Martin Gardner, R.I.P.

Another Icon Passes -

Grim notes one, and each to his own, but this last week we lost a splendid writer and thinker: Martin Gardner.

I couldn't begin to do justice to the man, certainly not with the time I'm going to spend writing this. He was primarily a science writer, whose principal hobby was magic (the old close-up performing kind), who loved all kinds of imaginative and whimsical fiction (and was a dedicated quoter and annotater of G.K. Chesterton). Depending on where you ask, he's best known for a "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American, or for his work in "fringe-watching" and debunking pseudoscience. His first book in that field is over 50 years old but has much of lasting value. My favorite section: the probing, but sympathetic, chapter on Charles Fort.

In that place, though not in those words, he taught me this: magic is as fun and fascinating as I always thought it was, but it loses its charm when people start pretending it's real, especially when it's far past its time. Gardner once wrote a delightful essay on Conan Doyle for the "Baker Street Irregulars" - a society dedicated to the notion that Sherlock Holmes really existed - but if someone started really believing it, the fun would be gone. To be entertained by an illusionist, or learn a few tricks yourself, adds a bit of spice to life - but what could be drearier than the believers in Uri Geller, pretending his furtive games were something true, and the cutting edge of science? "Quantum Theory and Quack Theory" - a chapter in his The New Age: Notes of a Fringe-Watcher - has an especially good contrast between the real strangeness of quantum theory, and the unimaginative silliness of writers who tried to tie it to spoon-bending.[1]

Or, as I might say to Chesterton, you may like the freedom to believe in fairies - but the fairies lose their magic if you do. And what a shame - because, in their rightful state, how beautiful they are.

Gardner taught many things to many people, and brought much delight. One of John Derbyshire's reviews will give a better flavor of what he was like, and what he did, than I can. But I have said my piece.

[1]He knew enough history to liken it to this poor wretch, who figured a slate-writing magician had to be working in four-dimensional space - just as Doyle himself, in his later spiritualist days, was convinced that Houdini had to be dematerializing himself (because Doyle, himself, couldn't figure out how Houdini was doing it).