The book "Dreams of the Earth and the sky"

Hello! We have replenished our “Pop Science” series with a new book by Freeman Dyson.

Dyson talks about the greatest physicists of the 20th century — Richard Feynman, Robert Oppenheimer, Paul Dirac, and Stephen Weinberg, many of whom he knew personally. In addition, he writes about the British atomic program under the auspices of Winston Churchill and about the experiments of Werner von Braun on the creation of space rockets. It is important that the author in a provocative, often politically incorrect style approaches the discussion of the most controversial problems of modern science. Dyson offers a fresh perspective on the history and philosophy of science, as well as on the practice of the scientific method and even on the errors and erroneous theories, which are also part of our desperate attempts to understand the wonders of the world around us.

Dreams of a scientific fraternity

I grew up in England and from early childhood I absorbed the very idea that people in different countries can do different things. The Germans had Bach and Beethoven, the Spaniards had Velasquez and El Greco, the French had Monet and Gauguin, and we had Newton and Darwin. The English were good at science. This idea was only strengthened in my head when I began reading children's books of that period, glorifying the achievements of our national heroes - Faraday, Maxwell and Rutherford.

Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander who discovered atomic nuclei and created science, which was later called nuclear physics, was then at the peak of his fame. Being an immigrant from New Zealand, Rutherford became more English than the British themselves. He spoke on behalf of England, uttering his famous words, in which he compared the style of scientific research of continental Europe and England: “While they play with symbols, we operate with real facts of Nature in our Cavendish laboratory.” The French and Germans made their calculations based on the abstract mathematical equations of quantum theory, while Rutherford confronted one core with another and converted nitrogen into oxygen. English children were taught to be proud of Rutherford to the same extent that we were proud of our military heroes Nelson and Wellington, who defeated Napoleon. In some ways, this kind of pride is a healthy manifestation of patriotism. She encourages children's ambition and offers to take on serious tasks. But it can also do harm if it makes you believe that such heroes have a right to world domination from birth.
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I still remember one poem, which I had to memorize and recite aloud at the age of seven:

About Nelson and Northern Latitudes
It is sung in the glorious song of old years,
When the hot battle rose
Crown Danish power and color.

The battle led by Nelson near Copenhagen became particularly famous thanks to a joke. The authorized commander raised the flag, which was a signal for a cease-fire. Nelson pointed the telescope at the flag panel and looked at it with his blind eye. He, of course, did not see the flag, so he continued the battle and won a brilliant victory. But even the seven-year-old is able to realize that Nelson’s victory over the Danes at Copenhagen was not as remarkable as the defeat at Trafalgar inflicted on the French fleet four years later. Even a seven-year-old can sympathize with the defeated Danes and wonder if Nelson was given his unconditional courage and brilliant mind the right to bomb their homes. Recently, I looked into a tavern in Copenhagen, where tourists are proudly informed that he had just visited one of the few coastline buildings that had not been destroyed by Nelson’s cannons in due time. Property damage with which this victory was turned for Denmark is not forgotten.

The book of John Gribbin "Brotherhood" refers to the type of patriotic literature, which is harmless. This is a portrait gallery, which presents several prominent personalities who have made a significant contribution to the development of modern science in the XVII century. Each biography is full of drama. These people lived in times of great change, and their personal life was as interesting as their ideas. Almost all of them are English. Gribbin did not write the history of world science - no, he told the story of a particular scientific institute: the Royal Society of London. “Brotherhood” refers to several men who founded this society in 1660 and devoted their time and energy to its development. Despite the fact that they were English, their goals and objectives were international in nature and they warmly welcomed outstanding scientists and academicians from other countries. From the very beginning, one of the main concerns of society was the exchange of information and the improvement of communications between England and the rest of the world. The very fact of the foundation of society cannot be equated with the foundation of modern science, but this separately taken unique event has led to tremendous consequences, which are more than worthy of studying them in more detail. And the Gribbina book offers us a lively and easy to learn story about them.

The story begins a hundred years earlier with William Gilbert, a physician who practiced in Colchester and London and became chairman of the Royal College of Physicians of Great Britain in 1600. He was one of the court doctors, whose duties included the health care of Queen Elizabeth. In his spare time, he experimented in the field of magnetism, and published his conclusions in a book with the Latin name De Magnete - “About magnet”. Its full name is: “About a magnet, magnetic bodies and a large magnet — the Earth: a new physiology on the example of arguments and experiments” (On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies, and the Great Magnet: A New Physiology Demonstrated by Arguments and Experiments) . This book is written in a surprisingly modern style: in it the science of the magnetic field is seriously substantiated by experiments. Hilbert carried out careful measurements, using as a material for the experiments small balls of natural iron ore (magnetic iron ore), which he called terrels (lat. Terrellae) - “small lands”. From the very beginning, he understood that these small magnets are models of our planet. He hung them in the water and measured their attraction and repulsion with the highest accuracy. He helped resolve a number of misunderstandings by demonstrating that using the term "north pole" to indicate the end of a magnet pointing to the north was incorrect. He showed that the north and south poles are attracted. This means that, if we take the magnet for a model of the Earth, then its end, pointing to the north, should correspond to the South Pole of the Earth. In his book he writes:

“All those who have written so far about the poles of iron ore, all sculptors of tools, all navigators are all highly mistaken in believing that the north pole of the piece of iron ore points to the North Pole of the Earth, and the South Pole to the South Pole of the Earth: hereinafter we show that this opinion is wrong. "

Roughly speaking, Hilbert did for the science of the magnetic field about the same thing that Benjamin Franklin would do for the science of electricity 200 years later: he established the basic facts with the help of experiments that every doubter could repeat himself. But Hilbert, who still lived 200 years before Franklin, was in some sense a more impressive pioneer. Throughout his research of magnets, he also conducted a series of experiments with electricity and showed that magnetic and electrical materials differ from each other and that they need to be studied separately.

Hilbert was aware that he was cutting a path for the introduction of a new style of experimental philosophy, which would be useful in many other areas besides magnetism. In the preface to “About the Magnet,” he writes:

"To you alone, true philosophers, unsophisticated minds that seek knowledge not only in books, but in the things themselves, I dedicated these fundamentals of the science of the magnetic field - this new style of philosophizing."

One of the people that read "About the Magnet" - and, probably, soon after the book was published in 1600 - was Galileo. Galileo was 20 years younger than Gilbert, but he had already managed to advance a lot in studying the dynamics using pendulum mechanisms and balls rolling down inclined planes as experimental tools. In his correspondence, Galileo spoke warmly of Hilbert: "I really appreciate, admire and envy this author - because such an enormous idea in his importance came to his mind." Later, Galileo conducted similar experiments with Hilbert magnets and obtained the same results. Fortunately, the friendly relations between Galileo and his English fans were not destined to be saddened by disputes about the pioneer priority, such as those that arose between Newton and Leibniz a century later. Gilbert got the share of that glory.

»More information about the book can be found on the publisher's website.
» Table of Contents
» Excerpt

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