Customer Reviews

Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever (Wiley Popular Science)

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I have to disagree strongly with one of the customer reviews of Hal Hellman's "Great Feuds in Science." "Iceage" complains that "... the book dissapoints (sic)... mainly because of its lack of first person perspeective. I was looking for more feeling, more virulent attacking by two historical giants ..." Apparently the reviewer was expecting people like Newton and Leibniz or Thomas Hobbes and John Wallis to stand head to head yelling four-letter words at each other. We should be fair: these feuds are scientific battles, not barroom brawls. As for his complaint that he "was hoping for more of a graphic and detailed picture of the opposition ..." I found Hellman's examples apt and intriguing. One example: John Wallis, mathematician and clergyman, writes to a colleague about Hobbes: "... nor should we be deterred ... by his arrogance which we know will vomit poisonous filth against us." In Chapter 10, Hellman r! elates that Derek Freeman, Australian anthropologist, wrote of that American icon, Maargaret Mead, that many of her assertions about Samoa, made decades earlier, are " ... fundamentally in error and some are preposterously false." Also, "There isn't another example of such wholesale self-deception in the history of the behavioral sciences." These aren't four-letter words, but they are explosive. Hellman has given us that good feel for who these people were and what they meant to society at the time. This book could bring science to life for the young and those of us who are more experienced. Iceage missed the boat but your readers should jump on board.

This book makes science interesting. The science we so often learn in school makes it seem as though science always proceeds in a straight-forward manner. This book explodes that stereotype. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Kelvin and his estimate of the age of the earth, and, of course, the famous one between Galileo and the Church.

The most recent one is between Derek Freeman and the late Margaret Mead. After I first read about it I felt that people were being pretty hard on Mead, but since then I've changed my mind. People claiming to do scientific research are held to high standards. If they are found to be not completely honest, even once, their reputation is ruined. That is a high standard, but a fair one.

Hellman has an excellent ability to describe the personalities, the scenes, the zeitgeist, but unfortunately he is not too good in science. He never really gets into the heart of the matter, he never discusses any details, he usually relies on second hand sources, he leaves the story in the air just when starts to get exciting. If you know history of science, this book does not contain anything new or startling. But it is fun reading for the uninitiated.

Hellman presents us with a well written and carefully researched series of entertaining profiles about some notable debates in science (both old and current). These are informative and fun to read, but perhaps their greatest value for lay readers is in revealing the all-too human sides of the combatants. This discredits the "Story Book" version of science so often given in texts wherein noble scientists are portrayed as unblemished heroes fighting to bring light into the darkness against a purely non-scientific opposition. Here we see that even great scientists often squabble with one another and that they seldom epitomize rationality and objectivity.

I suppose it is an eternal effort to try to bring science to the public in an interesting way. Hellman, who according to the blurb has written 26 other popular science books, takes the tack of presenting various controversies in science, of which there are a depressing number.

Hellman picks ten, most of which are fairly well-known: Galileo vs. the Church, Newton vs. Leibniz, and so on. He springboards off of these to various extents to present the science behind the controversies or at least the history thereof. In particular, he takes the Darwinism vs. creationism issue up to the present day, even mentioning Behe and Darwin's Black Box. Other controversies are inherently recent: Donald Johanson vs. Richard Leakey on mankind's family tree and Derek Freeman's issues with Margaret Mead. (I have to side with Mead on the latter, at least as the situation is presented here. Freeman comes across as an opportunist looking for a way to gain publicity more than as a seeker after truth.)

It's lightweight if sometime saddening reading, particularly in such cases as Lord Kelvin, whose successes were undeniable but whose lack of flexibility hindered the progress of science at times.

Review of "Great Feuds in Science"
Author Hal Hellman
Reviewed in 1999 by Bill Palmer

I have only seen one other review of this book that was so savage that I was uncertain as to whether to bother to read the book. In the end, I did read it and found it a popular worthy attempt to place some of the fascinating history of science in a genre.

The book is subtitled "Ten of the liveliest disputes ever". The choice of feuds may be limited but there have certainly been enough quarrels and disputes between scientists to fill this and several other volumes but the title. The actual choice seems a fair one in terms of the most severe recorded quarrels of major scientists. Those chosen were: UrbanVIII versus Galileo: Wallis versus Hobbes: Newton versus Leibniz: Voltaire versus Needham: Darwin's Bulldog versus Soapy Sam: Lord Kelvin versus geologists and biologists: Cope versus Marsh: Wegener versus everybody: Johanson versus the Leakeys: and Derek Freeman versus Margaret Mead. One might argue that feuds involve personal animosity, so that it is not really possible to have a feud with everyone (Wegener) nor can the living really feud with the dead (Freeman) etc. However, stories are more detailed than would be found in the standard biographical dictionaries yet only running to 20 pages or so in a simple but interesting style. This gives ample space to describe the personalities of the feuding groups and the scientific principles under discussion. In all cases where I had some previous knowledge of the dispute, I was able to gain further insights and felt that the views expressed were not partial.

Overall I felt that the author had a genuine interest in the history of science and that this book will further popular interest in this area.

BILL PALMER

More than a "popular science" book, GREAT FEUDS IN SCIENCE touches a number of disciplines, including philosophy, religion, politics, and sociology. Hence, this book has a fairly wide, if not universal, scope. While his writing is not what I would call distinguished, Hellman is skilled at cutting corners and providing reasonably accurate portraits of these feuding scientists and thinkers, as well as neat summaries of their hypotheses (and world views, biases, nasty streaks, and the like). This is easy reading; any reasonably intelligent 16-year old will get through the book with no problem, and they'll be better off, more informed, for having done so. So while this book may not be an important source for someone writing a paper for a physics dissertation, it will be helpful for anyone wanting a little more than an encyclopedia entry on why, say, Newton or Darwin, is important. Hellman wisely includes notes and a helpful bibliography for those who want more.

This is simply a marvelous book. Period. I would enthusiastically recommend it to anyone who is looking for a stimulating, yet fairly easy read over a vacation, holiday, plane ride, whatever. Hellman's prose drew me in --and keep me in--. I normally have trouble finishing books. Not this one. This is one of those books that leaves you feeling better educated upon completion.

In the final chapter of his wonderful book "Great Feuds in Science" Hall Hellman speaks of Margaret Mead's study of Samoans: "One of her innovations was writing in a way that the public could understand." Hellman does the same. This book is "written in a way that the public can understand." It is sober without being sour, intelligent without being intimidating and scholarly without being stifling. From the moment we meet Galileo who was forced to recant his revolutionary conclusions by the urban Pope Urban VIII, to our final visit with Margaret Mead, Hellman holds us in literary thrall. Reading this book I was reminded of the memorable "Microbe Hunters" by Paul de Kruif. This wonderfully various author, like de Kruif, combines a dazzling understanding of science as well as the scientists with an usually graceful style of writing. For the reader, Hellman's extensive research opens a window on the usually opaque walls of statistics ! ! and experimental results and makes it all surprisingly palatable - especially when his punctuates his prose (as he often does) with humor and humanity. I highly recommend this book to anyone who knows the truth - that non-fiction, well written, has all the romance, passion and excitement as a best-selling novel. And for any non-believers, apologists, amateur scientists and "nosey parkers" who would like to pursue the characters (and they were!) in even more depth, Hellman provides extensive notes, a superb bibliography, and a helpful index.

This is good anecdotal collection of scientific diputes which could have been written as a series in a popular science magazine. Its emphasis is on the personalities involved in scientific disputes over the years, and a general description of the nature of the debate. The book makes little attempt to delve into the psychology of the scientific mind. Nor does it try to pin to together a consistent philosophical basis underlying scientific progress, paradigms and debates. You are left with a series of vignettes of roughly 20 pages a piece, well written and entertaining, which offer little penetration and cohesion into the 'nature' of scientific conflict. As a quick survey of scientific progress and perhaps as a guide to more in depth reading it is a good work, especially for the young reader