Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever 1st Edition

by Hal Hellman (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0471350668

ISBN-10: 0471350664

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The dramatic stories of ten historic feuds: How they altered the course of discovery-and shaped the modern world
Hall Hellman tells the lively stories of ten of the most outrageous and intriguing disputes from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Bringing the cataclysmic clash of ideas and personalities to colorful life, Hellman explores both the science and the spirit of the times. Along the way, he reveals that scientific feuds are fueled not only by the purest of intellectual disagreements, but also by intransigence, ambition, jealousy, politics, faith, and the irresistible human urge to be right.
Unusual insight into the development of science . . . I was excited by this book and enthusiastically recommend it to general as well as scientific audiences. -American Scientist
Hellman has assembled a series of entertaining tales. . . . many fine examples of heady invective without parallel in our time. -Nature
An entertaining and informative account of the unusual personalities and sometimes bitter rivalries of some of the world's greatest scientific minds. -Publishers Weekly
A fascinating new book which details some of the most famous disputes of the ages.-Courier Mail
Dry science history turns into entertaining reading without sacrificing historical accuracy. -The Christchurch Press
Great Feuds in Science is wonderful history, as the reader learns how scientists had to fight with religious leaders and other scientists to get their work recognized, accepted, and even get the credit for it! -Bookviews

Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"The facts, even the theories, are history. It is the process that is the living science; that's what makes the activity exciting to those who practice it," science writer Hal Hellman observes. "Often, however, the process of scientific discovery is charged with emotion.... Holders of an earlier idea may not give it up gladly." Hellman describes some of the most emotional, dramatic, and personal debates in scientific history. He rounds up the usual suspects--Galileo versus the pope, Newton versus Leibniz, Cope versus Marsh, evolution versus Creation--but also includes less well known, but no less interesting, conflicts: Wallis versus Hobbes on squaring the circle, Voltaire versus Needham on embryos. And he boldly includes two conflicts in which (some) of the combatants are still alive: Don Johanson versus the Leakeys on human origins and Derek Freeman versus the ghost of Margaret Mead on Samoa. Never a dull moment. --Mary Ellen Curtin --This text refers to the Digital edition.

From Library Journal

Ranging from Galileo vs. Pope Urban VIII to Derek Freeman vs. Margaret Mead, this compilation of great scientific feuds covers an interesting variety of personalities as well as subject matter. Proceeding in chronological order, chapter by chapter, science writer Hellman aims to show the human side of scientists, including all their petty frailties. Some of the feuds were more constructive than others; some seemed to center on personality clashes; collectively, they demonstrate that over the centuries science has shown little ability to acknowledge changing interpretations or newly calculated data without falling into conflict. Hellman certainly raises some questions on style in science, but it would have been even more worthwhile if he had tried to derive some theme from these confrontations instead of simply demonstrating that scientists can be just as human as the rest of us. For larger popular science collections.?Hilary Burton, Lawrence Livermore National Lab., Livermore, CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Digital edition.

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Product details

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (August 20, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0471350664
ISBN-13: 978-0471350668
Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 0.7 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 22 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #323,717 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #675 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Scientists
- #1676 in Books > Science & Math > History & Philosophy
- #3232 in Books > Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses

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Customer reviews

3.6 out of 5 stars

5 star		41%
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The Science that Students Don't Always Get to See.

ByKevin Currie-KnightVINE VOICEon September 24, 2008

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

The way we teach science in our schools is not a true representation of how science actually is. We teach it as a calm, objective, and detached road to certain truths when, as books like this point out, science is frought with emotionalism, tentativity, and competitiveness. Who discovered what first (and gets the credit)? Whose theories will be superceded by the next big discovery? Whok will be seen as the winner and who, the loser?T

hese are the types of scientific feuds profiled in this highly engaging book. Hellmen profiles what he sees as the 10 greatest feuds.

Some have to do with the all-too-familiar and -touchy area where religion and science collide (Galileo v. Pope Urban, TH Huxley v. Bishop Wilberforce). In both chapters, Hellman describes well how tempers flared, arguments got heated, and science eventually won the day. (Galileo lost the battle but won the war.)

A few are battles that many people may never have heard about. Newton and Leibniz sparred rhetorically over who discovered calculus first. (It turns out that Newton did, but Liebniz was the first to publish.) Hobbes and Wallace wrote many a stinging rejoinder to one another over whether one could square a circle. Cope and Marsh most heatedly accused eachother of everything from incompentence to blatant dishonesty when battling over whether certain sets of fossils were of dinosaurs. Other feuds profiled in this book are more well known (Leaky v. Johanson battling over whose human fossils were the oldest and Derek Freeman slashing into Margaret Mead's reputation posthumously).

What all of these feuds have in common - what Hal Hellman does an excellent job replicating - is that science is not always the calm, detached discipline that we teach our kids of, where truth is the primary goal. There are egos, there are rhetorical bouts, and there are fierce competitions. And (particularly in the case of Wegener arguing about plate tectonics) there are points where the once-nonsensical position gradually, and grudgingly, becomes the accepted one. Science lives and breathes, and this book shows it!

The reason I give it four stars rather than five is because I do not think that Hellman represented the best and most relevant battles in science. I have been scratching my head, for instance, as to why he did not include the recent battle over sociobiology (culminating in EO Wilson being doused with ice-water at a conference), or the Dawkins/Gould feud over gradualism v. punctuated equilibrium and reductionism (which is one of the most heated I have seen!). What about Einstein's attempts to dismantle and disprove Heisenberg as to the uncertainty principle.

I know that one cannot include EVERY good battle in a book while keeping it a manageable size, but some of Hellman's choices and omissions are, to my eyes, strange.

For all that, the book does a wonderful job of conveying the emotion that seeps into sceince every now and again. He also does a good job of keeping the 'science jargon' to a minimum, though he does do well in explaining the idea that each feud was over.

It is a pity that our high school students can't read about this side of sceince also. But at least you can.

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Low quality Kindle edition

ByG. S.on April 4, 2012

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is a comment about the form rather than the content of the Kindle edition of this book.

With wide blank margins on both sides, no chapter markers, and text that renders poorly, this feels like a badly scanned copy of the book.
It's a subpar edition, and it's disappointing that I had to pay $10 for it.

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I would classify the book as an excellent read for middle-school aged kids

ByAlekon August 17, 2014

Format: Paperback

After watching me devour the works of Carl Sagan, Niel DeGrasse Tyson, and a host of other scientific greats my wife decided to pick this book as an introduction to the stuff that interested me. She got busy and has yet to read it, but I had an hour or two to spare and decided to check it out.

I would classify the book as an excellent read for middle-school aged kids. It offers excellent commentary on matters of major scientific importance, and even more importantly humans some of the greatest minds our civilization has ever know. To your average 12 year old Isaac Newton is just some old dude who invented most of the crap you have to learn in science and math classes, but seeing the quarrels with fellow scientists that happened behind the scenes goes a long way towards making the man and therefore his discoveries more interesting.

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For the most part entertaining and informative

ByA customeron April 4, 2000

Format: Hardcover

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.

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A feast for science fans!

Bywhite gold wielderon February 6, 2015

Format: Paperback

This book is delightful and any science fan should enjoy it.

Stories of scientific conflicts are offered together with historical background,
who were the allies on each side.

Each tale is introduced carefully, with information on how the scientific issue and
conflict came about. The various stages of the debate, from simmering to boiling,
are given in detail.

If there is any flaw at all, it might be that on occasion, the reader is not given quite
enough detail about the actual scientific issue in question.

But this is more than made up for by the excellent manner of presentation.

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hindsight is always 20/20

ByNadyne Richmondon April 6, 2013

Format: Paperback

Science is a messy place, and what we know to be true today might not be true tomorrow. There are arguments raging in science even today (and I don't mean faux arguments like climate change deniers). This book attempts to give an overview of some of the most famous shifts in science thinking.

Some of these aren't feuds in the way that we would understand the word, since feuds usually require all of the involved parties to still be alive. Several of these are scientists working to show that the previous understanding wasn't accurate. There are some honest-to-goodness feuds to be found here, and those are the most interesting reading, to see where scientists let emotion overrule their data.

The book suffers from the flaw of 20/20 hindsight. Now, many years removed from most of the feuds presented herein, the feuds lose their sense that there was ever actually anything to argue about. The author makes the old arguments seem ignorant and flawed, instead of helping us understand how they were the best scientific knowledge available at the time. Later, with better instruments and a better ability to create experiments.

It's a good enough overview, but none of the feuds really held my attention.

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Most recent customer reviews

In the tradition of Voltaire?!

On page 65 of this book, Hellman writes of Voltaiare, that: "Though not a scientist himself, Voltaire had developed a keen interest in both the physical and biological...Read more

Published on December 1, 2012 by Andrew L. Lautin

Great Feuds in Science- a good read!

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...Read more

Published on December 19, 2010 by William P. Palmer

Light on Science, plenty of Emotion

I had mixed emotions about this book. There wasn't that much deep insight into the underlying science or philosophy under debate, so it was sometimes hard to decide whose side I...Read more

Published on October 30, 2003 by Keith Appleyard

A new approach to popularizing science

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,...Read more

Published on September 23, 2000 by Kevin W. Parker

Great zeitgeist, thin science

Hellman has an excellent ability to describe the personalities, the scenes, the zeitgeist, but unfortunately he is not too good in science.Read more

Published on August 1, 2000

How great science REALLY gets done

Scientists are human, too. They have pride, turf, and overbearing egoes. This little book, with its chapters relating disagreements and outright feuds between scientific...Read more

Published on May 18, 2000 by The Sanity Inspector

Good, rather light, informative

Published on April 24, 2000 by Bryan Moore

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