Hidden Histories of Science

Five top writers on science have collaborated to produce this book which looks at the ways that major discoveries in biology, physics and medicine have been suppressed or misunderstood. Stephen Jay Gould gives a summary of his critique of conventional "progressive" pictures of evolutionary change. Richard Lewontin rejects the attempt to reduce the complexity of living things to the simplicity of physics. Oliver Sacks offers a tour of scientific roads not taken, or taken too late. Daniel Kevles recounts the strange story of resistance to the idea that viruses can cause cancer. And Jonathan Miller shows how the discredited panacea of hypnotism could have helped to reveal a non-Freudian view of the unconscious.