasadena, CA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Brilliant Blunders PREFACE Throughout the entire period that I have been working on this book, every few weeks someone would ask me what my book was about. I developed a standard answer: "It is about blunders, and it is not an autobiography!" This would get a few laughs and the occasional approbation "What an interesting idea." My objective was simple: to correct the impression that scientific breakthroughs are purely success stories. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Not only is the road to triumph paved with blunders, but the bigger the prize, the bigger the potential blunder. Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher, wrote famously, "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." In the time that has passed since the publication of his The Critique of Practical Reason (1788), we have made impressive progress in understanding the former; considerably less so, in my humble opinion, in elucidating the latter. It is apparently much more difficult to make life or mind comprehensible to itself. Nevertheless, the life sciences in general--and the research into the operation of the human brain in particular--are truly picking up speed. So it may not be altogether inconceivable after all that one day we will even fully understand why evolution has concocted a sentient species. While this book is about some of the remarkable endeavors to figure out life and the cosmos, it is more concerned with the journey than with the destination. I tried to concentrate on the thought process and the obstacles on the way to discovery rather than on the achievements themselves. Many people have helped me along the way, some maybe even unknowingly. I am grateful to Steve Mojzsis and Reika Yokochi for discussions on topics related to geology. I thank Jack Dunitz, Horace Freeland Judson, Matt Meselson, Evangelos Moudrianakis, Alex Rich, Jack Szostak, and Jim Watson for conversations on chemistry, biology, and specifically on Linus Pauling's work. I am indebted to Peter Eggleton, John Faulkner, Geoffrey Hoyle, Jayant Narlikar, and Lord Martin Rees for helpful discussions on astrophysics and cosmology, and on Fred Hoyle's work. I would also like to express my gratitude to all the people who provided me with invaluable materials for this book, and in particular to: Adam Perkins and the staff of the Cambridge University Library, for materials on Darwin and on Lord Kelvin; Mark Hurn of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, for materials on Lord Kelvin and on Fred Hoyle; Amanda Smith of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, for materials on Fred Hoyle and for processing photos related to Watson and Crick; Clifford Meade and Chris Petersen of the Special Collections Department of Oregon State University, for materials on Linus Pauling; Loma Karklins of the Caltech Archives, for material on Linus Pauling; Sarah Brooks from the Nature Publishing Group, for material on Rosalind Franklin; Bob Carswell and Peter Hingley for materials on Georges Lemaître from the Royal Astronomical Society; Liliane Moens of the Archives Georges Lemaître, for materials on Georges Lemaître; Kathryn McKee of St. John's College, Cambridge, for materials on Fred Hoyle; and Barbara Wolff of the Albert Einstein Archives, Diana Kormos Buchwald of the Einstein Papers Project, Daniel Kennefick of the University of Arkansas, Michael Simonson of the Leo Baeck Institute, Christine Lutz of Princeton University, and Christine Di Bella of the Institute for Advanced Study for materials on Einstein. Special thanks are due to Jill Lagerstrom, Elizabeth Fraser, and Amy Gonigam of the Space Telescope Science Institute, and to the staff at the Johns Hopkins University Library for their continuous bibliographic support. I am grateful to Sharon Toolan for her professional help in preparing the manuscript for print, to Pam Jeffries for skillfully drawing some of the figures, and to Zak Concannon for cleaning some of the figures. As always, my most patient and supportive ally has been my wife, Sofie. Finally, I thank my agent, Susan Rabiner, for her relentless encouragement; my editor, Bob Bender, for his thoughtful comments; Loretta Denner, for her assistance during copyediting; and Johanna Li, for her dedication during the entire production of this book. Excerpted from Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe by Mario Livio All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.Table of Contents
| Preface | p. 1 |
| 1 Mistakes and Blunders | p. 5 |
| 2 The Origin | p. 12 |
| 3 Yea, All Which It Inherit, Shall Dissolve | p. 37 |
| 4 How Old Is the Earth? | p. 60 |
| 5 Certainty Generally Is Illusion | p. 84 |
| 6 Interpreter of Life | p. 103 |
| 7 Whose DNA Is It Anyway? | p. 136 |
| 8 B for Big Bang | p. 157 |
| 9 The Same Throughout Eternity? | p. 184 |
| 10 The "Biggest Blunder" | p. 221 |
| 11 Out of Empty Space | p. 246 |
| Coda | p. 269 |
| Notes | p. 273 |
| Bibliography | p. 303 |
| Index | p. 327 |