Does this suggest another possible source of scientific inspiration – the thoughts of a ‘lay’ public?
The wonderful thing about those letters is that they are from people looking at the big issues in life. They’re not afraid of the big questions: who we are, where we come from, the nature of existence and the universe. A lot of these views are pretty non-standard, but it’s their own view, created out of their experience of being alive. The folk or peasant remedies that comprise ‘Tell the Bees’ also represent an archaic version of popular science that freely merges rational procedures of trial and error with elements of allegory and magical thinking, yet today it is their plausibility which surprises – the way in which they anticipated such crucial medical developments as inoculation, Penicillin and of course the current fascination with homeopathy. This is collective knowledge whereas the Mt. Wilson letters are very individual. I think that ideas, just like proteins, tend to be rougher in their singular form, more jagged; once they become beliefs that are held by lots of people, the ro
