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In one of the most surprising developments
of the twentieth century, science and technology are now
regarded as mysterious and somewhat frightening realms where
isolated specialists work their magic while ordinary mortals
view them with awe or, more often, an acute lack of interest.
How did it come about, and why? In The Creative
Moment, the author of the bestselling Einstein for Beginners
ventures back into history to examine a series of great
'creative moments' -- decisive points in time when important
understandings about the nature of the physical world failed
to be assimilated into the larger culture. Acting as a critic
of science, he shows how Galileo and Newton in the seventeenth
century cast their arguments in the form of an obscure mathematics
in order to protect the revolutionary new science of mechanics
from the prying eyes of the Church, but at the price of
making physics inaccessible to the lay person.
We see how Einstein's General Theory of
Relativity, a crowning achievement of the nineteenth century
on a par with the works of Beethoven, Dickens or Cezanne,
became famously arcane when it ought not to be... how the
physicists at Los Alamos allowed themselves to be manipulated
by the military into building an unnecessary atomic bomb...
how the new science of molecular biology has failed to realise
its potential, falling instead into a way of thinking so
restrictive as to hamper research and even imperil the search
for an Aids cure... why physicists have come up with almost
no new ideas since the 1920s.
Taken sequentially, these moments tell the
story of the rise and present stagnation of the West as
it is expressed in the great distinguishing feature of western
culture, its science.
Interlinked with the narrative thread is
an overall perspective: science is a way of understanding
created by human effort. Our understandings of nature are
constructed, not discovered. By viewing science as a way
of understanding and not as revealed truth The Creative
Moment leads us on a fascinating exploration of the
way science could work, and its critical relationship to
the society at large from which it is now estranged.
Uniquely among social commentators, Joseph
Schwartz is able to use science as a mirror with which we
can see ourselves. Here, writing with clarity and passion,
he offers a wise and important perspective on the trajectory
of modern society and the origins of our present crisis.
Joseph Schwartz is a physicist and a
writer, author of Einstein for Beginners (with Michael
McGuiness) and Partial Progress: The Politics of Science
and Technology (with David Albury). He lives in London
with his partner Susie Orbach and their two children.
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