50 Years Ago

“European Brewery Convention” — The idea of science infiltrating into brewing still frequently produces a reaction from the layman on the grounds that, first, beer has been brewed for more than six thousand years, so there can be little still to learn; second, the less the scientist has to do with it the better because it used to be better than it is (in fact, it is even hinted that nowadays “beer is made from chemicals”); third (triumphantly), brewing is an art and not a science. The first two points are born of ignorance of the real position, and the truth of the third depends on the sense of the word 'art': in so far as it refers to experience and skill in 'know how' it may be correct.

From Nature 11 August 1956.

100 years ago

Poverty and Hereditary Genius; a Criticism of Mr. Francis Galton's Theory of Hereditary Genius — The criticism which Mr. Constable brings forward in this book is that reputation is not a test of ability, and as Galton's theory of hereditary genius is based on this assumption, it has to be discarded. The statistical evidence given in “Hereditary Genius” has to be explained away, and Mr. Constable attempts to do this by what he calls the “swamping effect of poverty.” We quite agree with Mr. Constable that it is harder for a poor man with uninfluential parents to achieve success as a judge than for a rich one with influence, but this does not seem to us to justify Mr. Constable in discarding the conclusions of “Hereditary Genius,” for if the social conditions of both parents and offspring are relatively about the same, it seems as if the omission of the ability in poverty-stricken parents and their children is rather like leaving out of account the addition of numbers to both the numerator and denominator of a fraction.

From Nature 9 August 1906.