In a previous post (The Mind of a Human Biologist), I mentioned how Peter Medawar (1915–1987) had provided a foreword for the book entitled Human Biology and had given his opinion as to what it was. Why had the authors agreed to asking Medawar to perform that task?
I suspect that it was something about Medawar that made him the ideal person to write the foreword. He was not simply a prestigious name to be called upon to give a new book cache. He represented something of what a Human Biologist ought to be. He was a Human Biologist before the term became popular. That included him also being something of a philosopher.
He championed the ideas of Sir Karl Popper (1902–1994) and, in particular, the hypothetico-deductive method (or model) of doing science. Philosophy is not a popular discipline among practicing scientists. One reason for this seems to be that scientists view philosophers as speculating without an evidential base, whereas they see themselves as basing their thinking firmly on objective data. Philosophers do not collect data. Instead, they interrogate the thinking that arises from those data.
I suspect that there may also be some degree of prejudice born of interdisciplinary rivalry, which is inculcated into the minds of all young would-be scientists. (Unless, of course, they are strong-willed enough to make up their own minds.)
Medawar not only championed Popper’s ideas; he presented Popper’s hypothetico-deductive system in terms accessible to scientists. They did not have to resort to Popper’s original philosophical writings. This Medawar did through lectures and essays written for a broad audience. His Jayne lectures of 1968, published as ‘Induction and intuition in scientific thought’ (published separately in a slim volume and later collected within Medawar’s ‘Pluto’s Republic'), are a case in point. These are writings accessible to all thinking persons.
Richard Dawkins (1941–) once referred to Medawar as "the wittiest of all scientific writers." Medawar’s scientific writing was certainly not devoid of humour. His ‘Aristotle to' Zoos'—subtitled A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology and co-authored with his wife—was, by all accounts, written amid howls of laughter as he thought of a witty way to put some scientific fact.
For instance, he defined a virus as “a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein.” That phrase describes exactly what a virus is. A proteinaceous capsule containing genetic information (in the form of RNA or DNA) that, when disease-causing, is clearly bad news for those infected. As a definition, it is more memorable than any to be found in any textbook. If called upon to describe a virus, it can readily be translated back into drier (more academically acceptable) scientific terms. (Perhaps only "bad news in a protein coat" can be said to be more concise.)
In the introduction to the final posthumous collection of his essays, their editor, David Pyke, predicted that his work would continue to be read for years to come. That prediction has not come to fruition. Only a few of his books appear to be still in print. One must search for second-hand copies of most of his work. This is pity. His writing is deserving of greater attention. Even if the content is sometimes a little dated, the style and expression of ideas merit consideration.
Interestingly, Medawar never really wrote a book as such. Most of his work published in book form consisted of essays or published lectures. That makes them all the more palatable to scientists. Most scientists deal in facts, pure and simple. As already noted, they are not idle speculators. They don’t want to be encumbered with spurious and unsubstantiated speculation expounded at length. Medawar’s essays do not fall into that trap.
I once heard Medawar speak. He gave an invited lecture at the University of Surrey in my final year as an undergraduate there (1980-81). Having been crippled by a series of strokes, he sat in his wheelchair throughout his delivery. His lack of mobility was in stark contrast to what he had to say. His brain had suffered from the strokes, but his mind was lucid and unimpaired. (Somebody once quipped that the effect of the strokes he had suffered was to reduce his IQ to three digits!) As an undergraduate, I had already discovered his writings because my course in Human Biology had the breadth to allow his ideas to be introduced to us. A decade later, I based a master's dissertation on some aspects of the scientific thought expressed in them.
