I'm currently reading a highly entertaining and informative book called FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT by Portuguese cosmologist and physicist Joao Magueijo. I'm only about halfway through, so I can't comment on it yet, but so far, Magueijo is sailing along fine as he attempts to explain relativity and modern cosmology to us consumers, without putting in those reader-repelling equations.

This book is only the latest addition to my growing collection of popular books about modern physics and cosmology. I've got shelves of them, some read, some still unread. At this point, it's my favorite type of reading. These books are written by Real Scientists describing Real Science, how it came about, what discoveries were made, and what questions still remain. Along the way, these Real Scientists recount descriptions and anecdotes about Famous Scientists and their lives and work, some of them funny, all of them fascinating. And these authors also give me tantalizing glimpses of how scientists work together, discussing cosmic matters in the academic hallways and over beers and wherever else gentlemen meet.

If you are reading this, you probably know many of the books I'm talking about, such as THE GOD PARTICLE by Leon Lederman, or the various books by Stephen Hawking such as A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, or books by the Star Trek fan and prolific writer Lawrence Krauss. One of the most notable (though still unread on my shelf) of these, is THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE by Brian Greene. This was recently made into a glitzy PBS three-parter, broadcast last fall, and I was proverbially glued to the proverbial tube while it was on. I just can't get enough of this stuff. In fact, it's so attractive to me that I might as well call it as I see it: it's science porn.

Porn?? But this is reputable literature about science, full of good information, written by reputable scientists who are spending their precious time writing these books for us, often motivated by the best reasons: love of their subject and desire to share it with a wider audience. (If they make a few bucks too, so much the better.) How can I have the impudence to call this literature porn?

Like pornography, this literature presents, to the science-aspirant such as me, seductive words and stylized, unattainable people and breathless scenes of discovery-consummation. It's not just that young male scientists such as Brian Greene and the movie-star-handsome Joao Magueijo are marketed in magazines and on TV as intellectual matinee idols. It's that the whole enterprise (sorry, Dr. Krauss) of science is made to sound sexy and exciting. Perhaps they want young people to enter the field by making it sound romantic and fun. Or perhaps that's how the authors still see it, even after years and years of research drudgery, grant applications, publish-or-perish, and academic politics?

Invariably, the author apologizes for not putting mathematics in his book. But if he did, it would cause the enthusiasm of the potential reader to droop. It is part of the ritual of pornography that the encounter fantasy is made artificially easy. The climax of discovery gets a lot more pages than the long years of struggle that preceded it. The gossipy glimpses of life in PhysicsWorld only add to the enticement of the scene. Imagine, talking about the origin of the Universe rather than my usual boring inane conversations about the weather or what I might have for dinner.

Magueijo is quite aware of this metaphor, much to his credit. In the book, during his recounting (on page 74) of the first pictures of galaxies made by Edwin Hubble, he comments thusly:

"(Hubble) installed a telescope inside a building that rotated as a perfect clock, moving exactly to counter the Earth's rotation. He could thus automatically point his telescope in the same direction for extended periods and make observations without "attaching" the naked eye to the end of his telescope, using instead photographic plates that could be exposed for very long periods.
What came out of these unusual observations was truly pornographic…"

The "pornography," in this case, was the wildly exciting, and to that era shocking discovery that the universe was full of galaxies made of what a previous generation's science-porn-celebrity would say was BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of stars. Magueijo, though, has got the notion right. To someone excited by science and natural phenomena, the tales of galaxies, black holes, particle explosions, string theory, and esoteric cosmology are intellectual porn. You read it for the pleasure and the excitement, you want to be with it, and you keep wanting more.

But there is also an underlying element of futility. Any science aspirant has as much chance of becoming a professional cosmologist or string theorist, as a street basketball player has of playing in the NBA, or a garage guitarist of being a smash hit rock star. Between Brian Greene and his audience, a great gulf is fixed. The science-titillated can gaze and read and look and fantasize, but they cannot have it, cannot be part of the scientific work or make discoveries themselves, because for the non-mathematical public, popular science writing will always be a carefully presented illusion, which both teaches and conceals.

Posted at 1:59 am | link