Free Radicals - Michael Brooks [97]
We have seen the fraud that is ‘normal misbehaviour’. We have seen how scientists conjure up an idea from somewhere no one else could have been, through drugs or mysticism or hallucinations or religious faith. We have seen that polished powers of persuasion, a silver tongue, can do wonders for the acceptance of your idea. Sometimes, though, you just have to be a pain. You face up to sheer, bloody-minded obstinacy with a fighting spirit. You don’t give in to the belittling by your peers or even your superiors; you don’t just give up on your ‘hopeless’ or ‘misguided’ idea. You find ways to beat the system. That’s why science is not for the meek and mild. It is red in tooth and claw; its very ideas and breakthroughs are subject to the law of the survival of the fittest. Good scientists must strive to overthrow, undermine and destroy their colleagues’ reputations. It’s all neatly summed up in a quote attributed to the American playwright Gore Vidal. ‘It is not enough to succeed,’ he said. ‘Others must fail.’
In some ways, Chandra, Alfvén and Ovshinsky did fail. They never managed to achieve the status of ‘insider’. Though their scientific insights are now accepted and recognised, all three experienced the bitter taste of disappointment in their peers. Chandra remarked that, despite the Nobel Prize, he never considered himself part of the ‘astronomical establishment’. Alfvén spoke with bitterness of his status as a ‘dissident’; it was always, he said, a ‘very unpleasant situation’. Ovshinsky is the least bitter of the three, perhaps because he always knew he would never get a scientist’s ultimate recognition, the Nobel Prize. ‘I’m not a part of their world,’ he says.
The fact that the walls were too high for these scientists to climb is something the secret anarchists need to appreciate, because they are now faced with a task that requires those walls to be pulled down in a move towards unity and co-operation. As we will see in the final chapter, it is going to take a new and special kind of anarchy to get this job done.
IN THE LINE OF FIRE
Life on the barricades
F
rom the outside, it seems an idyllic scene. It is the autumn of 2010, and the chestnut tree is just beginning to yellow against the red brick of Chicheley Hall, a magnificent Georgian country house set in 80 acres of beautiful gardens in rural Buckinghamshire. The Royal Society, the oldest scientific society in the world, has recently purchased the property for a cool £6 million and spent another £10 million converting it into a conference centre. The Kavli Royal Society International Centre will, they hope, offer scientists an atmosphere of relaxed creativity in which to work.
Inside the conference hall, however, the atmosphere is anything but relaxed. David Brin, a planetary scientist and science-fiction author, is fuming. His mouth is set in an ugly grimace, and from time to time his head shakes in exasperated disbelief. His eyes hardly lift from the table in front of him, an angry stare burning into the wood. It is clear that when the current speaker, Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the alien-hunting SETI Institute, finishes, Brin is going to explode.
Shostak and Brin are taking part in a panel discussion about whether we should attempt to communicate with aliens. After years of listening – in vain – for alien signals, Shostak is keen that we send out signals from the Earth in a systematic effort to make ourselves known to the universe. Brin thinks that could prove suicidal. When his turn to speak comes, Brin turns on Shostak, all guns blazing. Shostak has displayed a ‘stunning ignorance and an incredible lack of imagination’, he says. Shostak, head slightly bowed, shows only a neatly cropped head of white hair and a wry smile. He has heard it all before.
As Brin’s comments continue to pour contempt on Shostak’s management of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, it becomes clear that these two have history. Brin makes references to Shostak