Overview
Flesh wounds, beheadings, exile and disgrace may be the outcomes of great historical feuds. No less dangerous, however—to the mind, if not the body—are the great feuds in science. They result in more than regime change or the settling of political scores; they can engender new paradigms for our knowledge of the world.
Hal Hellman tells the stories of ten of the most crucial scientific disputes of the past four centuries—seismic clashes of ideas, wills, and personalities that led to landmarks in the history of science: Galileo’s observations of the heavens put him dangerously at odds with Pope Urban VIII and the teachings of the Catholic Church; the claims and counterclaims of Newton and Leibniz to have invented calculus drew battle lines that lasted for generations; the “evolution wars” were touched off by fierce debates between Darwin’s impassioned ally Thomas Henry Huxley and his adversary, Bishop Samuel “Soapy Sam” Wilberforce, inflaming first Oxford and then religious and scientific communities everywhere.
But there are many less well-known but no less important disputes to be found here, among them: Edwin Cope versus Othniel Marsh in what came to be called the “Fossil Feud;” Alfred Wegener versus almost everybody, once he proposed the theory of continental drift; and more recently, Derek Freeman’s accusations of bias and flawed methodology in Margaret Mead’s celebrated research on Samoa.
Science is rarely as dull as it is portrayed. Neither are the scientists who wrestle with each other over the largest questions and play for the highest stakes. Great Feuds inScience records the friction, heat, and electricity of ten such encounters