Borderlands of Science: Where sense meets nonsense
by Michael Shermer, Oxford University Press, 拢17.95, ISBN 0195143264
WHY did Alfred Russel Wallace, the great evolutionist, believe in
spiritualism? Why, if Kenyan runners dominate marathon running, don鈥檛 black
people win the Tour de France? Could Carl Sagan write popular books, search for
extraterrestrial intelligence and still be a serious scientist?
These are just a few of the questions Michael Shermer asks and at least tries
to answer in The Borderlands of Science. Shermer is the editor of Skeptic
Magazine, host of a TV show on fringe science and, as he will tell you more than
once, a pretty good bicycle racer himself. He is bright, well read in the
history of science, and has written what amounts to several short essays, at
least tangentially related, and put them between hard covers.
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The chapter on the Piltdown Man hoax has little to say, but readers
unfamiliar with the largely posthumous rivalry between Charles Darwin and
Wallace will find a useful summary of what each contributed to the theory of
evolution.
Then Shermer so utterly dismisses Sigmund Freud as a scientist that
it is hard to imagine why the psychoanalyst鈥檚 ideas and terminology still
permeate our culture. His vigorous defence of Sagan鈥攚idely resented among
scientists because his books sold well and he looked good on TV talk
shows鈥攊s similarly one-sided.