Woolly liberal

Man and Nature: out of balance

For two centuries, since the Age of the Enlightenment, we assumed that whatever the advance of science, whatever the economic development, whatever the increase in human numbers, the world would go on much the same. That was progress. And that was what we wanted.

Now we know that this is no longer true.

We have become more and more aware of the growing imbalance between our species and other species, between population and resources, between humankind and the natural order of which we are part.

In recent years, we have been playing with the conditions of the life we know on the surface of our planet. We have cared too little for our seas, our forests and our land. We have treated the air and the oceans like a dustbin. We have come to realise that man's activities and numbers threaten to upset the biological balance which we have taken for granted and on which human life depends.

We must remember our duty to Nature before it is too late. That duty is constant. It is never completed. It lives on as we breathe. It endures as we eat and sleep, work and rest, as we are born and as we pass away. The duty to Nature will remain long after our own endeavours have brought peace to the Middle East. It will weigh on our shoulders for as long as we wish to dwell on a living and thriving planet, and hand it on to our children and theirs.

Margaret Thatcher, speech to the Second World Climate Conference, Geneva, November 1990

The science of the mind

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/09/neuroscience-ethical-dilemmas

To find the mind's construction

I read recently that scientists had made significant advances in artificially interpreting the electrical activity of the brain as speech. This is said to have great potential benefits, and clearly it may, for those people who are deprived of the physical ability to speak in circumstances of medical emergency.

It may have less benefit, and even potential danger, for the far larger group of humans who do still retain the ability to speak, and everyone who can communicate in some conscious and effective manner, but scientific advances are usually promoted by the identification of some plausible minority social advantage whilst the larger social and cultural implications are blithely ignored. As scientists always say, it wasn't they who dropped Little Boy from Enola Gay.

From another report:

Soldiers could have their minds plugged directly into weapons systems, undergo brain scans during recruitment and take courses of neural stimulation to boost their learning, if the armed forces embrace the latest developments in neuroscience to hone the performance of their troops.

These scenarios are described in a report into the military and law enforcement uses of neuroscience, published on Tuesday, which also highlights a raft of legal and ethical concerns that innovations in the field may bring.

The report by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science, says that while the rapid advance of neuroscience is expected to benefit society and improve treatments for brain disease and mental illness, it also has substantial security applications that should be carefully analysed.

The report's authors also anticipate new designer drugs that boost performance, make captives more talkative and make enemy troops fall asleep.

"Neuroscience will have more of an impact in the future," said Rod Flower, chair of the report's working group.