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View from the lab: setting the pace
(Filed: 31/07/2002) 


If only Prof Steve Jones had done his sums on the snails 


The world's greatest biologist joins the Science Page debate: "I have deeply
regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something
of the great leading principles of mathematics; for men thus endowed seem to
have an extra sense. But I do not believe that I should ever have succeeded
beyond a very low grade." In his autobiography, Charles Darwin admitted his
own inability to do sums.

Darwin's clever cousin Francis Galton was much more confident about
arithmetic ("wherever you can: count") but achieved far less. He counted
many odd and silly things, to little end. Nowadays, only the new Archbishop
has much interest in his "Statistical Tests for the Efficacy of Prayer" and
Delia in his paper "On Cutting a Round Cake on Scientific Principles".

Galton was a clever dilettante who used maths for amusement, but Darwin,
innumerate as he may have been, was a revolutionary. He managed without
calculus and might have been even greater with its help; but my guess is
that he was better engaged in riding across the Pampas, playing a bassoon to
earthworms to test their sensitivity to vibration and, most of all, in just
thinking. His own subject - evolution - became a haunt of mathematical
biologists who constructed an edifice of austere beauty which, alas, was
almost useless until we grubby toilers in the vineyard came up with enough
ugly facts to populate it.

For mathematicians, their subject is a science and perhaps the greatest of
all. For most scientists, though, it is no more than a tool. Like a scalpel,
a condensor, or a machine that goes "ping" - or like a chisel or a paint
brush or a lathe - what comes out at the end has more to do with the talents
of those who use it than with the equipment itself.

Although astronomy or particle physics depends on lots of mathematical
machinery, other parts of science - geology, gene sequencing - manage with
almost none (although they need a lot of "pings"). Some real geniuses are
almost as innumerate as Darwin (the Nobel prize-winner Peter Medawar, who
worked on tissue transplantation, replied when asked what he did when he
came across an equation: "I hum it"). Even Einstein lacked confidence: "Do
not worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I assure you that mine are
greater."

Einstein found the subject hard, and modern students find it harder. As
today's Science Page shows, it is easy, and perhaps justified, to bemoan
that fact. But, for the average scientist, how much does it matter? Science
is a broad church filled with narrow people; a refuge for those who cannot
do most things, but are good at a few. The mathematical illiterates are
matched by many who cannot extract DNA, recognise a greenfinch or wire a
plug. Even Darwin could not do everything; and knowledge has exploded since
his day.

All this is, needless to say, largely an apologia for my own incompetence.
As a student I was told that, for biologists, mathematics is like a bikini;
it shows what is interesting but conceals what's essential. Like a fool I
took the joke seriously. I know the basics, but not much more, and my
ignorance has cost me dear. As a result I once spent months in a Balkan tent
moving snails around in an attempt to measure natural selection, when a
simple statistical test would have told me that to have any chance of
success I would need millions rather than thousands of animals (I did,
though, develop a taste for slivovic).

My experiment foundered on the arithmetical rocks; and, as Leslie Mustoe's
article shows - as those who crossed the Millennium Bridge during its first
brief incarnation soon noticed - not only biologists can be blown off
course.

Engineers may be innumerate, but for the bridge an architect was the
navigator and should take at least part of the blame. Too many researchers
in the life sciences still behave like architects - they have a wonderful
idea, and leave it to someone else (often, nowadays, a computer scientist)
to do the real work.

Contracting out the hard stuff can pay off, but is not enough.

As 19th-century physicists realised and modern schools tend to forget,
science is the mathematisation of knowledge. Secretly, we know that they
were right - but, for the time being, we can still just about get away with
muddling on in our tents.

Steve Jones is professor of genetics at University College London

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