Sutherland, John A.

Name not available

Books 
W. H. Freeman and Company 
$23.95 
375 pages 
(The Quark and the Jaguar will be 
available in bookstores in April.) 
36 Engineering & Science/winter 1994 
by John Sutherland 
This is a difficult book to categorize. 
The mythical librarian who put Cancer 
Ward in the medical section will prob-
ably tear The Quark and theJt1guar in two 
and put one half in "Zoology" and (after 
toying with "Irish Literature: Joyce") 
deposit the other in "Physics." The 
resistance to categorization is, in large 
part, a willed thing. Murray Gell-Mann 
despises the "departmentalization of 
knowledge" that goes on in institutions 
of higher education and research-even, 
lamentably, at Caltech. He devotes a 
longish digression to the incorrigible 
"reductionism" (and by implication 
philistinism) of the Cal tech intellectual 
regime: 
Why does so Ii ttle research in 
psychology go on at Caltech to-
day? Granted, the school is small 
and can't do everything. But why 
so little evolutionary biology? (I 
sometimes say in jest that a cre-
ationist institution could scarecly 
do less.) Why so little ecology, 
linguistics, or archaeology? One 
is led to suspect that these subjects 
have something in common that 
puts off most of our faculty. 
It is that "something in common" of 
the subjects disdained by Cal tech that 
nowadays fascinates Gell-Mann. On one 
level The Quark and theJagl£ar is a long 
advertisement for the Institute at Santa 
Fe, which he founded in 1984 and where 
he and a band of carefully selected 
MacArthurite geniuses cogitate on 
"complex adaptive systems, functioning 
in such diverse processes as the origin of 
life on Earth, biological evolution, the 
behavior of organisms in ecological 
systems, the operation of the mam-
malian immune system, learning and 
thinking in animals (including human 
beings), the evolution of human soci-
eties, the behavior of investors in finan-
cial markets, and the use of computer 
software and/or hardware designed to 
evolve strategies or to make predictions 
based on past observations." 
It is clear that Gell-Mann regards the 
interdisciplinary seminars at Santa Fe as 
a kind of ideal superstructure to Cal-
tech's foundation. A lot of prophets 
have gone into the desert and come up 
with a plan for the salvation of mankind 
(this is not hyperbolic or intended as 
sarcasm: The Quark and the Jaguar con-
cludes with a program for the human 
race in the face of its imminent self-
destruction). But this description does 
not fit Gell-Mann. Nor is he what he 
superficially resembles-a 19th-century 
totalizing sage crudifying science into 
popular ideology (Ernst Haeckel, for 
instance, with his genealogical "tree of 
life forms" with its monera at the roots 
and man in the top branches; or Herbert 
Spencer with his pan-Darwinism). Even 
when discussing subjects as remote from 
theoretical physics as the territorial be-
havior of big cats in the rain forest, 
Gell-Mann is, first and foremost, a 
fastidiously strenuous scientist. In his 
40 years at Cal tech as one of the world's 
most distinguished exponents of quan-
tum mechanics, he has, as he demon-
strates, articulated a definition of "com-
plexity" (and its correlative "plectic," 
simplicity), which he now feels he can 
apply to other fields-particularly that 
of complex adaptive systems. Wall 
Street is a CAS, Madonna is a CAS, the 
TB bacterium is a CAS. It is magnifi-
cent, although many of his colleagues 
may think it is not science. 
The Quark and theJagztar is at least 
three kinds of book. It opens wi th a 
short introspective prelude made up of a 
number of autobiographical snapshots. 
In terms of reader enjoyment this is the 
most attractive section. Gell-Mann 
reminisces about not having seen a 
jaguar in the wild, but having had a 
dramatic encounter with a jaguarundi 
(the precise distinction of species is very 
characteristic) in a northeastern corner of 
Guatemala. He reminisces about him-
self as "a curious child" and recalls early 
intellectual adventures with his brother 
in prewar New York. He confides some 
touching recollections of his first-
generation American father and hints 
at youthful rebellions that still. trouble 
him. There is a vivid vignette of him-
self, newly married in 1956, driving 
with his wife through the Tejon Pass 
in their Hillman Minx and coming 
upon 11 California condors feasting 
on a dead calf. 
These early pages make one wish that 
the author had been prevailed on to 
write an autobiography proper. But the 
central section of The Qttttrk and the 
Jaguar, rather surprisingly, comprises a 
series of briskly technical expositions on 
plectics, coarse-graining, Algorithmic 
Information Content (a central element 
in Gell-Mann's definition of complexi-
ty), randomness, chaos theory, Zipfs 
law, Grand Unified Theory, superstring 
It is ainzed at the 
intelligent lay-
person) and the 
overall effect is 
that of an ex-
traordinarily 
bracing series of 
Watson Lectures. 
theory, and "Quantum Mechanics and 
the Classical Approximation." It is 
aimed at the intelligent layperson, and 
the overall effect is that of an extraordi-
narily bracing series of Watson Lectures 
(one recalls, incidentally, that Gell-
Mann is one of that select band of 
Watson lecturers for whom Beckman 
Auditorium is too small). Speaking as a 
layperson who was baffled to the point of 
fury by A Brief HiJtory of Time, I fcmnd 
this pedagogic section of the book lucid 
yet never condescending. Richard 
Feynman, one is told, habitually brushed 
off requests to explain the mysteries of 
his subject to nonspecialists wi th the 
good-natured jest: "If you could under-
stand it, you'd win the Nobel Prize as 
well." Gell-Mann, by contrast, gives the 
nonspecialist at least a glimpse of the 
inner workings of theoretical physics. 
One comes away feeling a cleverer 
person. 
The final section of The Quark and the 
Jctguar picks up themes publicized in 
Caltech's centenary "Sustainable World" 
conference. Gell-Mann makes a passion-
ate and rational plea for conservation, 
particularly in the tropics, where the 
bulk of the planet's surviving biological 
complex adaptive systems are stored. A 
professional theorist, he believes that the 
kind of interdisciplinary theoretic inter-
ventions secreted at places like Santa Fe 
may offer "some kind of headlight, even 
a flickering one, to help avoid some of 
the worst disasters." Since the disasters 
he foresees will involve, among other 
things, the extinction of the human 
species, one hopes he is right. 
One reads The QZiark and the J agltar 
with the sense that only Cal tech could 
have produced Murray Gell-Mann, and 
not even Caltech can hold him. No 
institution organized into "divisions" 
can satisfy his Baconian ambition to 
make "all knowledge my province." 
This is an outstandingly brilliant man's 
book and will doubtless have a huge 
impact. It must be said, however, that 
for all its author's brilliance, the editorial 
hand could have been applied to better 
purpose. The overall shape of the dis-
course seems in places to have been 
improvised. Stretches of the text read 
as if they had been dictated and never 
polished. The author's love of name 
dropping ("Tom" Kuhn, "Steve" 
Hawking) and his habit of attaching a 
kind of Who'J Who list of honors to even 
cursory mentions of his distinguished 
friends should have been curtailed. The 
final sections of the book-which, as 
Gell-Mann's Cassandra-call to humanity, 
require a ringing eloquence-seem to 
have been phoned in from Rio. It is a 
pity that with a book of this importance 
the publisher could not have contrived 
to produce something worthy of the 
author's mind. 
John Sutherland iJ the Lord Northcliffe 
ProjeJJor of English CIt College 
London. From 1984 to 1992 he was jJro-
fessor of literatzm:: at Caltech and retllrnecl 
laJtfal1 term as a Fctirchild Distinguished 
Scholar. 
Engineering & SciencelWinter 1994 37 


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