Irwin Deutscher
Published: 1973
Total Pages: 388
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This book has some of the qualities of a detective story and of a drama. As a drama, it resembles a dialogue between the author and his friends and foes. The book has a beginning, middle, and end that do not correspond to the economical, but quite a historical character of most scientific writing where the literature is reviewed and problems stated, the evidence presented and a conclusion reached. Instead, the beginning is an account of the author's confrontation with a nagging, persistent, and perhaps ultimately insoluble problem that faces every honest researcher - can we explain behaviour by giving evidence of attitudes? The middle develops new leads and materials but never abandons the central characters of the first act. The end, in Pirandello fashion, leaves us with a feeling of illumination, but illumination of the essential paradoxes and difficulties - not the light that breaks on a heroic solution.