Letters to the Editor

Dear Sir

1993 Darwin Lecture (Issue Number 14) Professor Lewis Wolpert undoubtedly has it in for the sociologists. It is curious therefore that he should propose the Marxist thesis that “the industrial revolution was wholly science-free”. In mining the Davy Lamp, in steel-making the laboratory work of Gilchrist and Thomas, in textiles the application of synthetic dyestuffs and in canal and railway navigation the application of optics to the production of surveying lenses (from which, fortuitously, microscopy was subsequently to benefit) are examples of the impact of pure science within those major activities which comprised the industrial revolution. Nor could the feats of engineering construction which underlay all of them have been totally neglectful of the principles of Newtonian mechanics.

Adeline More, London

The Editor replies: Yes, Professor Wolpert certainly has little respect for the sociologists of science. Having recently reviewed a book of papers by many of their leading lights for the Journal of Biosocial Science (Science as Practice and Culture in the July 1994 issue), I find myself in wholehearted sympathy with his views about them. Any other readers’ comments on this issue, on Professor Wolpert’s other views or, indeed, any other matter within the Institute’s field of interest would be very welcome.)

Dear Sir

In the October edition of Scientific American, William Calvin suggests (“The Emergence of Intelligence”) that human thinking emerges from the ability to throw objects accurately and the prejudgement needed to do this.

I think one can use a step below arm control.

When I was a schoolboy, those who could spit further and more accurately than the rest of us could all “tube their tongues”. They had a more complex level of muscle control.

I wondered if this might reflect Calvin’s idea and tried to link it with results from my extended Pembrokeshire family.

Using an IQ test with a standard deviation of 20, we achieved the results shown in the table below.

This may appear odd, even funny, but it might prove useful.

Patrick F James
Swallowcliffe, Near Salisbury