The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science
by Robert K Merton and Elinor Barber
Princeton University Press, £12.50 (pb), ISBN 0-691-11754-3

This unusual book was written in 1958 and published in Italian in 2002 and in English, its original language, in 2004. It really falls into three parts, although the first two are not formally separated. The first seven chapters give an enormously erudite history of the word “serendipity” and of changing uses of it and attitudes to it. It was invented in 1754 by Horace Walpole, but used by him, as far as can be discovered, only once, in a letter. It languished in obscurity until the late 19th century when it was rediscovered, and gradually came into first specialized and then general use. Walpole’s meaning was: “making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they [i.e. people] were not in quest of”. His examples, however, involve drawing correct conclusions from small indications, rather like Sherlock Holmes (as the authors point out), or like the ‘abduction’ of C S Peirce (as they don’t).
The last three chapters and two long Notes discuss the implications of chance discoveries in general, and in science in particular. This is done largely by quoting scientists and others who have thought about the matter. Some think chance very important, others less so, which is interesting but inconclusive. Finally a longish (68 pp) Afterword by Robert Merton, Elinor Barber having already died, as he did soon after, explains how their interest began, and further discusses the role of chance. He explains that he has left the original text, as a kind of time capsule reflecting views of 1958. But this of course applies to any book.
I suspect that reactions will vary, not “like it or loathe it” but rather on a dimension from delight to irritation or boredom, but quite heavily skewed to the positive end. The actual writing is most enjoyable, and the impression is of immense but lightly carried humane scholarship. Perhaps no other single word has ever been explored like this.

John Radford

The Hanged Man: A Story of Miracle, Memory, and Colonialism in the Middle Ages
by Robert Bartlett
Princeton University Press, £9.95 (pb), ISBN 0 691 12604 6

It is thanks to a commission held in 1307 to examine the claim that Thomas de Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford, had fulfilled the conditions necessary for sainthood, that the strange story of William Cragh has been preserved. Cragh was hanged at Swansea in 1290 but brought back to life by, it was claimed, the intervention of the deceased bishop. As alleged miracles go, this was a well-attested one because nine witnesses – including, bizarrely, Cragh himself – gave testimony to the commission ordered by the Pope to examine Thomas’s credentials. Several of these had also viewed Cragh’s body and were certain he was dead.
Bartlett is fortunate that the spectators formed a fairly representative cross-section of the social spectrum of the time, from aristocrat to labourer, as this enables him to delve into the social relationships between high and low, English and Welsh, monarch and subjects, church and state, and men and women. We are given a peek into how they viewed their world, as well as a description of the members of the commission and the notaries who signed the records.
The decision to focus on the witnesses to Cragh’s resurrection means that we do not hear about the other miracles that formed the evidence that secured sainthood for Thomas de Cantilupe. But we are told the fates of the various individuals whose later histories were recorded, though not surprisingly this tends to favour the aristocrats and church bureaucrats because their lives were documented.
We never get to the truth of Cragh’s survival, but his fascinating story is a way in to the people and the political landscape of the period. This is micro-history at its best, taking a small-scale event and using it as a lens to examine the wider society and its interactions. It is a readable account that makes a complex period accessible to the non-specialist. Bartlett’s analytical approach would surely be applauded by the divines who interrogated the witnesses to the remarkable execution and resurrection of William Cragh.

Tom Ruffles

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive
by Jared Diamond
Penguin, £9.99, ISBN 0-140-27951-2

“The monumental ruins left behind by [collapsed] societies hold a romantic fascination for all of us. We marvel at them when as children we first learn of them through pictures… We feel drawn to their often spectacular and haunting beauty, and also to the mysteries that they pose.”

We have all met people who are, one might say, over-fascinated by what we can’t know about Stonehenge, Easter Island, Chichen Itza or Brighton.

Beyond counting, even now, are the legions of followers of von Daniken or Tony Hancock’s rather less amusing cousin, Graham.

Here is one way of fighting back. Cajole, bully or trick them into reading this superb book by a writer equally at home in history and evolutionary biology. Let these bores and fantasists, perhaps for the first time, gain a shattering insight (or dim inkling) as to what intelligent reasoning about the past actually looks like.

Easter Islanders managed the twin feats of erecting 12-ton stone statues with ropes, “canoe ladders” and ramps, and then obliterating all species of trees on the island. This deforestation led to starvation and cannibalism. Extraterrestrial masons do not seem to have played a huge part in all this.

Diamond discusses the Mayans and the Vikings, Montana and Rwanda, among other communities and ecologies. In the horrendous case of Rwanda, he notes that, “any ‘explanation’ of why a genocide happened can be misconstrued as ‘excusing’ it”, and insists that, “it is important that we understand the origins of the Rwandan genocide – not so that we can exonerate the killers, but so that we can use that knowledge to decrease the risk of such things happening again.” One of the contributing factors was the Malthusian condition of population pressure exhausting resources, but Diamond is careful to avoid ecological determinism, applying his nuanced comparative method throughout.

The last hundred pages of the book are devoted to practical lessons, asking why some societies make disastrous decisions, outlining our most serious problems, and offering reasons for hope.

Paul Taylor

Evil Incarnate Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History
by David Frankfurter
Princeton University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0-691-11350-5

In the 1980s, American TV ‘revealed’ a nationwide network of Satanists committing atrocities, particularly against children in day-care. The panic generated by media coverage and professionals who should have known better soon spread to the UK. Frankfurter’s book is a scholarly, readable and sometimes disturbing history of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) allegations, that looks at why they happen in insecure times and shows that they are not safely confined to history or to ‘less enlightened’ parts of the world.
From earliest times, religious institutions extended their power by presenting evil as a real and potent threat that only they could combat. From an attempt to control a ‘chaotic world of misfortunes’, demonology soon became a ‘weapon of institutions’. Centralization of Church power, professionalizing of witch-hunts and the spread of printing led to widespread witchmania in the 16th and 17th centuries and to a new phenomenon: Satanic witchcraft, with its child sacrifice, transgressive rituals, conspiracy theories – and a dose of voyeuristic eroticism. Heretics, Jews and native peoples were demonized as dangerous sub-human Others, along with established community members – the threat from within.
In the last century, ideas of demonic possession revived by Deliverance Ministeries merged with concerns about child abuse to create the SRA panic. Externalizing the cause as something demonic was preferable to accepting child abuse as something wholly human. It also obscured the real issues of familial child abuse and extreme violence done to children during Christian exorcisms.
There has always been a strong theatrical element to the selfappointed ‘experts’, the perpetrators and the victims. They give the audience what they want, either willingly (exorcists and witch-hunters) or under coercion – tortured ‘witches’ or children providing over-eager therapists, social workers and congregations with appropriately lurid details, often in return for status or special attention.
Frankfurter concludes that no evidence, forensic or archeological, exists for SRA and that “historically verifiable atrocities take place not in the ceremonies of some evil realm but rather in the course of purging evil and its alleged devotees from the world”.

Tessa Kendall

The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland
by Steve Roud
Penguin, £10.99, ISBN 0140515127

Why is it that, whenever I see a single magpie, I find myself murmuring, “Good morning, Mr. Magpie. I hope you and your family are quite well”? According to this entertaining and informative book, showing respect to this bird by raising your hat or speaking politely is a traditional (well, for the last hundred years or so, anyway) means of warding off misfortune — which seems to be the purpose of the majority of superstitions.
Steve Roud has been researching British folklore for thirty years and so as well as providing a comprehensive list of superstitions, his notes attempt to provide a genuine historical and geographical context for them all, including an earliest known occurrence. His working definition of “superstition” includes a belief in luck, omens, and occult powers, and that coincidences have a deeper meaning than random accident. Given this, it is easy to see why superstition thrives in an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty and perceived lack of control over one’s fate. The carrying of lucky charms and mascots increased dramatically during the First World War, suggesting that such beliefs are not fixed references to some ancient wisdom but can be adopted and then discarded again according to circumstances. The author explicitly rejects the “ancient origins” approach (many of them are probably pure invention anyway) and points out the many common motifs that superstitions share with each other and with folk tales.
Are we as superstitious as we used to be? From the evidence Roud has gathered, along with that from other sources, the answer seems to be “No”. In a survey to find the top ten superstitions in 1998, “Unlucky to walk under a ladder” was mentioned most often — a bit feeble compared to, say, “If two men fight aboard a ship, it will sink within 24 hours.” The entries are arranged alphabetically, cross-referenced, and there is an extensive bibliography, so this is a useful reference book as well as an enjoyable read.

Mike Hutton

A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives
by Cordelia Fine
Icon Books, £9.99, ISBN 1840466782

For those of us who like to put consciousness to the fore, and who take pride in rationality over mere emotion or prejudice, this slim little volume provides something of a challenge. There’s no denying that it’s entertaining, and it’s written in an engaging and none too serious style, but it packs a punch all the same. In six short chapters Cordelia Fine picks apart at the mighty edifice of the rational brain and, quoting extensively from the research literature, reveals a vain, egotistical, devious, untruthful and bigoted organ. The picture of the mind that emerges has more in common with an unscrupulous populist politician than a fairminded seeker of truth. I’d find this incredibly depressing, but of course having read the book my mind is apt to put aside what it has just learned and is happier to offer me the comforting illusions of reason. Oh well, it’s not my fault, for according to the research the mind plays this sort of trick more often than not. Fine writes with a light touch: there’s a gentle humour and a peppering of homely anecdotes throughout the book. But the research she draws on is serious enough, and for those who need convincing there are plenty of notes and references to follow up.
By the end of the book one could be forgiven for thinking that we are mere dupes of the brain – that consciousness itself is an illusion and that what we think of as reasoning is usually a post-hoc rationalisation of some far deeper process. However, if that is the case then how is it that we can read a book cover to cover? How is that anyone could write a book in the first place? Intention and concentration together are evidence of some process that we can label consciousness. Even if we’re still not sure of what’s going on deep under the surface, there’s still something there.

So, despite the lying, the scheming, the clinging-on to prejudices and the other vices that our brains are prone to – and which this book does much to shed light on – we shouldn’t resign ourselves to the idea that conscious reason itself is a complete illusion.

Pan Pantziarka

The Nativity: History and Legend
by Geza Vermes
Penguin Books, £7.99 (pb), ISBN 0-141-12446-1

Christian dogma rests on the life and teaching of Jesus Christ and in particular on his birth and death. Geza Vermes, one of the most distinguished of contemporary Biblical scholars, here examines the first of these. The direct evidence for the Jesus story comes in the New Testament, above all in the four Gospels.
These were, of course, all composed some time after the events they describe, and are a selection from an unknown number of accounts, oral and written, that circulated in the early years of Christianity. The Gospel accounts are inconsistent with each other, and also internally. Only two, Luke and Matthew, deal with the birth of Jesus. They do so in quite different and contradictory ways. Internally, Luke provides an elaborate genealogy for Joseph, the husband of Mary, Jesus’ mother, to show that he was descended from King David. Thus his son would be eligible to be the Royal Messiah. But he also makes it clear that Jesus was literally the son of God, not Joseph. Vermes quietly and methodically teases out the various strands that make up the two accounts, drawing on obviously immense scholarship, but writing with elegant clarity. He shows what must have been added by the gospel writers, or later editors, and what may be based on historical fact. There are those who suggest that Jesus never lived at all, but a more balanced view is that he was a charismatic preacher who was born about 4 or 5 BCE and was executed some thirty-plus years later. Stories and legends accumulated around him for several centuries, and such were the two nativity accounts. Vermes concludes that the purpose was “the creation of a prologue, enveloping the newborn Jesus with an aura of marvel and enigma”, and thus fitting him to be the divine Saviour of the new religion as it broke from its Jewish roots and sought to become universal.

John Radford

That’s Bollocks!: Urban Legends, Conspiracy Theories and Old Wives’ Tales
by Albert Jack
Penguin Books, £12.99 (hb), ISBN 0 140 51574 7

…You said it, pal. You know Christmas is coming when sorry accumulations like this appear. Albert Jack has mostly cobbled together bits from Fortean Times and tabloid “it’s a weird old world” columns. The rest of it has been culled from a few lazy sessions sticking terms like “urban legend”, “conspiracy theory” and “old wives’ tales” into Google and adding a smug tone to hold it together. The result is a rehash of generally familiar tales that he invariably fails to exploit fully, such as missing out the ending of the story about the man who blows himself up on the toilet then is dropped from the stretcher by laughing paramedics. He doesn’t even seem to understand what an urban legend is. A number of the items are tagged with “this is a true story”. An example is the story of how Jack Nicholson’s sister turned out to be his mother. Peculiar it may be, urban legend it isn’t. Whether Mick Jagger and David Bowie went to bed together is just showbiz gossip.
Then we have the man tying helium balloons to his deckchair, which obviously isn’t about Larry Walters who achieved precisely this feat in California in 1982 because Jack states that his version, about “Harry”, is unlikely to be true (though strangely Harry paraphrases Walters’ famous “a man can’t just sit around” remark ; now that is weird). When Jack gets on to the ‘myth’ of global warming, it becomes clear what he is – a pub bore with a word processor. Pitted against Gore, I know which Al I would put my money on. The biggest mystery is why Penguin produced a good quality hardback when its contents were the equivalent of chicken nuggets. Despite the declaration that this is a study of urban legends, it is just an undemanding bog book. If you want a proper survey of urban legends read Jan Harold Brunvand (Jack clearly has). If That’s Bollocks does well we are promised a follow-up.
Please don’t encourage him.

Tom Ruffles