Update Endeavour Vol.29 No.4 December 2005 139

effective route to the catalysis of chemical reactions. Theinvocation of mystical or esoteric procedures for thetransformation of matter was not as commonplace as isusually assumed: such practices might relate to onebranch but can never define the whole tree of alchemy.The current obsession with these practices is not helpfulbecause it misleads us into thinking of alchemy as anunscientific pursuit instead of a forward-looking and verypractical enterprise carried out for the purpose of gaining

Corresponding author: Nicholls, P. (pnicholl@essex.ac.uk).Available online 26 September 2005

www.sciencedirect.com

a deeper understanding of the natural world. Moran hasgiven us much food for thought in Distilling Knowledge,and if his reinterpretation of alchemy gradually becomesprevalent – a prospect that is not at all inconceivable –modern scientists will be greatly relieved to discover thattheir past was far less ignoble than most of us are nowwilling to concede.

0160-9327/$ - see front matter Q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2005.07.006

A heretic or just a radical?The Heretic in Darwin’s Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace by Ross A. Slotten. Columbia University Press, 2004. US$39.50 or

£26.50 (602 pages, hardback) ISBN 0231130104

Peter Nicholls

Department of Biological Sciences, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, UK CO4 3Q7

In contrast to the wide academicinterest in the life, ideas and lettersof Charles Darwin, until the mid-1990s no equivalent attention hadbeen paid to his codiscoverer of themechanism of evolution by naturalselection: Alfred Russel Wallace. Wal-lace’s modest acceptance of a subsidi-

ary role in the development ofevolutionary theory had seemingly

been taken at face value by the Darwin scholarlyindustry, despite Wallace’s political as well as scientificprominence in the latter part of the 19th century. Thecoverage of this in several modern biographies wasinadequate and far more scientific and political infor-mation was to be found in Wallace’s own autobiographyand in his posthumously published letters and reminis-cences (edited by James Marchant). Yet althoughWallace was a more interesting and approachable figurethan Darwin, he was quite secretive about his personallife. His personal feelings still remain more hidden thanthose of Darwin, who wrote frankly about sexualfeelings, personal love and loss, and his family relation-ships (not all intended for publication of course).Biographical burrowing was needed to read Wallace’sextant letters and documents, and then to get behind thematerial and understand the person. And unlikelaboratory science there is no way of doing a biographi-cal experiment. Material once lost is usually lost forever –the possible data set is finite and diminishing, andWallace’s letters are scattered and sometimes hardto locate.

But the new millennium has revived Wallaceaninterest. There are now at least four relatively respectablebiographies or semi-biographies (by Peter Raby, MichaelShermer, Martin Fichman and now Ross Slotten), at least

three collections of Wallace’s writings have also beenpublished since 1990 and a useful website has beencreated by Charles Smith (http://www.wku.edu/wsmithch/index1.htm).

The Heretic in Darwin’s Court: The Life of AlfredRussel Wallace is the lengthiest and in some ways themost complete of these recent efforts. It is also unique inthat this substantial and careful work is apparentlySlotten’s first contribution to this field (all the otherbiographers had done some previous work in this area).Slotten is a family doctor whose interest in Wallace isavocational. He deals with both the personal side ofWallace’s life and his science with an unusually assuredhand for an academic ‘outsider’, writing well andengagingly. The Heretic in Darwin’s Court is informativeeven for those who already have a modest familiaritywith the topic. Wallace scholars might find fine points todebate but Slotten is a good guide for theintelligent enquirer.

The title of the book would seem to place Slotten in oneof the two Wallace ‘camps’: one regards Wallace as anoutsider and heretic in Victorian science, whereas theother regards him as more a quintessential Victorian andthe reclusive Darwin as the real heretic. However, Slottenactually distances himself from the two extremes andwrites about Wallace’s supposed eccentricities more insorrow than surprise.

The Heretic in Darwin’s Court really begins withWallace’s Amazon voyage, and Slotten’s description ofhis early life is comparatively brief. Yet the reviewerbelieves that some secrets lie here, in Wallace’s relation-ship with his problem father and his uncertain feelingstowards his mother. We do now at least know the name of‘Miss L———‘ (Leslie), Wallace’s first fiancee, but fewother new details have come to light in either Slotten’s orthe other recent Wallace biographies. We do not knowwhat happened to Leslie or why she dumped Wallace, andhis family background, which might be linked to his

Update Endeavour Vol.29 No.4 December 2005140

interest in and gullibility about spiritualism, is notextensively examined.

The past is another country, in which eminentscientists – not just Wallace – went to seances andwere prepared to attest obviously absurd (to us) things;such as the appearance of very solid ghosts whopresented the participants with real fruit and flowersyet came from ‘another’ world. Can one really get intothe frame of mind of those for whom religion was stillsuch an important emotional crutch? In trying one getsan inkling of just how revolutionary Darwin was andwhy he waited so long to put anything into print. Bycontrast, Wallace’s support of the anti smallpox-vacci-nation campaign in the UK during the second half of the19th century has a lot more resonance with recent issues– such as the doubts about the combined MMR vaccine –and his arguments remain competent and important,even if they are mistaken.

Corresponding author: Broks, P. (Peter.Broks@uwe.ac.uk).Available online 22 September 2005

www.sciencedirect.com

Slotten tells us fairly about all this, as well asWallace’s struggles in the field of evolution. A pureselectionist in all areas other than the human and hencemodern in his thinking (unlike cautious Darwin who waslater prepared to accept some Lamarckian evolutionarymechanisms), Wallace was unable to accept a selectivemechanism for evolution of the human brain andconsciousness, although his alternative from the ‘worldof spirit’ remained ill defined. But before laughing weshould perhaps decide for ourselves how we see theevolutionary origin of consciousness.

I am sorry I arrived 22 years too late to be acontemporary of Wallace. Those who feel the same canmake up for this in a virtual way by reading The Hereticin Darwin’s Court, and then some of Wallace’sown writings.

0160-9327/$ - see front matter Q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2005.05.005

Is popular science too easy?No Easy Answers: Science and the Pursuit of Knowledge by Allan Franklin. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. US$29.95

(258 pages, hardback) ISBN 0-8229-4250-X

Peter Broks

School of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, University of the West of England,

St Matthias Camps, Oldbury Court Road, Fishponds, Bristol, UK HR6 9BD

It is often claimed that the reason whyscience is so unpopular in schools isbecause it is ‘too difficult’. The argu-ment (very crudely) is that in contrastto those fluffy make-it-up-as-you-go-along arts subjects, in the sciencesthere are facts and facts just have tobe learned.

However, at the same time asuniversity science departments have trouble recruitingstudents, bookshops have no trouble at all filling theirshelves with the latest books on ‘popular science’. If schoolscience is difficult, then presumably popular science iseasy – or at least easy enough. It is, therefore, a bold stepby Allan Franklin to address the general reader with abook called No Easy Answers: Science and the Pursuit ofKnowledge. Unfortunately, the book lives up to its title.

Franklin explains that the book is intended ‘to give anaccurate picture of science to both a general reader and mycolleagues in the humanities and social sciences, who maynot have any background in physics’. Yet as early as pagesix, without warning or explanation, we are hit with asentence like: ‘This was illustrated in the discovery of theWG, the charged intermediate vector bosons required bythe Weinberg-Salam unified theory of electroweak inter-actions.’ Elsewhere in No Easy Answers it is easy to see

that an attempt has been made to explain variousscientific principles, but these explanations needed to bepushed beyond those suitable for students of introductoryphysics to accommodate, as intended, those readers withno background in physics at all.

Of the 13 case studies in No Easy Answers all but twoseem to be re-workings of Franklin’s previous papers orchapters from his previous books. This raises importantquestions not only about the purpose of the book but alsoabout the status of the argument it presents. In pullingtogether a collection of useful previous writings No EasyAnswers performs a practical function, and Franklin doesindeed have important and necessary things to say aboutthe role of experiments in science. However, I feel that thecase studies he presents in the book are not reallyreworked enough from their inclusion in Franklin’s oldermaterial to be accessible to the general reader, and anyonewith interest in this level of detailed argument mightprefer to go directly to Franklin’s original work.

If we accept the convenience of the case studies beingbrought together in No Easy Answers, should we alsoaccept the argument that they present? All but one ofthem is taken from physics. For Franklin this is justifiedbecause he believes that ‘the episodes are typical of allscience’, but it might be argued that such a focus onphysics is only typical for a certain model of whatconstitutes science both now and in the past. For instance,how applicable is such a model to natural history,