I wholeheartedly endorse everything Professor Ramakrishnan, the new president of the Royal Society, says in his article “More than ever, science must be central to all our lives” (Comment), except for one thing: what he says about the nature of science is wrong. He says: “Science is simply the systematic accumulation of knowledge based on evidence.” It is not.
Two considerations govern acceptance and rejection of theories in physics: evidence and unity. Given any accepted physical theory, it is always possible to concoct endlessly many disunified rivals that fit the evidence even better than the accepted theory. One can, for example, simply add on a number of additional verified laws, thus creating a thoroughly disunified rival theory that is much more empirically successful. But such empirically more successful but disunified theories are never considered for a moment in physics, precisely because of their disunity. This persistent acceptance of unified theories only in physics, even though endlessly many empirically more successful disunified rivals are available, means that the whole enterprise makes a big, problematic assumption about the nature of the universe: it is such that all disunified theories, however empirically successful, are false.
Nicholas Maxwell
Emeritus reader
Department of Science and Technology Studies
University College London
London WC1
Different forms of loneliness
A personal observation gleaned from Kit Buchan’s reporting (“All by myself: what Londoners say about being alone”, New Review) is that there are two kinds of loneliness: one obvious state where you don’t see many people, can’t get out and often live alone. The second one highlighted for me the loneliness that I sometimes experience and feel guilty about. I am lucky I have a loving family, good friends and things to do but I live alone after a long marriage, and the last 10 years of that marriage I happily supported my disabled husband. I relish my independence and in many ways delight in living on my own, but a remark made by Angelika – “If your mind is clear and you’re positive about life, you’re not lonely” – helps me understand myself better. I will keep her phrase by me and I feel it will help me when I occasionally feel lonely.
Jude McGowan
London W7
Act quickly on broadband
Your editorial “Government investment is vital for our feeble broadband network” (Comment) lays the blame for the current state of broadband in Britain partially at the door of the previous Labour government, which you say “gave responsibility for the broadband network to BT” in 2005. In 2004, before Ofcom’s last strategic review of telecommunications, only 25% of households had a fixed broadband service. At that time, companies were offering speeds of up to 3Mbit/s. The Labour government forced BT to open up its exchanges to rivals to give the UK a more competitive broadband market in 2005. Since then, average broadband speeds have risen more than 20-fold, while prices have fallen by about 50%.
Labour left office with fully costed plans for universal broadband access by 2012, something that has still not been achieved by this government. Efforts by Conservative MPs to have BT broken up are a diversion from the government’s failure to provide even basic broadband that so many homes and businesses need. Ofcom’s decision to take action against BT is a step in the right direction, but ministers must keep an open mind and be ready to act quickly if they do not achieve the desired result.
Chi Onwurah MP
Newcastle upon Tyne
Myra Hindley the manipulator
I quietly seethed while reading the piece by Richard Astor in last week’s Observer defending his father, your former editor David Astor, in his campaign to secure the release of Myra Hindley from her mandatory life sentence for murder in which he compared her continued incarceration to the plight of Nelson Mandela (“Why my father David Astor was right to campaign for Myra Hindley)”.
Apart from the comparison being odious in the extreme, why cannot he realise that Hindley was, to her death, an extremely devious woman? I am afraid Lord Longford, the prime campaigner for her release, intellectual though he may have been, was almost devoid of common sense and so was an easy target for Hindley’s manipulation. David Astor was a great editor of a great and venerable newspaper but when he got it wrong he got it very, very wrong and his high-mindedness was misdirected in this instance.
Tim Wallace
Penzance
Cornwall
Ridiculous referendum
Talking of “reckless risks with Britain’s future”, it was Cameron himself who took the most reckless risk by promising this ridiculous referendum in the first place (“Why swapping partisan nastiness for olive branches would be smart”, Andrew Rawnsley). It sticks in the gullet to have to support this arrogant bully, yet I suppose it must be done for the greater good.
Roy Boffy
Walsall
