Using the device of a student essay written from the perspective of the year 2073, Haldane provided a chilling vision of a future in which human lives are overwhelmed by advances in the biological sciences. A world in which ectogenesis – the artificial development and “birth” of human embryos outside the womb – is the norm, “and less than 30 per cent of children are 
 born of woman”, a world of ectogenetic parents selected to improve the quality of the gene pool, advancing each generation in any desired respect “from the increased output of first-class music to 
 decreased convictions for theft”. Daedalus was one of the (unattributed) inspirations for Aldous Huxley’s dark novel Brave New World.

It would be easy to dismiss Haldane’s essay as the ramblings of an ideologue, to be compared with more recent fantasies from the pens of scientists who see futures twisted to fit their own blinkered and rather inhumane outlook. But Haldane did not lack humanity. As the contributors to Haldane’s Daedalus Revisited make clear, Haldane could foresee the evil consequences of implementing scientific advances without adapting our moral systems accordingly. He noted that scientific advance is full of promise only if “mankind can adjust its morality to its powers”.

Many of Haldane’s predictions have become reality, and our systems of morality have been challenged as a result. As a society, we collectively accept in vitro fertilisation and “test-tube babies”, but we find it difficult to accept the idea of babies born from the eggs of aborted fetuses (remember the “yuk factor”?). There can be little doubt that, chilling or not, we are living with at least some aspects of Haldane’s vision.

In Daedalus Revisited, Haldane’s predictions of 1923 are reviewed in detail, and compared and contrasted with modern developments in genetics and medical science. Contributions range from personal recollections of Haldane and his work to essays on the relationship berween science and society.

Few of the more controversial speculations by scientists on science and the future are worth revisiting but Haldane’s Daedalus is an exception. Daedalus Revisited is a lively and pertinent contribution to the current debate.

The programme for my region included a plea from David Hunt, the present science minister, for us to “enthuse our young people with the excitement and challenge of science, engineering and technology”, and “capture the imagination of future generations 
” Those presentations that were intended to do just that had titles such as “Pretty, pretty, bang, bang – making safer pyrotechnics”, “Science, sport and you – with inswingers, bananas and splits”, and “The history of combustion, or how to make chemistry go with a bang”.

SET95 was deemed to be necessary because, as a nation, we are faced with a curious social phenomenon. The interest that the public claims to have in science has been shown in every recent opinion survey. The thrill that science brings to many children can be seen on their faces as they bed down for a “Science Night” at the Science Museum in London (the next one is on 22 April). The desire to know more and understand more of the world around us needs no elaboration. It is evidently there.

But by the time they come to make critical career decisions, the enthusiasm of many young people has somehow been turned off. Science is either not as interesting as they first imagined, is too difficult and complex, or simply insufficiently rewarding. It is possibly all of these. Might-have-been scientists cross the divide, opt for alternative careers and forget the childlike sense of wonder they once possessed for things scientific. The divide is deep and wide. With little motivation to retain even a distant contact with science, they quickly become isolated from that world. For every survey telling us of the enthusiasm that many ordinary people have for science, there is another telling us of their alarming scientific illiteracy.

What goes wrong? Better minds than mine have no doubt been brought to bear on the question, and here I offer only a few observations for what they are worth. It seems to me that we are in danger of misinterpreting this enthusiasm for science, particularly among children. We take it as a signal that they are willing to receive endless streams of rather self-satisfied propaganda about science’s great achievements: how, through the marvels of science, we now understand this, can control that, can make this go bang. We take it as a sign that all we need to do is pull the stuffing out of science and make it more entertaining and accessible. We present it as a kind of clever game we play with nature, in what I tend to regard as the “Physics is Phun” approach to science presentation.

We make what I believe to be a fundamental error of judgment. I suspect that nonscientific people, and especially children, are not really all that interested in our complicated scientific answers. They are much more interested in our questions. These are the questions for which we have no pat answers, no smug scientific explanations. Answers are quickly reduced to the level of the mundane. Unanswered questions provoke wonder and fascination, and at least offer the informed lay person the opportunity to develop an opinion every bit as valid as the scientist’s.

What happens to this early enthusiasm for science’s great questions? I suspect that it is lost under the weight of its 300-year legacy. No amount of entertainment can hide the simple fact that to become properly qualified to ask questions and hold an opinion, young students must first assimilate three centuries of accumulated answers. They spend years trying to come to terms with what we think we already know. Even worse, they learn that modern science is not actually about the kinds of questions they were once interested in. It is increasingly about how science can usefully serve the nation’s economy and ability to compete in a pragmatic and unromantic world. In these circumstances, the fire of enthusiasm can be rapidly extinguished, the sense of wonder and purpose lost. “To hell with this,” they might say. “I’ll be a merchant banker instead.”

I wonder if the “Physics is Phun” approach is ultimately damaging to the cause of science. It can mislead people into thinking that science is simple and provides easy answers, only to disappoint when it is revealed to be horribly complicated and demanding.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not in favour of making science less accessible. But science can be presented as what it is – a truly marvellous construction for channelling our curiosity about the mysteries of nature – without belittling it. It does not have to be presented as pompous or glumly serious, but it does need to be sincere. It certainly does not need to be condescending.

As a theory, the interpretation of quantum mechanics that was developed in the 1920s and 1930s by Niels Bohr and his colleagues in Copenhagen satisfies many of the criteria of a good scientific theory. But, by insisting that we give up otherwise cherished notions of determinism and causality, the Copenhagen interpretation fails to offer us any hope that we may one day really understand the mechanics of the fundamental constituents of matter and radiation. The Copenhagen interpretation says that it’s a crazy old world, but that’s just the way it has to be so we had better get used to it.

This is curious, because there is another interpretation that is empirically equivalent to Copenhagen (it is internally consistent, fits the same facts and makes the same predictions), but has the added bonus of at least retaining determinism and some sense of cause and effect. If “understandability” is indeed a criterion for a good theory, then it is arguably even better than Copenhagen. This is the “pilot-wave” version of quantum mechanics originally developed by Louis de Broglie in 1926, revitalised and extended by physicist David Bohm in two seminal papers published in 1952 and further developed by Bohm and his colleagues in subsequent years.

In Quantum Mechanics: Historical Contingency and the Copenhagen Hegemony James Cushing gives one of the most lucid descriptions of the de Broglie-Bohm alternative that I’ve ever read. He compares and contrasts Bohm with Copenhagen, and shows to what extent the two theories are observationally equivalent. He then sets about his main task. With a causal equivalent of quantum mechanics so clearly feasible in the late 1920s, why, he asks, was it so quickly and strongly rejected in favour of Copenhagen? Cushing argues that the answer lies in historical contingency. There were deeply rooted sociocultural factors that encouraged (particularly German) physicists of that time to abandon the principles of cause and effect.

Radical transformations in the philosophy of science were in progress, encouraging a strongly positivist, or instrumentalist, view of the role of scientific theories. Albert Einstein, one of the most ardent critics of Copenhagen, was seen to be out-played in his classic debate with Bohr – a debate which left Einstein mumbling about the “unreasonableness” of the Copenhagen interpretation. All these factors contributed to the forging of the declaration by the Copenhagen school that its interpretation was the only sensible one. From then on, physicists who held opposing views were beaten into mental submission, and the Copenhagen view became dogma. The natural scepticism and conservatism of most physicists have helped to maintain the status quo. The de Broglie-Bohm alternative ended up as something of a curiosity, far removed from the mainstream of quantum physics.

It might all have been very different. Cushing asks some plausible “what ifs 
” and concludes that a reordering of a few key events might well have given us a research programme for quantum physics based on a causal interpretation substantially different from the acausal interpretation in common use today.

That such diverse interpretations can coexist with the observed phenomena demonstrates, Cushing suggests, “the essential underdetermination of our most fundamental physical theory”. He asserts that the choices between determinism or indeterminism, causality or acausality become matters only of faith. It just so happens that it is the faith of the Copenhagen priesthood that has held sway these past 70 years.

Cushing has produced a clear, consistent and powerfully argued case. This is not a book for everyone: readers will need a solid grounding in quantum physics and a more-than-passing acquaintance with the history of science and philosophy. Nevertheless, this is a book for anyone fascinated by the problems of theory development and selection who is prepared to look beyond the glib, matter-of-fact presentations of most textbooks to the unruly, unforgiving, and sometimes just downright unpleasant world of real science.

John Wheeler is a remarkable scientist, and an even more remarkable
man. He has contributed more than any other living scientist to the great
revolutions that have completely transformed the physics of the 20th century.
He has made his mark on the science of the nucleus, quantum theory, relativity
and the very machinery of existence. He embodies the physicist’s child-like
spirit of inquiry, cheekily shouting his questions in nature’s hallowed
halls.

Wheeler became a physicist in 1927. While studying engineering at Johns
Hopkins University, he couldn’t keep from sneaking a peek at the latest
issue of the German journal Zeitschrift fur Physik in the physics library.
The most amazing papers on the new quantum theory, penned by luminaries
such as Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Wolfgang Pauli and Max Born,
were beginning to undermine the concepts on which our understanding of the
physical world had been based for over 200 years. Wheeler was captivated,
and switched to a doctorate programme in physics.

It was the start of an impressive scientific career. At the age of 22,
he decided to join Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, because Bohr could ‘see ahead
more deeply into the still unsolved problems of physics than anyone else
I could name’. He worked with Bohr on problems related to the internal structure
of the atomic nucleus, and in 1939 published with Bohr an account of the
first successful application of quantum physics to the description of nuclear
fission. This work was eventually to lead him into an important wartime
role on the atomic bomb project, helping scientists from Du Pont to develop
safe procedures for producing and isolating plutonium.

His pragmatism and his (albeit brief) encounters with engineering made
him an ideal consultant during the early days of the American nuclear power
programme, advising on the safe design and location of nuclear reactors.
Against the unlikely event of a meltdown, Wheeler and his fellow advisers
recommended the installation of a dome to capture the smoke and burning
uranium from the reactor core. ‘Today those domes, some metal, some concrete,
have become in the Western world the sign and symbol of the nuclear power
plant with its overriding concern for safety.’

As a mature physicist, Wheeler has championed the orthodox, so-called
Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory. Although he encouraged Hugh
Everett to publish his ideas on the ‘many worlds’ interpretation in the
1950s, he later rejected this as carrying within it too much metaphysical
baggage. Instead, his own line of thinking led him to a no less bizarre
Universe of ‘observer-participants’. In Wheeler’s Universe, measurements
by observers involve irreversible acts of amplification of quantum events,
and registering them as phenomena using ‘classical’ measuring devices effectively
gives tangible reality to the Universe and its past history. Wheeler’s
Universe is a ‘self-excited circuit’.

But perhaps Wheeler is best known for his work on relativity. Robert
Oppenheimer and Hartland Snyder were the first to explore the possibility
of gravitational collapse in 1939, but it was Wheeler who in 1967 coined
the term ‘black hole’. In calling for fundamental revisions to our conceptions
of space-time in the light of quantum physics, Wheeler has developed the
notion of an ultimate indivisible on which reality is constructed by observer-participants.
This is the ‘bit’ of information. According to Wheeler, all of physics is
information theory.

Apart from a brief biographical sketch of Wheeler in Jeremy Bernstein’s
Quantum Profiles (published by Princeton University Press), I know of no
other recent biographical or autobiographical study. This is an omission
that should not be allowed to continue. While we wait for a definitive Wheeler
biography, we can at least enjoy At Home in the Universe. This is a delightful
collection of previously published essays and speeches spanning some 36
years, covering much of Wheeler’s most important work in physics. Here are
personal insights into many of the intellectual giants of 20th century
science, including Bohr and Albert Einstein. Essays on science and society
speak of a happier age, when science was accepted as a higher calling and
scientists did not need to justify themselves except through their intellectual
achievements. There is a strong sense in which Wheeler’s more down-to-earth
contributions to both military and civil projects were made in partnership
with government and industry: science as equal citizen – not servant – of
society.

Among minor quibbles are some repetitions, although understandable in
a collection where recurring themes are coloured by the same favourite anecdotes,
they could have been avoided by judicious editing. Also, Wheeler’s McGonagallesque
poetry could, I feel, have been safely excluded.

Modern physics has left us with an illogical and somewhat alien Universe.
Nobody has done more than John Wheeler to derive comfort from the Universe’s
apparently bizarre structure. Reading At Home in the Universe, feelings
of alienation melt into tolerance, acceptance and ultimately fond recognition.
‘Can we ever expect to understand existence’? Wheeler asks himself. Although
you can’t quite put your finger on why, you somehow get from Wheeler the
impression that we can.

Jim Baggott is a freelance science writer. His new book, Perfect Symmetry:
The Accidental Discovery of Buckminsterfullerene, is published in October
by Oxford University Press.

A team of British chemists has ended 40 years of uncertainty surrounding
the first step in the mechanism of a class of reactions that are important
to chemists who make or manufacture organic compounds. The researchers have
determined the structure of the intermediate formed when the hydrocarbon
ethene (also called ethylene) reacts with halogens such as chlorine and
bromine.

Ethene (H₂C=CH₂) reacts with molecular chlorine
(Cl₂) to produce the 1,2-dichloroethane (ClH₂C-CH₂Cl).
Forty years ago, the American chemist Robert Mulliken suggested that this
type of reaction involved one of two possible intermediates. The first was
a T-shaped structure which Mulliken called an ‘outer complex’, in which
the chlorine molecule interacts only weakly with the electrons of the carbon-carbon
double bond to form a loose association held together by electrostatic forces.
The second structure, which Mulliken called an ‘inner complex’, is made
when the chlorine molecule is broken to form a positively charged triangular
intermediate and a negatively charged chloride ion. Because the intermediate
forms and reacts very quickly under normal conditions, no one could tell
which of these two possibilities was more likely to occur in the real reaction.

Now, however, Tony Legon and his colleagues Hannelore Bloemink, Kelvin
Hinds and Joanna Thorn at the University of Exeter think they have settled
the matter. They rapidly mixed ethene and chlorine in a vacuum chamber,
and then immediately allowed the mixture to expand through a narrow aperture.
The expansion cooled the gas mixture to very low temperatures, ‘freezing’
the reaction at the intermediate stage. The chemists then studied the intermediate
using microwave spectroscopy, which revealed details of its rotational motions.

From this, Legon and his colleagues determined the geometry of the intermediate.
The evidence came out overwhelmingly in favour of the T-shaped ‘outer complex’
(Chemical Communications, p 1321).

The chemists obtained similar results when they looked at the reaction
of acetylene (ethyne) with chlorine and with bromine monochloride (BrCl),
and the reaction between ethene and BrCl. The structures and properties
of these T-shaped intermediates are broadly similar to hydrogen-bonded complexes
such as that formed between ethene and hydrogen chloride. This suggests
to the researchers that the first step in these reactions is dominated
by weak electrostatic interactions between the reactants.

Dons are creatures that really have to be experienced to be appreciated
fully. It is wrong to call them simply ‘academics’. They are indeed a species
of the genus Academicus, but a highly evolved form rarely encountered outside
their natural territory.

Dons were a feature of academic life peculiar to Britain. They were
unique in their cantankerousness, woolly-mindedness, disdain for students,
contempt for the establishment, forgetfulness, rudeness and total devotion
to their scholarship. They were simultaneously out of touch with the ‘real’
world, irresponsible, ill-tempered, arrogant, unapproachable, reprehensible,
cynical, untrustworthy, unprincipled, socially inept and wholly committed
to the rigours of their intellectual discipline.

Physically, the dons were decrepit, usually with an excess of wiry greying
hair in odd places such as the back of the neck, eyebrows, ears and nostrils.
Their uniform was an old, ill-fitting three-piece suit in some nondescript
design. Collars and cuffs were frayed, torn or missing. The combination
of coloured socks and shoes revealed a complete lack of anything that could
be remotely called dress sense. They exuded a strange smell – a mixture
of stale pipe, cigar or cigarette smoke, match-head phosphorus and spilled
sherry.

Dons were revolting to the uninitiated but, over time, became familiar,
warm and friendly. Exclusively male, some dons exhibited a great fondness
for wine and women, others for beer and boys. Politically, most would be
found in the suburbs of the left. With no real conception of the motives
and failings of ordinary people, many could see only justice and inevitability
in Marxism, and actively recruited young homosexuals to the KGB. Others,
seeing no contradictions between their political beliefs and their associations
with the hierarchy of the British intelligence services, recruited young
homosexuals to MI6. Some, of course, did both.

Mentally, the dons were sprightly as spring lambs, always ready to leap
headfirst into intellectual battle over some subtle metaphysical point or
moot philological assertion. They were intelligent versions of Harry Enfield’s
Old Gits. They were Stephen Fry’s Donald Trefusis.

The dons did not train young people to take their place in society,
but offered those with sufficient wit and ability the opportunity to have
their minds opened to things larger and greater than themselves. The dons’
purpose was not to create the next generation of bank managers, industrialists,
research-and-developers or entrepreneurs. There were management training
courses and apprenticeships and the University of Life and stuff for such
lesser mortals. The dons saw their role as quite opposed to the demands
of society, the economy and other mundane facts of life. Their task was
to defend the highest standards of intellectual rigour on the highest intellectual
plane. They were engaged in the continuation of illustrious lines of scholarly
inquiry already centuries old; of guarding an essential part of our cultural
inheritance against the barbarians at the gate.

Above all else, the dons enjoyed true academic freedom. This was not,
as many seem to believe, simply a freedom to carp and criticise the establishment,
to join CND marches or write pompous letters to The Times. It was not even
freedom to pursue unpopular or unfashionable lines of scholarly investigation
at the taxpayers’ expense. What it was was a tremendous freedom to think.
With no pressures to teach hordes of uninterested and largely uninteresting
students, no council or committee meetings to attend, no urgent grant proposals
to write or to referee, the don was truly free to sit in his study, watching
the warm, late afternoon sunlight cast shadows on the grass, sipping sherry
and thinking about Hume and Heisenberg, Schopenhauer and Schrodinger. Over
time, this proved to be a surprisingly fertile way to bring forth new ideas.

Every don has his day, and the day of the don is rapidly drawing to
a close. Powers beyond imagination are changing the cosy environment of
the ivory tower. Those students who in the 1970s failed to rise to the intellectual
challenge posed by the dons grew up to become Conservative politicians.
The politicians have now brought in the barbarians who did the management
training courses where they learnt (pace Wilde) the cost of everything and
the value of nothing. As The Economist put it recently, they learnt to believe
that knowledge is simply too important to be left to the academics. Now
the managers and the accountants are in charge and every forced change,
every new initiative introduced since 1979 has had only one purpose: to
ease the dons into ignominious extinction.

When an ecological niche is subject to such rapid change in climate,
the species that inhabits it adapts or perishes. The dons are slowly disappearing
– through death, retirement or intellectual resignation – to be replaced
by a species in transition. The new breed doesn’t quite know where it fits
or what is expected of it: it is not yet fully adapted to the emerging order.
On the one hand, the pretenders wish to emulate their intellectual heroes
and their mentors by becoming dons themselves, adopting donnish appearance
and mannerisms. Many are but pale shadows.

The move to a fully adapted species will take at least another generation.
Our children can look forward to being trained in the classic disciplines
by academics who look and think like bank managers: all pin-striped suits,
Givenchy and electronic organisers. Demographics demands that the majority
will be under 50, with probably a large proportion under 35. Thatcher’s
children let loose on the ancient seats of learning to realise Thatcher’s
vision.

The classic disciplines themselves will be chopped up into ‘accessible’,
predigested, bite-sized chunks called ‘modules’. With all the difficult
bits excised from 19th-century English literature, modern chemistry, the
history of art, comparative philology or mathematical physics, the new academics
will be required to do little more than transfer the spoon of knowledge
to the students’ gaping mouths. The watchwords in this Brave New World will
be ‘relevance’ and ‘accountability’. Students and their parents will be
customers, and the highly competitive universities will be suppliers of
the new commodity called Higher Education. Minds will no longer be opened,
they will be trained, disciplined and narrowed.

Pity the poor dons. They were their own caricature, however I think
I’m going to miss them.

Jim Baggott is a science writer who normally specialises in physical
chemistry.