We Are All Stardust: Scientists Who Shaped Our World Talk about Their Work, Their Lives, and What They Still Want to Know

269 Pages·2015·2.15 MB·English

by  Stefan Klein

A S K
LSO BY TEFAN LEIN
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The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy—and What We Can Do to Get Happier
We Are All Stardust
Scientists Who Shaped Our World Talk about Their Work, Their
Lives, and What They Still Want to Know
Stefan Klein
Translated by Ross Benjamin
Contents
Introduction
ON THE COURAGE TO SPEND A LIFETIME SEARCHING
We Are All Stardust
• COSMOLOGIST MARTIN REES •
ON THE BEGINNING AND END OF THE WORLD
The Genes of the Good
• EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST RICHARD DAWKINS •
ON EGOISM AND SELFLESSNESS
In the Hall of Illusions
• NEUROSCIENTIST V. S. RAMACHANDRAN •
ON CONSCIOUSNESS
The Recalcitrant Zebra
• PHYSIOLOGIST AND GEOGRAPHER JARED DIAMOND •
ON CHANCE AND NECESSITY IN HISTORY
Chimps Are Individuals Like Us
• PRIMATOLOGIST JANE GOODALL •
ON OUR RELATIONSHIP TO ANIMALS
The Unity of the World
• PHYSICIST STEVEN WEINBERG •
ON SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Can We Become Immortal?
• MOLECULAR BIOLOGIST ELIZABETH BLACKBURN •
ON AGING
Is Luxury Immoral?
• PHILOSOPHER PETER SINGER •
ON ETHICS
Our Well-Being Depends on Our Friends and Their Friends
• PHYSICIAN AND SOCIAL SCIENTIST NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS •
ON HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS
The Software of Life
• BIOCHEMIST CRAIG VENTER •
ON THE HUMAN GENOME
The Poetry of Molecules
• CHEMIST AND POET ROALD HOFFMANN •
ON BEAUTY
Do You Remember?
• NEUROBIOLOGIST HANNAH MONYER •
ON MEMORY
The Others in Our Heads
• NEUROSCIENTIST VITTORIO GALLESE •
ON EMPATHY
The Laws of Devotion
• ANIMAL BEHAVIOR RESEARCHER RAGHAVENDRA GADAGKAR •
ON ALTRUISM
The Hunger for Fairness
• ECONOMIST ERNST FEHR •
ON MORALITY
The Strongest Feeling of All
• NEUROPHARMACOLOGIST WALTER ZIEGLGÄNSBERGER •
ON PAIN
The Female Side of Evolution
• ANTHROPOLOGIST SARAH HRDY •
ON MOTHERHOOD
Babies Can Be Smarter Than Us
• DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGIST ALISON GOPNIK •
ON CHILDHOOD
Love Is the Offspring of Knowledge
• ARTIST LEONARDO DA VINCI •
ON THE BEGINNING OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
Acknowledgments
Photograph Credits
About the Author
Introduction
On the courage to spend a lifetime searching
SCIENCE DEFINES OUR LIVES AS NEVER BEFORE. And yet we don’t know much about
the people who change our world with their research. It can’t be that they have
nothing to share. Many of the scientists I met for the conversations in this book
look back on astonishing life stories. They have unusual interests and think far
beyond the horizons of their respective fields. In short, as people they are just as
interesting as the actors, professional athletes, or politicians whose inner lives
we hear about in minute detail.
Yet we still tend to picture all scientists as Einstein, the genius who is inept at
life and sticks his tongue out at the world. This lingering perception is partly
scientists’ own doing: They try to deny their personal side. Science aims to be
objective; the self is to be kept out of it. In a scientific publication, to use the
word “I” is sacrilege. And because scientists, of course, crave recognition as
much as anyone else, they help construct the myth that surrounds them.
Scientists may be discouraged from expressing their individual personalities too
strongly in their professional world, but they can at least flatter themselves that
they are scholars who hover above everyday things.
But there’s another, deeper reason that the thoughts and feelings of scientists
are unknown to the public: Our society views science with tunnel vision.
Scientific research is rightly perceived as a source of prosperity; it has brought
us effective medications, computers, and thousands of other amenities. The work
of scientists in their laboratories is clearly useful, even if we don’t always
understand it. But in the eyes of most people, it has nothing to do with what
really moves us, with the existential questions of our lives.
To think that way, however, is to overlook the fact that science is part of our
culture—like our books, our music, our movies. From its beginnings, science has
explored the mysteries of our existence. And particularly in recent years,
scientists have gained many insights that help us see more clearly who we are,
where we come from, and what it means to be human.
For this book I have met some of the women and men to whom we owe such
insights. With two exceptions, my interviews with scientists—from Europe, the
United States, India, and Australia—took place between 2007 and 2012. I was
encountering almost all my subjects for the first time. Usually I arranged to meet
with them on two consecutive days, always in a place of their choosing. Often
we spoke in their offices, but we also occasionally conversed on long walks or in
restaurants, museums, or their houses. The one thing I demanded in advance
from the scientists was time; generally our dialogues—some conducted in
German, some in English—lasted five hours.
The interviews collected here are distilled from those conversations, edited
and significantly condensed to include the most interesting passages. All but one
first appeared in the magazine supplement to Die Zeit, the German weekly
newspaper, and many interviews went on to be included in a prior German
edition of this book. These interviews thus took an indirect path to their English-
language publication here (in many cases, after having been translated into
German for Die Zeit, and now translated back again). To ensure nothing has
been lost in the process, every interview in this book has been reviewed and
approved (and sometimes lightly updated) by the interviewee. For several
conversations, I decided to take this opportunity to revisit the original,
voluminous transcripts. Working directly from those, I have been able to bring to
light many revealing passages not included in the former newspaper versions.
All my conversation partners enjoy a worldwide reputation in their fields, and
all have made a mark by placing their research in a broader context. They
include a winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry who has made a name for
himself as a poet, a cosmologist who publicly wagers on the fate of the world in
the next decades, and a physiologist who at the same time investigates the
origins of civilizations in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. I have tried to give
representatives of a wide variety of scholarly interests a chance to speak: A
geographer, a philosopher, a social scientist, an economist, and an anthropologist
offer perspectives from the humanities and social sciences. Incidentally, the
selection is unabashedly subjective. I’ve talked to people I wanted to meet—
because their lives and scientific contributions struck me as extraordinary.
The objection that in this collection white men are disproportionately
represented is undeniable: Only five of my conversation partners are women,
and only three are not from Europe or the United States. But this assortment is a
snapshot of our time. I sought scientists with far-reaching lifetime achievements
and broad perspectives, which are typically attained in the second half of a
career. Among researchers of that age, women as well as people from Asia,
Latin America, or Africa are still rare. Today the young talent in the laboratories
is fortunately more diverse, and thus the assortment of my conversation partners
would look different two decades from now.
In the conversations, I pursued two simple goals: to learn who my
conversation partners are and what they do. For me, those are really just two
ways of phrasing a single question, for I have never believed in the myth that
scientists can disregard their personal side in their work. It seems to me almost
self-evident that their life stories, not to mention their cultural roots, shape their
interests. But for most of those I spoke with, my approach was extremely
unfamiliar. As the neuroscientist Hannah Monyer put it, “In science, the
individual doesn’t count.” It was astonishing, in light of her comment, how
many of them opened up about themselves once we had developed a level of
trust. Had they felt burdened by the need to inhibit themselves?
Not all of them were completely at ease with me, however. World-renowned
scholars occupying the highest academic posts, who give lectures all the time in
front of their students and at conferences, suddenly lost all their eloquence when
it came time to talk about themselves. Still, they did enjoy the opportunity for a
little self-expression. Only they clearly felt guilty about it—as if I had inveigled
them into something unseemly. The fear of revealing a weakness through an ill-
considered remark was too deep-seated.
I wasn’t surprised that the conversations with Nobel laureates—their
reputations secure—were among the most relaxed. At the same time, especially
before the meeting with the physicist Steven Weinberg, I was more than a little
nervous, as this almost legendary scientist had, with his essays and books, been a
significant presence for a good twenty years of my career. There are probably
few physicists of my generation the whole world over who would not revere
Weinberg as a supreme authority. So I shot frenetically on my rented bike across
the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, passing his department several
times before I finally sat across from him, sweaty and late. After we greeted each
other, I confessed to feeling intimidated. I told him how much and how early in
my career his works had influenced me—and was immediately embarrassed by
my words, which I feared he must have heard a thousand times before. But
Weinberg’s eyes lit up: “That’s very pleasing to hear.” From that point on, the
spell was broken. Rarely have I met anyone less pretentious—and rarely anyone
who so candidly admitted their own mistakes, lapses, and doubts. When you
have achieved everything, you have nothing left to prove.
Each of the scientists I met commanded my respect. What inspired my
admiration, however, was not so much their outstanding intelligence, which is so
often ascribed to eminent scientists. Certainly I was dealing with women and
men of extremely keen intellect, but there were few whose mental powers struck
me as beyond reach. Nobel Prize winners are not smarter than other people, the
chemist Roald Hoffmann, who is one himself, suggested in our conversation. I
would add: And if they nonetheless attain heights that are impossible for others,
it is not because they were born with superior brains, but because they better
train their gray matter. Their intelligence was never a given; it had to be
developed on a path that all my conversation partners pursued. They had
dedicated their lives to the goal of discovering a few puzzle pieces of the world.
It was this capacity for devotion, which shone through in each conversation, that
I admired and that often moved me. Devotion can bring people the highest
moments of happiness, but it exacts a heavy toll. In this series of conversations,
however, the only scientists to acknowledge the cost of their commitment to
cutting-edge research were the women. The fact that they alone—and none of
the men—addressed this subject seems hardly a coincidence.
While the media report only the news of scientific successes, very few
outsiders know the vast price in failure and disappointment at which every single
triumph comes. The mysteries of nature are like a labyrinth: The solution
appears only after every wrong path has been tried at least once. And even
someone who, without knowing it, is on the right track must toil painstakingly
for years, sometimes decades, before solving a fundamental problem. It’s not
intelligence that is the most important trait of a scientist, but persistence—a
determination bordering on obstinacy to contend with setbacks, self-doubt, even