As both a physicist and published novelist, Snow was eye-witness to the growing differences between scientists and other thinkers, and the misunderstandings arising about science and its specialised language and methods.

It inspired him to publicise the emerging split among scholars, to question why it was occurring and how it had been allowed to happen. He first drew the issue to public attention in the 1959 Rede lecture at Cambridge University.

In 1963, Snow re-published his essay, and threw down the challenge for the birth of a ‘third culture’, one in which intellectuals of both disciplines would meet, communicate and collaborate.

Since then, the concept of ‘two cultures’ and a ‘third culture’ to frame human intellectual endeavour has fascinated people on both sides of the disciplinary divide and inspired all kinds of study, commentary and activism.

In the year of its fiftieth anniversary, Science Hub re-visits The Two Cultures, with an occasional series on what the idea means to scientists of the twenty-first century.

We begin by talking to one of Australia’s most esteemed scientists: Professor Peter Doherty – Nobel Laureate, immunologist, author of two books and aspiring novelist.

Source: University of Melbourne. Reproduced with permission.

“I read [The Two Cultures] a long time ago and enjoyed it… There is more permeation between the two things now, … [although] we narrow our education system too quickly. We force people towards the arts or sciences too fast in ourhigh school curricula and that’s a mistake. We should leave it broader.

“But the real problem is that people outside science really don’t understand how it works. It can make them very angry.”

As author of two books about science and the scientific culture, a contributing writer to Australia’s major newspapers, and a frequent public lecturer, Professor Doherty is clearly motivated to help the world outside the ivory tower understand science.

He is a persistent and talented communicator who conveys the nuts-and-bolts of science, and its excitement, using analogy, humour and empathy. But he observes that two things stand in the way of a broader public understanding, and acceptance, of scientific issues. The first is whether those outside science are willing and able to think critically about scientific information. The second is the increasing complexity of science.

While critical thinking is a vital skill in the scientific toolkit, it can be a rarer quality in people who haven’t been scientifically trained. He points out that many in society who count themselves as climate-change deniers rely on pseudoscience literature that isn’t properly referenced or annotated.

“Critical thinking, looking at evidence and similar skills are very important,” he says. “You learn that through science. People who don’t do science sometimes don’t learn those skills very well. They’re not used to looking in-depth and critically at something.

“As someone pointed out, in doing an MBA, you do a lot of courses, but don’t really handle data the way you do in science training. You don’t handle it, you don’t analyse it and you don’t generate it anything the way we do. There are very few areas of human activity that do.”

If the habit of critical analysis sets scientists apart, then their specialist knowledge of the natural world can separate them further from those outside the lab.

In having the facts of new discoveries, and the skills to understand their importance, scientific opinion on many issues can become very different from public thought. And as science becomes hyper-specialised, the need to convey its value and ensure its continued support from government and the tax-paying public becomes more urgent.

“Complexity and complex thinking are going to be the hallmarks of science this century,” says Professor Doherty, “and that will distance us [scientists] even further from what the person on the street sees, for whom things are presented in extremely simplistic terms.”

“If you talk about the science of this century, as distinct from the science of the twentieth century, what will be added is ever greater complexity.”

A key example of the power of increasingly sophisticated science is in climate change study, a topic close to Professor Doherty’s heart, and a major theme in his second book, A Light History of Hot Air.

“The Intergovernments Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a unique and new phenomenon,” he says. “The IPCC is taking information from many, many diverse fields and synthesising that information for politicians and the public.

“In climate science, there has been a tremendous increase in the availability of data and information. As you get more information, computing becomes much more demanding. [Scientists] are trying to integrate that information into a general model of climate change and nobody’s ever attempted that before.”

In biomedical science, similarly, Professor Doherty’s own field of expertise, advances in computing technology have allowed life scientists to do increasingly complex studies, and to investigate systems as they interact.

“We’ve traditionally divided biology, or medicine, up into systems. We don’t think in terms of the whole organism because it’s simply too complex to do that.

“I’ve still got a substantial research lab in the US, and we’re involved in a big NIH contract to look at the “systems biology” of the early virus-infected lung – I don’t know when the word “systems biology” was invented, I think it’s comparatively recently.

“We’re bringing in proteomics, genomics and lipidomics, in a multi-centre collaboration with massive computing resources and all the rest of it … It would have been unthinkable ten years ago.”

“There’s still a lot to discover…. so much to discover about interrelationships and interconnections.”

Expert scientific commentary like Professor Doherty’s helps demystify what scientists do, and for some people, eases concern about some of science’s risks. As more research reveals an ethical dimension, stirs up public opinion and crystallises personal values, this type of community engagement by scientists becomes increasingly important.

As the Professor has made comment in a previous issue of Science Hub, scientists have a duty to speak up if debate or decision-making would benefit from their input [Professor Peter Doherty: not by words alone].

“They have to try to get the message out there somewhere, but it’s difficult. The more we can get good science stories out in the public arena, the better, but it’s hard enough to get the major newspapers to carry science stories. If you get something into the Herald Sun, for instance, which has a circulation of about 650,000, it’s probably not going to be read by anyone much that it means anything to. Unless it’s very simplistic.

“The communication system is changing and the blogosphere and online is the way to do it. That’s where younger people are going to get their information… and it’s the young people we need to communicate with – by young people I mean up into their 40s. Everyone’s young to me at this stage!”

Related articles:

• Fiat Lux – Q & A with Professor Peter Doherty
• ThinkTank – State of Australian Science: Innovation nation or a hole in the ground?
• Culture – Science and Society: Professor Peter Doherty: not by words alone

Source: University of Melbourne. Reproduced with permission.

Professor Peter Doherty is one of Australia’s most recent Nobel Laureates, winning the Nobel Prize in 1996 for Physiology or Medicine. He was recognised for his research into how the immune response controls virus infections, work he continues at both the University of Melbourne and St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. He has written two books, A Light History of Hot Air and The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize. He was Australian of the Year in 1997.

In the third of our four-part series, Science Hub talks to Professor Doherty about writing books, experimental mythology and intuition.

“In science there are collectors, classifiers, compulsory tidiers-up and permanent contestors, detectives, some artists and many artisans, there are poet-scientists and philosophers and even a few mystics… To the chagrin of my family, I am very Swiss and a true collector… Peter is a Celt and a true Australian and to the chagrin of his wife and of mine, he is a mystic.”

These were the words of Rolf Zinkernagel to guests at the Nobel Prize Banquet of 1996. He was honoured that year with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research into T-cell biology. The mystic Peter to whom he was referring was his co-Laureate, Brisbane-born Peter Doherty.

It is a tantalising, and at first blush, surprising image of the Peter Doherty known to many: the world-class immunologist, social commentator, author and qualified vet, schooled in livestock management of the breed ‘em, feed ‘em and eat ‘em philosophy. More than most scientists, he has built his reputation by being fact-focused and down-to-earth.

“There have been two things to my career as a scientist,” he says. “One is my capacity to write reasonably well. If you can’t, it’s very hard to communicate. The other thing is that I look at data very closely. I’m very interested in what the actual numbers are. Fitting my findings into someone else’s conceptual view, or even my own previous view is not a useful way to do science.”

It is better to be instructed by nature, says the Professor, and he practices what he preaches, training his students to avoid the mistakes of young researchers.

“There are two things it’s very hard to get a young scientist to do. One is to write, of course. They all hate to write. The second is to look very closely at their data … Everyone wants to do the next experiment without looking at what they’ve got.”

Of his own early success, Professor Doherty considers intuition as important as his analytical and writing skills.

“In science there’s a certain intuitive ability – at least, in the case of the complex science that I’ve been doing… And I’ve been doing it without the tools to do complex science, if you like. Knowing where to go and what to do is an intuitive capacity,” he says.

“That’s what Zinkernagel meant by calling me a mystic – I’m a bit intuitive and conceptual.”

As well as a full-time scientist with two laboratories in Melbourne and the USA, Professor Doherty is the author of two books, with a third on the way. His first, The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize, was not a manual for Nobel success, but an introduction to the culture of science, a topic of increasing importance as science becomes more specialised and remote from public understanding.

The Beginner’s Guide nonetheless gave young scientists some advice on tipping the Nobel odds in their favour and Professor Doherty’s top pointers were to live a long time, be generous to colleagues, learn to write well and exercise – meaning run, don’t walk, far away from committees and administrative responsibilities.

His second book, A Light History of Hot Air, was an eclectic mix of anecdotes focused on hot air in its many forms – steam, political gasbagging, and a Doherty family hot air-balloon adventure over the seasonal migration of Kenyan wildlife. It also examines climate change, a topic that the Professor is passionate about.

In writing for the public, Professor Doherty says, “What I’m trying to do is put out a broader understanding of some general concepts, and although I’ve no training in it, the ethical implications, as well as the strictly scientific issues.

“I think [scientists] do have a responsibility to get the message out if they can see that something happening is dangerous or damaging. They have to be careful, on the other hand, if speaking out on an issue they know really well – especially if it involves money – not to be painted as self-serving.”

Whether science or words are his medium for exploration, Professor Doherty is clearly a man interested in ideas, and like most scientists, and all mystics, someone searching for meaning.

“I’m interested in how you express ideas, how you probe ideas and in broad general ideas that are useful.
“I’m an experimentalist,” he continues. “I do experiments all the time – not with my personal life – that can lead you to a situation where you can be totally destroyed.”

But as he has said previously, in a careful pun, “My real expertise is microbiology, immunology and pathology and I’m an experimentalist, so if you combine those fields you get experimental mythology.” And this is perhaps apt for an intuitive immunologist of Celtic heritage, and a scientist who likes history.

Professor Doherty’s third book, in its third draft, is a science-based novel. It is the realisation of his long-held ambition of writing fiction, and an expression of his combined interests in the humanities and sciences.

“One of the things I like about writing is it makes you look at things,” he says. “It makes you to come to a new synthesis in your perception of something.

“And this is why, after trying to write a novel, I’ve got even more respect for good novelists. They start to write about something and then come to a new synthesis of it. It means something to the reader in a way the reader has never seen before.”

He has strong interests in history and politics; wants to write about synthesis and complexity, denial and scepticism; and admits had circumstances been different, he “may well have gone down the arts side of things”.

But during a formative period for the younger Doherty, he found himself reading Hemmingway and Sartre simultaneously – an experience he says jokingly left him confused for many years (“Wouldn’t you be?”). In the two authors he saw a choice: a life of action, or a life of meditation, and he made his choice to become a vet, deciding, “to be the man of action rather than the philosopher,” and in keeping with the motto of the Royal Society of London, of which he is member, that “nothing is by words alone.”

Professor Zinkernagel was circumspect as he rounded out his Nobel speech in late 1996, and suggested that he and his colleague Peter were not altogether necessary in the discovery of their prize-winning results.

“Peter, let us face it,” he said, “We’ve been lucky … Had we not found the rules of restricted immune T cell recognition, somebody else would have.”

Yet had the younger Doherty had chosen differently – a life of meditation, history and words alone – science would be all the poorer for it.

Next month, in the final part of Science Hub’s series on Professor Peter Doherty, we re-visit C.P.E Snow’s Two Cultures, and ask the Professor what it means to him.

Related articles:

• Fiat Lux – Q & A with Professor Peter Doherty
• ThinkTank – State of Australian Science: Innovation nation or a hole in the ground?
• Culture – Science and Society: The Two Cultures 50 years on – Professor Peter Doherty

The seafaring mollusk known as nautilus (Cephalopoda nautiloidea, or ‘head-foot sailor’) carried a calcified rendering of a mathematical wonder for its shell millions of years before Descartes anointed it with the first of its many names. The logarithmic spiral is also known as the growth spiral or the equiangular spiral. The eminent mathematician Jacob Bernoulli was so enamoured with this spira mirabilis, the miraculous spiral, he wished it inscribed on his gravestone. (12)

The logarithmic spiral can be defined as a curve that exhibits a constant angle between the radius vector (a line from the centre to a point on the curve) and the tangent vector (a line oriented along the path of travel). Try this: put a bin in the middle of your office, stand next to it, then stretch out your left arm so that it is pointing approximately at 10 o’clock. (13) Walk backwards around the bin, moving further away from it while keeping your arm pointing directly at the bin. Stop before you run into your desk, and you will have traced out a logarithmic spiral. The tangent vector is pointing out your back, while your sore arm (14) is the radius vector.

The logarithmic spiral has many special properties that make it very useful in both nature and engineering: it is self-similar, in that its shape remains unaltered by scaling and angular growth; the distance between arms increases in a geometric progression; (15) any straight line passing through the origin makes a constant angle with the curve (Figure 1); a degenerate logarithmic spiral is a straight line at one extreme and a circle at the other; it can be produced using incredibly simple rules, such as ‘move forward a bit, turn left 30 degrees’. If instead of moving forward, we simply ‘grow and turn’, we enter the domain of Lindenmeyer Systems: a formal set of simple rules capable of generating remarkably complex fractal figures, such as trees and ferns. (16)

Nature provides a cornucopia (17) of examples of the logarithmic spiral in action. The arrangement of seeds in a sunflower–the optimal arrangement for efficient packing. The path of an insect as it flies toward a light–arising from the structure of its compound eyes. The path of an eagle as it swoops on its prey–so it can keep a constant eye on the target. The arrangement of scales on a pineapple. The swirling rage of a tropical cyclone. Or the swirling mist of stars in a galactic spiral. And the shell of a mollusk–due to the accretive mode of its construction. You may even find one in your own backyard.

Graphic reproduced with the permission of Karmen Franklin.

…
Now D’Arcy Thompson (1860-1948) liked to walk around St Andrews, Scotland with a parrot on his shoulder. He was also very fond of ice-cream, and translating classical Latin and Greek texts. But more than for his parrot, he will be remembered for his opus magnum, On Growth and Form (1917), wherein an entire chapter is devoted to the logarithmic spiral. (27) In these pages we find a poetic treatise on natural development, a thorough analysis of patterns of growth and models that became a cornerstone of modern morphometry (the study of the shape of living organisms). Thompson’s unifying theory is that ontogeny (individual growth) is determined by the physical forces of nature, and shaped by environment. This powerful statement, to some extent at odds to Darwinian theory (and pre-dating the discovery of DNA), is now generally accepted as complementary to our modern notions of growth, development and biological processes.

Shells, such as the nautilus discussed earlier, grow by accretion; matter is gradually accumulated or deposited at the opening, enlarging as it winds around a central axis. (28) This means that only the opening ever grows; the original form never changes, so that a young shell has the exact same form as a larger one of the same species. Thompson marvels that ‘this remarkable property … is characteristic of the equiangular spiral, and of no other mathematical curve.’ Such a shell can be described as a gnomon, which in its most general sense is ‘any figure which, being added to any figure whatsoever, leaves the resultant figure similar to the original.’ (29) The word has its origins nearly 2000 years ago with the mathematician Hero of Alexandria, in a day when people were more interested in the design of sundials; (30) the gnomon was the ‘indicator’, the part of the sundial that cast the shadow. Gnomons can be found in many areas of both mathematics and nature, shells being the most obvious exemplar.

Notes:
(12) Tragically, the engraver mistakenly produced an Archimedean spiral (resembling a coiled rope) instead.
(13) Where 12 o’clock is straight ahead, 9 o’clock is to your left, and 3 o’clock is about tea time.
(14) Hope you didn’t trip over anything!
(15) A constant ratio between successive measures, and hence the origin of one of its names.
(16) Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz and Aristid Lindenmayer, The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1996.
(17) Cornu copiae, the ‘horn of plenty’, was a mythical horn able to produce whatever was wished for, a gift from Zeus to Amalthea from the goat upon whose milk he was raised. Horns, of course, are shaped like a cone twisted by a helical spiral.
(27) D’Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992.
(28) This parallels the growth of plants, whereby the meristem (the growing cells at the tip of a plant) grows and turns at a constant angle.
(29) Thompson, 182.
(30) Gazale, 125.
Copyright 2006, University of Melbourne Postgraduate Association
Copyright 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

Text reproduced with permission from the author and Dr Michelle Smith, the editor of Traffic (2009).