It's the character the article is really about. Much like the reverence we have for Feynman or Einstein, it's not just the science they did but the stylish way

It's the character the article is really about. Much like the reverence we have for Feynman or Einstein, it's not just the science they did but the stylish way they did it. The author obviously has a great fondness. But there's another message that's strong in there, and it comes from many sources around Lovelock. It's about how desperately we need more of Lovelock's breed, and how hostile to it our "prickly" science has become. The story of Nature rejecting him, not on the merit of his ideas, but his postal address, is simply embarrassing. The article bewails the loss of visionaries, iconoclasts, intellectual courage, scepticism and independence. These are the traits we beat of children at school, and punish as trouble-making, deviance and disinformation in our now very rigid society, frightened of "alternatives". Spike Milligan was right; Real progress is like an old car. It takes a crank to get things moving.