Volume 9, Number 7 · October 26, 1967
Triple Thinker
By Morton White
The Art of the Soluble
by P.B. Medawar
Methuen & Co., distributed by Barnes & Noble, 160 pp., $4.50
In one of the essays in this highly readable collection, P.B. Medawar says of his hero, D'Arcy Thompson, that he 'had not merely the makings but the actual accomplishments of three scholars.' Thompson was not only an eminent naturalist, but held the presidency of two classical associations, and was the author of a published paper in mathematics. He was a famous conversationalist and lecturer, and Medawar declares that his book 'Growth and Form is beyond comparison the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue.' Medawar's versatility bears some comparison with that of his hero. He is Director of the National Institute for Medical Research (in Great Britain) and winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1960; he has a serious interest in the methodology of natural science, he has read more in the history of that methodology than most of its present-day practitioners, and his prose is as sharp and as witty as that of any scientist writing in English today. As one reads this collection of occasional pieces or his books, The Uniqueness of the Individual and Th Future of Man, one may also be tempted to compare him with T. H. Huxley, since Medawar has a great gift for explaining biology to laymen, he has taken pains to study philosophy and its history, and is winningly savage in dealing with theological and literary silliness about science.
Review, 2151 words
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