Understanding Without Stars

One of the imperative tasks of our day is to interpret the purposes, methods and results of science in such wise that this greatest adventure of the human spirit may be "understanded of the people." Science needs to be made use of, but understanding of it must precede complete utilization. . . .

Four distinguished U. S. scientists, Arthur H. Compton, Geologist Kirtley F. Mather, Astronomer Harlan T. Stetson, Psychologist Edward L. Thorndike, uttered hosannahs of approbation for a book The Advancing Front of Science* by George W. Gray, from which the above words are taken.

The interpretation of science to laymen is a different thing in Britain and the U. S. In England star performers, brilliant writers, more or less celebrated scientists with strong personal views have borne the load. The best known books of Eddington, Jeans and Bertrand Russell are as much treatises on their personal philosophies as they are skilled explanations of Relativity and quantum mechanics. Biologist Julian Huxley, brother of Novelist Aldous Huxley and grandson of the late great Evolutionist Thomas Henry Huxley is noted for his opinions about Science & Society, and for exposing the anthropological fallacies of Nazi Aryanism, although he has written (with a collaborator) two general books for laymen. Simple Science and More Simple Science. Burly Geneticist John B. S. Haldane fills his books with pungent gibes, epigrams, jocund disclosures of his own idiosyncrasies.

In the U. S., few celebrated scientists lave written popular books about their own specialties. Anthropologist Earnest Albert Hooton (Up from the Ape) and Astronomer Harlow Shapley (Flights from Chaos) are exceptions. But in general relatively obscure men, journalists with solid scientific backgrounds or university scientists with a flair for journalism have taken the job of making science "understanded of the people." Among such U. S. interpreters of science three men are particularly outstanding.

Gray. At the University of Texas 34 years ago there was a freshman, George W. Gray, who entered every science course open to freshmen and after only a year's study was removed from college by a severe attack of malaria. Afterwards he became a newspaper reporter, and although he took time out to finish his education at Harvard, he continued to hold jobs in newspaper offices and publishing houses. Seven years ago he published his first scientific article in the Atlantic Monthly. Today, a small, ruddy, cheerful, white-haired man with a southwestern drawl he has a less effulgent reputation than any one of half-a-dozen British luminaries but he is probably one of the ablest popularizers of science writing in English.