REVOLUTIONS in science have tended to follow a similar pattern: a genius, wrestling with questions difficult to answer, breaks the mould by imagining questions difficult to ask. Something like this happened with Antoine Lavoisier’s theory of oxygen, John Dalton’s atoms, Charles Darwin’s natural selection and Albert Einstein’s relativity.
Distinguishing a genius from a crank is not easy. Both take bold leaps of faith fuelled by imagination and sustained by belief, yet the former is a visionary and the latter a fool. Respectable science often demands belief in things we cannot directly observe. In the 19th century, for instance, we had…
