Sentimental distortion of truths

Witkowski N. Sentimental history of science / trans. from fr. D. Bayuk. M.: KoLibri, 2007. 448 p. (Small scope).

«I know, I know, a house full of condiments and no real food»
Chuck Palaniuk. Fight Club.

“The most dangerous of errors are partially distorted truths.”
Georg Lichtenberg (quoted in " Sentimental History ")

First, a few words about the book from a formal point of view, then speculation about the main thing and, for starters, the flea-catching traditional for reviewing.

Two words about the book from a formal point of view

The book begins with a preface that talks about the "Tawny Effect." The author tells how he, together with an Indian guide and a French botanist, was searching for the tawny plant (Brosimum acutifolium), the juice of which helped shamans “think like an arrow” and sense the arrival of a jaguar (this tree spirit will breathe into the back of the one who drinks sufficient amount of juice). History is rich in allegories. After the tree was discovered, it was bled. The cloudy juice flowing from the cut, quickly turning red in the air, did not inspire confidence in the author. Fearful, he refused to drink the juice and instead chewed the tree bark and smoked a pipe filled with pieces of it. Instead of arrow-like thinking, he was overcome by “heavy drowsiness.” Chemical analysis showed that there were no “jaguarogenic” substances in the juice.

From the jungle the author moves to the national library, where new experimental animals live: extinct scientists. This is the forest of the history of science. Everything is bad in this forest: people walk along the few beaten paths and are afraid to step further than specially built viewing platforms. These timid journeys do not yield any catch other than historical and scientific myths, the exposure of which is devoted to the exposure of another book by the author, written in co-authorship with Sven Ortoli, “The Bath of Archimedes.” The author hopes that the historical and scientific tales he has obtained will look more fun than the “usual history of science” (He complains: “... the same one that weighs down scientific works with a dead weight and injects an almost lethal dose of tranquilizer into school textbooks - why is she so boring?”: p. 14).

The preface ends with an optimistic passage addressed to potential readers of the book.

“This artistic flair is unlikely to be approved by those who want to see in the history of science the story of the triumph of Reason and objective knowledge. But, perhaps, curious amateurs, burdened by organized excursions along the highways mentioned above, will find it interesting to move in small steps along slippery paths, sometimes connected unsteady bridges of vines."

The final touch is a note that tells how in 2002, an alkaloid was discovered in tawnee juice, albeit in small concentrations, which caused visions in shamans.

The preface is followed by essays, thirty-five in number, accompanied by appendices. Each essay is preceded by a picture. It was not easy to understand how an essay differs from an appendix, but apparently the “appendices” are devoted to the publication of rather long pieces of original texts by the scientists to whom the essays are devoted, or the texts of any documents related to these scientists. As a rule, they are also interspersed with author's comments. For unknown reasons, Jacob Balmer and Omar Khayyam were left without applications.

Overall, the essays are good. Both the time range and the coverage of personalities are quite wide, although the texts are too short: they are barely enough to place a couple of anecdotes from the life of scientists in a sketchy context. Most are less than ten pages. So the only thing that can be reproached to the author is concentrated in the difficult (if at all) word to translate tantalizing. Tantalum's pangs of the reader. Here it is, water - drink, but it retreats as soon as you reach out to it with greedy lips. You read... You want more... but on the fifth, seventh, tenth page of the small format it all ends. This review (from the book's title at the beginning to the c'est tout at the end) is noticeably longer than any of the book's essays. Perhaps this is why the book seemed a bit boring to me (for all its external attractiveness, it is shallow). I am used to drinking tawny juice, red as blood - it gives the ability to think like an arrow and populates the world with jaguars. Chewing and smoking bark, which the author, true to his habits, tries to limit himself to here too, only makes you sleepy.

There is no need to list all the pundits (and ladies - Ada Lovelace broke through the serried ranks of white dead males) discussed in Nikola Witkowski's book. Since the concept of science is interpreted somewhat broadly, the reader will find there (along with the familiar Harvey, Newton, Lomonosov, Darwin - grandfather Erasmus and grandson Charles - and Maxwell and the little-known Joseph Plateau and Leopold Hugo) Omar Khayyam (in the guise of a mathematician) and Edgar Poe. As a popular book, it contains little of interest to historians of science, but much of entertainment for the wider public. It's hard for me to put my science background aside, but I don't think it's required to enjoy reading. To get a first-hand idea of ​​the nature of the essays, you can get acquainted with one of them (about Omar Khayyam) on the book’s promotional page on the publisher’s website.

The book is published in a cozy, almost pocket-sized format (albeit a bit thick for most pockets), the font is (finally) not intended for the visually impaired, but the lines are not crowded together. The interesting cover (the book was published in some kind of semi-hardback) is pleasant to the touch and did not fall apart after the first reading and traveling in a backpack.

Two words about the main thing

To begin with, I will say that I am almost ready to subscribe to what is said about the history of science in the introduction (boring, standard, miserable). The author is referring to France, but in Russia the situation is no better. It is unclear to whom the books are addressed, published in editions of 300-400 copies, a magazine in which the most incendiary materials of recent times are not so much articles by regular authors, but devastating letters from angry readers (also historians of science) about these articles. However, there is another history of science. It should be well known in France, less well known here, but it exists, and there is no escape from it.

This funny story of science lives mainly in the English-speaking world (which the author of the book mildly dislikes for stealing French priorities). One after another, for decades now (the situation began to change in the 1970s), articles and books have been published. Interesting, well written, sometimes funny, but at the same time always thorough. They have something to read, something to hold on to. These are new roads. They pass through a once virgin forest unknown to the history of science. It’s just that we, as often happens, are trying to imagine the area using a map with a topo base from 1948. And Nikola Witkowski, alas, helps us with this, passing off these highways as narrow paths along which he made his way in order to get us, the readers, something funny and instructive. In principle, the outlines of this road network can be seen in the lame (as will be discussed below) bibliography, but they are visible quite clearly.

Worse, as long as we only translate popular collections of historical and scientific anecdotes, we will remain in the dark. Yes, those who have chosen the history of science as their profession know that there is “Galileo at the Court” by Mario Biagioli, “Leviathan and the Vacuum Pump” by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaeffer, “Nature and Nation” by Lisbeth Koerner, “The Politics of Evolution” by Adrian Desmond, “ Lords of the Flies by Robert Cowler, The Pasteurization of France by Bruno Latour and many, many other wonderful books (not to mention the many magazines filled with equally interesting articles). However, these names will mean nothing to the vast majority of Russian readers of the review. They will never go to Amazon.com to buy them. They will have nowhere to go to borrow them from the library. They will continue to wander in three pines (not even in the jungle), led by domestic historians of science, who care about the average reader no more than the cartographers of Soviet times, who shamelessly and with impunity supplied the country with 1:400,000 maps, from which it was impossible to do anything except how to get from point A to point B by bus.

In France, Witkowski's book probably covers a narrow segment of the market, saturated with historical and scientific literature (constant references to standard texts are scattered here and there). For us, she looks like a lone warrior in an open field, like a miraculously surviving cabinet of condiments thrown out of the window of the blown-up apartment of the nameless hero of Fight Club. These spicy anecdotes are nothing to sprinkle on. There is no food. The last time it was distributed to the poor was during the Soviet era. It would be good if someone miraculously happens to have two volumes, green with boredom, of the history of biology from ancient times to our (their, early 1970s) days or a rather brief history of physics by Kudryavtsev. Do we have something that could replace them? Are there many things that can complement them? How many books, of those that appear annually in the reports of the only Institute for the History of Natural Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the whole country, are written at a modern level and reach readers?

Yes, yes, I know, I know whose garden I’m throwing stones at. Dmitry Bayuk, the translator of Witkowski’s book and my colleague in the club of scientific journalists, is at the same time the deputy editor-in-chief of the central journal for the discipline “Questions in the History of Natural Science and Technology” and a senior researcher at the Institute I mentioned. But who else but he will understand me correctly? I don’t have the feeling that this book will help revive the history of science in Russia. However, most likely, this task was not necessary. It's a pity...

There are three main themes (spoken often enough to become noticeable) in the book: rational and irrational in scientific creativity, historical and scientific myths associated with disputes about priority, and forgotten names. Without touching on the forgotten names, I cannot help but comment on the first two, more general ones.

After so many copies have been broken regarding the historicization of scientific rationality, the author’s remarks scattered throughout the text about the irrational in scientific creativity (here, they say, look at the rubbish from which scientific theories grow, without knowing shame) look strange. This, in general, would not be a big problem if Nikola Witkowski’s rationality were not so unchanging / ahistorical, no matter who he discussed: our almost contemporaries from the 20th century that recently became history, or scientists of the 16th-18th centuries who are far from us.

Historical and scientific myths associated with battles for priority in discoveries and inventions are mostly local, French, and unknown to us. Russia has its own, and the debunking of the French gives us nothing but the gloomy satisfaction of the dark side of national pride. It's nice to know that Papin didn't make the steamship, but the joy is shallow and insincere. The only sad thing is that in the analysis of these cases Witkowski does not go beyond calendar statements. It is as if Kuhn, who had already become a classic, did not exist, who in his “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” demonstrated the problematic nature of the traditional “calendar” approach to “discoveries” and inventions, as if there were not later works that showed how bringing to light a little-known deceased predecessor helps solve disputes about priority between living colleagues and creates a positive mythology for the emerging scientific community, giving it a semi-mythical founding father.

A strange conclusion arises: the history of science as interpreted by Nikola Witkowski is an outlandish hybrid between the now seemingly naive and naturalistic ideas of the sample of almost the 1960s and modern cultural studies, a tourist’s walks along the “ecological trails” of a national park, passed off as the adventures of a pioneer in an unknown forest .

Flea-catching

As an application, in the name of eradicating the most dangerous errors (see epigraph No. 2), let’s try to catch fleas (I’m by no means sure that I caught them all, but, following the deeply rooted habit of an entomologist, I cannot remain silent about those that caught my eye) . I’ll say right away that there are relatively few of them for a book of twenty sheets. Fleas are listed in order of discovery, which for the most part corresponds to page order (shown in parentheses; unless expressly stated otherwise, pages are for the book under review).

(1) Actually, I sensed something was wrong when, after reading the first two tales, I started looking at the bibliography out of boredom (alas, as I said above, some of the superficiality of the presentation always caused me to have its light forms). At first she didn’t make me protest. I relaxedly glanced at the familiar and unfamiliar names, noting with pleasure that the author was not alien to an interest in modern historical and scientific literature, and suddenly stopped out of the blue. caught my eye A second link to the work of an author with the memorable name Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs . There would be nothing strange in this: how many works by the same author can appear in bibliographies? What alarmed me, however, was not the repetition itself, but the fact that between two works by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs there was a reference to the work of John Maynard Keynes. Suddenly the entire list of references appeared in a new light. The cute oddity of starting with the author's first name and ending with the last name no longer seemed to me the biggest problem. The entire eight and a half page list was not in alphabetical order. At the same time, the beginning of it did not cause any protest in me, I got involved and only the repetition of names made me think that something was wrong. The casket simply opened: these were endnotes, mercilessly devoid of cross-references to and from the places from which they should have been referenced. This hypothesis explains both the apparent naturalness of the list (it naturally begins with sources to the introduction and the first essays) and the “broken” alphabetical order: if these were simply item-by-item bibliographies merged together, the alphabetical order should have been preserved at least within their boundaries. The editors of the Russian translation probably forgot that they were dealing with endnotes and left them lying at the end of the book in an untidy heap, bearing a superficial resemblance to a bibliography.

Need I say that, inspired by this discovery, I began to take a closer look at the main text?..

(2) The first discovery was not long in coming: it was discovered at the very beginning of the book in an essay dedicated to William Gilbert, one of the first authors to engage in experimental research on magnets. Commenting on the concept of “orbis virtutis” (that something present around a magnet), the translator gives a note that seems to clarify the point: “The world of virtue (lat.), but Gilbert means here a certain “region of quality”” (p. 32) .

Frankly, it is completely unclear why orbis is the world. Orbis is a circle/circle (hence "orbit"), district (or neighborhood, if you will), as it is sometimes used in contexts in which it is easier to translate it that way. There is a stable expression orbis terrarum - literally “circle of earth”, which is usually translated as “world”, but in other combinations the word orbis “world” does not have to mean. Late Latin virtus only approximately corresponds to the current Russian virtue, so it is not entirely clear what a direct translation can provide here. The fact is that virtus (plural: virtutes) is both strength and army, and, in addition, one of the angelic ranks, corresponding in the Orthodox tradition to the rank of “Authorities” (for angelic ranks, see Dionysius the Areopagite , in particular, Chapter VIII “About the Dominions, Powers and Powers, and about their middle Hierarchy"; specifically about the virtutes, the following is said there: “Finally, the name of the holy Powers signifies a rank equal to the Divine Dominions and Powers, harmonious and capable of receiving Divine insights , and the structure of premium spiritual dominion; - not autocratically using the granted sovereign powers for evil, but freely and decently ascending to the Divine, both itself ascending and holyly leading others to Him, and, as far as possible, becoming like the Source and Giver of all power, and depicting Him , as much as possible for the Angels, in the absolutely true use of their sovereign power."). For a 16th-century author, angelic rank is a more than likely connotation. The output is orbis virtutis = area, the vicinity of the magnet, in which some mysterious power / force is manifested. Strangely, for all its uncertainty, it is less vague than the “world of virtue,” although not much closer to modern understanding.

(3) For some reason, the abbreviated title of William Harvey’s famous work on blood circulation (De motu cordis) is provided with an explanation in parentheses “On the movement of veins and blood” (P. 67). Let's figure it out in order. The full title of Harvey's work is: Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus ([Harvey], 1628), and it translates fairly consistently as follows: An anatomical exercise on the movement of the heart and blood in animals. Latin cor (genitive: cordis) is heart. It can be confused with corda (in the genitive case: cordae, and cordis - in the dative and ablative) - a vein, a string, but this should not be done. Moreover, (1) a lover of primary sources can easily be convinced that to designate what could, with some stretch, be called “veins” (vessels), Harvey uses the words arteria, clear without translation (see [Harvey], 1628 P. 10 et ff.) and vena (ibid. P. 13 et ff.), and (2) those who walk “on pebbles” can always check themselves using the easily accessible Russian translation (Harvey, 1927 or 1948).

(4) In the appendix to the essay on Erasmus Darwin (p. 173) one can find a remarkable passage: “The first part of Erasmus Darwin’s Botanical Garden, entitled The Loves of the Plants (1789), is a strange mixture of artistic , atheistic and anthropomorphic variations on the theme of the sexual life of plants. Since the methods of vegetative propagation are infinitely diverse, stories about stamens and pistils sometimes take such a turn that the plane trees of the Bois de Boulogne would blush.” We are talking about a well-known presentation of the Linnaean system of plants in verse. All the more amusing is the mistake at the level of knowledge of the fifth grade of high school, which destroys the very basis of the erotic fantasies of two naturalists of the 18th century: vegetative reproduction is confused with plant reproduction (which is not difficult to do when translating). Both in the Systema sexualis of Carl Linnaeus and in the poem of Erasmus Darwin, we talk about the sexual reproduction of plants (reproduction végétale) “with the help of stamens and pistils,” and not at all about vegetative propagation (reproduction végétative) using vegetative parts of plants, for example, shoots or leaves. For example, every amateur gardener is engaged in vegetative propagation of plants, planting potatoes in the spring (burying tubers - modified shoots) in the ground. Even if the French author-physicist made a fatal mistake (alas, I have not seen the original of Vitkovsky’s book), he should have been corrected (on vegetative reproduction in plants, see, for example, Korchagina, 1978: pp. 118-123 and 144-146; specially I give a link to the book, which in a slightly earlier edition could have been known to the translator).

(5) The Kuryokhin story about Lenin being a mushroom, popular in the late perestroika years, is deeply rooted in post-Soviet discourse. The hyphae of its own mycelium penetrate further and further. Egyptian hieroglyphs are casually entrusted to be deciphered by the touching hybrid of Jean-François Champollion and a champignon, Champillion (p. 256).

(6) Everyone who has come across translated stories about Charles Darwin has at least once heard about his finches (P. 277). The select few who have had the chance to read competent translations or works written by Russian-speaking zoologists know that we are talking about the so-called Darwin's finches. The English finch and French pinson do not quite correspond to the Russian finch, Fringilla coelebs (specifically chaffinch or le pinson des arbres). Moreover, the finch and Darwin's finches belong to different, although close, families of the passerine order: the finch belongs to the finches (Fringillidae), and Darwin's finches belong to the buntings (Emberizidae). The established name Darwin's finches (traditionally translated as Darwin's finches) is a special case of a fairly common phenomenon: the discrepancy between folk and scientific nomenclature. In English, not only almost all finches, but also some representatives of buntings are traditionally called finches. However, all this does not give any reason to call them “finches”. In the Russian language, a single species of bird is called a finch, and the word “finch” is completely unthinkable as a generic name.

(7) Foraminifera (Foraminifera) in Russian-language zoological literature are traditionally considered as feminine creatures (see, for example, Dogel, 1975: P. 27-31), therefore the genitive plural should not be “foraminifera” (P. 363), and "foraminifera".

(8) Zeglodon (p. 364) is not the land ancestor of the dolphin. Firstly, it has the traditional “Russian” name zeyglodon (from lat. Zeuglodon ). Secondly, the structure of this ancient aquatic cetacean, which reached 25 meters in length, does not imply the possibility not only of living on land, but also of going there for a short time. Taking this opportunity, I note that the modern name of this animal (established according to the principle of priority) is Basilosaurus ( royal lizard). It is associated with the erroneous initial identification of this ancient whale as a fossil marine reptile - the skeletons of basilosaurs with their long vertebrae and relatively short ribs were passed off as the skeletons of the legendary sea serpents (see Carroll, 1993: pp. 92-93).

(9) The phrase that D'Arcy Thompson "put ... seeds and larvae in an umbrella" (p. 364) suggests a theological understanding of animacy: maggots, like corpses, are denied a soul. It depends on everyone, but I would be more pleased if he folded the larvae. I leave “sticky boogers” (ibid.) to the conscience of a damaged telephone (a quote from the memoirs of D’Arcy Thompson’s daughter, double translated through French), but their proximity to shells suggests that we could be talking about naked slugs.

(10) Clouds, unlike pens, are not made of feathers (P. 373). They are usually called feathery.

(11) The air is not rolled back, but pumped out (“evacuated air”, see p. 384).

(12) Eels swim to spawn not through (P. 393), but into the Sargasso Sea.

(13) Omar Khayyam from Nishapur by the end of the chapter turns into the French nobleman Omar Khayyam de Nishapur (P. 426). This can be taken as a joke, but it will have to be attributed to the translator, since the original French language does not have the appropriate capabilities.

That's all.

Acknowledgments

The author considers it his pleasant duty to express gratitude to Marina Vilner, who drew his attention to the sweet dissonance between Georg Lichtenberg’s aphorism on the cover and the text of the book.

PS While I was writing the review, I learned from the Scientific Journalists Club e-mail that this book is not only popular science, but also for children. Not sure. Not so much because I don’t believe in the strength of children, but because I don’t know how interesting hints about circumstances unknown to them can be for children. To read this book, you need to have at least some idea of ​​the standard history of science. And physics - in the scope of the general physics course for natural science faculties.

Literature

Harvey W. Anatomical study of the movement of the heart and blood in animals / transl. and note. K. M. Bykova; preface acad. I. P. Pvlova. M.; L.: State. publishing house, 1927. X+113 p. (There is a more accessible second edition: V. Harvey. Anatomical study of the movement of the heart and blood in animals. Leningrad: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1948. 235 p.)

[Dionysius the Areopagite]. Saint Dionysius the Areopagite on the heavenly hierarchy. M.: Synod. type. 1839. 2+70 s. and many subsequent editions. There is an Internet version: http://vehi.net/areopagit/nebesnaja.html

Dogel V. A. Zoology of invertebrates: a textbook for univ. 6th ed., revised. and additional / ed. prof. Yu. I. Polyansky. M.: Higher. School, 1975. 560 p.

Korchagina V. A. Botany: Textbook for grades 5-6 of secondary school. 12th ed. M.: Education, 1978. 272 ​​p.

Carroll R. Paleontology and evolution of vertebrates: in 3 volumes / trans. from English Belova V.V. and Karhu A.A.T. 3. M.: Mir, 1993. 312 p.

[Harvey, W.] An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals by William Harvey of England, Physician to the King, & Professor of Anatomy in the College of Physicians of London. Frankfurt: Sumptibus Guilielmi Fitzeri, 1628. 72 p. + 2 pl. Опубликовано в Интернет: http://www.rarebookroom.org/Control/hvyexc/index.html

See also:

• Abstract of the book on the publisher's website
• Bayuk Dmitry Aleksandrovich on the website of the magazine “Around the World”
• Kuryokhin Sergey Anatolyevich on Wikipedia.