Book description
Good science and common sense often don't mix. In Weighing the Soul,
Len Fisher shows the path to scientific discovery is frequently a bumpy
one that follows Schopenhauer's famous maxim - 'All truth passes through
three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed;
and Third, it is accepted as self-evident.' Fisher tells the
fascinating, human stories behind some of the great as well as some of
the not-so-great scientific ideas of the past - those that were truly
bizarre, peculiar or downright daft, and those that just seemed that way
at the time. As he shows, it is often only with hindsight that the two
can be told apart, and it is some of those who appeared most wrong - and
who were variously ignored, persecuted and imprisoned as a result - that
ultimately went on to be proved most right. Recipient of an IgNobel
Prize for his studies in the physics of biscuit dunking, and voted 'an
enemy of the people' by The Times for work on the way roast dinners
absorb gravy, Len Fisher is a tireless promoter and populariser of
science. He moved to England in 1989 following a career that began in
food research, but has included forays into biomedicine, mining
engineering, surface science, fundamental physics and philosophy. He is
currently Honorary Research Fellow in the Physics Department, University
of Bristol.
