Magnus Pyke

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Dr. Magnus Pyke (29 December 1908 – 19 October 1992) was a British scientist and media figure, who, although apparently quite eccentric and playing up to the mad scientist stereotype, succeeded in explaining science to a lay audience. He was known for his enthusiastic way of waving his arms around as he spoke.

Born in London, Pyke rose to prominence as a young food researcher working for the wartime Minister of Food, Frederick Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton. Even then, he was known to be eccentric. It is said that, in an effort to cope with the problem of blood donation outstripping local storage for blood transfusion, Pyke suggested using the excess human blood to make black pudding.

Pyke was a regular panellist on the Yorkshire Television science programme Don't Ask Me from 1974 to 1979; it was later changed to Don't Just Sit There. The panel was chaired by Derek Griffiths, and other members included David Bellamy (a botanist), Dr Miriam Stoppard and Dr Robert Buckman. The programme consisted of the panel attempting to answer viewers' queries about science and the everyday world.

Pyke appears on the song, and the video, "She Blinded Me With Science" by Thomas Dolby, where he shouts "science" and provides other sound bites. After the video was released, he was said to be annoyed by people coming up to him and shouting "Science!" at him. His eccentric brand of humour was often heard after dinner at the Savage Club.

1 The Science Myth
2 Bibliography
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] The Science Myth

Although Pyke was known for bringing science to a lay audience, in The Science Myth (and similar writings, such as Slaves Unaware?) he was also a critic of how the citizens of industrialized nations have historically been lured into social conformity by the comforts and security offered by applied sciences or technology, and the associated industrial economic propaganda and advertising. This has entailed the loss of important individual freedoms in the name of an ever-increasing gross national product or standard of living, measured monetarily, with some associated negation of independent human values, common sense and individuality, family and community, health, safety and ergonomics. In his 1962 book, he uses the Greek myth of Procrustes and his Procrustean bed as a metaphor for how citizens are forced to conform to the one-size-fits-all rigid structure of the modern industrial society. He cites associated problems such as coronary disease related to diet, psychological and social problems stemming from work related stress and training, "...softly and persistently hammered into shape until — Pinocchio in reverse — from being a living creature... becomes for forty hours an insensate puppet..." and educational systems, which "knock out of the ingenious adolescent all of the 'nonsense' of the young, this being most of his or her eagerness and ingeniousness". However, the Western work environment fails youthful expectations to an even greater extent than the schools. "At school, success is judged in terms of work, whereas in industrial life this is not so..." after young people hasten to leave school for the benefit of the social significance of the work, rather than for the work itself, they find that "Work seldom seems to the worker to have meaning or worth..." and "achievement is judged by the pay envelope which may have no relation to the difficulty of the work."^[1]

Pyke professes that there are alternative systems to that of the Western industrialized nations which could retain many of the benefits of science and technology, allow a reasonable standard of living, but still make room for the good life, many aspects of which were enjoyed by pre-industrialized societies. He claims that just as wise nations may not wish to retain a demanding and overbearing monarchy that requires too many unjustified sacrifices, it is "up to the nations who have committed themselves to scientific technology and power to temper the rigors of efficiency and productivity..." He criticizes misplaced values of the Western system in statements such as the following:

"The main body of the citizenry, the 'workers,' are kept segregated from the drones, the women at home, the children, the old and the idle. ...the necessary doctrine of the division of labor makes this regimentation necessary. But it has the effect of setting economic effort apart and dividing the day and the week into "work" and "everything else".
"This way of thinking has so deranged our minds that we have come to accept that only when we are actually carrying out paid industrial work are we serving our purpose on earth."
"To minds so deformed, the things that 'retired' people do are not considered to be of value. They are empty, merely something to do."
"The leisure pursuits of the senior executive seem to be corroded with competitiveness, superficial sociability, display, and conspicuous consumption. He must own an automobile of a certain size and make, not necessarily to travel in, but to prove that he can afford it."

Pyke gibes military training in statements such as "The students of laughter have never given any very convincing answer to the question why it is that the site of 'one' grown-up man stiffly jerking his arms and legs about would cause the bystanders to laugh, whereas a regiment of men doing the same in unison is a matter for pride — or fear — in the onlookers. He feels that military training is just an extreme example of Western job training, the purpose of which "is to change an uncertain, unpredictable human into a machine." Military engineering has also suffered historically. The first British gas attack at Loos in 1915 caused injuries and death to British Special Brigade soldiers with previous chemistry training and experience, due to improperly sized pipe, leaking connections and chlorine being dispensed in a liquid rather than in the intended gaseous state. The first nearly indestructible American tanks produced in World War II were ergonomically so inferior, that operators were exposed to carbon monoxide and ammonia gas and to lethal vulnerability through lids left open due to unsuitable cabin sizes. He compares these military situations to civilian employees working with apparatus and equipment that they know could be improved, but due to training and loyalty, find themselves in situations where safety and efficiency are compromised, or to privately doubting "the usefulness for the increase in human happiness and prosperity..." "the production of products ranging from gin and chlorophyll toothpaste all the way to hydrogen bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles."

He also attributes some medical advances (in addition to others) to the resolution of military problems in war situations, stating that historically "of all the painful mutilations of the military machine, the most lethal is disease. ...epidemic diseases of all sorts — spread by water, lice, rats fleas or famine — kill and disable more destructively than the enemy." He cites some historical health related military loss statistics up to "the medical and sanitary disasters of the Crimean War which were brought to general notice by the vigour of Miss Nightingale..." Aside from general advances in diet, clothing, health and sanitation, many advances made in World War II were of permanent value. "Penicillin was known to exist when World War II began, it had been discovered by Fleming in 1929 but at that time no one could make it in quantity. It was not until the war of 1939 began to exert its strains on the community that extraordinary efforts were made to manufacture penicillin to mitigate the worst distress of the disease and wounds inevitably accompanying such a war." He goes on further to describe the two sided nature of war (and of industrial societies). "The rigid framework of the self-imposed discipline of a scientific community at war can be dreadfully wrong, or it can be splendidly right. It is dreadfully wrong when a system, designed for a purpose that has become obsolete, is allowed to continue when circumstances have changed." He states the biological science [not to mention history] "has demonstrated... that the notion that genetically one nation is 'better' than another is a fallacy, and the hypothesis that one nation is born to rule and another to obey is untenable. Rather it is more rational to consider... that the enemy of the moment is an ally who, on this occasion, happens to be on the wrong side... clearly, the most effective and agreeable of the methods of repairing the disharmonies of war is to settle down and marry one's enemy."

"In these modern times our minds have been conditioned to think differently from John Milton who saw some virtue and, indeed, pleasure to be had from sadness. ...Sadness and melancholy are no longer part of life where musing pensively, we may come to wisdom. The constant pressure of the affairs of applied science has been such that we now believe that these moods can be effectively dealt with by taking 15-milligram tablets of phenelzine... People who are 'depressed, unhappy, morose' need be so no longer. Nialamide is the specific therapy for these conditions. Take it, says the announcement, and you will find 'increased cheerfulness and hope.'" But the "humanistic person about whom I am writing knows that madness is merely a peculiar accentuation of sanity... one afflicted by some degree of madness can often be made to snap back." Magnus then examines malleability of the technological citizen's mind as related to the research of Ivan Pavlov. As an introduction, he discusses not only Pavlov's well known classical conditioning experiments whereby the salivation response of dogs was associated with an arbitrary stimulus such as a bell, buzzer or electric current. He describes Pavlov's research in transmarginal inhibition, the body's natural response of shutting down when exposed to overwhelming stress or pain. "It is a simple experiment to 'condition' a dog to expect food... The current itself is almost pleasurable... But then the experimenter, bit by bit and day by day, increases the voltage... Sharp, revolting pain is the price for food. The mind of the dog, tortured with pain and fear and hope and bewilderment, eventually breaks down." Additional experiments by Pavlov, as mixing time delays, or presenting learned stimuli with unexpected reward or punishment to induce such breakdowns or erasure of learned responses. "Not all dogs allowed their minds to give way under these stresses. ...They had given their hearts... and their devotion to learning how to behave - and worries and frustrations - even the confusing effects of the unexpected - did not make them change. ...But for those dogs who remained inviolate... he reserved a final treatment. These animals would be castrated or infected by fever, or given diarrhea and then the bells were made to ring, the buzzers to buzz, the horns to blow and the electric currents to shock. ...he had discovered... the degree of stress required to remove a set of ideas from a dog's mind." Magnus then associates these methods to those of the Inquisition, whereby a mind was considered a reflection of an individual's living soul, to be saved from far more painful and prolonged tortures of Hell, and modern brainwashing, whereby minds are viewed as mere mechanisms whereby "ideas and thoughts and the evanescent dreams of freedom and justice and hope and beauty.. "ought to be explained" in technological terms and can be "impressed with ideas in a certain way and, if required, can be broken down in another way so that the set of ideas on them can be taken off and new ones put on. ...And although minds vary in strength... no mind is immune. This conclusion is one more indication of the general conformity to the doctrine that society's purpose is technology and that minds of nonconformists can be made to conform... they should be made to do so. But... in spite of the persuasive pressure to believe that the purpose of modern society is no absenteeism, and increased industrial productivity, there are still people whose lives follow a different path." He cites the devout religious millions in India. "These people do not see dogs as 'material' for psychological research. ...Here and there are artists and dreamers, a very few philosophers, and even some who cling to ideas of noble deeds and honorable action apart altogether from technological efficiency. ...those whose standards of life are distinct altogether from the 'standard of living.' ...In a different world Galileo brought his mind to the point of dissent from the accepted framework of thought; Newton boldly conceived laws of motion that brought the heavens and the earth into a single system comprehensible to human minds by the logic of mathematics. ...the number of scientists and technologists in the world has doubled every fifteen years since Newton. ...three quarters of the all scientists and technologists who ever lived are still alive today. It is just possible that they have not quite realized yet what it is they are trying to do."

"In the early 1950's a powerful pressure of advertising was brought to bear on the consumers of the Western world to purchase a wide variety of goods to which chlorophyll had been added on the basis that this substance would prevent the user from smelling. ...Chlorophyll is the chemical compound that gives greenness to grass and leaves. It is the basis of life for mankind and all the higher animals because, using energy in the light of the sun, it unites carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere with water to form sugars from which all vegetable food (and so all animal food) is derived. ...means that it is a substance of outstanding biochemical importance. ...In 1950 a report was published in a United States medical journal entitled "Oral chlorophyll fractions for the body and breath deodorization." ...Twelve people who had been eating onions were given 100 mg. chlorophyll tablets. ...seven people in the trial, the smell of onions was still present in their breath after four hours. ...This then was the type of evidence which convinced the people who were technically concerned with the production of dentifrices and air conditioners, mouthwashes and tablets to cure bad breath that chlorophyll added to these articles would increase sales - whether or not it exerted any useful effect in suppressing smell. ...manufacturers were obliged to import large quantities of chlorophyll from the British Isles... if chlorophyll - a substance shown years ago in 1939... to be not even absorbed into the human body when eaten - if chlorophyll should affect the body's smell, how would it be expected to act? ...It is now generally accepted that the force of Advertising need not depend on what the advertisement says in word, whether true, half-true or untrue. The journal 'Science' comments almost as a platitude that 'nearly all over-the-counter drug advertising is to some extent misleading. ...It was soon apparent that if one man would buy an article because an advertisement described it clearly and unemotionally as something he wanted, ten men would buy it because they had seen its name ceaselessly repeated wherever they went. But compared to ten, a hundred would come in response to some hidden unconscious urge they never knew they possessed. ...people smoke to show they are manly and mature; young smokers are unconsciously demonstrating that they are fully grown up; and older people, particularly women, smoke to show that they are young and still in the prime of their vigour too. ...Most of the people bought one kind of car rather than another because it satisfied their idea of the kind of figure it would cut in front of their friends and acquaintances. ...The toothpaste people have over the years impressed on the public how disastrous it would be if bacteria were allowed to attack the teeth. ...full of mystical ingredients which can save teeth from the attack of deadly microbes. ...As customarily used... toothpaste... does not ... reduce the concentration of micro-organisms in the mouth. ...Today, the soap manufacturers do not merely promise to make ladies clean, they promise to make them beautiful. ...For men, it is the promise of strength and virility - and a smell... guaranteed to bring the ladies swarming. The auto manufacturers do not just sell a car, they sell status and prestige. ...Listerine would cure, first, sore throat, then dandruff, and finally, ...marketed just as effectively as an aftershave lotion. ...We have already discussed how children's education is directed to some degree... so that they more easily acquire... jobs in industry. ...we should not be surprised if advertising likewise applies itself to children in the cause of consumption. ...This is indeed what the pressure to conform, to be efficient and to raise the standard of living is about: the purpose is to press men and women into the proper shape for production and consumption. It is the few stray people who have not been shaped to size who wonder. Advertising is an instrument comparable to the church is it? But with a different purpose."

[edit] Bibliography

About Chemistry
Automation: Its Purpose and Future
The Boundaries of Science
Butter Side Up!: The Delights of Science
Catering Science and Technology
Dr Magnus Pyke's 202 Inventions
Food for All the Family
Food Science and Technology
Food & Society: Fact, Fallacy, Religion & Folklore: the Background to Scientific Nutrition
The Human Predicament: An anthology with questions by Cedric Blackman
Long life: Expectations for old age
Man and Food
Manual of nutrition 1947
Nothing Like Science
Our Future
Red Rag to a Bull!
The Science Century
The Science Myth, The MacMillan Company, 1962
The Six Lives of Pyke
Slaves Unaware?: A mid-century View of Applied Science
Success in Nutrition (Success Studybooks)
Synthetic Food
Technological eating;: Or, Where does the fish-finger point?
There and Back
Townsman's Food
Weird & Wonderful Science Facts