“I wanted to become a chemist - and so it happened. I dreamed of marrying an extraordinary girl - and so it happened. I wanted to have two children - a boy and a girl - and so it happened. I tried to compose novels and short stories - it also worked out … Finally, I decided that I would not do anything at all except literature. And so it happened."
This micro-autobiography belongs to Isaac Asimov, an American science fiction writer and author of books on the history of natural history. We offer the reader a preface to one of these books - a collection of historical and scientific essays "Adding a Dimension" ("Another Dimension"), published in England in 1964.
Once, it was many years ago, I met a rather famous historian of science. More precisely, he condescended to meet him. With contemptuous regret, I looked at a man doomed, in my opinion, to vegetate on the outskirts of science. His specialty seemed to me like a lifelong exile in a remote and harsh land, where the light of modern science can hardly dawn. While I, a young college teacher, was already basking in the direct rays of this sun.
Well, all my life I've been delusional. But to such an extent - rarely. After all, it was me, not him, who sat on the sidelines of science. And he, not I, walked along her pillar path.
I was deceived by the illusion of the so-called growth zone - the belief that all the most valuable in science is concentrated on its leading edge, and that what is left behind is outdated. But is it really so? Is the young greenery that covers the tree every year is the tree? By itself, this green is nothing more than a bright and eye-catching outfit. The trunk, the branches - this is what gives the tree its true grandeur, justifying the existence of leaves.
Scientific discoveries, even the most amazing, the most revolutionary, never appear from scratch.
"If I saw further," Newton said, "it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
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Studying the past not only does not deny scientific innovation, but, on the contrary, allows you to truly appreciate it. Agree that the gradually opening bud, as we see it thanks to the extended shooting in time, is a much more exciting sight than a photograph of an already blossoming flower.
Exaggerated interest in the growth zone threatens to kill the best in science, its soul, because the true progress of knowledge is not at all limited to this zone. To those who see nothing but the growth zone, science begins to seem like a revelation, which was not preceded by any preparatory work. This is Athena, who emerged from the head of Zeus as an adult, fully armed; barely having time to take the first breath, she shook the air with her war cry. Who would dare to add anything to such a science? But what if some part of this shiny structure turns out to be unusable? The superiority of the latest achievements is deceiving, and when they collapse, you ask yourself how you could get carried away with this tinsel.
But add one more dimension - spatial depth! Learn to see the branches behind the halo of foliage, the very branches that connect it to the trunk that goes into the soil. And the tree of science will appear before you, you will see something eternally alive, at the same time changeable and constant. And not just a growing edge, an ephemeral canopy of foliage, doomed to death if frost suddenly hits.
Science acquires real meaning when it is viewed not as an abstract reality, but as the result of the work of all generations - both the present one and those who no longer exist.
No scientific position, no observation, no idea exists by itself. Any idea is the result of the efforts expended by someone, and until you find out who this person was, in what country he worked, what he considered to be true and what was a delusion, until you know all this, you will not be able to truly understand this or that scientific thesis or fact, this or that idea.
Consider some of what the history of science teaches.
First, if science is not a revelation, but a product of the human mind, it can be developed further. If a scientific law is not an eternal truth, if it is only a generalization suitable, according to some people, to describe a certain class of observations, then it is possible that other people will find another generalization more acceptable. Limited, not absolute, scientific truth contains room for further improvement. Until this is understood, all scientific research will be meaningless.
Secondly, the history of science helps to assimilate some important truths about the nature of the scientist as a certain human type. Of all the stereotypes that word of mouth bestows on academics, one has undoubtedly done the most harm. A scientist can be labeled with any label: "devilish", "immoral", "soulless", "cracker", "egoist", "not of this world" and even worse - nothing will happen to him. But unfortunately, such a quality as infallibility is too often attributed to him, and this already threatens to distort the appearance of science in the most irreparable way.
Like all people, scientists have a great and indisputable right to make mistakes sometimes, the right to make gross blunders in some cases, and finally, the right to grandiose errors. What is much sadder, they are sometimes capable of persisting in their mistakes with goat stubbornness. And since this is so, it means that science itself may turn out to be false in one way or another.
Only by hacking into his nose that no scholarship is immune from mistakes, the scientist will protect himself from disappointment. When a theory fails, it doesn't follow that there is nothing more to believe in, nothing to hope for, nothing to rejoice in disinterestedly. For those who are accustomed to the collapse of hypotheses, who have learned to find a replacement for them in the form of new, more convincing generalizations, a failed theory is not the gray ash of a discredited present, but a harbinger of a new and more optimistic future.
And thirdly, following the evolution of scientific ideas, we ourselves join the excitement and rapture of the great battle with the unknown.
Miscalculations and blunders, imaginary revelations, a game of hide and seek with the truth that, it turns out, was almost discovered a hundred years ago, exaggerated authorities, debunked prophets, hidden assumptions and conjectures presented as irreproachable evidence - all this makes the struggle risky, the outcome - uncertain. But how much more expensive is the gain for us, the result of the arduous history of science, than if we simply came and skimmed the cream of its current achievements.
Let's be frank, which of us did not come up with a sober thought: why all this is needed? Isn't it better to use a ready-made truth and not waste time and energy on what others have already done?
This is so, but saving the time spent by others does not mean buying time for yourself. Otherwise, what's the point of getting up early and sitting all day with a fishing rod on the shore, when you can, without getting out of bed, just pick up the phone and order fish in the store. I thought about this when I wrote my studies. And I flatter myself with the hope that it is not so rare that the past of science is capable of enriching its present in some way.
