Title: Einstein and the Birth of Big Science
Author/Artist: Peter Coles
Publisher: Icon Books
Media: Book
Reviewer: Paul Taylor
I can't think of a neater account of Einstein's theories and their significance. This is a pocket guide to relativity written with unusual clarity and straightforwardness and aimed at those pursuing Cultural Studies who might wish to know why Einstein became such a cultural icon. Students might even find reading this book a bewildering experience, in that, expecting to be faced with the intimidating technicalities of physics, they find themselves in a zone of good English and careful explanations, without the mystifying jargon of much cultural theory.
Within the confines of such a short book, it may be asking too much to get all the above plus detailed social-theoretical considerations, but there are a couple of questions arising from the last section, entitled The Press, Science and Truth.
Coles writes that,
"the media don't seem to like representing science the way it actually is, as an arena in which ideas are vigorously debated and each result is presented with caveats and careful analyis of possible error. They prefer instead to portray scientists as priests, laying down the law without equivocation." (p.64)This is very mildly, even naively, expressed: how often do the media represent things in general the way they are? A couple of pages further on, though, in the last paragraph of the book, Coles reminds scientists of their own responsibility for representing science in a balanced way, but seems to shift the blame for their ordination:
"The distorted image of scientist-as-priest is likely to lead only to alienation and further loss of public respect. Science is not a religion, and should not pretend to be one." (p.64)Amen. We might also say, thinking of fundamentalism, that religion is not a science, and should not pretend to be one.