Peter Watson (1) (1943–)

Convergence is a history of modern science but with a distinctive twist. The twist has been there for all to see but so far it has not been set out as clearly as it deserves. The argument is that the various disciplines — despite their very different beginnings, and apparent areas of interest — have in fact been gradually coming together over the past 150 years. Converging and coalescing identify one extraordinary master narrative, one overwhelming interlocking coherent story: the history of the universe. Among its achievements, the intimate connections between physics and chemistry have been discovered. The same goes for the links between quantum chemistry and molecular biology. Particle physics has been aligned with astronomy and the early history of the evolving universe. Paediatrics has been enriched by the insights of ethology; psychology has been aligned with physics, chemistry and even with economics. Genetics has been harmonised with linguistics, botany with archaeology, climatology with myth — and so on and so on. Big History — the master narrative of the trajectories of the world's great civilisations — has been explained and is being further fleshed-out by the interlocking sciences. This is a simple insight but one with profound consequences. Convergence is, as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, has put it, a 'the deepest thing about the universe'.
Most of the ideas collected here were not new to me but this is an impressive synthesis ....and a very large book (544 pages). Too big to try and summarise.
With Bohr: "But the real importance of Bohr's breakthrough was in his unification of Rutherford, Planck and J.J: [Thompson] confirming the quantum - discrete - nature of nature, the stability of the atom (half-quantum states were inadmissible), and the nature of the link between physics and chemistry.
Linus Pauling: unification of Chemistry and biology..."All this was important because, at the time Pauling developed his concept of resonance, he now adapted an idea from biology. Having based his chemistry for so long on quantum physics, Pauling had started attending biology seminars at Caltech in the department headed by T. H. Morgan. He was in particular interested in how geneticists identified the location of genes on chromosomes, which they did indirectly, by inference, by measuring how frequently two independent traits were inherited together. The principle established here was that the closer two genes were physically on the chromosome, the greater the probability they would stay together during genetic crossover in reproduction. Pauling now adapted this idea to resonance, to create his own scale of the relationship between pairs of elements, according to how ionic or covalent their bonds were. He found that the more ionic the bonds were between the atoms, the greater was the difference in their ability to attract electrons.
Darwin and evolution: While the great story of evolution was the main biological unification of the nineteenth century it was not, only one. The most important, certainly in the early part was the discovery of cells and, no less important, the realisation that both animals and plants are made up of cells. This idea, that forms of life are composed of independent, but cooperative units ranks as one of the seminal discoveries in biology. a fundamental link between zoology and botany, over and above the fact that they both concern living things.
Watson and Crick and DNA: "In the summer of 1953, the physicist, George Gamow wrote to Watson and Crick. 'Your article, he said, 'brings biology over into the exact sciences.
So far Peter Watson seems to be on reasonably solid ground and his arguments are factually based but he seems to slip into some much looser thinking when he indulges himself with some historical speculation....especially about the end of the last ice age and the rise in sea levels that presumably buried most of the evidence of human habitation under the sea. Here he slips into prioritising myth (and I'm not convinced that this is any more reliable than relying on the stories of Superman today might be in 1000 years time). "......then, like other powerful events, would they have been remembered and rendered coherent in myth form?" Well maybe....but how accurately? He further speculates...."There is one piece of evidence, one myth, which suggests there was just such a powerful change in human consciousness. Could it be that this all-important change in mentality is in fact contained in the very first book of the Bible? Is this why the Bible begins as it does? ....The expulsion itself, for instance, would seem to represent the end of horticulture, or the end of humankind's hunter-gatherer lifestyle and its transfer to agriculture, and the recognition, discussed earlier, that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was easier, more enjoyable, more harmonious, than farming." Frankly, I just wish that he had stuck to his factually based stuff....especially given that the genesis story seems to actually be two stories that were patched together by the authors of Genesis with a mixture of Egyptian (Nile) myths and Babylonian myth. Maybe he's right but he certainly has lost his fact based narrative.
Stephen Wolfram...physicist-mathematician. "Found that a few simple rules can lead to both great complexity and to order....that order and complexity are different sides of the same coin."......"Throughout his book he describes the behaviour of cellular automata only, patterns in black and white, and occasionally other colours, like grey. But Wolfram finds in the patterns many analogies to real life. For example, some of the patterns resemble the order we see in nature, the stripes on tigers, for example, or the shape of sand dunes, the whorls of snails and shells. Elsewhere, he argues that space itself may well be made up of discrete units, much like the cells of cellular automata, and that this helps us explain fundamental particles, which are essentially 'tangles' in this network of units. It is the tangle that moves and interacts and this is what mass is (not a million miles from the Higgs boson". Looking at space in this way, he says, helps us understand quantum mechanics and such phenomena as 'superposition', the idea that entities can be in two places at once, because they are essentially connected via the space network. He also shows that if the basic shape of the cells or 'pixels' (for want of a better word) is, say, a hexagon rather than a square, then space will naturally be curved, just as Einstein said"....."Wolfram's ideas have had a mixed reception." Partly this is because cellular automata are analogies of life, not life itself, and he claims just too much for them. Partly it is because his book abounds in phrases like 'I strongly suspect', 'it seems possible', 'it seems like', 'if I am correct'. Speculation piled on analogy is not everyone's idea of science" Ironic that Watson should express this view when he has done precisely the same thing with his myths about Genesis etc. But one of Wolfram's main conclusions is that 'At some rather abstract level one can immediately recognize one basic similarity between nature and mathematics . . . this suggests that the overall similarity between mathematics and nature must have a deeper origin.. Most scientists seem to agree but not all.
The whole thrust of the book has been the great convergence, the growing interconnections between the various sciences but Watson does say: ..."It is important at this point to say that, in recent years; beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, but taking wing in the 1990s, a counter-movement proliferated. It consisted mainly of philosophers, historians, sociologists, and even a few computer specialists, rather than mainstream scientists themselves. This camp argues that reductionism is little short of a sin, that the sciences can never constitute a single unified project — that, in fact, the sciences are a disunity and that it is 'imperialistic' and 'patriarchal' to say otherwise. These individuals are sceptical that there is a pre-existing order to the world we see around us. They argue that the 'apparent order' is in many ways an artefact of the methods we use to study the world".
Despite his strange lapse into fantasy thinking, I liked the book. His selection of the great figures or great convergences might be argued but overall, IU found it fascinating and convincing. (He influenced me to read a biography of Pauling and I must also look into Wolfram's work). I give it five stars.… (mer)

Where to start? On a positive note, this novel did have a few compelling moments, hence three stars rather than two. That being said, I have so many issues with the story. It opens with Madeleine being stripped naked and humiliated in a "test" meant to prepare her potential torture and execution should she be captured by the Nazis in her role as a British agent in occupied France. But, after a bit of pampering, Madeleine is absolutely fine and up to flirting with the man to orchestrated the entire episode: the narrator of this novel, one Matt Hammond. As the novel is narrated from Matt perspective, the book title should really have been Matt's War, not Madeleine's War. In short order, Matt and Madeleine become involved, even as Madeleine leaves for occupied France ahead of the D-Day invasion. Left to his own devices, Matt starts suspect Madeleine could have been a German spy (so much for love, I guess) and then gets himself sent to France to kill a Resistance fighter on Churchill's orders. The last is a bit that could have been left out of the book entirely, and left me with a very negative view of Matt as a person. Overall, I kept wondering what the author wanted the reader to take away from this book: was I supposed to like or have sympathy for the narrator Matt (who I rather despise by the end)? Was there supposed to be some kind of theme about how war compromises everyone's morality? Was I supposed to feel attached to the characters (I didn't mind in the least when several died towards the end)? I'm not sure and I don't know that I could recommend this novel when I've encountered so many WWII-era novels that are just better stories.… (mer)

Watson's erudition, his knowledge of the sciences, and his ability to weave a compelling story around them is undeniable and impressive. I haven't read everything in this hefty book (how many people have?), but almost everything I did read was compelling and provocative. Only, after a while you realize that Watson has done quite a bit of cherry picking, has simply selected everything that fits in his convergence-theory and sometimes also relies heavily on less reliable theories and studies. For the latter I’m not referring to his extensive report of evolutions in the exact sciences (physics and mathematics first), because I am not sufficiently versed in that. But I did read thoroughly the pieces where he talks about, for instance, Big History, or early human history, because I think I know something about that.

Big History is presented by Watson as proof of his claim that the sciences have been converging since the mid-19th century. I don't know. The publications of a Christian David (to whom Watson strangely does not refer at all) make it clear that Big History can paint an attractive narrative of the evolution of our universe, but you will not find a real integration of physical, biological and social sciences in it. Big History sticks to the surface a little too much for that.

And in the chapter on early human history, Watson relies on highly controversial and often very preliminary recent publications to launch speculative theories. For example, he talks about the prehistoric Venus figurines, citing the highly controversial publications of Maria Gimbutas, and formulating a theory himself that after the domestication of animals, from about 12 to 10,000 years ago, man realized that there was a male input in the onset of pregnancies; it was the beginning of patriarchy, and the sudden disappearance of female fertility statues. The latter is not even true, just to indicate on what loose sand Watson builds his claims.

It is also striking that Watson does not only want to prove that sciences are evolving towards each other, but above all wants to defend the reductionist approach of science. For him, that reductionism is even the core of the success of those sciences. Well, to a certain extent this is justifiable: many breakthroughs, especially in the physical sciences, are the result of focusing on very limited research objects, strictly distinguishing phenomena, etc. But that there are great risks involved, and that this approach does injustice to reality as a whole, is now also clear. None of that with Watson, who continues to ardently defend reductionism, also in the social sciences, and who attacks mainly non-scientists who point to phenomena such as chaos, complexity, emergence, etc. The title of this book would therefore better be: “reductionism. The idea at the heart of science”.… (mer)