There’s a potent antidote to the “Isn’t this amazing?” school of science communication and it’s called Will Self. In Self Drives: Maxwell’s Equations, which was broadcast recently on BBC Radio 4, the curious curmudgeon takes science to task once again as he goes in search of the mathematical and physical genius behind James Clerk Maxwell. In the 19th century, Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory unified electricity, magnetism and light in four compact but redoubtable equations, which celebrate their 150th anniversary this year.
Over five short episodes, Self’s querulous quest takes him from Maxwell’s birthplace in Edinburgh to his family home in Glenlair, to the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank and the Diamond synchrotron near Oxford, and finally to Cambridge, where Maxwell studied mathematics in his youth and returned in his latter years as one of the nation’s most accomplished scientists to head the Cavendish laboratory. Accompanying Self along the way is Akram Khan, the same physics professor who joined the errant writer on his earlier orbit of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. I would have dubbed Khan Sancho Panza to Self’s Don Quixote, but for this particular expedition the characters are reversed. It is Khan who wishes to see the poetry of science, while Self is happier to be grounded in prosaic and flawed reality. At CERN he refused truculently to worship in the cathedral of particle physics, stymied in equal measure by the difficulty of the subject matter and the boosterism of its scientific proponents. Here again the journey is mostly one of disappointment and frustration.
But not for the listener. The quest is far from fruitless, and nor is it lacking in emotional and intellectual force. Self’s documentary is not straight biography – you will find out more about Maxwell’s life and work from Wikipedia – but he has a different target in mind. Self may cleave to narrow-eyed circumspection when faced with the marvels of science, but by stabbing at the chinks in its gleaming armour – so often gushingly admired by others – he can occasionally release satisfying spurts of insight. It helps too that Self will confess to sensing the occasional jolt of scientific wonder through his skeptical hide. There is also the pleasure of listening to Self’s languid delivery of a well-crafted narrative.
On the road from Edinburgh to Cambridge, Self and his scientific sidekick bicker about the human factor in science and technology, domains over which Maxwell has enormous but largely unseen influence. The plaque fixed to his house in Edinburgh acclaims him as the father of the electronic age, since his theories ushered in technologies such as mobile phones, radio, radar and GPS.
But during this voyage of discovery, Maxwell’s name is invoked at least as often in those moments when the travellers’ progress is punctuated by malfunctioning electric gadgetry as it is in conversations about his theoretical achievements. Khan misreads his smartphone map; Self, wilfully ignoring their car’s proximity sensor, reverses into a BMW; he also has sardonic fun at the expense of their hapless Chevrolet Volt, the hybrid car that is supposed to be the very embodiment of Maxwell’s electromagnetic legacy. Because the hire company has not provided a proper lead, the intrepid travellers manage just a solitary mile of their 600 mile trip on battery power.
That electric mile is achieved after charging up on a domestic supply at Glenlair, the country estate where Maxwell spent his childhood and much of his adult life. There, Self and Khan try to divine the great man’s mathematical and physical intuition from the geometric tiling he is reckoned to have laid out on the hallway floor, and from the pulse and form of the forces of nature that shape the lands, wind and water in the surrounding countryside.
Self feels they may have been trying too hard:
As we hit the road, I’m only partially convinced that bucolical Glenlair brought Maxwell’s scientific imagination to fruition. It seems far more likely to me that this is just another figurative prop for us laypeople’s limp understanding.
And there’s the rub – this stuff is hard. It’s not clear that you can translate it for laypeople. Self does try, stung perhaps by some of the criticism of his CERN journey that he had not engaged sufficiently with the science. He has himself tutored in calculus and electromagnetic theory in preparation for his Maxwellian odyssey. But as Khan patiently explains, and Self is quick to agree, you cannot expect to master this stuff in a matter of hours. You have to invest more heavily or be content with less.
The trouble is that most people have neither the time nor the inclination. And so the scientists risk becoming, in Self’s view, a type of “intercessionary priesthood”, which raises questions of trust and belief. The instinctive answers to these are evident in the travelling companions’ divergent attitudes to the fruits of science. Khan insists humans must adapt to new technology; Self would rather be master than mastered.
The argument comes to a crunch midway through the journey at a Chinese restaurant in Manchester. While waiting for their prawns and sea bass, Khan insists that science is pure and ultimately detached from its applications. In reply Self pushes the nuclear button: were not the fine, pure scientific minds of those who worked on the Manhattan project complicit in mass annihilation?
Even if Khan’s immediate response is rather feeble he is clearly troubled by the point. The next day the physics professor complains, perhaps a tad churlishly, of his companion’s Self-consistent eloquence. But the author will give no ground: “Perhaps I’m right?” he shoots back.
And he is. Though it’s also fair to say that scientists have long engaged in these sorts of debates, not just on nuclear weapons, but issues such as climate change, mitochondrial transfer and, just last week, the use in humans of genome editing. But what’s not clear is whether Self would ever restrict the search for knowledge as opposed to its application. I would like to have heard Khan push back on this point.
For it’s clear that, despite his doubtful mien, Self still shares in the wonder of scientific curiosity. He recalls his own childhood fascination with magnets, even though it never propelled him to the study of Maxwell’s equations, and is charmed by the grandeur of the Jodrell Bank radio telescope and the chemistry and physics being probed with the intense X-ray’s produced by the Diamond accelerator.
But charm alone cannot produce understanding and ultimately Self has to admit to the deflation of defeat:
The trouble is my lack of real skills. A working knowledge of differential calculus seems a minimum requirement for any grasp on the way human conceptual thought maps the world and interacts with its physical processes.
He is perturbed by the exclusion, a sense reinforced by science historian Simon Schaffer who pinpoints the publication of Maxwell equations in 1865 as the breakpoint between the everyday common sense of the world and the understanding accessed only by those who have worked at the mathematics. Since then the problem has only got worse. Much of modern science is conducted in the invisible realm, making it all the harder for scientists to relate their work to those who have never seen or sensed the contours of the atomic and molecular landscape, never mind the subatomic kingdom and the strange forces that operate within. Is it any wonder that astronomy and brain scanning, with their colourful visuals, have such appeal in the popular mind?
If someone with Self’s evident erudition cannot easily penetrate the mind of Maxwell, what chance does that leave the average layperson? In our high-tech world, that conundrum raises questions not just of understanding, but of power and authority. In a democratic society, these are hard questions that scientists need to ponder seriously, as discussed in these pages by Roland Jackson and Imran Khan only last week.
To such questions, this particular scientist has no ready answers. But I would at least suggest the BBC send Will Self off on yet another quest.
17 Dec 2015: This post was edited lightly for clarity (SC).
As a student of physics @Stephen_Curry once understood Maxwell’s equations, but now contents himself with being a professor of structural biology at Imperial College.
