Somebody who frequently appeared on television when I was a boy was the electrical engineer Professor Eric Laithwaite (1921-1997). This was in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was in the era before the emergence of today's more ‘telegenic’ popularisers of science. I don't think anybody would have described Laithwaite as 'telegenic;' he seemed to be a rather gruff, although not unfriendly, character with a strong Lancashire accent. He and those scientists with whom he often appeared had a much greater sense of gravitas about them than current science presenters, and yet they were still able to appeal to a young audience. Indeed, he twice gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1966 and 1974.
One of Laithwaite's interests—highlighted in his 1974 lecture—was the properties of gyroscopes. This seems to have been sparked by his meeting with an amateur inventor called Alex Jones. Laithwaite's pronouncements on gyroscopes were controversial at the time—and probably still are. This is because what Jones had built, based around a gyroscope, seemed to contradict certain laws of physics—not least Newton's Third Law of Motion (the one about there being to every action an equal and opposite reaction).
Be that as it may. Something I took from hearing about this was from what happened next. In order to find out how he had been able to build such a machine, Jones took it to pieces. Then, upon reassembly, he found that it did not behave in the way originally observed! (At least, this is how I understand the story; I only remember these few details.)
If there is a moral to this story, it is about the dangers of reductionism. As a whole, Jones's machine behaved in a certain way—or at least seemed to. To try to understand this machine as a whole, what would have been the best approach? As it turned out, taking it to pieces was certainly not the ideal. Indeed, was it even necessary to disassemble it? The machine had been built from a known set of parts put together according to certain plans. Were there not also other recollections about its construction that would have made the assembly of a replica possible? Why take apart when one could make an exact copy? Then, should both machines behave in the same way, one’s initial findings would be on an even firmer foundation.
Here, I am interested in the human body. How might we understand it better without taking it apart? What lessons might we draw from the story of Jones and Laithwaite?
