Darwin Meets Einstein: On The Meaning Of Science

frans w. saris Darwin Meets Einstein On the Meaning of Science ABHI:G96BUC>K:GH>INPG:HH Darwin Meets Einstein Darwin Meets Einstein On the Meaning of Science F r a n s W. S a r i s English translation: Pien Saris-Bertelsmann Cover design: neon, ontwerp en communicatie, Amsterdam Layout: Het Steen Typografie, Maarssen isbn 978 90 8964 058 1 e-isbn 978 90 4850 830 3 nur 911 © Frans W. Saris / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2009 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. To colleagues and friends, for decades of Fun, Utilization, Theories of everything and Survival, Thank you Contents The temple of science 9 Fun Diary of a physicist 13 Dear Zhong-lie 23 Alchemy 25 Worthwhile 27 Scientific nomads 29 Superheated ice 34 Managing a discovery 37 Spy in the lab 43 B. Manfred Ullrich 46 Utilization Diary of a fusionist 51 Roger 55 Solar cells 56 Particle accelerators 59 The Silicon Age 62 The discoverer and the inventor 70 Jaap was right 72 Moore’s law in Bilthoven 74 Teller in the Netherlands 76 The scientific life 81 Theories of Everything Shopping 91 Fundamental research of matter 93 A vacuum is not nothing 95 Father of the atom 98 Who influenced Bohr? 102 Hooray for the electron 105 Decadence 108 Physics and Faith 112 Theories of everything 114 Survival A mind’s eye 121 The mother of all knowledge 124 A matter of civilization 127 Why science? 132 Spinoza’s God 138 Science through the looking glass of literature 144 Sir Charles 153 Darwin meets Einstein 155 The temple of science In a famous speech to the German Physical Society in 1918, Albert Einstein honoured his colleague Max Planck with the following words: ‘In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be som