For a show that promises a comedy romp through two-and-a-half thousand years of thought, the opening gambit of Total Eclipse of Descartes recalls the punchline to the old joke: 鈥淚 wouldn鈥檛 start from here鈥�. Forget 鈥淚 think, therefore I am鈥�; Robert Newman wants to talk about the work of a largely forgotten professor of psychology who helped to invent the grammar school.
Ah, yes, Cyril Burt, head of psychology at University College London from 1931 to 1950. Rarely mentioned in the same breath as Descartes, but when Newman begins to spin his yarn you quickly start to see where he is going.
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Burt鈥檚 science is a fine example of how ideas matter in the real world. He was highly influential in education circles in post-war Britain, where he championed the claim that academic ability was largely inherited, and hence there was no point trying to educate people who were less able. His work provided scientific justification for a school system that condemned countless children to a second-class education.
Newman is no fan of selective education or genetic determinism and he finds plenty of reasons to put the boot in. Burt鈥檚 experiments relied on testing the IQs of identical twins raised apart 鈥� a rare commodity, but not one that Burt seemed to have trouble procuring. Starting in the 1940s he published a series of studies involving dozens of pairs of twins separated at birth or soon after. All of them found the same correlation in IQ scores 鈥� 0.771, to be precise.
Breaking point
If that wasn鈥檛 strange enough, Burt鈥檚 methods often stretched credulity to breaking point. One case study involved a well-off couple who had identical twin boys, kept one for themselves, and gave the other away鈥� to a shepherd. Burt had two assistants, Margaret Howard and Jane Conway, who only ever published papers with Burt or wrote glowing reviews of his work elsewhere. When suspicion mounted that they were fabrications, Burt claimed they had 鈥渆migrated鈥�. He didn鈥檛 know where.
This is excellent comedy material, and Newman 鈥� whose appearance and demeanour of a dishevelled Oxford don belies a rapier comedy mind 鈥� makes hay with it. There鈥檚 only one problem: the Burt Affair is not as open-and-shut as Newman tells it. Burt was indeed denounced by the British Psychological Association in 1980, but . For one thing, he was an accomplished statistician: if he 鈥渃ooked the books鈥�, why leave in such a glaring clue? Howard and Conway were found to be real people. If anything, Burt was a progressive pioneer of education whose legacy was destroyed by a witch hunt.
Newman鈥檚 economy with the truth in search of a laugh is no surprise. After splitting from his stadium-filling double act with David Baddiel, he reinvented himself as a writer, activist and broadcaster, often turning his cerebral wit to science. His first Radio 4 series, Robert Newman鈥檚 Entirely Accurate Encyclopaedia of Evolution, was a critique of the selfish gene. His second, Neuropolis, takes aim at neuroscience. Both have been turned into books and both display an irritating tendency to misrepresent or misunderstand the science in search of a point or a laugh.
This is all the more irritating because Newman doesn鈥檛 need to do it. When he does get around to Descartes, his takedown of dualism is spot on (though perhaps not a total eclipse). His Pythagoras skit is brilliant, and his myth-busting about Pavlov鈥檚 dogs hilariously surreal.
Intellectual arrogance
But underlying it all is a grating intellectual arrogance. Does Newman really think he has outmanoeuvred some of the most brilliant minds of the past 2500 years, using a homespun credo he calls 鈥渢errestrial philosophy鈥� (as in, down-to-earth)? The monkeys-with-typewriters thought experiment is dismissed because monkeys can鈥檛 and won鈥檛 type; the tree falling in the forest gets short shrift because lots of small creatures will hear it fall. As for the ethics of driverless cars, 鈥淣obody has thought about it properly.鈥� Really?
Of course, pointing out that somebody has misunderstood or misrepresented an idea is humourless and pedantic. Newman knows this, and lampoons it via a whiny and peevish character who calls out Newman鈥檚 errors 鈥� only to be skewered by his wit. I laughed along, but couldn鈥檛 help thinking of a famous catchphrase from an earlier Newman incarnation: 鈥淭hat鈥檚 you, that is.鈥�
At risk of being a humourless pedant, I think this stuff matters. Science and philosophy should not be above satire or parody or any other form of comedy, but attacking straw-man versions of them doesn鈥檛 do anybody any favours. It is not like there aren鈥檛 plenty of worthy targets for Newman to go after 鈥� I鈥檇 love to see him wrestle with the nest of vipers that is free will, for example, or call out the lingering influence of Freudianism in psychiatry. But he contents himself with easy targets and convenient parodies.
Suspend your scepticism, and the show is brilliant. Newman is always witty and often wise. But in the final analysis he is too ready to play fast and loose with the facts.
Robert Newman鈥檚
Soho Theatre, London, until 10 March, and touring the UK
