{"id":205,"date":"2013-03-06T10:11:51","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T10:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/?p=205"},"modified":"2013-03-06T10:23:17","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T10:23:17","slug":"do-i-feel-lucky-well-do-ya-newton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/2013\/03\/06\/do-i-feel-lucky-well-do-ya-newton\/","title":{"rendered":"Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, Newton?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ernest Rutherford was having none of it: he was very anxious that everyone knew his results were down to him and nothing else.\u00a0 On hearing \u2018Lucky fellow, Rutherford, always on the crest of a wave,\u2019 he is said to have replied, wittily, \u2018Well, I made the wave, didn\u2019t I?\u2019[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

But Rutherford aside, many of our important science-discovery stories do<\/i> have an important role for luck.<\/p>\n

\"lucky-science\"<\/a>Alexander Fleming famously returned to his messy lab after a break to discover that Staphylococcus bacterial growth had been inhibited by a mould (Penicillin) that had accidentally contaminated one of the petri dishes. \u00a0Result: antibiotics.<\/p>\n

In another well-known example, Luigi Galvani just happened to have some frogs\u2019 legs knocking around in a thunderstorm, and observing their twitches is said to have discovered the electrical impulses in nerves, transmitted to muscles.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

And, of course, there\u2019s Newton and the apple.\u00a0 One fruity bonk on the head and gravity sprang irresistibly to mind.<\/p>\n

The reality in all these cases is less poetic.\u00a0 Fleming had in fact already been researching anti-bacterial agents (known as lysozymes) before the mould incident, so he was primed to look for things that worked against bacterial growth.\u00a0 It\u2019s also worth noting that Fleming didn\u2019t personally make the jump to thinking of Penicillin as a systemic medicine \u2013 only as a topical application.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t, if you like, discover a medicine<\/i> by chance.<\/p>\n

The stories about Galvani and Newton have an even poorer basis in reality.\u00a0 Galvani had a distinct plan (inspired by the work of others) to investigate the links between nervous irritation and electricity, so he didn\u2019t need a chance observation to make him think of it. \u00a0Besides this, the careful dissection required for his experiments was far beyond the kind of chopping you\u2019d do for the pot.<\/p>\n

We can, I think, agree that luck is not a real thing. Chance is real, but not luck, which is the characteristic of obtaining favourable chance.<\/p>\n

Assuming, then, that we don\u2019t believe in luck, we need instead to ask what role luck plays in the stories we tell about scientists.\u00a0 How does it help us shape the kinds of narratives that we want to tell about them and what they do?\u00a0 Here\u2019s a historic example, from the early nineteenth century:<\/p>\n

How many a fine mind has been lost to mankind by the want of some propitious accident, to lead it to a proper channel \u2026 We know not whether the story of Newton\u2019s apple be true, but it may serve for an illustration, and if that apple had not fallen, where would have been his Principia?\u00a0 If the Lady Egerton had not missed her way in a wood, Milton might have spent the time in which he wrote \u2018Comus\u2019 in writing \u2018Accidence of Grammar;\u2019 and if Ellwood, the Quaker, had not asked him what he could say on \u2018Paradise Regained,\u2019 that beautiful poem \u2026 would have been lost to us.[3]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is quite different from modern notions of luck.\u00a0 Rather than delivering a scientific discovery out of the blue, luck seems to play the role of divine grace in enabling men of science to channel their otherwise wayward intellects.<\/p>\n

Stories of luck are commonly supposed to serve as a source of inspiration to scientific learners.\u00a0 This example comes from 1807:<\/p>\n

[W]hile contemplating gradual improvement of science by the successive labours of many philosophers, and tracing the slight hints and little accidents which often led to important discoveries, [the student] is insensibly encouraged to exert his own ingenuity, and to search for modes of applying the knowledge which he has already acquired.\u00a0 Perhaps even the trite stories of Archimedes\u2019s bath and of Newton’s apple have not unfrequently contributed to excite a spirit of attentive observation in young experimentalists.[4]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In effect this is the very opposite to what we might expect: although it contains two of our famous lucky exemplars, what\u2019s supposed to be learned from them is something within human control, i.e. ingenuity.\u00a0 It bears a strong relation to Pasteur\u2019s famous claim in 1854 (speaking of Oersted and the \u2018birth of the telegraph\u2019) that \u2018luck favours only the prepared mind\u2019.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

In modern stories about science, luck does two related things.\u00a0 Firstly it grants humility to the scientist (especially if a scientist claims it for him or herself) in that he or she claims no personal pride in the discovery.\u00a0 But, contrarily, the attribution of luck also indicates that the scientist is favoured by nature.\u00a0 There is something special and magical about the fact that nature deigned to speak to them. \u00a0The scientist, even though we don\u2019t exactly believe in luck, goes up on the same pedestal as Jack of Beanstalk fame.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

I suspect that we, in the UK at least, got a fresh wave of lucky-science stories in the years following the Rothschild Report of 1971.\u00a0 This Report recommended to the government of its day that 25% of funding allocated through the research councils should be committed in a customer-contractor relationship to fulfil particular (i.e. applied science) needs.\u00a0 This was considered, by many scientists, to be a serious blow to the autonomy of their research.\u00a0 The Rothschild Report, together with all the funding threats that have followed ever since that 1960s financial zenith, provoked them to re-articulate the value of pure research, and one of the ways that they have done so is to emphasise how pure science can produce chance results that are useful.\u00a0 In other words, you can\u2019t by-pass pure science to get to the applied sort.\u00a0 One of the most persistent versions of this particular myth is Teflon, a supposed spinoff from space research.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, it\u2019s worth noticing that stories of luck are often applied to scientists who either came from a humble background and\/or were of a shy personality.\u00a0 It\u2019s a way of explaining how, nevertheless, they came to be successful, without transgressing borders of class or gentlemanliness.\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry, he didn\u2019t get superior; he just got lucky.\u00a0 But C. P. Snow, like Rutherford, was having none of it.\u00a0 He was proud of his achievements, yet acutely aware of where his path had been trammelled by cultural expectations and prejudices. \u00a0He declared:<\/p>\n

By training I was a scientist: by vocation I was a writer.\u00a0 That was all.\u00a0 It was a piece of luck, if you like, that arose through coming from a poor home.[8]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a rather complex statement.\u00a0 Which thing is lucky?\u00a0 To be a scientist?\u00a0 A writer?\u00a0 Both?\u00a0 Or to have come from a poor home?\u00a0 He seems, in a back-handed sort of way, to be saying that he was lucky to get the best of both worlds because poverty meant that he could not develop his natural inclination (literature) in its naturally posh environs, but instead forced him to be trained in science.<\/p>\n

Whatever we think about Snow\u2019s class-based assessment of science, it raises a final and rather serious version of luck in science.\u00a0 It\u2019s luck whether you are well educated in science or not; whether you have a good teacher, good equipment and early opportunities to participate in research.\u00a0 It\u2019s luck whether you are nurtured to study a STEM subject at University, and whether you have appropriate and plausible ambitions beyond that.\u00a0 All this requires funding and effort; it\u2019s too important to leave to chance.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> C. P. Snow, Public Affairs<\/i> (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 15.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[2]<\/a> See Charlotte Sleigh, Frog<\/i> (Reaktion books, 2012).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3]<\/a> Review of The Life and Writings of Dr Parr<\/i>, Quarterly Review<\/i> 39 (1828), 255-314; p. 255.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[4]<\/a> Review of Thomas Young, A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts<\/i>, The British Critic<\/i> 30 (for Jul-Dec 1807), 1808, p. 8.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[5]<\/a> \u2018\u2026 dans les sciences d\u2019observation le hasard ne favorise que des esprits pr\u00e9par\u00e9s.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[6]<\/a> This image of the scientist as humble conduit of nature was cultured by Michael Faraday.\u00a0 See the publications of Iwan Rhys Morus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[7]<\/a> NASA scotches the familiar myth that Teflon was a spin-off from the space programme here: http:\/\/spinoff.nasa.gov\/spinfaq.htm#spinfaq12<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[8]<\/a> Snow PA, p. 13.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ernest Rutherford was having none of it: he was very anxious that everyone knew his results were down to him and nothing else.\u00a0 On hearing \u2018Lucky fellow, Rutherford, always on the crest of a wave,\u2019 he is said to have replied, wittily, \u2018Well, I made the wave, didn\u2019t I?\u2019[1] But Rutherford aside, many of our … <\/p>\n

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