Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe (40 page)

Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors using the concept of
heuristics
: simple rules of thumb that guide decision making. One of their findings was that people tend to rely more on their intuitive understanding—which is based largely on their personal experience—than on actual data. Naturally, scientists of the caliber of Darwin, Pauling, or Einstein believed that their intuition would guide them to the correct answer even when the right way forward was elusive or when the scientific landscape was changing at a bone-breaking pace. As I have noted above, Bertrand Russell understood the dangers of overconfidence and certainty, and he thought that he had found a solution when he advocated a habit of hinging beliefs “upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings.”
Unfortunately, it is not easy to follow this advice. Modern neuroscience has shown unambiguously that the orbitofrontal cortex (a region in the frontal lobes in the brain) integrates emotions into the stream of rational thought. Humans are not purely rational beings capable of completely turning off their passions.

Despite their blunders, and perhaps even
because
of them, the five individuals I have followed and sketched in this book have produced not just innovations within their respective sciences but also truly great intellectual creations. Unlike many scientific works that target only professionals from within the same discipline as their audience, the oeuvres of these masters have crossed the boundaries between science and general culture. The impact of their ideas has been felt far beyond their immediate significance for biology, geology, physics, or chemistry. In this sense, the work of Darwin, Kelvin, Pauling, Hoyle, and Einstein comes closer in spirit to achievements in literature, art, and music—both cut a broad swath across erudition.

There is no better way to end a book on blunders than with an important reminder—a plea for humility, if you like—that nobody can express more eloquently than Darwin:

We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

© NASA, ESA, AND J. COYLE JR. (FOR SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE)

MARIO LIVIO
is an internationally known astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of
The Golden Ratio,
a highly acclaimed book about mathematics and art for which he received the International Pythagoras Prize and the Peano Prize, and also
The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved, Is God a Mathematician?
and
The Accelerating Universe.
He writes a regular blog,
A Curious Mind,
and lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Visit the author at
www.mariolivio.com
.

FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Mario-Livio

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A
LSO BY
M
ARIO
L
IVIO

Is God a Mathematician?

The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry

The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number

The Accelerating Universe: Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos

Chapter 1: Mistakes and Blunders

world championship match:
A detailed description can be found in Evans and Smith (1973). A brief summary is online at
www.mark-weeks.com/chess/72fs$$.htm
.

Ray Krone of Phoenix:
A description of this sad case can be found online, eg, at
www.innocence project.org/Content/Ray_Krone.php
.

The British historian A. J. P. Taylor:
Alan John Percival Taylor (1906–90). Taylor 1963.

President Woodrow Wilson:
Wilson 1913.

Chapter 2: The Origin

On November 29, 1975:
The record is apparently held by the vulture known as Rüppell’s Griffon (
Gyps rueppellii
); see
www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1976/how-high-can-birds-and-bees-fly
.

record-setting explorer Jacques Piccard:
See, eg, “Jacques Piccard,”
Encyclopedia of World Biography,
2004. Online at
www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404707243.html
.

A recent catalogue:
Chapman 2009.

The most recent study predicts:
Mora et al. 2011.

one tablespoon of dirt:
Gans et al. 2005.

The ocellaris clown fish:
Scientifically,
Amphiprion ocellaris
.

According to Greek philosopher Aristotle:
Aristotle fourth century BCE.

A similar description appears:
Pliny the Elder first century CE. Can be downloaded from
www.perseus.tufts.edu
.

The famous Roman orator:
Cicero 45 BCE.

precisely the line of reasoning adopted by Paley:
Paley 1802. William Paley (1743–1805) published an influential book entitled
Natural Theology,
in which he contrasted a natural rock with a watch. Ironically, through radiometric dating (see chapter 5), rocks can determine the age of the Earth—a
much longer time interval than that ever measured by any watchmaker’s clock.

The first edition of Darwin’s book:
There are, of course, numerous printings of
The Origin
. Two that I found particularly attractive are
The Annotated Origin,
annotated by James T. Costa (Darwin 2009), and one reprinted in facsimile with an introduction by Ernst Mayr (Darwin 1964).

“In the distant future I see”:
Darwin 2009 [1859], p. 488. Darwin himself followed up on his own prediction in
The Descent of Man,
published in 1871, and in
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,
published the following year. Current developments in evolutionary psychology can be seen as descendants of these pioneering efforts.

“We thus learn that man”:
Darwin 1981 [1871]. A dozen years following
The Origin,
Darwin became confident enough to broaden his theory of evolution to include humans—an issue he tried to skirt in
The Origin
. There is very little doubt that the outcry against Darwinism would have been much less pronounced had evolution not applied to humans. Darwin’s ideas in
The Descent
have inspired tireless efforts by many members of the Louis Leakey family to search for and find fossil hominids in Africa.

Darwin’s theory consists of four main pillars:
There are many excellent books on evolution and natural selection, at various levels. Here are just a few that I found very helpful: Ridley 2004a is a first-class textbook. Ridley 2004b is a wonderful anthology of high-level articles, as are Hodge and Radick 2009 (on Darwin), and Ruse and Richards 2009 (on
The Origin
). A thought-provoking philosophical approach is Dennett 1995. An excellent review of the history of evolutionary theory is Depew and Weber 1995. Wilson 1992 is a sweeping review of biodiversity. Dawkins 1986, 2009, Carroll 2009, and Coyne 2009 are superb popular books. Pallen 2009 is a brief and extremely accessible introduction. A few very useful websites on evolution are
www.evolution.berkeley.edu
;
www.pbs.org/evolution
; and
www.nationalacademies.org
.evolution.

Darwin’s ideas on evolution had an older:
A landmark work on the history and origins of the theory of evolution is Gould 2002. Another high-level historical review is Bowler 2009.

distinguish between
microevolution: Resistances to antibiotics and to pesticides, which develop within a few years, are examples of microevolution. The origin of mammals from reptiles is an example of macroevolution. An excellent summary of macroevolution is Carroll, Grenier, and Weatherbee 2001.

“Nothing in Biology Makes Sense”:
Dobzhansky 1973.

modern theory of
uniformitarianism: Charles Lyell (1797–1875) largely expanded on the concept that geological changes are the result of the continuous accumulation of tiny transformations over immeasurably long periods of time, in his influential book
Principles of Geology
. Lyell 1830–33.

Some “living fossils” such as the lamprey:
Classified as
Priscomyzon riniensis
. Gess et al. 2006.

the concept of a
common ancestor: This pillar of Darwinian evolution has been confirmed by many spectacular findings. For instance, the discoveries of fossils of feathered dinosaurs, such as the
Microraptor gui
and the
Mei long,
are consistent with the idea that birds evolved from reptiles.

Darwin’s solution to the diversity problem:
Good descriptions of speciation are Schilthuizen 2001, and Coyne and Orr 2004.

the “tree of life”:
An interesting discussion on the tree of life can be found in Dennett 1995.

the case of the Italian sparrow:
Elgvin et al. 2011.

author Vladimir Nabokov:
The study that confirmed Nabokov’s speculation is Vila et al. 2011.

phylogenetic tree for all the families:
In an impressive study, Meredith et al. 2011 used twenty-six genes to construct the phylogeny of mammalian families and to estimate divergence times.