another vital question

A few students have taken me up on my final essay suggestion: explore alternative responses to the Vital Question (as posed by William James): "What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?"

It's a question about human nature, the possibility of progress, of our capacity for cooperation and kindness and compassion, and of many particular facets that James could not have imagined.

I'll be interested to see where people choose to take the question. One possibility is the biotech angle:

"Where will synthetic biology lead us?" asks Michael Specter (author of Denialism). Some think life's about to start making of itself a creator of brand-new forms of life-- not in the Wittgensteinian sense, but for real. What might await our form of life, at the other end of that rabbit-hole?

"If the science truly succeeds, it will make it possible to supplant the world created by Darwinian evolution with one created by us." O brave new world, that has such reasonable-sounding "biological engineers" as Drew Endy in it...

Thing is, this isn't really even "long-term" thinking,

the future is now.

Bill McKibben, for one, says "Enough!"

"Denialism" and weirdness

The optimistic view of science is that the theories advanced with its methods will have self-evident appeal to an educated public. Why, then, do people so often behave unscientifically? A sitting congressman claims he’s seen a U.F.O.; a former Playboy model insists, against overwhelming evidence, that childhood vaccines cause autism; Las Vegas vacationers expect to beat the casinos; former British Prime Minister Tony Blair treats his children with homeopathic remedies.

Michael Specter, a science and public health writer for The New Yorker, shows little interest in the first approach in his pugnacious new book, “Denialism,” which carries the ominous subtitle “How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.” He devotes chapters to anti- vaccine zealots, purveyors of organic foods, promoters of alternative medicines and opponents of race-based medicine, accusing each group of turning “away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie.”

Specter is not the first to take on doubters of science. More than a decade ago, Michael Shermer — who believed in alien abduction and megavitamin therapy before becoming a confirmed skeptic — adopted a more sympathetic tack in Why People Believe Weird Things. Shermer wisely realized that the public’s view of science is refracted by human psychology. For example, we are wired to see patterns even when none may exist. And from science, as from any explanatory framework, we tend to seek instant gratification, the reassuring company of others, and simplicity... NYTimes 11.27.09

Michael Shermer's encounter with Mr. Deity was weird, but-- like his TED talk-- instructive and fun.