Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe Read Free

and sometimes even failures. On the other, I will scrutinize briefly the various types of blunders and attempt to identify their psychological (or, if possible, neuroscientific) causes. As we shall see, blunders are not born equal, and the blunders of the five scientists on my list are rather different in nature. Darwin’s blunder was in not realizing the full implications of a particular hypothesis. Kelvin blundered by ignoring unforeseen possibilities. Pauling’s blunder was the result of overconfidence bred by previous success. Hoyle erred in his obstinate advocacy of dissent from mainstream science. Einstein failed because of a misguided sense of what constitutes aesthetic simplicity. The main point, however, is that along the way, we shall discover that blunders are not only inevitable but also an essential part of progress in science. The development of science is not a direct march to the truth. If not for false starts and blind alleys, scientists would be traveling for too long down too many wrong paths. The blunders described in this book have all, in one way or another, acted as catalysts forimpressive breakthroughs—hence, their description as “brilliant blunders.” They served as the agents that lifted the fog through which science was progressing, in its usual succession of small steps occasionally punctuated by quantum leaps.
    I have organized the book in such a way that for each scientist, I first present the essence of some of the theories for which this individual is best known. These are very concise summaries intended to provide an introduction to the ideas of these masters and an appropriate context for the blunders, rather than to represent comprehensive descriptions of the respective theories. I have also chosen to concentrate only on one major blunder in each case instead of reviewing a laundry list of every possible mistake that these pundits may have committed during their long careers. I shall start with the man about whom the New York Times correctly wrote in its obituary notice (published on April 21, 1882) that he “has been read much, but talked about more.”

CHAPTER 2
     

THE ORIGIN

     
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
—CHARLES DARWIN
     
    T he most striking thing about life on Earth is its prodigious diversity. Take a casual stroll on a spring afternoon; you are likely to encounter several kinds of birds, many insects, perhaps a squirrel, a few people (some may be walking their dogs), and a large variety of plants. Even just in terms of the properties that are the easiest to discern, organisms on Earth differ in size, color, shape, habitat, food, and capabilities. On one hand, there are bacteria that are less than one hundred thousandth of an inch in length, and on the other, there are blue whales more than 100 feet long. Among the thousands of known species of the marine mollusks known as nudibranchs, there are many that are plain looking, while others have some of the most sumptuous colors exhibited by any creature on Earth. Birds can fly at astonishing heights in the atmosphere:On November 29, 1975, a large vulture was sucked into a jet engine at a height of 37,900 feet above the Ivory Coast in West Africa. Other birds, such as the migrating bar-headed geese and the whooper swans, regularly fly higher than 25,000 feet. Not to be outdone, ocean creatures achieve similar records in depth. OnJanuary 23, 1960, therecord-setting explorer Jacques Piccard and Lieutenant Don Walsh of the US Navy descended slowly in a special probe called a bathyscaphe to the deepest point at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean—the Mariana Trench—south of Guam. When they finally touched down at the record depth of