In Adrian Desmond and James Moore鈥檚 tour de force, Darwin
(Penguin, 1992) they describe Charles writing to his wife Emma as he sits at
the bedside of their dying daughter Annie.
鈥淎nnie vomited slightly a second time and took less of the gruel. As Brodie
sponged her face and hands, she put her arms round the nurse鈥檚 neck and kissed
her. Then she slept peacefully. In the small hours, Charles sat circled in
candlelight and poured out his heart to Emma. `Whilst writing to you, I can cry,
tranquilly,鈥� he confessed. `Otherwise I am constantly up & down: I cannot
sit still.鈥� 鈥�
Annie鈥檚 death left Darwin with a profound sense of the unjustness of nature,
and a recognition at last that there could be no God. He had, according to
Desmond and Moore, 鈥渁 fresh vision of the tragic contingency of nature鈥�.
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That such a particular, unrepeatable and intensely personal event could
influence the course of science was for a long time unacceptable to historians
of science. A 鈥淓ureka鈥� moment was assumed to occur only to solitary scientists
alone with their data.
Later, even the concept of 鈥済reat men of science鈥� was temporarily displaced
by the notion of the 鈥渉istory of scientific ideas鈥�. And sociologists located the
agency of scientific change in society, culture and context: sociology, after
all, is not about individuals.
Yet even science-as-social-construct needs constructors. 杏吧原创s work
within a culture and in a context that consists not only of their society and
their times, but also of their lives, their families and themselves. Prefacing
the Cambridge Science Biographies series reissued this year (most cost about
拢14), editor David Knight proclaims: 鈥淪cience is a human activity; the
personalities of those who practise it are important.鈥�
Overall, however, the series is more factual than personal. For instance, in
Darwin鈥檚 biography, Peter Bowler presents Annie鈥檚 awful death in a few lines.
And in Michael Sharratt鈥檚 Galileo, all we learn about Galileo is that
he was conceited and 鈥渘ot cold鈥�. Perhaps the historical sources allow us no
more. In his Isaac Newton, Rupert Hall implies that the apparent
scarcity of Newton鈥檚 personal relationships may be an artefact of the record,
not a fact of the life.
Rather different is the life drawn in exquisite and revolting detail in John
Banville鈥檚 1981 novel Kepler. Unconstrained by the record, but richly
informed by the period, Banville tells of a stinking, dark, precarious world
where dukes in cloth-of-gold mete out their spiteful patronage. Here, Kepler
discards the principle of uniform velocity of the planets while puking
absentmindedly during a prostitutes鈥� brawl.
The personal can inform even when it repels. In Ray Monk鈥檚 discomfortingly
compelling biography, Bertrand Russell (Jonathan Cape, 拢25, ISBN
0 224 03026 4), we learn that the philosopher tried to alleviate the pain of his
wife鈥檚 unrequited love for him by being cruel to her: if she had reason to love
him less, her pain would decrease accordingly. Full marks for logic, Bertie, but
zero for human understanding.
Denis Brian鈥檚 Einstein (Wiley, 拢18.99/$30, ISBN 0 471
11459 6) also deals with his relationships with women, previously considered
inappropriate for a scientist鈥檚 biography. Brian brings us Einstein鈥檚 assertion
that while special relativity would eventually have been discovered without him,
the Eroica symphony could never have existed without Beethoven.
Individual artists matter, but individual scientists don鈥檛.
Certainly, bookshops teem with biographies of the interpreters and
manipulators of the human sphere鈥� actors, politicians and soldiers. These
people live their professional lives in public: we buy the books to see what
they do in private. But the scientists, whose profession is private and who are
presumed to 鈥渞eflect鈥�, rather than 鈥渞efract鈥�, the cosmos, have become like a
mirror鈥攊nvisible. We have tended to look at them to see not what they are,
but only what they do.
Those most likely to benefit from the books鈥� dogged factuality and measured
speculation are surely students working on essays. Why else would anyone read
Bowler on Darwin, when they could enjoy Desmond and Moore, or Janet Browne鈥檚
widely acclaimed Charles Darwin: Voyaging, now in paperback?