C. H. Waddington (1905–1975)

A fairly readable collection of essays about the relation of science to other things, such as art, different political movements such as fascism and communism, and about the scientific attitude in general. The author was a biology professor at Cambridge, and the essays in this book were written during the second world war, and are heavily influenced by this period.
Not very much science is included in this book, it is more of an assessment of the indirect influences of science and scientists, show more so much of it might be classed as sociology. The author takes a fairly heavily left-wing view of things, which I found to be the only irritating thing about this book, but this is understandable due to the time in which this book was written. I didn't find the essays to be as stimulating as those of somewhat comparable writers like Koestler, but there were some interesting opinions to do with art, which would never have occurred to me, though I think he was correct about them.
This book might be interesting for the scientist, as it describes the world from the view of a scientist, but it might also be interesting for a non-scientist who is interested in learning how various aspects of the world are affected by science. show less

It has often been pointed out that twentieth-century painting and physics share a common tendency toward probing behind appearances into the underlying structure of things ... The author provides a concise summary of those aspects of modern science that relate to his theme, including the development of a 'third science' that embraces information, communication, automation, and systems theory. He also provides in parallel a concise history of the modern movement in painting-

During the 1930s, show more Waddington also began his close association with such emerging avant-garde painters, sculptors, and architects as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, John Piper, Sandy Calder, and Walter Gropius. Waddington’s knowledge and appreciation of art was considerable; more than thirty years later he wrote this enormously ambitious analysis Behind Appearance: A Study of the Relations between Painting and the Natural Sciences in This Century (1969). In 1936, he married painter and architect Justin Blanco White. show less