London
To Light Such a Candle by Keith Laidler, Oxford University Press, 拢25,
ISBN 0198500564
WHEN the quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg remarked that 鈥渟cience clears
the fields on which technology can build鈥�, he was encouraging the common
misconception that technology trails on the coat-tails of science. Yet
technology has been around longer than science; toolmakers were at work
thousands of years before scientists.
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Although most of us believe we know the difference between science and
technology, few of us can give a definition of the difference that stands up to
close scrutiny. The difference is worth making, especially to those in
government who make decisions on funding. How many of the officials really
appreciate that whereas technology is about economically producing useful
things, science is concerned with ideas that may or may not have a practical
application?
Many governments in the West have demonstrated a worrying loss of faith in
fundamental research and a naive enthusiasm for projects intended to bear
economic fruit in the short-to-medium term. 鈥淭echnology foresight鈥� techniques
have flourished in Britain, Australia and Finland, but funding of particle
physics has come under pressure鈥攚itness the US government鈥檚 brutal
cancellation in 1993 of its supercollider project.
Keith Laidler, emeritus professor of chemistry at Ottawa University, believes
that an understanding of the relationship between science and technology is
crucial if scientists are to improve their communications with the public and
their elected representatives. In his handsomely produced To Light Such a
Candle, he sets out to clarify this complex and changing association
through seven essays, each devoted to a single historical theme: steam engines,
photography, electrical power, radio transmission, electronics, large molecules
and nuclear power.
It鈥檚 a pity that Laidler hasn鈥檛 included genetic engineering and information
technology鈥攖he two technologies which define our age鈥攂ecause their
history would have shed light on the current science-technology interface.
Laidler鈥檚 treatment of his chosen topics is typical of the scientist
fascinated by the history of science, rather than of the specialist historian.
Each essay tells how a familiar technology has emerged from the work of a few
key individuals, such as the steam engine from the pioneering efforts of James
Watt and quantum electronic devices from the discoverer of quantum theory, Max
Planck. Laidler has amassed an impressive array of unfamiliar anecdotes and is
most at home when telling us his best stories, even when they don鈥檛 bear
directly on the stated purpose of his book.
Michael Faraday is, understandably, one of Laidler鈥檚 heroes. He describes
Faraday鈥檚 remarkable progress from an uneducated childhood in a poor family to,
twenty years later, the seminal work that has an enduring impact on our lives,
not least through electric power generation. Laidler makes a persuasive case
that Faraday鈥檚 work at London鈥檚 Royal Institution would now be worth no fewer
than six Nobel prizes.
You can鈥檛 fault the comprehensiveness and accuracy of Laidler鈥檚 account, but
he continually fails to explain how it relates to his theme of distinguishing
between science and technology. We learn a lot about Faraday鈥檚 life, for
example, but remain unclear about his motivations and about the complex
relationship between his theoretical work and its myriad technological
applications.
The same criticism applies to most of the other essays, especially the one on
J. J. Thomson, who inaugurated the electronic age just over a century ago with
his discovery of the electron. Laidler鈥檚 discussion of the genesis of the
transistor in the 1940s鈥攐ne of the most intriguing examples of
collaboration between scientists, technology and big business鈥攊s dull and
perfunctory. It should have been one of his most instructive episodes.
More successful is his account of the influence of the great 19th-century
Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell鈥檚 unified theory of electricity
and magnetism was not only the theoretical basis of the transmission of radio
waves, but it was also a crucial inspiration for Einstein鈥檚 special theory of
relativity, published in 1906, which includes the famous energy-mass
relationship E=mc2. In a worrying lapse of accuracy, Laidler
gives the false impression that Einstein introduced the equation ten years
later, as a consequence of his 1916 general theory of relativity.
Laidler is dismissive about Guglielmo Marconi鈥檚 reputation as the inventor of
radio technology: 鈥淚t is going too far to call Marconi a fool, but he was close
to being one as far as radio transmission was concerned.鈥� The celebrated
Italian鈥檚 achievement was not as a scientific or technological innovator, but as
the person who did most to make radio commercially feasible. Contrary to popular
belief, says Laidler, it was Sir Oliver Lodge who first demonstrated radio
transmission.
Nearing the end of his book, I became convinced that Laidler isn鈥檛 much
interested in helping us to understand science鈥檚 relationship with technology.
Perhaps his unwritten intention was to write some clear, orthodox histories of
science and technology鈥攁nd enliven them with stories that wouldn鈥檛 be
familiar to most scientists. He comes across not so much as a historian of ideas
as a serial anecdotalist without a theme.
The final chapter, entitled 鈥溞影稍磗, science and society鈥�, sounded
promising鈥攑erhaps he would identify the key points of his essays. But he
confesses immediately that 鈥渋t is hard to identify any common pattern鈥� in his
seven case studies.
I had prepared myself for a disappointing coda and the author duly delivered.
Rather than receiving a distilled central message, the reader must instead
struggle through a blizzard of detail, repetition and platitude. Some remarks
are stupefyingly trite, such as 鈥渟ome scientists are gregarious, some are
hermits, and most are somewhere in between鈥�.
Among Laidler鈥檚 conclusions, all apparently bolted on to the end, is his
notion that 鈥減ure research should be judged entirely on the basis of its
quality, and not in terms of its practical applications鈥�. But what is meant by
鈥渜uality鈥�? This is the heart of the problem. Many of the errors in international
research funding have arisen after government officials tried to measure quality
in terms of potential economic benefits.
Laidler is right to argue that many of these decisions could have been
avoided if those responsible had a better understanding of the difference
between science and technology. He is right to believe that an accessible book
is urgently needed to clarify the issues for nonspecialists. Alas, for him and
for us, he has not yet written it.