The Small World of Fred Hoyle: by Fred Hoyle

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this first autobiography of the 20th century's greatest astronomer and cosmologist is that there is very little astronomy and cosmology contained within its 187 pages. What "The Small World of Fred Hoyle" does give us is an amazing insight into the kind of world in which the author spent his formative years. Though his world was "small" in the geographical sense, it was a world which made it possible for Hoyle and others of his generation to assume the status of a giant in scientific achievement and technological development. So we may say that the book is a study of the influences of an era which made possible the tremendous eruption of ideas, discoveries and inventions which poured forth from the fertile mind of its author.

Sir Fred Hoyle opens his first chapter with a discussion of trilby hats. The effect of the trilby hat was that it made the face and head of its wearer appear larger than it actually was. We can only really be cognizant of this fact when we examine it from a historical rather than from a contemporary perspective for facts such as these are best understood within the context of a comparative analysis of the fashions and designs of different eras. This apparent triviality of trilby hats transparently demonstrates the great extent of Hoyle's observational and analytical abilities which, though mainly exercised in scientific fields, could switch to other disciplines and there offer insights of near unfathomable depths such as to shame their practitioners engaged in their full-time study.

In later life, Hoyle bemoaned what he saw as the late 20th century's lack of scientific progress and dearth of scientific ideas all of which stood in stark contrast to the prolific output of scientists in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. Hoyle put all this down to science becoming big, corporatist and above all conformist. The straitjacket in which scientists now find themselves confined militates against any originality of thought and development of ideas. That Hoyle always desisted from taking the eggs from birds' nests that he and his friends found, preferring instead to leave them and watch what eventually happened, is not only indicative of his scientifically enquiring mind forming at an early age but of the non-conformity for which he was known throughout his adult life. Hoyle's persistent truancy during the early years of his schooling, his feelings that most of what was given to children to learn was essentially useless, are other examples of the ingredients that went into the making of Hoyle's non-conformity with establishment norms and practices.

The mysterious untimely deaths on the local Milnerfield estate, the dark strip of woodland enclosed by the "Great Wall of Milnerfield" and the eerie Sparrow Bills Lane with its strange twists and turns all of which went into creating a world of ghosts and ghouls and dragons and ogres must have been for Hoyle an imaginative wonderland whose seeds would eventually sprout in his science fiction novels whose characters, plots and themes became almost as well-known as his work as a serious scientist.

"The Small World of Fred Hoyle" has something big to tell us who are living in the opening years of the 21st century. Our world is bigger, but yet it is smaller! We can travel further and faster but we see less. Hoyle's learning about factory machines and canal lock gates were the fruits of a real education which ironically came from his periods of truancy, from the freeing of himself from the confines of the four walls of a brick and mortar classroom. Situations of scarcity of resources which were manifested in an ill-equipped school chemistry laboratory served to throw the pupils back on their own resources and inventiveness. The mythical creatures of Milnerfield and the machinery of the mills were the contrasting blends which made Hoyle at once the practical scientist and the man of fresh ideas and healthy imagination. Is it not astonishing that factories and fairies' dens were the properties of the Salt family of Milnerfield? Do we not see in these starkly contrasting worlds a microcosm of Britain, a nation which has prospered and succeeded on a marriage of tradition and progress, a Britain which Hoyle loved and to which he showed the greatest patriotism.?

In our world of plenty and privilege, inventiveness is asomewhat scare commodity; in a childhood of electronic games and play stations imagination is stunted and the ghosts and ghouls have fled the tree-shaded winding lanes to become mere blips on a computer monitor. Yet, if we re-read the autobiographical works of the late Sir Fred Hoyle and take as our own his commiserations for a long lost past we may have the chance of re-creating the immensity of his small world and in so doing create a bigger and better world of our own.

Home is Where the Wind Blows: by Fred Hoyle

I have always admired Sir Fred Hoyle's works and writings. His autobiography "Home is where the wind blows" is truly Hoyle's masterpiece among all his works. Although the greatest cosmologist of the 20th century, Hoyle remains totally unpretentious throughout this book; whether as a grammar school pupil or Plumian Professor of Cosmology, Hoyle is never far from the earthy rough and tumble Bingley boy of the early years of the last century.

I have been reading Hoyle's works since I was at school, so much of my thinking on science in general and astronomy in particular has been guided by Hoyle's thoughts and ideologies. And yet it is not only in the field of science that Sir Fred Hoyle had much to say throughout his life, he also showed great astuteness in his analyses of matters political. And so it is here that I would make a mild criticism of his autobiography: Hoyle makes only passing reference to his excellent book "A Decade of Decision" and fails to even mention "Man and Materialism" and "Of Men and Galaxies". These earlier works of Hoyle's demonstrate his penetrating insight into political, social and economic issues which were not only germane and central at the time of their composition, but which can be found as being equally relevant in the 21st century. For example in "A Decade of Decision", written in 1950, Hoyle states that there is very little difference between the Conservative and Labour Parties - a fact that is only beginning to dawn on people now. In these early writings, Sir Fred discusses the problem of the exhaustion of fossil fuels and other finite resources, and argues that the best alternative is nuclear energy: and all this being two decades before the oil crisis of 1973.

In "Of Men and Galaxies", Hoyle rightly bemoans the fact that science has produced nothing outstanding since the early decades of the 20th century, and this is because we rely too much on "big science" with the result that scientists cannot think outside of a fixed establishment mind-set. As large funding is necessary for today's science, the scientist has to spend as much time lobbying government for money as in doing actual scientific research. If this were...