Welcome to the website of A Tale of Two Sciences, by Peter Sturrock
A TALE OF TWO SCIENCES: Memoirs of a Dissident Scientist is one scientist’s reflection on a successful sixty-year career. Professor Sturrock has trod an unusual path, combining a variety of innovative research in mainstream science with another variety of studies well outside the mainstream. Although most scientists look with a jaundiced eye on topics such as parapsychology and UFO research, he views them simply as more grist for the scientific mill, regarding topics outside the mainstream as major challenges rather than minor annoyances best swept under the rug.
A Tale of Two Sciences has three sections: The first reviews the author's conventional research. The second reviews his unconventional research. The third presents his speculations on how these two presently distinct ventures might be reconciled, to their mutual advantage.
With a clear and simple style–and occasional humor–Sturrock presents both scientists and nonscientists with a refreshingly open and unprejudiced perspective on science. He shows that scientific thinking can be applied to a wide range of topics–unconventional as well as conventional–and even to topics that are normally considered beyond the purview of science, such as the Shakespeare authorship question.
Peter A. Sturrock is emeritus Professor of Applied Physics and emeritus Director of the Center for Space Science and Astrophysics at Stanford University. He has received numerous awards, including prizes from the American Astronomical Society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Cambridge University, the Gravity Foundation, and the National Academy of Sciences. His other publications include five edited volumes, three monographs, and over three hundred articles.
Chapter Headings: A Tale of Two Sciences
PART 1 - CONVENTIONAL SCIENCE
Chapter 1. Out Of The Blue
How It All Began
Chapter 2. Hitting The High Road
Mathematics—How Impressive—And Respectable!
Chapter 3. Seeing The World
Footloose—But Not Exactly Fancy-Free
Chapter 4. Stanford Beckons
The Land Of Opportunity
Chapter 5. To The Sun And Beyond
Stanford University Offers A Stairway To The Stars
Chapter 6. Solar Neutrinos
Does The Spirit Have A Message For Us?
PART 2 - UNCONVENTIONAL SCIENCE
Chapter 7. UFOs—Unidentifiied [Still?] Flying Objects
A Credible Introduction To An Incredible Topic
Chapter 8. A Guide To The Condon Report
And To The Anti-Condon Report
Chapter 9. The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence
A Tale Of Two SETI’s
Chapter 10. The Aas (American Astronomical Society) Survey
Tell Me, Professor, When Exactly Was The Last Time You Saw A Flying Saucer?
Chapter 11. An Introduction To Parapsychology
A New Friend Can Bring A New Problem
Chapter 12. Founding A Society
Will You, Won't You, Will You, Won't You, Will You Join The Dance?
Chapter 13. Reincarnation, Anyone?
Doctor Stevenson, I Presume
Chapter 14. An Introduction To Anomalous Healing
New Members Can Present New Challenges
Chapter 15. The Rockefeller Review
Shoot-Out On The Hudson
Part 3 - TOWARDS A SYNTHESIS
Chapter 16. Probabilistic Thinking And Bayes’ Theorem
Would You Bet Your Life On It?
Chapter 17. Science A La Bayes
Following In Father's Footsteps
Chapter 18. Models Of Reality
Careful—Your Weltanschauung May Be Showing
Chapter 19. U-Physics
Weird Data May Need A Weirder Theory
Chapter 20. Beyond The Blue Horizon
Waits A Beautiful Theory?
APPENDICES
Appendix A. The Schofield Event
Meteors In Echelon Formation
Appendix B. The Fast-Wave Tube
Better Late Than Never—And Better Late Than Too Early
Appendix C. Bayes' Theorem
Just What The Doctor Ordered
Appendix D. Evaluating Options
To Some Fuzzy Ideas, Add A Few Fuzzy Facts, And Stir
Appendix E. A Brief Guide To Ufo Literature
Invitation To The Waltz
Appendix F. Late Night Questions For Alice
As They Might Have Been Posed By Gertrude
Appendix G. Kelvin’s Syllogism
Fact, Fact, Go Away—Come Again Another Day
Praise for A Tale of Two Sciences
Good science takes critical thinking, but also genuine curiosity and courage. The former is taught, the latter are rare. Peter Sturrock has them all and this is his story. Young scientists: read this book. Old scientists: read this book. Non-scientists: read this book.
–Wayne B. Jonas, M.D.
President and CEO, Samueli Institute
Former Director, Office of Alternative Medicine, NIH
Sturrock's delightful, detailed story of his life should inspire all truly ambitious young scientists. He shows that an able scientist can attack problems far from his own nominal realm, bringing insight and a surgical analysis. Sturrock has followed his nose, sniffing out problems that are both intriguing and have high-yield potential. His is a way to get high leverage in difficult areas, and he tells the tale well.
–Gregory Benford
Professor of Physics, University of California Irvine, Author
A Tale of Two Sciences is a profile in courage. It is the personal account of one of the most daring and brilliant scientists I have ever known. Peter Sturrock realizes that science grows from the edges, and that its lifeblood is the anomalous things that do not fit in. This book should ideally find its way into the hands of every young scientist, because in today’s world we need Peter Sturrock's example as never before.
–Larry Dossey, M.D.
Author of Healing Words and The Power of Premonitions
Executive Editor of Explore, The Journal of Science and Healing
At the end of the nineteenth century, scientists thought that all important science had been discovered, and that the future was only a matter of discovering greater detail. A century later, with the key discovery that we are not alone in the universe, we again realize that a new paradigm has become essential for the survival of our species. A Tale of Two Sciences helps to show how new, open-minded scientists can help us make this crucial transition.
–Edgar Mitchell
Apollo Astronaut
Founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences
Peter Sturrock is a gentle revolutionary, and this is the story of the man and the
revolution that he has done so much to ignite. This book, like Stanford Professor Sturrock’s career, manages to bridge world-class mainstream science with mind-bending research into scientific anomalies in general and UFOs in particular. Sturrock’s mainstream-science accomplishments are impressive, but they are not what make the book so compelling. The real story is about the still-forming revolution, and what it looks like from the inside. Young scientists reading Peter Sturrock’s chronicle will see how truly fascinating science can be.
–Garret Moddel
Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering,
University of Colorado
President, Society for Scientific Exploration
Examples are rare in academic life of scholars who have achieved international distinctions in several established scientific venues, then have moved outward and upward to challenge much more daunting, ultimately more portentious topics of public concern. Even more precious are those who can establish and lead institutionalized organizations that collectively advance scholarly understanding of those controversial areas, as Sturrock has done for many years. This is an engagingly written reprise of a fascinating journey through an array of uncompromising scholarly initiatives, any one of which would have distinguished a less ambitious and astute scholar.
–Robert G. Jahn
Professor of Aerospace Sciences
Dean of Engineering and Applied Science, Emeritus, Princeton University
This is a book that every young scientist should read and absorb. What I hope will happen, if every young scientist DOES read this excellent book, is a change in the culture of science to the welcoming of unconventional investigations of the mysterious. I have always been baffled why UFOs in particular are treated the way they are by the scientific establishment: The notion of highly advanced civilizations on other worlds having the technology to visit our world is utterly conventional, yet the evidence that this has actually happened is widely regarded as pseudo-science, and not worth investigating! The young reader will also benefit from Sturrock’s fascinating account of his wonderful trajectory in his conventional science career.
–Richard Conn Henry
Professor of Physics and Astronomy,
Johns Hopkins University
It is rare for an eminent scientist to risk his academic standing by informing
himself about factual observations of paranormal phenomena. Professor Sturrock had the courage to take this unconventional step. What he discovered was so significant that it led him to found the Society for Scientific Exploration with an elite group of researchers around the world. He continues to apply the spirit of inquiry that distinguished his career at Cambridge and Stanford to the
deciphering of phenomena that challenge science in the 21st century. His
account of this adventure is a warm human document and a shining example
of rigorous analytical thinking. It contains important insights for the open-minded scientist and the educated layman alike.
–Jacques Vallee
Scientist, Author, Venture Capitalist
Sturrock challenges both scientists and laymen to take anomalous phenomena and their investigation seriously. Laymen are challenged to put doubt and the scientific method ahead of belief, and the book exemplifies how to do this. Scientists are justly accused of labeling some anomalous observations as “unscientific” per se, without scientific investigation. A Tale of Two Sciences contains some of the best-documented cases of anomalous phenomena of all types, including UFOs, studies of young children reporting verifiable details of a past life, and documented healing of laboratory mice by “laying on hands” by skeptical but trained volunteers. Finally, Sturrock proceeds to discuss what prevents regular scientists from coming to grips with anomalies, and suggests some tools of the scientific method that provide an intellectual platform from which to attack them. This is a thought-provoking book for scientists and laymen alike.
–David E. Pritchard,
Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Delightfully written, with subtle British humor, this book takes the reader through the unorthodox journey of an outstanding scientist whose curiosity one day happened to be stimulated by an unrecognizable—an anomalous—phenomenon. Sturrock later began to inquire into this genuinely interesting subject with the same integrity and rigor as in all of his other scientific investigations, only to find out that no reputable scientific journal was willing to publish his results, so discovering that science is not as open as one is led to believe. The book discusses intriguing research results in several taboo areas, and provides ample evidence to anyone who has an open mind that such anomalies present us with an extraordinary opportunity to discover something extremely important about the nature of reality. The book reveals a style of open and honest exploration, without dogmatic agendas, that will hopefully return scientific interest to subjects that have long been discredited and abandoned by young scientists—the very people capable of unraveling these mysteries with their curiosity, enthusiasm, and fresh ideas.
–Federico Faggin
Physicist, Inventor, Entrepreneur
Co-Founder, Chairman Emeritus of Synaptics, Inc.
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