Rivals: Conflict as the Fuel of Science
by Michael White
Vintage, £7.99, ISBN 0436204630

Michael White’s latest book takes as its theme the role of personal, political and ideological conflicts as the motivating force behind some of the key scientific developments from the Renaissance to the present day.
The topics are selected to reflect different historical periods, fields of research and levels of conflict (from the personal to the international), and the result is an engrossing and always entertaining piece of popular science writing in the tradition of White’s previous best-sellers on Leonardo, Newton and Stephen Hawking. Fans of these earlier biographical works may find the present book’s inevitably more superficial treatment of individuals and ideas a little frustrating – but the aims of the present book are obviously different.
So far as sceptics are concerned, White is most definitely on the side of the angels, as his introductory section, ‘The Long Road to Reason’, makes clear, and throughout the book, he offers telling illustrations of the ways in which entrenched ideologies – particularly, though not exclusively, religious ones – have hampered scientific progress. The eight chapters (ranging from Newton versus Leibniz to Bill Gates versus Larry Ellison) are followed by a rather brief recapitulatory section, containing some general speculations about the nature of scientific discovery, the personality characteristics of scientists and the sociology of knowledge.
These are topics on which whole volumes have been written and readers who seek an in-depth theoretical analysis of them will not find it here. What they will find is an enjoyable and balanced account of a broad range of specific rivalries which have both stimulated and delayed advances in scientific knowledge.

The Mammoth Book of UFO’s
by Lynn Picknett
Carroll & Graf Publishers, £7.50, ISBN 078670800X

Separating the hundreds of rubbishy UFO books from the true reference books is a feat in itself.
Further narrowing down to those that fundamentally add something to the field leaves a mere handful. Only one encyclopaedic reference, detailing dates, locations and witnesses, is needed to grasp the vastness of the phenomena. Clark’s three volume set springs to mind; other authors include Vallée, Hynek, and Evans. Whether these current titles ultimately add something to the field, like UFOs, remains to be seen. Firstly, Randles’ handbook delivers its promise of 100 photographs (I counted them).
Picknett’s stands out as having no photos or other illustrations, thereby hindering any assessment of cases where photographic evidence is the focus. Aside from the catalogue format of cases, both authors attempt to provide natural explanations for the wealth of reports. Randles provides us with a fascinating chapter on IFOs (Identified Flying Objects) and an interesting flow diagram.
The diagram begins with the shape of the apparent UFO (i.e. lights, disc, or tube) then takes the witness through a series of questions to determine whether it’s actually a balloon, aircraft, satellite, bird, meteor or planet. This diagram is annoyingly rehashed in text form elsewhere in the book in a pointless chapter entitled ‘UFO recognition’.
The Mammoth Book, however, delivers 60 pages of explanations ranging from the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), through various IFOs and psychological theories, to the wonderful Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS), a little-known mental condition giving rise to ‘otherworldly’ visions. The cases in ‘The Mammoth Book’ are presented in a writing style that is frustratingly chatty, and constantly questioning, preventing accurate comparison between key cases or a ready acceptance of all the facts. Despite this, the research on the subject matter has obviously been comprehensively conducted, supported by various named advisors including Kevin McClure, John Spencer, Dr Jacques Vallée and Hilary Evans. Likewise, Jenny Randles has had a prolific impact on ufology since the 1980s and has revealed a knowledge and field-active expertise unmatched today. Do these books add anything to the field? If you are fascinated by ufology, have the photographs from one book and text from the other on your shelf, then maybe they offer convenience. But if you’re not interested in ufology, look away…

The Mind Made Flesh: Essays from the Frontiers of Psychology and Evolution
by Nicholas Humphrey
Oxford University Press, £11.99, ISBN 0-19-280227-5

Perhaps the first thing to be said is that, despite the rather grand subtitle, this is not a textbook on psychology, nor is it a treatise on the scope and limits of the evolutionary approach to psychological theory. It is a collection of the author’s ‘occasional’ pieces – newspaper articles, lectures, radio and television talks, etc. – on a wide range of topics. These include: the nature of the Self, Multiple Personality Disorder, altruism, St Valentine, mediaeval ‘trials’ of animals, Shakespeare’s sonnet LXXXVII, the Mind-Body problem, cave painting, the placebo effect, war, belief in the supernatural … well, you get the idea. Given their different intended audiences, the pieces vary considerably in tone, but all are entertaining and thoughtful.
Although not intended as an academic text, most items are provided with footnotes, which give some guidance towards evidence and possible supplementary reading. The time period covered is rather wide (1979-2000) and this means that some of the pieces refer to events which have lost their immediacy (e.g. his 1987 Guardian article on the US bombing of Libya). Even in these cases, however, Humphrey usually has a telling and controversial point to make.
From the sceptic’s viewpoint, the most rewarding chapters are the 1995 New York lecture on ‘Human Nature and Supernatural Belief ’ and his 2000 lecture in Stockholm on ‘The Evolution of Faith Healing’. For those interested in getting a brief taste of the theoretical approach of evolutionary psychology, this collection contains some useful material (especially the 1987 radio talk, ‘The Deformed Transformed’). Ultimately, however, this is a book for the beach or the bedside. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but anyone who wants a systematic treatment of evolutionary psychology would have to look elsewhere.

Aliens: Can We Make Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence?
by Andrew J H Clark and David H Clark
Fromm International, $25.00, ISBN 0880642335

This book is by a father (David) and son team who, between them, possess expertise in astronomy, physics and philosophy. It starts well, with a prologue full of marvellous withering scorn for the alien abductions and other nonsense surrounding the subject. There is, the authors say, no certain evidence that extraterrestrials have ever visited Earth, and the rest of the book, making clear the vast distances there must be between intelligent species, if indeed there are any others, demonstrates why this is almost certainly so. And that is a big ‘if ’: there is a nice illustration of the fallacy of the “in the vastness of the universe there must be other intelligent beings” argument with an analogy with a shoe shop offering 12,000 pairs.  
The authors admit that no definitive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) has been found, but emphasise how small the effort to find it has so far been. They illustrate the vastness of the task with another nice analogy, on how long it would take to ask everyone on Earth their cola preference – at 10 seconds per person, all day every day – 1,000 years! But that would be only 1.5% of the challenge of surveying every star in the Galaxy. The McCrea Question (“If life in some elementary form that we know about is available on every planet in the cosmos, what is the chance that creatures like humans will evolve elsewhere?”), and the Fermi Question (more usually called the Fermi Paradox – if there are intelligent beings elsewhere why do we see no evidence of them, given that some might be expected to be much more advanced than us and therefore to have developed interstellar travel, or as the Clarks put it more economically: “If they are there, why aren’t they here?”) are naturally discussed. The book ends with an epilogue, glossary, bibliography, and advice on how to become a SETI scientist.

The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science
by Taner Edis
Prometheus, $29, ISBN 1573929778

Man has always been searching for proof or signs of the existence of a god (or gods). The tools vary from metaphysical philosophy, revelations in holy texts, creationism, intelligent design, the origins of the universe, quantum mysticism, twisting the laws of thermodynamics, faith healing, Gödel’s Theorem, and mystical revelations. Edis tackles them all in this collection of essays and treats all those different ‘proofs’ with respect, pointing out their strong points, and then gently takes them apart. Only the metaphysical philosophers do not get this patient treatment.
Throughout the chapters he describes how the concept of a god has evolved. Miracles were demonstrations of a Higher Power and became breaches of the Natural Law. Bible analysis has caused a change in the concept of a personal God reigning from his throne, to a more vague entity. The 18th Century Enlightment shift from theism to deism was inspired by scientific discoveries.
The more physicists discover, the more the image of a traditional god evaporates and the more the organized religions have problems justifying their claims. If there is no one who observes, cares and meddles, no master plan, then there is not much need for religion any more, nor for a higher power to explain things that a random generator can explain as well. The recurring theme is that our world can best be explained by ‘random accidents’ and that we can very well live with that idea. The answer from the religious, claiming that there is no morality without religion, gets special attention in a chapter on the social animal, sociobiology, evolutionary ethics and evolutionary psychology. Advocates of intelligent design and cosmic design use the same arguments with the same flaws.
The chapter on Holy Writ treats of not only the Bible and the life of Jesus but also quite extensively looks at the Quran and the life of Mohammed. Edis describes how Jahweh evolves from a local thunder and lightning god, who had to compete with the other gods, to a chief of all gods and then to the only god. A Moabite text, in the same style as the Biblical, tells how they “slew the Israelites guided by their own gods” and then committed the same atrocities. The Bible is “not written as an account of the past but an instrument to get unconditional loyalty to Jahweh”.
Traditional miracles are waning and replaced by ‘statistical miracles’. Edis deals with them in a chapter on parapsychology. The ‘new miracles’ are UFO abductions, OBE and NDE. That brings him to neuroscience, the function of the brain, the definition of consciousness, malfunctions of the brain, hallucinations, the mystics and other ways of ‘knowing’, and postmodern philosophy. The battle is to win society and that battle is not waged with scientific arguments. In his conclusions, Edis does not reject religion, instead arguing that we should see it as an art form of myths and magical thinking that can give much pleasure.
A brilliant book, warmly recommended for its broad view, bringing together so many different aspects that are rarely to be found in one great synthesis.

Demons of the Modern World
by Malcolm McGrath
Prometheus Books, $32, 1-57392-935-2

Demons of the Modern World is an investigation into the subject of supposed ritual satanic abuse, as well as a potted history of demonology in the West. It is well written, putting the subject matter across in a non-academic way – being sometimes as engaging as a whodunnit mystery novel. The author has done his homework too; this is a well-researched book drawing material from history, social sciences, literature, cinema, and even UFO abduction reports. McGrath’s main point is that demons are an illusion. He shows that ritual satanic abuse is also an illusion, one generated by some psychologists and therapists using techniques to uncover so-called repressed memories.
However, in real life it seems that people who have suffered abuse, or other highly traumatic experiences, in childhood have difficulty in repressing the memories which can cause them so much anguish throughout their life.
I learnt a lot from this book. The author has done an excellent job in tying together strands from several areas to explain and make his case. The only criticism I have is that the focus is almost exclusively on happenings in America. Over a decade ago there were in Britain cases of alleged ritual satanic abuse of children. This resulted in parents being arrested and children taken away from their families. At the time I considered those allegations to be dubious and far-fetched, even though many children are, unfortunately, abused by their parents. It would have been interesting to see what differences there are in other countries.
After reading this book I was left with an unanswered question: why did the satanic abuse scare get taken seriously by so many people despite the lack of physical or other corroborating evidence? Maybe that would make a good subject for another book.

Think for Yourself!: Questioning Pressures to Conform
by Dr Sharon Presley
Ronin Press, USA $13.95, Europe $25, ISBN 1579510501

This is a small book, only 127 pages, padded out with photographs and quotations. The intention is to persuade readers to examine their own habits of thought using the techniques the author suggests. This is a worthy goal and, indeed, worthy describes the book very well. It reads like a school text for one of those personal development classes we had in my youth in America.
Despite the fact that I agreed with nearly everything the author said, I found myself put off by the book’s tone. It is preachy and lecturing. Perhaps it developed out of a series of public lectures or the scripts for selfhelp tapes. That’s what it feels like. The writing is very bland. Although this is hardly a sin, a book that seeks to convince readers of the need to make fundamental and profound changes to the way they think has got to inspire. Conformity, particularly for the young, offers security and appears desirable.
Presley’s writing, on its own, does not seem to me potent enough to counter this.
The publisher recommends the book for “youth groups, boys and girls clubs, church and community organizations”. It is as a resource, for stimulating discussion of the issues around what it means to think independently, that I believe this book has real value. It covers, albeit briefly, a huge range of issues, for example the role of experts, political and commercial manipulation and social pressure. It then offers suggestions for coping with these. A skilled teacher could compensate for what it lacks in depth.
But before anyone goes out to buy this book, the publishers have a job to do. In this age of the automatic spell-checker, it is inexcusable for a book to be published with such dreadful typos as teh for the. A good editor would not have hurt either.

Skeptical Philosophy for Everyone
by Richard H. Popkin and Avrum Stroll
Prometheus Books, ISBN 1-57392-936-0

Skeptical Philosophy for Everyone presents a history of major philosophical controversies by focusing upon the role of scepticism within these debates. The authors consider topics in ontology, epistemology, religion, ethics and political theory and present brief biographies of the major philosophers involved.
The starting point for their discussion is radical scepticism concerning the existence of the external world and the possibility of knowledge.
The history of such concerns is traced from the ancient world (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle), through to its modern formulation (Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume) up until the 20th century (Russell, Moore, Austin, Wittgenstein and Derrida).
The authors then move away from such radical questions to consider the role of scepticism within specific philosophical controversies. These include the notion of religious certainty, claims of ethical knowledge and the balance between effective government and the need to be sceptical of the political claims. This last topic is presented via a discussion of the role of sceptical texts in the development of the American Constitution. The book concludes with a debate between Stroll and Popkin on the modern relevance of scepticism.
Stroll advocates a commonsense rejection of radical scepticism based upon the writings of Reid, Austin and Wittgenstein. Popkin contends that scepticism has a continuing and valuable role within philosophical debate. Interestingly, however, both seem to agree that the postmodern fashion of using scepticism to promote relativism and trivialize science should be opposed.
While I tend to agree with Stroll (the person who continually checks his trouser pockets in order to confirm it doesn’t contain a rabbit cannot easily be described as a ‘sceptic’ or a ‘philosopher’), both authors provide an excellent and accessible introduction to the historical importance of scepticism and to the practice of philosophical analysis.