ResoluteReader: science

Showing posts with label science. Show all posts

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Ian Angus - Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism's Assault on the Earth

Karl Marx eagerly devoured writings on all aspects of history, culture and science. Anyone who has read a small part of his work will be struck by references to contemporary politics, history, science, art and culture. But in 1851 Marx read a paper that altered how he thought about the world. This was by Roland Daniels, a fellow Communist activist, doctor and scientist which described something called "organic metabolism", the "simultaneous destruction and regeneration" of living organisms. Daniels thought that this could be used to understand human society and Marx, agreeing, placed metabolic ideas at the heart of his ongoing analysis of humans and society.

The concept of "metabolism" for Marx, and Marxists, has been the subject of intense discussion in recent years. A quarter of a century ago John Bellamy Foster wrote a fundamental text Marx's Ecology which drew out the ecological core of Marx's though and popularised the concept of "metabolic rift". In the years since, metabolic rift theory has become a tool eagerly used by revolutionaries to understand the relationship between capitalism and nature and how to change it. But it has also been critiqued by some on the Marxist left and by more people on the right.

Ian Angus has been a prominent figure in these discussions through his online journal Climate and Capitalism and this, his latest book, is a study of "Metabolic Rift" and a reassertion of key concepts. But Angus goes much further than restating the arguments. He notes that

Marx could not have known how broad, deep, high and complex the metabolism was. Scientists in his time were just beginning to study the metabolic processes that make life possible at every level, from cells to the entire planet, and even today vast parts are not well understood. But he grasped the essence of the matter, and his insights provide a basic framework for understanding what is happening to the Earth System at all levels today.

So Angus' book sets itself the task of firstly explaining the "metabolic" framework and then using it to explain what is happening to the Earth System today. It is a huge task, and while Angus doesn't claim to write a full analysis of what is going wrong, he offers both a general approach and specific examples that explain the interlocked environmental crises we are facing.

In writing this book Angus stands in a long, if neglected or forgotten, tradition of key Marxist figures engaging with science to understand history and the world. Marx's metabolic approach was mostly forgotten after his death, but not by all. In a key chapter he looks at the work of three Marxists - Bebel, Kautsky and Bukharin - to demonstrate how they each, in different ways approached social and scientific questions in a similar way to Marx. I am particularly glad that Angus devotes some time to Kautsky's work The Agrarian Question, which was described by Lenin as "the most important even in present day economic literature". It is a book that ought to be more widely read for those trying to understand precisely while capitalist agriculture is so destructive.

But I was taken by Angus' account of an earlier work by August Bebel. Bebel's 1879 book Woman and Socialism was one of the most widely read popular expositions of socialist ideas. It was also a book that explored ecological issues. Bebel wrote that capitalist agriculture is "soil vandalism" and it "cripples the land and decreases the crops". He also bemoaned environmental destruction including "the senseless ravaging of forests, for the sake of profit".

Angus explains that the books like these "disproves the canard that socialists of the late 1800s and early 1900s did not know or care about the universal metaolism of nature or the environmental destruction caused by rifts in that metabolism". That said he acknowledges that there was a loss of this knowledge and it is being rediscovered. But this "does not mean that everyone understands the funamental concepts". Crucially, "a common misunderstanding in articles on metabolic rift... is treating it as a metaphor rather than as a description of real global circumstances".

The bulk of the book then is an attempt to explain these core concepts. Angus does this by firstly explaining the metabolic processes that are key to the Earth's systems. Some of these are ancient. Angus' explores how life evolved and how it required chemicals that arose out of key cyclical processes that are built into the planet's geological systems and climate.

Perhaps the most impressive chapters however are those that show how the Earth's metabolic processes are being broken by capitalism. Two of these chapters are essential reading - on the breaking of the carbon cycle (which is driving climate change) and the disruption of the nitrogen cycle. The latter a rarely mentioned crisis that is causing serious problems. Industrial agriculture is pumping nitrogen into Earth's systems faster than any natural process can break it down. The "glut" is breaking a cycle that has exised for "hundreds of millions of years" which saw:

Constant recycling of reactive nitrogen in multiple forms, "a metabolism prescibed by the natural laws of life itself," enabled plant and animal life to thrive almost everywhere on the planet.

But:

Planetary boundaries research confirms that the current level of industrial nitrogen "cannot continue without significantly eroding the resilience of major components of Earth-System functioning".

To fix this, Angus concludes, requires taking control of the valves and "expropriating" the factories. He says:

However it is achieved, social control of nitrogen production must ensure a radical reduction of nitrogen use. That will require balancing the need to prevent ecological damage aganst the need to produce sufficient food, not just withing a country, but globally. It may one day be possible to feed the world without synthetic fertiliser and other chemicals, but undoing the damage that capitalism has caused won't be easy or quick.

The Nitrogen cycle chapter demonstrates very well the great strength of Angus' book, which is the way that Marxism must engage with science to develop strategies that can offer solutions to environmental crises. This is explicitly explored in the final chapters when Angus shows how scientists often come close to recognising that the environmental crises we face are systemic ones, but seldom draw revolutionary conclusions. He warns, however, that what science shows is that the changes needed are urgent, but will also take "decades". Day two of the "revolution" will not see ecological equilibrium restored. But it will open up a space where workers, scientists and activists can find a way forward - at the same time as having access to the wealth and power they need to deal with immediate issues. This, as Angus says, is not about "reordering capitalism" but building a new society in tune with the natural world. Nonetheless the first revolutionary stage is necessary, and I was struck by a pertinent quote that Angus uses from the great ecological socialist William Morris that I had not read before. Morris said:

The first real victory of the Social Revolution will be the establishment not indeed of a complete system of communism in a day, which is absurd, but of a revolutionary adminstration whose definite and conscious aim will be to prepare and further, in all available ways, human life for such a system.

Looking at the world around us the catastrophe threatens on multiple fronts: imperialist war, genocide, economic stagflation and environmental disaster. In Metabolic Rifts Ian Angus reminds us that there is a deep tradition of revolutionary politics closely engaged with scientific research, that offers an understanding of the chaos around us. It also offers us a strategy to change it. I urge readers to read it.

Friday, March 27, 2026

Daniel Oberhaus - Extraterrestrial Languages

In some ways this book's title is a misnomer. There are no extraterrestrial languages. Or at least none that we yet know of. But Daniel Oberhaus has not written a scientific text teaching us to speak another language, rather this is a fascinating study of how we could communicate and, indeed, what communication might mean to aliens. Oberhaus begins with a useful historical introduction to the science of communicating with aliens. There are some early proposals that set the scene - plans to use mirrors in the Sahara or burn messages into forests to communicate with Mars - but these are background to show the evolution of the idea.

More important are the beginnings of serious attempts to communicate combined with the development of the science of understanding language and communication. Here Oberhaus takes the reader on a series of discussions about how we might communicate with intelligences that do not share our culture, biology or indeed references points. Many readers will be familiar with SF films or novels that show communication where the two alien species attempt to communicate around common knowledge. Maths is the normal starting point, and indeed this forms the basis for much of how such communications might happen. Oberhaus shows how messages can be used to use simple maths to build up communications teaching, for instance, counting, then logic and so on. But there is always a problem. What knowledge is common across the universe? Will aliens understand our maths? Is maths even a thing likely to be held in common? Oberhaus writes, while discussing the possible use of set theory and logic to establish common ground:

Axiomatic set theory and symbolic logic have come to dominate mathematics over the past century to the point htat it feels entirely natural to conceive of the order of the world in terms of sets and cognition in terms of symbolic logic. Yet this misses the cirtical transition from grounding metaphors, which can reasonably be assumed to be shared with extraterrestrial intelligences since they arise from direct experiences... to linking metaphors, which are the creative productions of human minds meant to deal with human experience. In other words, a very useful mathematical invention that meets the idiosyncratic needs of embodied human intellifence has been naturalised to the point that it is taken to be a trait of the universe itself.

There's a good example in the book. We might think physical understanding is a common ground. But what if we had communicated with aliens when our only understanding of the atom was Bohr's model and not the quantum models now favoured. Might a more advanced alien race have ignored us?

Oberhaus grapples mostly with the sciences of communication and languages. But there are some interesting moral points. He notes, for instance, criticism of the Pioneer plaques that only depicted humans who looked caucasian. The Voyager records were better, mixing languages and music from many cultures, but still displaying cultural limitations. Indeed none of these languages offered enough information to allow real communication or understanding to develop. Perhaps their greatest success would have been in terms of inspiring future scientists here on Earth.

Oberhaus also makes a further interesting point. When we communicate, "do we want to tell extraterrestrials the truth?" Indeed do we share the limitations of our civilisation or, as we have done so far, share "messages into space [that] hve been filtrered through rose-tinted glasses".

Realistically there is little chance that any historic messages to space, or indeed any ones in the near future will be received or answered. While I was not convinced by Oberhaus' arguments that other aliens may well share biological traits with us, and indeed DNA might not be unique, the bigger problem is that aliens are likely to be extremely rare. I suspect that most life in the universe will be some form of slime or bacteria. That said the scale of the universe is such that statistically there ought to be intelligences out there, that we might converse with. That is unlikely to happen. But the science of how we communicate, and this fascinating little book, are part of developing our own knowledge of ourselves and our universe. As Oberhaus says, "each message... is like a mirror that reflects the spirit of the age that crafted it".

Related Reviews

Rubenstein - Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race
Bell - The Interstellar Age

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

Riley Black - The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs

Riley Black's The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs is a remarkable book that places dinosaurs in their historical and ecological context. But it also shows how our own understanding of dinosaurs is constantly changing. As such the book is also a history of paleontology. As Black jokes in her afterword, "in the past two hundred years our favorite prehistoric creatures have stompled through our imaginations as immense lizards, leaping oddities, tail-dragging dullards and rainbow-coloured fluffballs". By placing dinosaurs in their wider ecological, social and historical context a new understand emerges. This ecological approach is important. Dinosaurs are changing, growing and developing creatures. They are, in consequence, very real.

This was brought home to me when I was lucky enough to visit the Museum of the Rockies in Montana. There a fantastic display Triceratops skulls shows how the animal heads changed through their lives. Later, adult, skulls had huge fans and horns. But also holes (fenestra as they are known) in their fans which only developed later in life. Dinosaurs, like Triceratops, grew up. Their bodies changed constantly, and as Black repeatedly points out, so likely did their behaviour.

For instance the horns or clubs of dinosaurs have usually been understood as weapons - reflecting a tendency for nature to be understood as "red in tooth and claw". While it is undoubtably true that dinosaurs hunted each other and bit each other, it is far from the only use for such features. Black shows how horns and claws are more likely to have been used for multiple purposes (as many animals do today) having roles in development, mating or fighting. It is very unlikely that given the variety of dinosaur horn arrangements, they "all evolved their horns to principally ward off predators" otherwise "there would likely be an ideal configuration for telling tyrannosaurs to back off". Instead the variety of horn arrangements suggests that "interactions between individuals of the species were a central factor in how these dinosaurs evolved".

Black shows how palentologists have had to break with older ideas to allow us to understand dinosaurs in a new way. It is hard not to conclude that some of the newer approaches to ecology that have developed in recent decades are part of this changing view of the dinosaurs. The environmental crises have changed our understanding of how human society interacts with nature, and this has led to new approaches to how we should understand the interaction between living things and their environment. Black's book feels refreshing in this regard. It moves us on from simply seeing dinosaurs as carnivorous individuals fighting over a herbivore carcass as they are often portrayed in books or on screen. Indeed, Black repeatedly encourages us to see dinosaurs within their wider context - including non-dinosaur animals. Here again the reader is encouraged to think differently:

The supposed antagonism between dinosaurs and mammals has been overplayed, and in some ways misunderstood because of a focus on competition for ecological prominence.... The emerging pictures is that competition between different forms of early mammals restricted the evolution of our ancestors, not the dinosaurs.

The competition between species may have been less important than the interactions between individuals of the same species. Here I really enjoyed (and learned a lot from) Black's discussion of the rearing of young dinosaurs, and how adults treated their eggs. Sometimes they cared for them, and sometimes they left the eggs alone and the young to fend for themselves. But whichever strategy was adopted by different dinosaur species, it had consequences for the behaviour of the young and for the wider ecology. Take young T-Rexs. Their very existence likely changed the local ecology, but also the fossil record. As Black says of the T-Rex young they took up the "distinct ecological role of the medium-size predators that we would expect to find, preventing other dinosaur species from taking it up. it's one reason that the Hell Creek Formation... sometimes seems to have lower dinosaur diversity than other habitats".

Of course dinosaurs, like all living creatures, transformed their own environment. Black gives several examples of how they changed the landscape - creating pools through their size and weight, or ensuring that a forest would have had plenty of open space as well as woodland. The disappearance of the dinosaurs then opened up an evolutionary space where mammals could become dominant, but so could many other forms of flora and fauna. Dinosaurs were not isolated lizards. They were social creatures that changed their environment and evolved, developed and disappeared over a huge period of time. Black reminds us that the later dinosaurs could possibly have walked past fossils of their older ancestors. It is a startling reminder of how old the Earth is, and how long the time of the dinosaurs was.

Since reading one of Riley Black's earlier books The Last Days of the Dinosaurs I have enthused about it to everyone who mentions dinosaurs to me. The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs is a fine volume that broadens the story and places dinosaurs in a much wider context. Anyone who wants an introduction to the dinosaurs that shows how we have changed our understanding of these fabulous beasts will enjoy this book. Its an excellent, entertaining and insightful read.

Sunday, November 23, 2025

M.V.Ramana - Nuclear is Not the Solution: The folly of atomic power in the age of climate change

A few years ago I had the arduous task of reviewing Bill Gates' book on dealing with climate change. I noted that Gates' was obsessed with technological solutions to the climate crisis, in particular nuclear power - an industry which he has got a material interest in. The hunt for technological fixes to environmental crises has a long pedigree. Gates was just one of the billionaires who is most open about it.

The nuclear industry is both wealthy and adept at using the media to put across its case. The argument that nuclear is not a solution is not necessarily straightforward or obvious. So the environmental movement, and indeed the movement against nuclear weapons, should rejoice that M.V. Ramana's new book is available.

Ramana is a trained physicst, who has researched and written extensively on the nuclear industry. He is also greatly concerned about the climate crisis, and understands the intimate connection between the question of energy and reducing emissions. The book demolishes the case for nuclear in two ways. Firstly Ramana challenges the promises of the nuclear industry, both in terms of the potential for nuclear energy and in terms of the technology itself. More importantly though Ramana shows how nuclear power is closely connected with the very systems of imperialism and capitalist accumulation that drive the climate crisis. Let's look at his arguments in turn.

This review is not the place to rehash Ramana's arguments against particular corporations or particular types of nuclear reactors. If you want that I would urge you to read the book itself. But in general Ramana's book explains that

expanding nuclear power production is neither a desirable nor a feasible solution to climate change. Due to the use and production of radioactive materials at reactors, expanding nuclear energy to mitigate climate change will inevitably result in a variety of undesirable risks and environmental impacts. Not is it compatible with environmental and social justice. The consequences and burdens of such an expansion will fall primarily on ecommunities that are distant from the centers of power and economically and politically too marginal to figure in the calculations of decision makers.

Let's take one example - the cost of nuclear power. Ramana discusses research by the "financial firm Lazard" (not a hotbed of radical politics).

Lazard calculated that the average construction costs of a utility-scale solar photovoltaic plant in the United States... was $875 per kilowatt of generation capacity. (For comparison, the cost of a residential rooftop photovoltaic system in the US was about $2,600 per kilowatt.) These estiamates are averages over many different projects and thus smooth over the peculiarities of individual locations, differential labour costs, and geographical variations. Lazard estimated that a nuclear plant costs around $10,300 per kilowatt - or nearly twelve times the corresponding cost for utility-scale solar photovoltaic plants.

Interestingly while the cost of energy generated by renewables such as solar has dropped dramatically, that of nuclear has risen. The costs of "building a new nuclear reactor rose from nearly $6,800 per kilowatt in 2013 to $10,300 per kilowatt in 2021".

Given the problems of potential accidents, nuclear waste storage and the length of time taken to build new nuclear plants, the starting point for opposition to nuclear power should not be the costs. But Ramana's book makes the point that the costs matter precisely because nuclear continues to be touted as the solution by the industry, governments and politicians (of centre-left and right). In other words powerful groups remain committed to nuclear power despite its extremely high cost. Why is this?

One part of the problem is that these groups ignore or downplay the impact and threats of nuclear waste, potential accidents and the impossibility of deploying nuclear power plants on the scale and in the numbers to deal with the existing climate threat. But the real problem is that nuclear power is being promoted by people who have a lot to gain from the investment in nuclear power. Here Ramana's knowledge of the industry proves fascinating. In several examples he shows how nuclear companies have promised to build nuclear plants, then seen costs mushroom and profits leap. Sometimes the costs (and timescales) are astronomical. The now discredited company Westinghouse plannted to build a nuclear reactor in Georgia, which despite their claims it would cost $4 billion and take 36 months, ended up costing "$35 billion for such two reactors and a construction time of over ten years".

It doesn't take a genius to conclude as one commentator told the press, that "every euro invested in new nuclear power plants makes the climate crisis worse because now this money cannot be used to invest in efficient climate protection options". Indeed the "nuclear renaissance" that George W Bush launched in 2005 has cost $40 billion dollars, but "has not yet avoided a single molecule of carbon emissions".

This brings us to the second theme of Ramana's book: the wider context. I was intrigued to understand the cross over between nuclear power and the fossil fuel industry. Ramana shows how many nuclear companies also have investments in coal and oil. He points out that "talking about future nuclear power... is a strategy to shift attention away from their current energy mix". I would add though that it is also a way of maintaining the status quo. Such companies can claim they are reducing emissions elsewhere and continue with their fossil fuel activities.

But the biggest example of how nuclear power is promoted and desired, despite its dangers and costs, is its links with nuclear weapons. Here, I must confess, I learnt a great deal. In fact my own writings against nuclear power have underplayed this angle. The argument is best made by a quote that Ramana has from the physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the man who led the Manhatten Project. Oppenheimer said of a proposal for the international control of nuclear weapons:

We know very well what we would do if we signed such a convention: we would not make atomic weapons, at least not to start with, but we would build enormous plants, and we would design these plants in such a way that they could be converted with the maximum ease and the minimum time delay to the produciton of atomic weapons.

As Ramana shows the nuclear power industry has often been used by countries as a stepping stone to nuclear weaponary. The intimate links between the industry and nuclear bombs, submarines and so on, are carefully documented. Ramana says, "it is remarkable that whenever the nuclear power industry is in trouble, the strongest argument that officials use in order to obtain government support is to emphasize the overlap with military uses." This overlap is in producing raw materials, skills and training. The industry however is wary. The Dalton Nuclear Institute at Manchester University warned that the links must be "carefully managed to avoid the perception that civil and military nuclear programmes are one and the same".

Those in favour of nuclear power argue for it against all logic. They do this because they recognise that nuclear power plays a role within a wider economic and political system. Ramana quotes the billionaire Sam Altman (who runs OpenAI). One of Altman's concerns is of course having enough power to run the computer banks that power AI systems. But his fears for the lack of energy are also about wider critiques of capitalism:

The alternative to not having enough energy is the crazy de-growth stuff people talk about. We really don't want that... I think it's insane and pretty immoral when people start calling for that.

What Altman says here is just what the capitalist class think. As Ramana concludes:

Nuclear energy is being promoted by powerful elites in governments and businesses precisely because it comes with the promise, even if it will be ultimately a false promise, that the economic system can continue more or less along the same path while avoiding large-scale climate change.... Talking about nuclear power from new reactors serves to delay dealing with the climate crisis. Procrastination might be the thief of time, but it is good business strategy for companies that profit from the current system.

Ramana's book is a comprehensive demolition of the lies and technological limitations of nuclear power. But it is particularly powerful because he places these lies within the wider context of capitalist society and the logic that has caused the current environmental crises. While I felt that some of his points could have been expanded - I would have liked more on the carbon costs of the nuclear cycle (from mining to storage of waste) - there is plenty of material here to arm those looking for a rational, and sustainable energy policy. You don't have to be anti-capitalist to oppose nuclear power on the grounds of danger, waste or cost. But understanding the position of the industry in wider capitalist society illuminates a great deal. MV Ramana's book is thus urgent and necessary.

Gates - How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need
Bird & Sherwin - American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Adam Higginbotham - Challenger: A true story of heroism and disaster on the edge of space

The first time I went to the United States in the very early 1990s, when I told anyone I was a space and astronomy enthusiast, everyone wanted to tell me their recollections of January 28, 1986. It was a seminal moment for that period, and perhaps the most important collective event for American citizens until September 11 2001. The Challenger disaster was particularly poignant and memorable because it was the flight which promised to make the possibility of the ordinary person in space more than just a dream. Christa McAuliffe was an ordinary teacher on board the mission, and she, alongside six other astronauts died several minutes after a leak on one of the shuttle's booster rockets exploded the fuel in the main tank.

In the aftermath of the disaster NASA came under extreme scrutiny. The Roger's Commission set up by the US President to investigate what happened declared it "an accident rooted in history". They singled out how a succession of choices made by senior managers at the company that manufactured the booster rockets and NASA bureaucrats combined to give the go ahead for launch on a day when temperatures made failure of the crucial O-Ring component very likely. This was despite the energetic and powerful opposition for key rocket engineers.

But Adam Higginbotham makes it very clear that the "history" of the shuttle, and the potential for disaster began many years before 1986. His account of the development of the shuttle as a break from the Apollo programme was rooted in the US government's desire to make regular space usage cheap and profitable - as well as a key component of the US's military strategy. Despite the enormous technical difficulties of a reusable spacecraft, Nasa was driven to make a vehicle that could be reused, with senious figures and politicians daydreaming of weekly flights. But cost cutting, out-sourcing, design flaws and extraordinary political pressure to get the Shuttle aloft meant a series of technical shortcomings and potential floors were made. In addition, as Higginbotham repeatedly points out, decisions about flights were often made under pressure - not the immediate pressure of a politician on the phone, but an internal pressure caused by NASA culture.

Higginbotham's book is very much the biography of a number of key individuals. The lives and training of the astronauts is told in detail which means the disaster, which you know is coming, is very personal. But it also serves to highlight the horror that results from budget cuts and bureaucratic pressure. But also here are the accounts of the engineers, some of whom never recovered from their failure to stop the flight and several of whom made enormous sacrifices to expose the shortcomings and failures that led to Challenger's explosion.

For a teenager obsessed with space, the Shuttle programme was shiny and inspiring. Challenger makes it clear that in many ways it was a sordid, overly expensive, project that could never deliver on early promises. That's not to detract from its potential, but to recognise that a system that puts profits before people and places national prestige above safety and rational planning, will only ever deliver space programmes that eventually cost lives. Tragically the deaths of the seven Challenger astronauts where followed in 2003 of a futher seven astronauts as Columbia exploded on re-entry. The investigation after that disaster found that few lessons had been learnt in the long term, and failures of communication and leadership overruled the safety decisions that could have saved lives. While Higgenbotham's excellent book is about Challenger, it is also very much about how organisational corner cutting can be deadly. The details may often be technical, but the story is very human.

Sunday, August 03, 2025

Kai Bird & Martin J Sherwin - American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Like many others I bought American Prometheus after watching the 2023 film Oppenheimer. By any judgement, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the subject of the biography and film was a remarkable figure. A brilliant scientist who in his early career made a series of important breakthroughs in the febrile atmosphere of early 20th century physics, he was a public intellectual with connections and sympathies with many radical movements of pre-war United States. A multifaceted figure who found himself a central figure in one of the most controversial projects of World War Two - the development of the atom bomb.

Few of Oppenheimer's enemies would have disagreed with many of these judgements. They acknowledged his genius, his political connections and his central role in the creation of viable weapons of mass destruction. But for these enemies Oppenheimer was a threat to the security of the United States because he was prepared to openly discuss the moral consequences of the atom bomb's invention and its possible future. Fearing that he would use his position to undermine the US's post-war lead in nuclear technology, challenge its military doctrines, and possibly even strengthen its enemies, they decried him as a Communist - spread lies, undermined (and possibly killed) his friends, and dredged up past mistakes to blacken his name. In the growing anti-Communist witch-hunting atmosphere of the late 1940s and 1950s, Oppenheimer was one of thousands whose lives were destroyed. The difference was that Oppenheimer was famous and wealthy. Many others, from trade unionists and civil rights activists to leftists and even a handful of actual communists had their lives ruined.

American Prometheus is the story of how Oppenheimer found himself trapped in the logic of this witch-hunt. It begins with his childhood in a nurturing, wealthy, family who offered him opportunities to develop his knowledge and genius. He was also introduced to the finer things in a wealthy family's life - travel, cars, books and fine foods. Family Oppenheimer was the perfect space for Robert to develop - even if his own personal development was stunted at times. Travelling to Europe in the 1920s, Oppenheimer finished his Phd at an incredible scientific moment, studying and contributing to the insights of the emerging fields of Quantum Mechanics and nuclear sciences.

Back in the United States he found himself at an intoxicating moment. As a scientist, physics was expanding and breaking barriers on multiple fronts. There were countless opportunities for a physicist of Oppenheimer's brilliance to make a name for themselves. But for a liberal thinker, who was well read and engaging with wider political debates, there were many other opportunities. Oppenheimer found himself in the midst of growing political radicalism, the struggle for Civil Rights, and most particularly, the early 1930s, a wave of strikes in San Francisco.

It is here that the authors of American Prometheus really get to grips with Oppenheimer as an individual. Biographers (and indeed his enemies) have of course noted his left ideas, after all Oppenheimer himself did not exactly hide these. But he was teaching at Berkeley at a singular moment - a wave of strikes hit the port of San Francisco. Oppenheimer, some of his friends, and several of his students were supportive and engaged with the struggles:

Berkeley itself was split between critics and supporters of the strike. When the longshoremen initially walked out on May 9, 1934, a conservative member of the physics faculty, Leonard Loeb, recruited "Cal" football players to act as strikebreakers. Significantly, Oppenheimer later invited some of his students... to come along with him to a longshoremen's rally in a large San Francisco auditorium. " We were sitting up high in a balcony," recalled [Bob] Serber, "and by the end we were caught up in the enthusiasm of the strikers, shouting with them, 'Strike! Strike! Strike!' " Afterwards, Oppie went to the apartment of a friend, Estelle Caen, where he was introduced to Harry Bridges, the charismatic longshoreman union leader.

What is interesting here is that Oppenheimer wasn't just a casual onlooker, though he was not a political activist. He was engaged with struggles, and supportive of them. And indeed, in the case of unionisation, he encouraged it on several occasions through his working life. The point is that Oppenheimer had been immersed in radical politics that went beyond mere abstract ideas - though he certainly also engaged in those. He took these seriously, even if he did not always agree. One acquaintance thought he had read more Marx and Lenin than mnay active Communist Party members. While he certainly was radical, and was very close to some Communist Party activists - both his lover Jean Tatlock and his wife Katherine "Kitty" Puening, were CP members and activists - he was not a member (though even CP members often thought he was). The point of this is not that Oppenheimer was close to the CP. Its more that he had a set of ideas - political and scientific - shaped by a period of struggle in US history which influenced his thinking, while not being powerful enough to enable him to understand the threat to him posed by those who hated any ideas to the left of Harry Truman.

When World War Two came, the US scrambled to reassert itself. Money was poured into projects that could strengthen its military position. One of these was the Manhattan Project - the development of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was an obvious choice, though his politics made him already suspect. But crucially two factors, often ignored by his detractors decades later, were central. First was that the great threat from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan meant that people were included into military arenas that they would not normally have been allowed into. People with suspect ideas, were not considered as much of a threat as they would under McCarthyism because the danger was very real. Even liberals like Oppenheimer, who hated the idea of unrestricted military murder, felt that the atom bomb was needed because Nazi Germany would otherwise get it. Note that at this point Nazi Germany was considered the real danger by the likes of Oppenheimer. The second issue was that the Soviet Union was a friend and ally.

Oppenheimer played a central role in making the bomb real - the book details his work, his influence and his importance and we need not be distracted by that here. But Oppenheimer also played an important role in making the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima happen. He drew up the instructions for the proper and best use of the first weapon. He did, as he later agonised, have "blood on his hands". Nonetheless the reality of the atrocities against Japan slowly changed his mind:

Once again [Oppenheimer] had failed to persuade the president and members of his Administration to turn their back on... "the whole rotten business." The Administration now supported a program to build a bomb 1,000 times as lethal as the Hiroshima weapon. Still, Oppenheimer would not "upset the applecart." He would remain an insider - albeit one who was increasingly outspoken and increasingly suspect.

Bird and Sherwin map the trajectory of Oppenheimer's transition from concerned scientist to outspoken critique of the nuclear strategy of the US and its allies. Though I should add here that I think they neglect the work of other scientists who tried hard to build a peace and anti-nuclear movement. This is well documented in Robert Jungk's excellent book Brighter Than One Thousand Suns. Jungk also highlights the significant role of other scientists in the development of nuclear physics, and more detail on events at Los Alamos. Bird and Sherwin's hyper-focus on Oppenheimer means that this material is often neglected undermining the larger story.

However what matters is not Oppenheimer's trajectory but the limitations of his politics. By the 1950s and 1960s, Oppenheimer retained his liberal criticisms of society. But he was very much a US patriot. The crude equation of Soviet Russia with existing Communism meant that Oppenheimer and many others, simply dismissed socialism completely and saw the US as the only option - albeit an option that had to be reformed.

Intriguingly it is no less a figure than Albert Einstein who understood Oppenheimer's greatest weakness. As the witch-hunting grew louder and those who wanted to dethrone Oppenheimer as a Communist who was at the heart of the US nuclear machine and consequently needed to be destroyed, circled, Einstein commented "the trouble with Oppenheimer is that he loves a woman who doesn't love him - the United States government." Despite the brilliance of his mind, Oppenheimer could comprehend that the US was not a democratic system based on rational debate. It was a imperialist power prepared to murder its enemies, destroy civilians and smash opposition that threatened it - however mild it might be.

Even after he was defeated and lost his security clearance, Oppenheimer remained, according to the science sociologist Charles Thorpe. "in spirit a supporter of the fundamental direction of its [the US's] politics". Bird and Sherwin point out that despite what the US state had done to him, "Robert was determined to prove that he was a reliable patriot". Indeed, his failure to challenge the dominant politics directly led to his downfall. As one person commented, "The trouble was [Oppenheimer] accepted his accusers' terms from the beginning... He should have told them at the outset that he was the builder of the atom bomb - that he was a scientist, not an informer".

Whether that would have been enough to save Oppenheimer from his enemies is a moot point. Socialists ought to, in my opinion, acknowledge the horrors unleashed by the US's nuclear strategy, and the problems inherent in the nuclear bomb. This is not to downplay or ignore the grave injustice of the witch-hunt against Oppenheimer and the others caught up in the US's anti-communist attacks. That said, Oppenheimer did at least get some vindication - subsequent US Presidents recognised the errors and injustices, as did many thousands of scientists and others.

The same was not true for countless radicals, trade unionists, and socialists who lost their livelihoods and sometimes their lives, as a result. Nonetheless the attacks on Oppenheimer, despite the lack of any real basis, the failure of any sense of natural justice, the collusion, smears and lies that brought him down had lasting impacts. Oppenheimer's brother Frank lost his job in his beloved physics environment. Toni, the gifted linguist daughter of Robert and Kitty, failed to get a job as a UN translator due to the FBI's grudge against the family. The rejection surely contributed to her mental health issues and eventual suicide. I think that accusations that the US government killed Jean Tatlock because of her politics and closeness to Oppenheimer have some merit.

Oppenheimer was not a Communist spy at the heart of the US nuclear programme. He was a gifted scientist and thinker who was brave enough to speak out. He was not a political activist, and once he had lost his position, he retreated from explicit criticisms of the threat of nuclear war. He seems to have made little, or no, comment on US politics - either imperialist or civil rights - in the later years of his life. As a public intellectual he had significant limits.

American Prometheus is certainly the best biography of this complicated man. The authors have done an admirable job in drawing out the factors that shaped Oppenheimer. They are less clear on those factors that shaped the politics of the system that would destroy him, and continues to deploy nuclear weapons today. Nonetheless through this brilliant account we learn a great deal about the politics that have shaped the world that we live in today, and the individuals who built it - as well as created forces that could destroy it all. A great biography should always leave the reader feeling like they've lived the triumph and/or tragedy of its subject. American Prometheus certainly does that.

Sunday, May 04, 2025

Margaret Mead – Coming of Age in Samoa

Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa is one of the most well-known books of anthropology ever written. Mead was in her 20s when she took the audacious trip to Samoa, and then on to the smaller island of Taʻū to live with the Samoan community there. Her account of the lives of the people there, and her focus on the lives of young women was extremely unusual for the time. First published in 1930 the book carries with it some contemporary prejudices, though it must be said that at the same time the book is remarkably progressive for the time – simply taking issues such as female sexuality and gender issues seriously was radical.

The book was written explicitly as a popular work, and is devoid of the complex anthropological classifications and relationship diagrams that bedevil other, similar works. The book is also written as a polemic, aimed at a Western audience (primarily in the United States), about education and development of young people. As Mead writes in her original introduction,

this tale of another way of life is mainly concerned with education, with the process by which the baby, arrived cultureless upon the human scene, becomes a full-fledged adult member of his or her society. The strongest light will fall upon the ways in which Samoan education, in its broadest sense, differs from our own. And from this contrast we may be able to turn, made newly and vividly self-conscious and self-critical, to judge anew and perhaps fashion differently the education we give to our children.

The opening chapter describes daily life in Samoa, a mix of work, play and rest, centred on the production of food (through fishing and agriculture) and the various roles that people play. While Samoa is not a pre-class society, in fact it is heavily hierarchical on a regional and very local scale, it is a society where class differences matter much less than in capitalist society. Chiefs and heads of households have more of a role in terms of managing and organising, at least at the time that Mead visited, village life. The collection of a surplus allows more for the functioning of ceremonial, religious and celebratory life, than the maintenance of a position of power and wealth.

There are strict gender roles as well. However gendered labour is also shaped by differences related to age. Women, and girls, primarily focus on the home, though some girls and women also fish and collect food and some boys work in the home cooking. Age also plays a role in determining hierarchy in a way that is far more than just who is more important than others. For instance, children, including very small children often look after younger children. But all children understand that older people have authority to order them about. This means children are central to Samoan production, but they are also more collectively looked after and developed. They are also freer, at least as they become teenagers, to change households and move about. Meads explorations of the way age, class and gender inter-relate and sympathetic and detailed and make for real insights into a society very different from ours. Indeed this forms the very basis for her points about shining a light on our own education systems.

One important aspect to Samoan culture however was its close nature. Children were much more exposed to the realities of human life – death, birth and sex – than Westerners, especially in Mead’s era. As such children where not sheltered from sex, death and birth. Sex in particular is part of getting older. Children clearly experimented more in Samoan culture, and were prepared and protected. There is also a curious difference between the sexuality of young people before marriage and that after. Young people seemed to have frequently sexual encounters, both hetro and homosexual, and it seems that their first sex was usually with an older person. This latter part feels uncomfortable and it is not clear to me from Mead’s writing exactly how this works unless it is abusive. Some of the sexual realities of Samoan society are, however, much more progressive than our own. The acceptance of homosexuality as a natural part of life for younger people is very different, though again Mead does recount a case of “deviance”, to use her word, where an older male Samoan who might be considered transsexual and/or homosexual is treated with disdain by the community and, indeed the author. Despite Mead’s own possible bisexuality, her comments about homosexuality in Samoan society imply it is merely a childhood distraction, or “deviance”. with hindsight this seems either naïve, a mistake or perhaps Mead recognising that Western society would not accept a truthful account.

Mead also shows that rape, in a particular form, seems to have been relatively common. She writes:

Between the unmarried there are three forms of relationship: the clandestine encounter, “under the pam trees,” the published elopement, Avaga, and the ceremonious courtship in which a boy “sits before the girl”; and on the edge of these, the curious form of surreptitious rape, called moetotolo, sleep crawling, resorted to by youths who find favour in no maiden’s eyes.

These relationships and realities belay the idea that Samoan society in this period was a Utopia. While there were clearly more open and relaxed attitudes to sex, and young people did seem to enjoy and have freedom to explore their sexuality before marriage, it is also true that there were some violent and unpleasant traditions and beliefs. The focus, within the community on "deflowering" of young women and the moetotolo that is related to this, imply a structural problem within Samoan society's approach to women. It demonstrates that for all its positives in its approach to sexuality, Samoan culture had, at the time, an unequal setup between men and women, and consequent unequal power relations.

Nonetheless Mead's work does remind us that societies can be organised very differently. For instance, Mead reports that her Samoan friends laughed at the story of Romeo and Juliet, believing the idea of lifelong romantic monogamy hilarious. This was not because marriage and love did not happen, or that lifelong love between partners did not occur, but because the idea of a couple only having sex with one another for their whole lives was impossible to understand.

Indeed adultery and consequent punishment did happen. But it punishment was usually about the offended party being paid a fine, such as some well-made mats.

Mead’s discussion of the economic life of Samoan people tells us much about different approaches to life. She tackles questions that remain extremely relevant – how does a differently organised society change approaches to things like Mental Distress, loneliness and love. One interesting point is that the role of the immediately family is much less significant to Samoan people. Mead says:

It is interesting to note that a larger family community, in which there are several adult men and women, seems to ensure the child against the development of the crippling attitudes which have been labelled Oedipus complexes, Electra complexes and so on.

The Samoan picture shows that it is not necessary to channel so deeply the affection of a child for its parents and suggests that while we would reject that part of the Samoan scheme which holds no rewards for us, the segregation of the sexes before puberty, we may learn from a picture in which the home does not dominate and distort the life of the child.

These are interesting points. The central role of the “bourgeois” family in Western society is remarkably constraining. Leaving aside Mead’s dated psychiatric comments and her framing from her own, much more segregated society, the point that an extended family allows much wider child development still stands.

There are, of course, problems. Mead’s work is often shaped by her own times and as such some of the language and analysis absolutely jars. She also knows that she is seeing Samoan society in a period of rapid change, as US influence is changing things dramatically. She notes, for instance, that the recent compulsory attendance of children at school by the authorities is quickly destroying traditional society which relies heavily on child labour to care for the youngest children and prepare food. This would only be exacerbated in the decades after the period when Mead was writing.

It is also clear that Mead’s approach to certain key questions relies too heavily on a belief that adult behaviour develops just from conditioning in childhood. Yes the differences between Samoan and Western societies are important and the different approach to education is tremendously important. But the organisation of the “economic base” in Western society shapes these factors, rather than simply a desire to educate differently.

These problems aside this is a tremendously influential and significant work. The attacks on Mead’s work by later anthropologists seem, in no small part, to stem from a belief that young women were not, and could not, be the independent, sexual and confident people that Mead described. It is also likely that dismissal of Mead herself, due perhaps to her gender, lay at their root. Mead’s youth, sexuality and liberal politics, no doubt made her a more insightful scientist than many of her peers. The book she wrote reminds us that humans have constantly found new and varied ways to organise their lives. While we should not pretend that Samoan society in the 1920s was a perfect utopia for all, Mead's account should give those of us trying to change the world renewed confidence that things do not need to be like they are.

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Andrew Chaikin - A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts

Despite developments and commitments from various space agencies to return humans to the moon, over fifty years after the first moon landing in 1969, it seems such explorations are a long way off. The achievements of the US state in putting men on the moon between 1969 and 1972 seem, today, somewhat perplexing. They by many different metrics incredible achievements. Yet today they seem out of time. Even futuristic. When we think of them today, particularly in the light of commitments to return to the moon, the landings themselves seem solely technical achievements. Few people can name more than one of the men who landed on the moon. Even in the 1970s Neil Armstrong and Alan Shepherd were usually the only names that the public could remember.

Andrew Chaikin's book tells the history of the moonlandings with an attempt to move beyond the technical story. It is based on a myriad of interviews with astronauts, ground crew, scientists and their partners. While many of these stories have been told previously, and there are only a certain number of anecdotes that can be told from a Space Race that was barely a decade long, there is still much of interest. Those who remain fascinated by space programmes in general and Apollo in particular would be advised to read Chaikin's book, even if you think you know the stories. What he does with the book is to rescue the humanity of the process, and place that at the front of what is essentially a techincal story.

He beings with the horror of Apollo 1's launchpad fire and the deaths of its three astronauts. It is a moment that shocked the world, and reshaped the space programme itself. In some respects it professionalised the Nasa machine, turning it into a safety conscious, self aware programme. The shock, and bad publicity, was both a spur and a warning. Chaikin's account of Apollo 1 links it to the growing awareness among Nasa and the astronauts themselves of the uniquenes of the moon landing process. While the accident of Apollo 13 had the world watching as the astronauts and mission control fought to bring the ship home, it was not an accident that led to a massive transformation. Apollo 1 personified the risks and costs of going to space.

But, Chaikin's theme really develops with a scientific issue that he places front and centre of the story - the question of geology. While going to the moon was always supposed to be about the science, in effect it was never about the science. The "contingency sample" that Neil Armstrong was badgered about by mission control in the first minutes of his landing was needed, because something had to be brought back. But the science was secondary, especially in the minds of the astronauts. This was transformed for Apollo 15 as key personnel fought to include proper geology training, and Apollo 15's crew were highly trained to know what to look for. In some ways Apollo 15 was the key mission. Forgotten in many regards today, Apollo 15's moon walkers looked at the landscape in a completely different way to their predecessors. Their ability to make informed guesses about rocks and materials was a significant step forward and transformative to the mission.

Arguments about whether or not humans are needed to explore were put to rest with Apollo 15. The final two missions took this to further extremes. Though it seems remarkable that the only true "scientist" to land on the moon did so with the final mission. Harrison "Jack" Schmitt's contribution was unique, and his inclusion was a massive boon for scientists even today.

Chaikin's account of the centrality of the geology to the moon flights is illuminating, because it is the one of the few ways in which human emotion becomes part of the story. The excitement of the astronauts on Apollo 8 to see Earthrise, is not really about exploration. It's about them comprehending the Nasa's achievement. The excitement of the latter moon walkers at a coloured rock, or the absence of volcanic debris, is telling because it comes from a shift away from the moon trips as being purely about achievement and more about exploration.

This then makes Chaikin's wider story - of the eventual budget cuts to the space programme even more tragic. As Apollo was really becoming something "for all mankind", it was stopped. Sadly Chaikin doesn't explore this enough. With Vietnam the backdrop, and protests demanding funding for social programmes, health and education, Chaikin could have used the opportunity to explore whether or not Apollo was a valid use of scant resources. It is interesting to know that Nixon considered cutting the programme after Apollo 11, the first landing, and almost chopped everything after Apollo 15. Happy to parade with the astronauts or invite them to dinner, he was also concerned to ensure that budget cuts didn't affect Vietnam, falling on the space programme instead. In fact the US could have gone to the moon, and provided healthcare and education for all. They didn't want to because that was not their priority. Cutting Apollo made it look like they cared. When in effect they didn't.

There are other absences in Chaikin's book. He doesn't enquire, even in passing, why no women or non-white people went to the moon - or were even considered. He also fails to explore some of the more personal stories. Duane Graveline, for instance, a doctor who was one of six scientists including Schmitt, selected for possible moon exploration, dropped out for "personal reasons". These reasons aren't discussed by Chaikin. It was actually because he was going through a divorce and that would tarnish Apollo's "all American" image. Graveline turned out to be a deeply flawed and unpleasant character - married six times, accused of violence, sexual abuse of minors and losing his medical license - so he was no loss at all. But Chaikin could have used this event to discuss more about the nature of Nasa's choices for missions and the pressures on the astronauts.

While the book centres on the astronauts and to a lesser extent their families and mission control, other figures are only there in passing. Many are not mentioned at all. Though we do learn about hundreds of workers losing their jobs as the budget cuts bite. Chaikin's focus on the Apollo astronauts and their voyages illuminates their individual careers, and their life after the moon. But it doesn't really help the reader understand Apollo within wider American society. There are hints of this though. Chaikin reports that Frank Bormann, commander of Apollo 8, which circled the moon in late 1968 received a telegram out of the blue on this return. The author, now doubt refering to Vietnam, to the Civil Rights movement and perhaps the growing counter-culture movements as well, simply saud "You saved 1968". Apollo in this sense was served to reassert US self-identity. To demonstrate that the nation was powerful and unassailable.

This is perhaps best illuminated by a comment that Chaikin makes right at the end of the book. He says that the Apollo missions were the "last great act undertaken by the United States out of a sense of optimism". This is, in fact, entirely inaccurate. Apollo was undertaken precisely because the US was in imperialist competition with the Soviet Union. This was why the cuts were made so quickly, why only a single scientist was sent to the moon, and why neither the US nor anyone else has returned. Apollo was undertaken with great cynicism. The despair of workers, scientists and astronauts was the result of that.

But read Andrew Chaikin's book for a different reason too. For the joy of the astronauts on the moon. For what they learnt about the moon. And most importantly because it reminds us that humanity can achieve a great deal. Let's hope that future generations can solve Earth bound problems and then take our questioning and inquisitive selves back to the moon.

Sunday, December 01, 2024

John Gribbin - The Universe: A Biography

John Gribbin is one of the longest, and best regarded, popularisers of science. His multiple books have spanned biological subjects and scientific biography, but he is perhaps best known for his books on physics and astronomy. This "biography" of the universe claims to be constructed along the lines of a classical biography, and is recommended as a good introduction to the historical development and possible futures of the universe.

Before he begins at the beginning, with a chapter on the "Big Bang" and associated ideas, Gribbin outlines how we understand the universe - this is less about the technology scientists use to explore and examine the universe, rather its about the conceptual ideas that humans have developed to understand physics at their most basic level. In particular there are outlines of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, before Gribbing tackles the question of whether there might be a theory of everything.

Exploring the early development of the universe in the immediate aftermath of the Big Band Gribbin has to tackle two complex questions that can be difficult for people new to the concepts outlined here. The first is the question of universe expansion and the second the question of dark energy and matter. These topics are explained simply and accessibly, though its notable that some of Gribbin's writing is slightly dated. He writes before the proof that the Higgs Boson exists, which underlines a central tenet of physics as we have it. There are also references to space missions and experiments that have since got underway.

I found the book most of interest in its chapters on the development of more mundance and closer to home subjects. Despite my intense interest in the structure of the universe, I found myself more entranced by Gribbins exploration of how elements form, and then the processes of planetary formation. In the section on the development of life in our solar system, Gribbin offers a good overview of theories, though he himself is clear he is most convinced that life originated in the "GMCs [Giant Molecular Clouds, in the material from which stars and planets then formed". He argues that the more common place idea that life began in "warm ponds" on Earth, "where complex organic molecules brought to Earth by comets" formed the basis for life, is a "conservative" idea.

I'm not sure that this is entirely fair, and it probably depends on the definition of life in this context. Amino acids certainly do exist in GMCs, but whether that was the place were life as most people understand it began seems open to discussion.

John Gribbin's book The Universe is a very fast read, a good overview of really big history, and a nice starting point for further reading. It's accessible and interesting, and where it is dated it is only because the author is writing on subjects were research is very cutting edge.

Sunday, January 28, 2024

Michael Collins - Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys

Michael Collins was the third man on Apollo 11. He was the bloke that stayed in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin landed, and the one who was routinely described as the loneliest human in the universe for being the most isolated from other people. This biographical account of his life before Apollo 11, and the years afterward was published in the early 1970s. It is, by far, the best of the astronaut books that I have read. A highly driven individual, Collins went in the airforce, applied twice to be an astronaut and ended up flying to space in Gemini 10 and around the moon in Apollo 11. Had he stayed with Nasa he would likely have commanded Apollo 17 and landed on the moon.

Carrying the Fire is an exceptionally interesting biography. Collins is no wooden military pilot - he is a deep thinking individuals, fascinated by literature and poetry (as this remarkable short interview with him illustrates). Collins was, I thought as I read this, one of the Apollo astronauts that I would most liked to have drunk a cup of tea with.

The book gives a sense of the drudergy behind the headline grabbing achievements of Nasa's space programme. Collins describes the monotony of the training. Every aspect of the Apollo missions was practiced before hand. The crew trained for every eventuality, and Collins explains how they were almost on autopilot. Nothing was left to chance - every conceivable disaster, however unlikely - was considered, trained for and practiced. But it was exhausting and hard work. By the time of the mission it seems that the crew could do it blindfold.

The mission was, of course, a collective effort involving thousands of people in addition to the three astronauts. But the crew is often portrayed as a collective. But Collins implies that they were really three very different individuals, that did not quite hit it off. It's clear that he felt that he was a slight outsider - not having to train for the landing meant that Aldrin and Armstrong had a very different, closer relationship. That said, it's interesting that Collins reports that Aldrin carried a huge chip on his shoulder that Armstrong pulled rank and took the first steps on the moon. I certainly got the impression that Collins didn't really like the other too very much. He confides, "evern as a self-acknowledged loner, I feel a bit freakish about our tendency as a crew to transfer only essential information, rather than thoughts or feelings."

This comes out in small ways. I don't think I had quite appreciated the extent to which the return from the lunar surface to rendezvous with the Command Module Colombia and Collins was such an unknown. Collins talks about the stress and anxiety - orbiting the moon surrounded by magnificent sights, but only wanting the mission to move on to the next step. When the other two come back and enter into Colombia, Collins says that Aldrin is the first one in and "I grab his head a hand on each temple, and am about to give him a smooch on the forehead... but then, embarrased, I think better of it and grab his hand, and then Neil's." It's a remarkable admission that illustrates the gulf between them.

Collins is a professional, and his book is full of the sort of detail that appeals to people like myself, obsessed with the details of spaceflight. But it is also full of the human factor - the struggles he had on Gemini with using the sextant to navigate the ship. The problems he encountered on the Gemini space walk. The fear and anxiety that were constantly there, among the amazing achievements of the space programme. Collins himself was a huge advocate of futher exploration, and his dismay with the retrograde motion of Nasa after Apollo is palpable in the prefaces written forty and fifty years after the first landing.

But after Apollo, and in the years that followed, it's clear that Collins developed a much deeper set of ideas. He writes about his ecological worries for the planet and even, in 2009 and 2019 declares that "we need a new economic paradigm to produce prosperity without growth." Degrowth enthusasts would probably be surprised to find Michael Collins was a fellow traveller!

Reading Carrying the Fire is a rewarding experience. Collins was lucky to be part of one of humanity's finest achievements. He is greatful for that. But he also describes it in terms of work and personal life. He knew he could walk on the moon if he stuck with the programme, and was encouraged to do so. But he didn't, because he also wanted to live a life with his friends and family. He writes, candidly, about how Aldrin in particular struggled with the post-Nasa life, quickly being hospitalised for mental distress. Collins avoided that, though life had its ups and downs. Collins did not go back to the moon, because he could not face two or three more years of simulator training and stress. Anyway, he thought that others would carry the fire. But the politicians and penny counters had other ideas.

Saturday, December 16, 2023

James Gleick - Chaos

I first read James Gleick's Chaos when just after first publication in 1990 or 1991 when I was at college and dreaming of a career in the sciences. Reading it again, thirty or so years later, was to be transported back to a time when science felt shiny and new, the world a problem to be cracked open and unravelled. Life, of course, is more complex and the world is more than a set of equations - which is really what Gleick's book is trying to tell the reader.

Chaos remains an excellent introduction to the subject of complex and non-linear science. One big reason for this is that when Gleick wrote it, the science had only recently broken out of its niche areas into mainstream understanding. The world's coffee tables were groaning under the weight of highly coloured photo books containing images from Mandlebrot Sets and everyone wanted to understand strange attractors. Gleick takes us through the history of the science, how a few lonesome scientists noticed irrational behaviour in their maths. Seemingly simple equations could, depending on circumstance, give widely varying results but when these results were plotted down and graphed, order would appear.

Reading Chaos today is to get a sense of a new, emergent science, breaking through old barriers between disciplines, turning scientists labours on their heads and making everyone ask difficult questions of themselves. It is no surprise that Gleick places Thomas Kuhn's idea of Scientific Revolution at the heart of his book. It clearly felt like a revolution was taking place.

Thirty years later I am not so sure. Gleick's emphasis on rapid change perhaps arises out of the close look he was taking at a number of scientists. But really this is a book that emphasises how modern science is so compartmentalised that new insights were difficult to accept and scientists often didn't understand each other. That remains true today. Nonetheless Chaos was a real breakthrough in terms of scientific understanding of the order, and disorder, of the universe.

Gleick's work is accessible, but he avoids a deep dive into the science. This is fair enough, because it might quickly become incomprehensible otherwise. But it does mean that in places there are elements of handwaving, or a glossing over of detail that left me wanting more. Nonetheless there's enough here to make the reader understanding the generalities. His focus is on the personalities and the processes. Nonetheless the anecdotal material illuminates an era in scientific research when mavericks could make a real difference. It is hard to believe that any university today would tolerate the Dynamical Systems Collective operating unofficially and borrowing equipment as they did at the University of California in the 1970s.

Gleick's approach does make it easier to see how Chaos theory arose out of a particular set of circumstances. It is interesting, for instance, that several of the earliest researchers were individuals who defied the mainstream politically and organisationally. It's hard not to see that the communal living and activity of the Dynamical Systems Collective helped them to defy certain scientific norms. Indeed, the sort of dialectical thinking that helps understand Chaos certainly was there among some scientists. It is also clear that the world of science was changing - new technologies, particularly the computer, allowed Chaos researchers to do the massive number of calculations necessary to generate the eye catching and data rich graphs and pictures that allow us to visualise the science itself. Nonetheless the book is of an age - there are no women scientists mentioned at all, and women only really make an appearance as wives of scientists. Thankfully that has changed at least a little, though we have a long way to go.

This brings me to a final comment. Chaos, the book, was written at a particular point in the science's development and it bears the hallmarks of its era. Some of the line drawings are very poor, though the colour plates stand up well (though a modern PC will now generate them in seconds, not hours). Some of Gleick's remarks are now amusing, as when he muses on computer power. But this is a book that stood up surprisingly well, and reminded me of a time when, for me, science remained this big shiny answer to all the complex questions. Then Gleick helped send me on a personal trajectory. Looking back I am not sure the revolution was quite as significant as is implied here. But science was changed and this book tells the story well.

Friday, August 11, 2023

Dan Hooper - At the Edge of Time

Somewhere on my shelves I have a copy of Steven Weinberg's book The First Three Minutes, a 1977 classic that looks at the origins of the universe in the Big Bang. Dan Hooper's At the Edge of Time might be considered a modern updating of that book, though it really looks at the "first three seconds" and summarises much of the latest research about how the early universe developed and led to what we can see today in the skies.

The immediate aftermath of the Big Bang was an incredible time. For extremely brief periods the rapidly expanding universe went through a series of different states that saw subatomic particles crashing into each other at massive speeds. Periods known as the Quark-Gluon Plasma era and the Grand Unified era followed in quick succession, followed by longer periods (of minutes) which saw the formation of the first protons and neutrons, followed by the creation of nuclei in the 50,000 years that followed. It is a complex time during which, as Hooper points out, "almost everything... remains a mystery to us". It is a time when the laws of physics we know today probably behaved very very differently, and when the universe expanded faster than the speed of light.

It is this inflationary period to which Hooper devotes much of his discussion - because it is in this period that the large scale structures of the contemporary universe have their origin. It, as he says, ends after a brief moment and "in a sense one can think of the end of inflation as the true beginning of the universe we live in". When Weinberg wrote his book, the idea of the Big Bang had only just been accepted by most cosmologists. Hooper explains that many of them probably expected that 50 years later we would know much of what there is to know, but that isn't true. In fact some of this book is tinged with disappointment as he points out that he, and many of his colleagues, expected the Large Hadron Collider to answer most of their questions about what took place in the very early universe.

The book is easy to understand, though readers without some physics and astronomy background might find some of it hard going. I was challenged by some of it - one realises that ones physics degree from the early 1990s is going out of date quite quickly when reading Hooper or Chanda Prescod-Weinstein). But at times I wasn't sure my incomprehension was simply lack of clarity on physics. For instance, I thought that Hooper confused the many universes theory by simply explaining how the existing universe is broken up into sections that are unobservable due to them being beyond a cosmic horizon where they are receding from the observer faster than light. This is important because, as Hooper points out, we cannot really explain how the temperatures in those distant areas are so similar. But it is not, in my opinion, quite the same as the many universes idea that speculates about multiple universes with (perhaps) different physical laws.

The book is at its best when Hooper is linking these complex ideas to his day to day work. In fact there is rather a nice part when he explains what he actually does! I think this sort of communication is important because it helps to ground science in reality, as well as making it clear that scientists are ordinary workers too.

For those fascinated by astronomy and the early universe, Dan Hooper's book is excellent. Let us hope that his firm belief that many of the unknowns he highlights will be explained soon.

ResoluteReader