The way we teach science in our schools is not a true representation of how science actually is. We teach it as a calm, objective, and detached road to certain truths when, as books like this point out, science is frought with emotionalism, tentativity, and competitiveness. Who discovered what first (and gets the credit)? Whose theories will be superceded by the next big discovery? Whok will be seen as the winner and who, the loser?T



hese are the types of scientific feuds profiled in this highly engaging book. Hellmen profiles what he sees as the 10 greatest feuds.



Some have to do with the all-too-familiar and -touchy area where religion and science collide (Galileo v. Pope Urban, TH Huxley v. Bishop Wilberforce). In both chapters, Hellman describes well how tempers flared, arguments got heated, and science eventually won the day. (Galileo lost the battle but won the war.)



A few are battles that many people may never have heard about. Newton and Leibniz sparred rhetorically over who discovered calculus first. (It turns out that Newton did, but Liebniz was the first to publish.) Hobbes and Wallace wrote many a stinging rejoinder to one another over whether one could square a circle. Cope and Marsh most heatedly accused eachother of everything from incompentence to blatant dishonesty when battling over whether certain sets of fossils were of dinosaurs. Other feuds profiled in this book are more well known (Leaky v. Johanson battling over whose human fossils were the oldest and Derek Freeman slashing into Margaret Mead's reputation posthumously).



What all of these feuds have in common - what Hal Hellman does an excellent job replicating - is that science is not always the calm, detached discipline that we teach our kids of, where truth is the primary goal. There are egos, there are rhetorical bouts, and there are fierce competitions. And (particularly in the case of Wegener arguing about plate tectonics) there are points where the once-nonsensical position gradually, and grudgingly, becomes the accepted one. Science lives and breathes, and this book shows it!



The reason I give it four stars rather than five is because I do not think that Hellman represented the best and most relevant battles in science. I have been scratching my head, for instance, as to why he did not include the recent battle over sociobiology (culminating in EO Wilson being doused with ice-water at a conference), or the Dawkins/Gould feud over gradualism v. punctuated equilibrium and reductionism (which is one of the most heated I have seen!). What about Einstein's attempts to dismantle and disprove Heisenberg as to the uncertainty principle.



I know that one cannot include EVERY good battle in a book while keeping it a manageable size, but some of Hellman's choices and omissions are, to my eyes, strange.



For all that, the book does a wonderful job of conveying the emotion that seeps into sceince every now and again. He also does a good job of keeping the 'science jargon' to a minimum, though he does do well in explaining the idea that each feud was over.



It is a pity that our high school students can't read about this side of sceince also. But at least you can.

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