The Scientist as Rebel

by DYSON, FREEMAN

• ISBN13: 9781590172162
• ISBN10: 1590172167
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-11-14
• Publisher: New York Review Books

Summary

An illuminating collection of essays by an award-winning scientist whom theLondon Timescalls "one of the world's most original minds." In the view of the Nobel Prizewinning physicist Freeman J. Dyson, science, wherever it practiced, is characterized by its rebellion against the restrictions of local cultures. Like art and poetry, it resists authority. The scientist is thus by nature a rebel, loyal not to social demands but only to reason and the imagination. Dyson believes that the best way to understand science is by understanding those who practice it. In these essays, he recounts fascinating episodes from the history of science, interspersed with reminiscences from his own life and career. His topics fall into four groups. The first takes up contemporary issues in science, from cosmology to nanotechnology to global warming. The second group deals with questions of war and peace, particularly questions of nuclear weapons and disarmament. The third group is concerned with the history of science, especially physics, with essays ranging from Isaac Newton, to Sir Ernst Rutherford and the discovery of the structure of the atom, to Einstein and Raymond Poincar, to Norbert Wiener, Richard Feynmann, and string theory. The final section contains more personal and philosophical essays, dealing with such questions as the differences between science and religion, and the relation between science and the paranormalsurprisingly, Dyson argues that paranormal phenomena may actually exist yet be inaccessible to scientific verification. This collection, by a renowned scientist who is also a lively and distinguished writer, offers fresh and often unexpected perspectives on the history, methods, and ethics of science, as well as informative and accessible ways of thinking about contentious current debates on the relations between science, religion, literature, and society.

Author Biography

FREEMAN J. DYSON is Professor Emeritus of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University. He is the author of Disturbing the Universe, Imagined Worlds, Origins of Life, and numerous other books. He is a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Weapons and Hope, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science for Infinite in All Directions, as well as many other honors. Throughout his career he has worked on nuclear reactors, solid state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics, and biology. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

PREFACE	ix
I CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN SCIENCE
1 The Scientist as Rebel	3	(16)
2 Can Science be Ethical?	19	(14)
3 A Modern Heretic	33	(6)
4 The Future Needs Us	39	(14)
5 What a World!	53	(14)
6 Witness to a Tragedy	67	(6)
II WAR AND PEACE
7 Bombs and Potatoes	73	(6)
8 Generals	79	(18)
9 Russians	97	(12)
10 Pacifists	109	(18)
11 The Race Is Over	127	(6)
12 The Force of Reason	133	(6)
13 The Bitter End	139	(18)
III HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
14 Two Kinds of History	157	(10)
15 Edward Teller's Memoirs	167	(6)
16 In Praise of Amateurs	173	(14)
17 A New Newton	187	(14)
18 Clockwork Science	201	(12)
19 The World on a String	213	(16)
20 Oppenheimer as Scientist, Administrator, and Poet	229	(14)
21 Seeing the Unseen	243	(12)
22 The Tragic Tale of a Genius	255	(14)
23 Wise Man	269	(18)
IV PERSONAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS
24 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil	287	(18)
25 Is God in the Lab?	305	(10)
26 This Side Idolatry	315	(6)
27 One in a Million	321	(14)
28 Many Worlds	335	(6)
29 Religion from the Outside	341	(16)
V BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES	357