Reflections of a physicist

Press, 15 August 1981, Page 17

Reflections of a physicist

Disturbing the Universe. By Freeman Dyson. Pan Scientific Affairs, 1981 280 pp. $9.50 (paperback). (Reviewed by John Hearnshaw) Professor Freeman Dyson is a distinguished theoretical physicist at Princeton University in the United States. However, the reader of this entertaining book will not find any enlightenment in theoretical physics. In fact “Disturbing the Universe is not about science at all, but a very personal account about scientists. Freeman Dyson has not simply undertaken an autobiography, though the reader will be rewarded with many fascinating glimpses into his life story and his thought-provoking personality. In this book we find a remarkable hotch-potch of loosely related sketches in a scientific, autobiographical and philosophical vein. Part one takes the reader through Dyson s formative years in England and his time as a statistician in R.A.F. Bomber Command during the Second World W'ar. The underlying theme of the author’s strong pacifism is treated prominently, and this continues in part two with Dyson's permanent migration to the United States in 1947. Here he soon came into contact with an impressive array of famous names in American physics, including Bethe. Feynman. Oppenheimer. Teller and many others. The discussion on the Los Alamos atomic bomb project draws from Dyson’s close personal relationship with the leading participants and his own social conscience which abhors the use of physics for human mass destruction. His love-hate relationship with Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb, is particularly

fascinating. The wide range of topics treated reflects the equally wide-ranging experience of the author — nuclear reactors, nuclear rocket propulsion, disarmament and solid state physics are all woven into the narrative in rapid succession, and yet a readable and cohesive storv is the final result.

In part three the constraints of Dyson's own professional experience as a physicist are left behind, and the author allows his imagination to range freely over the prospects for science and society in the future. The colonisation of space, genetic engineering. and self-reproducing computerised robots or automatons are combined into a refreshingly optimistic view of the future of mankind.

Dyson comes from a gifted English musical family, and as a boy he acquired a life-long love for English poetry (especiallv T. S. Eliot, from whom the book's title is derived). His artistic upbringing and awareness of spiritual, cultural and linguistic values strongly shape the philosophy that emerges. Man he asserts, has a role to play in the overall scheme for the universe. Without invoking a deity. Dyson reaffirms the major influence of mind and spirit on the future of the human race. Ultimately the galaxy will be colonised and conquered, not by machines alone, but thanks to our ability to genetically and mentally adapt to the new environments beyond the earth.

In this book we are given an insight to the fertile mind of an able scientist with an acute social awareness. His amalgam of spiritual and cultural values with science often seems wishy-washy and unconvincing, but it is always wellwritten. thought-provoking and entertaining.