Book Description

Reviews (24)

A Commendable Failure
This is a book with many virtues and one fatal flaw. Among the former are a clear, lucid style and an impressive overview of the state of the art in contemporary genetic science and the moral debates that they have provoked. This book is highly recommended to those who are relatively new to these issues and want a superb, layman's introduction.

But the book's central argument is embarrassingly weak. Fukuyama relies on Aristotle to support his central claim that morality ought to be grounded in an essential conception of human nature, the substance of which he sketches in the core chapters of the book. Scientific techniques should be regulated by the state, he argues, so that they do not threaten this nature, and thereby constitute an assault on human dignity.

The flaw here is what 20th Century philosophers have labelled "the naturalistic fallacy": deriving a statement of value from a statement(s) of fact(s). In a word, facts tell us nothing about what is valuable. Fukuyama confronts this objection head-on by denying that the naturalistic fallacy really is a fallacy. (The "naturalistic fallacy fallacy"!) I admire his intellectual gusto in doing so, although he had little choice if he wanted his argument to have some chance of success. But he just isn't a good enough philosopher to pull it off. He doesn't even come remotely close. The fact that many philosophers (eg. Kant, Rawls) who accept that this is a fallacy have made claims about human nature--this is Fukuyama's main counter-argument--may be true, but it simply goes to show that they were inconsistent; it doesn't touch the naturalistic fallacy. That is the (weak) heart of his counter-argument. This isn't a minor problem for Fukuyama. His whole argument pivots on it. One can almost hear the rest of his book come crashing down around mid-way, as he earnestly rides into battle against the naturalistic fallacy armed with the flimsiest of weapons and fails to make even a small dent in it. All of the prescriptive aspects of the book fall with this failure, which makes the book overall a failure. (A disturbing conclusion, when one considers that Fukuyama is on a national committee on bioethics advising the US government!) But the copious descriptive parts of the book are very well executed and impressively well-informed, making it a commendable failure. You will learn a lot about modern science from this book, and nothing about what (ethically) to do about it.

Timely and Provocative
This is an exploration on several levels -- advances in biotechnology and where they are headed, and what it means to be human. While occasionally tedious, overall Fukuyama has an excellent writing style and coveys information well.

He starts by briefly examining George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. He then explains, "The aim of [this] book is to argue that Huxley was right, that the most significant threat posed by contemporary biotechnology is the possibility that it will alter human nature and thereby move us into a "posthuman" stage of history." (7)

For all of our diversity, humans share fundamental qualities. Aristotle and his students began the dialog about "the nature of human nature [which has continued] in the Western philosophical tradition right up to the early modern period, when liberal democracy was born." (13). The Declaration of Independence captured the concept of shared human equality (albeit the concept was imperfectly applied in the Constitution). Fukuyama picks up the dialog, going beyond medical ethics to how advances in biotechnology may affect what it means to be human -- our humanness.

The book is in three parts. In the first part he runs the spectrum of biotechnology issues facing humanity, asking many intriguing questions along the way. He categorizes these issues as "the increasing knowledge about the brain and the biological sources of human behavior, neuropharmacology and the manipulation of emotions and behavior, the prolongation of life, and finally, genetic engineering." (16). It is the latter that raises the most concern, that has huge moral implications, since it has the most potential to change human nature and brings with it the specter of eugenics -- originally a neutral term, but since the 1930s one that has taken on a dark, foreboding connotation.

He explains (101) the cause for worry. "It is...a fear that, in the end, biotechnology will cause us in some way to lose our humanity -- that is, some essential quality that has always underpinned our sense of who we are and where we are going ...And what is that human essence that we might be in danger of losing? For a religious person, it might have to do with the divine gift or spark that all human beings are born with. From a secular perspective, it would have to do with human nature: the species-typical characteristics shared by all human beings qua human beings. That is ultimately what is at stake in the biotech revolution."

The second part of the book "deals with the philosophical issues raised by an ability to manipulate human nature. It argues for the centrality of human nature to our understanding of right and wrong -- that is, human rights -- and how we can develop a concept of human dignity that does not depend on religious assumptions about the origins of man" (16). He discusses at length (chapter 7) Western humanistic philosophies and social theories about the nature of man that presuppose more versatility with these ideas than I possess. Noticeably, he puts less emphasis on the spiritual aspects of being human (in contrast, for example, to Dr. Martin Luther King in his meditations on "What is Man" and "Dimensions of a Complete Life.") In chapter 8 he defines what he means by human nature and in chapter 9, human dignity. The latter is "the idea there is something unique about the human race that entitles every member of the species to a higher moral status than the rest of the natural world" (160).

"We are thus brought back to the question of politics and political strategies. For if there is a viable concept of human dignity out there, it needs to be defended, not just in philosophical tracts but in the real world of politics, and protected by viable political institutions" (177). This is the topic of the third part of his book - how and where we decide to draw the line. He argues that this decision can only be made by "the democratically constituted political community, acting chiefly through their elected representatives" (186).

The scope of his research is enormous (much of it building on his previous work), and he has excellent insights. For example,
· "If people get upset enough about genetic inequality, there will be two alternative courses of action. The first and most sensible would simply be to forbid the use of biotechnology to enhance human characteristics and decline to compete in this dimension. But the notion of enhancement may become too powerfully attractive to forego...At this point a second possibility opens up, which is to use that same technology to raise up the bottom" (158-159).
· In his discussion of reductionism vs. complex systems theory (162-164) he explains how cosmology and particle physics, even the eventual discovery of a Grand Unified Theory, likely will be unable to predict with certitude how the known universe will continue to evolve.
· He says (28), "Attacking the methodological credentials of people whose views one doesn't like and dismissing their work as "pseudoscience" is a convenient shortcut around arguing over substance." Interesting comment in light of the current controversy surrounding the Raelian claim of having cloned humans for the first time.
· "Human nature also serves to provide us with guidance as to what political orders won't work. Proper understanding of the contemporary evolutionary theory of kin selection, or inclusive fitness, for example, would have led us to predict the bankruptcy and ultimate failure of communism, due to the latter's failure to respect the natural inclination to favor kin and private property" (127).

In the end this is not only a primer on biotech issues, but a philosophical discussion of what it means to be human as well. While it's an evenhanded exploration, he shows a preference for caution and control. "...[I]t is time to move from thinking to acting, from recommending to legislating. We need institutions with real enforcement powers" (204). It's a complex book that is rewarding even if difficult to fully absorb (for me, in one reading anyway).

Thoughtful and interesting
There is no great revolutionary thesis here of the kind that Fukuyama astonished the world with in his previous work, claiming that the end of history had come and it is the triumph of liberal democracy. But there is the same kind of reasoned and measured thought, this time about the very nature of what it means to be human, and the threats to our humanity posed by our own technological innovations.
It seems to me that Fukuyama touches on only a share of the problems involved with the question. And I believe he could be helped had he relied on the Jewish conception , that human beings are creators creating in the image of the Creator and therefore constantly recreating themselves. i.e. by the conception that the essence of Mankind is in transcending our past humanity to create our next stage of development. In any case this is an important book for anyone who would understand the problems Humanity is facing today in regard to its own essence and future.

...and this guy's on the president's bioethics panel?!
I guess someone has to play the job of the paranoid futurist and Fukuyama has done a great job of it in the past. Here, he is no better. His aim: the biotech industry. His worry: biotech threatens human dignity. His arguments: (?)

I bought this book after seeing him on a C-SPAN panel discussion and he seemed quite balanced. Myself seeing nothing wrong with biotech (and being puzzled at the 'human dignity' arguments), I am still willing to hear good arguments to counter my own. I thought this would be the book. It was not.

The first section of the book is a rehash of the developments and techinical information needed to make a meaningful discussion of biotech. Here, Fukuyama gains both his stars. He was clear, concise, and he even managed to say in one sentence what I've seen others say in 2 paragraphs, and more comprehensively. Being familliar with a lot of this info from past readings, a lesser writer may have caused me to skip over the chapters. Even though I'd read most of the info before, reading it in Fukuyama's words was exciting.

Then there is the second, decidedly more philosophical section, where the author discusses first, human rights, and second, human dignity. Here, we see that Fukuyama is truly "Aristotle's bulldog". He first makes a(n almost irrelevent) case for natural rights. How does he do it? Surprise, suprise: humans have natures; those natures are (with minor variance) universal: therefore, human rights exist. He tells us that "ought" actually can be derived from "is". But here is the problem. Fukuyama is very selective in what he recognizes as human nature. Many prominent biologists have shown that brutish things like revenge, rape, infanticide, and bluffing (via game theory) are also part of our universal natures. Should we recognize them as rights too? Fukuyama, oddly, is silent. (somme other reviewers have made astute critiques of his "natural rights" proofs). While I think that 'oughts' should be made with 'is's' in mind (judgments should be INFORMED by fact), Fukuyama (and other natural rights theorists) must unavoidably be selective in what parts of our natures to count as 'natural rights' and which not to. These are value judgments and ones based almost unavoidably on PRIOR conceptions of what is desirable. Therefore, "is" to "ought" is not a necessary step, but a highly 'unnatural' moral leap. (Oddly enough, Fukuyama quotes Hume saying exactly this, never quite rebutting him. Hume, it turns out, makes the stronger case!)

From there, we talk about human dignity. I certainly agree with Fukuyama on two points: first, science has had a nasty tendency to (somewhat sadistically) make statements "degrading human dignity". Instead of being the third chimpanzee (an oversimplification to say the least), we are "JUST (read: only or merely) the third chimpanzee. Similarly Richard Dawkins likes to say that we are survival machines BLINDLY programmed by our genes to ensure their, not our, survival. The second area that I agree with Fukuyama is that science has made it appear that since we are made of the same stuff as other animals, that we are really not much different from them. This ignores obvious empirical evidence that even if we have the same emotions as, say, bonobos, we not only have more of them, but we can do such things as supress them, learn about them, modify them (fairly quickly) and be aware of them in a second-order way. Fukuyama, then, is right on these two counts and becuase of both of them, science has appeared to threaten our human dignity.

Where he is not correct is on the conclusions he draws from is: that biotech DOES threaten our dignity. If our natures can be manipulated, he says, then there is really not much special about us at all. My answer: only if that is the way YOU want to think of it, but your conclusion doesn't necessarily follow. After all, we can control diamonds: we can cut them, color them, crush them into powder, chisel them to our specs; but does that make a diamond less valuable to us? No. So if I were to engineer my daughter prior to birth to try and ensure that she is as healthy or has the 'best brain' possible, does that diminish her future high score on the SAT's? I highly doubt she will really think of it as my, and not her own, achievement. Fukuyama also assumes that we will be able to genetically engineer to ensure our children are succesful in life. Hmmm....I thought environmental factors played pretty important roles in ones 'succcess' (whether you've the right business partners, whether consumers like your ideas, whether you are in the right place at the right time with the right people...etc.)

There is a third section that takes his 'arguments' and applies them to public policy debates where his ultimate stance is to put serious regulations on cloning and biotech. I found this section only skim-worthy, as they rely on the faulty argumenets in previous sections.

I generally don't write long reviews, but there are honestly so many fallacies, over-simplifications, and unrealistic speculations in this book (not much of a departure from The End of History)that writing a short one would feel wrong. My suggestion? Read the book, but do so skeptically. A better book explicating the same kind of fears but with better arguments? "Human Cloning and Human Dignity" by The President's Council on Bioethics.

Human Nature Has Never Been Static
What is "human nature"? And will failure to initiate widespread government oversight of scientific research that could change this definition open a Pandora's Box of dire consequences?

Fukuyama suggests that failure to impose substantial government dictates over the "when's" and "how's" of future research centering on the human body and mind will precipitate a significant sea change in the inherent nature of our species, how we interact with one another, and a potential threat to Liberal Democracy. The implicit message is that unfettered scientific inquiry will lead to developments we will come to deeply regret.

While Fukuyama correctly illustrates the "easy fixes" that our society has latched onto (Prozac, Ritilin: Who said freedom to choose would mean wise choices?), his thesis fails to acknowledge the considerable roadblocks that Religion and State have placed in the way of the evolution of our species throughout history.

"Human nature" has, in fact, demonstrated a rather elastic nature over time. If one accepts the premise that human nature is fixed in an eternal quest for freedom, self-development and dignity and is manifested in superior intelligence, then one would want to remove any artificial roadblocks to creating the maximum environment in which these attributes could flourish. How else to explain the demise of almost all competing political models to Liberal Democracy? Yet, Fukuyama proposes a step backward, based on what appears to be a fixed, non-elastic definition of human nature.

Were a caveman to be plopped down in the late 20th Century and witness the first heart transplant, would he recoil in disgust and declare the practice inimical to the basic fabric of human existence? Quite likely. Does that mean, with the limited intelligence of a less developed brain - but with a brain nonetheless and all basic body parts and feelings that "Modern Man" exhibits - that the caveman would be right? I don't believe anyone would answer in the affirmative.

Now, as Man fights to tap the wonders of stem cells to better his fellow man by ridding the world of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, spinal cord injuries and the like, a new Holy Alliance of Religion and State has swooped in to cut off this laudable research at its knees. Already, the director of the National Institutes of Health has called on President Bush to lift draconian restrictions on research utilizing the stem cells of embryos discarded from fertility clinics (clinics whose practices have been condemned by only a vocal minority). Other voices, including a broad-based medical ethics panel, also call for revision of the Administration's protocols.

Time was, Inquisitions were used to ferret out individuals whose scientific curiosity did not adhere to those of The True Believers. Now we have a more diplomatic way to arrive at the same end: find a politician to serve as Front Man.

As dispassionate and thoughtful as Fukuyama's work appears on the surface - and no one can really argue that the author is a card-carrying member of The Religious Right or a shill for the Papacy - Fukuyama's call to action would have us expand the yoke of State control (in concert with the views of select religious figures) at a time when his beloved model of Liberal Democracy is finally expanding across the globe, toppling barriers to the practical application of human intelligence everywhere.

Which, in its own way, is rather ironic. ... Read more

Book Description

Computers have dramatically altered life in the late twentieth century. Today we can draw on worldwide computer links, speeding up communications by radio, newspapers, and television. Ideas fly back and forth and circle the globe at the speed of electricity. And just around the corner lurks full-blown virtual reality, in which we will be able to immerse ourselves in a computer simulation not only of the actual physical world, but of any imagined world. As we begin to move in and out of a computer-generated world, Michael Heim asks, how will the way we perceive our world change?

In The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, Heim considers this and other philosophical issues of the Information Age. With an eye for the dark as well as the bright side of computer technology, he explores the logical and historical origins of our computer-generated world and speculates about the future direction of our computerized lives. He probes the notion of "cyberspace," virtual reality (the computer-simulated environments that have captured the popular imagination and may ultimately change the way we define reality itself), and discusses such topics as the effect of word-processing on the English language, and the new kind of literacy promised by Hypertext.

Vividly and entertainingly written, The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality opens a window on a fascinating world that promises--or threatens--to become an integral part of everyday life in the twenty-first century. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

persian review
For persian visitors, there is a persian review that has been published in Mehr weekly too, in my blog : www.yousefi.persianblog.com

How to really play God
No one disputes that the growing sophistication of computing technology has altered the human condition. With the current world population in excess of five billion and the U.S. economy in excess of six trillion dollars annually, computers are essential to the management of life. However, few people ever think about how much this has altered the perception of existence. Philosopher Michael Heim is one such person.
The imminent, but distant development of Artificial Intelligence has forced a thorough rethinking of what human intelligence really is. The Turing test, where a computer interacts with a human via teletype and passes the test if the human thinks that the object on the other end is also human, has been proven inadequate. Other abilities, such as being able to perform extensive arithmetic computations, is also not an indicator of intelligence. As amazing as it may seem to the child struggling to learn their 'rithmetic, the algorithms are just not that complicated. The only conclusive result to date is that intelligent behavior is ill-defined. The best that can be agreed upon is a statement similar to that uttered by a justice of the United State Supreme Court. When asked to define pornography, his response was, "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."
Robotics, computer viruses and the nebulous discipline of Artificial Life are forcing a re-examination of what life is. Capable of reproducing, but only with the assistance of other objects, computer viruses are remarkably similar to their biological counterparts. Arguing that they are fundamentally different because they are nothing more than a series of instructions misses the point. A biological virus is a set of instructions coded in either RNA or DNA, both of which allow for four options, and is surrounded by a protective protein coat. The computer virus is stored in two option binary on a protective magnetic or optical medium. Each is extremely vulnerable when the instructions are isolated. For the biological virus,
this is when it has infected a host and the instructions are free of the protective coat. In the case of the computer virus, this is when the instructions are in working memory .
Artificial life, generally cellular automata, do many of the things commonly associated with life, including the ability to evolve into other forms. Like all dynamic systems with a random component, this evolution can be in either direction, to more or less "advanced." Again, the argument that a cellular automaton is nothing more than a series of precise instructions being sequentially executed has been rendered invalid. Whatever force you assign to human and animal existence, the core of life is a series of instructions coded in genetic material and requiring outside power sources to function.
While the development of AI and AL are forcing significant alterations in human perceptions of existence, those alterations will be dwarfed by the changes wrought by the advent of Virtual Reality. For here, the foundations of perception itself will be changed. It will be possible to create an existence of ones own choosing that is indistinguishable from that of "true" reality. This will require a redefinition of what is meant by the word God. One of the items under the definition of God in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary is, "one controlling a particular aspect of part of reality ." Anyone [programmer(s) plus computer(s)] capable of creating a virtual existence will satisfy this definition. Furthermore, AI and AL can both be considered subsets of virtual reality.
Michael Heim, known as "the philosopher of cyberspace," offers a preliminary examination of the consequences of virtual reality on the human mental state. Since VR is still primitive, the explorations here are still fairly speculative. But it is necessary to examine them now, while VR is still a toddler full of potential. He does a good job in setting down the universe of discourse, explaining items in terms that even the computer illiterate can understand. Some historical background in philosophy is used, but all can be understood by those lacking such knowledge.
The successful development of AI, AL, or VR all fit the criteria of a being that satisfies the definition of God. All those interested in the future course of humanity should begin thinking about such things. And this book is a good place to start.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.

The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality
If you search through the internet on the definition of VR, you'll hit on just about anything having to do with computers. Why? Heim attempts to answer this question with a wonderful explanation of what the term has meant, means now, and may mean in both the near and far future. He reviews the impact products have had on our daily lives, which we take for granted today, and studies what past philosophers feared--have these fears become a reality? The book defines our relationship to computers now, and what our expectations are. It's a fun little book to read. It'll make you stop and think about our real world when your done.

The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality is provocative and fun.
Michael Heim's Metaphysics of Virtual Reality is an investigation of the philosophical underpinnings of digital and virtual technologies. Chapters one through five contain and engaging analysis of information processing technologies and their profound impact on human thought. Heim's simple thesis that digital technologies change the way we think by altering the environment in which we think supports far-reaching claims about the unmittigated impact of the information revolution. Chapters six through ten treat of cyberspaces and virtual realities as products of a cultural imagination in search of ultimate fulfillment. Included is a helpful glossary of technical terms belonging to the somewhat disparate domains of technology and philosophy. Heim has written a fun book inspite of the ponderous subject matter thanks to his crisp prose. He judiciously balances weighty concepts with lively commentary drawn from popular literature, science fiction and film. As is to be expected, when an author incorporates many diverse elements in a concise text, some depth of analysis is sacraficed. However, Heim adequately compensates with thought provoking, if enigmatic predictions for the future of technology that invite the reader to speculate on the nature and ultimate worth of emergent technologies. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Where science meets >>>>>GOD!
This book should be taught to every SCIENCE major!!
ILLUSTRATIONS that teach how the UNIVERSE truely works

Where else can you find BALANCE of science & religon?

FOR ALL THOSE WHO SEEK KNOWLEDGE OF COSMIC WORKINGS

EMENSE! POWEFUL! MIND BOGGLING!
This will shake the very foundations of what you THOUGHT the universe operated like - debunks the "Big Bang" and other nonsensical cultish dogma and rattles the current scientific paradigm to pieces! Excellent read! Look into Russell's UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY by searching his name on the web!

Realized Knowledge for those living in the Cosmis Age
This book gives the opportunity to be enlightened if so desired. Walter Russell wrote this book from realized knowledge, not from information.

The bible of advanced theorhetical sciences
The Universal One is the finest analysis' to date by one of the centuries greatest figures, Walter Russell, of theoretical science. Included in this unique perspective includes it all from electricity and magnetism to dimensional theory. This rare work is considered essential towards any student of science. The Univeral One is a must for the true seeker. ... Read more

Book Description

Allegations of fraud, conflict of interest, and other ethical dilemmas have troubled the scientific community lately. With increasing frequency, graduate programs in the biomedical sciences are offering formalized training in the principles of responsible scientific conduct. Until now, there has been no single true textbook that can be used to teach this important subject. This text was developed to cover broad areas of scientific integrity and to meet the needs of today's graduate students and scientists working in the biomedical sciences.Case studies that parallel the material presented in the chapters are included to illustrate the diversity of issues that have been identified under the umbrella of scientific integrity. TABLE OF CONTENTS: Scientific Integrity MentoringScientific Record-KeepingAuthorship and Peer Review Use of Animals in Biomedical Experimentation Use of Humans in Biomedical ExperimentationConflict of InterestOwnership of Data and Intellectual PropertyGenetic Technology and Scientific Integrity ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Should be read by everyone involved in biological research
It is a very important book. Should be read by everyone involved with biological research;it would be useful to have a spanish version. ... Read more

Reviews (16)

Thought police
Darwin operated in a thought world completely unacceptable to the "politically correct" speech/thought codes found on most college/university campuses today. If one subscribes to Darwinian or neo-Darwinian ideas, one has to wonder what new "great ideas" we are missing out on today, now that the politically correct thought police have taken over the media, education, and popular entertainment establishments--effictively suppressing the sort of thought that nurtured Darwin's "scientific" speculations.

True Darwinism
In the beginning of the book, you will find a sort of definition of Natural Selection, which is about all the space Darwin spends on formulating his hypothesis.

"Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct? We shall see that all these questions, as indeed is obvious in respect to most of them, must be answered in the affirmative, in the same manner as with the lower animals."

On about 15 occasions later in the book he writes about how this selective encroachment of human races occurs, most signicicantly when writing that:

"Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe, and race with race. (.....) and when of two adjoining tribes one becomes less numerous and less powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption."

Racial and tribal genocide is the chief operator in shaping humans as they are today from an apelike progenitor, according to Darwin.

This work is not up to scratch compared to classics of biological science from the same timeperiod, such as Mendel's "Versuche". This work is more appropiately read together with Haecekel's "Natural Creation History" (Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte), which Darwin profusely praises in the beginning of his book.

Both these works from Haeckel and Darwin carry decidedly racist and generally judgemental content. Generally judgemental in continuously talking about higher and lower in an expressely moral way. For instance Darwin finds it neccessary to assert what the highest state of morality is for a person, and elsewhere he urges people in any way "inferior" not to marry.

The science is shoddy, especially the formulation is seriously lacking. The moral judgementalism, which makes up a great deal of the book, is generally coarse and without significant emotion showing through.

War, slaughter, slavery, cannibalism and absorption.
1) The mechanism of natural selection among human beings:

"the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct"

2) The way natural selection operates:

"Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe,and race with race. (...) when of two adjoining tribes one becomes less numerous and less powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption."

Make no mistake about it, all I did here was to distill the "formal" hypothesis from a book that's supposedly science. By the quotations above from this book, Darwin's version of Natural Selection theory stands or falls.

Excellent historical review
While I would never presume - as some reviewers might - to misstate what is said in this classic volume and then presume to suggest that "now you don't need to read the book," I will say that this is an excellent edition of a classic work. All who have any interest in the history of Darwinian evolution and particularly the historical views of the evolution of man will find this fascinating reading, particularly if the context can be juxtaposed with what has been discovered since Darwin's time. Of course, times have changed, our hopefully less euro-centric views have been altered and there has been considerable progress through the generations since the original publication by Darwin, and that makes the progress of human knowledge all the more fascinating, as well as the insight Darwin obviously possessed in his day. This one's a "must-read" for anyone interested in the history of science.

More than meets the highest standards.
How is it possible that anyone could be as ignorant as Rondeltap and give this great classic less than 5 stars? Given that it was written in the middle of the 19th Century, it more than meets the highest scientific standards of its time. Furthermore, except perhaps for Darwin's own Origin, it is arguably one of the most important works of its era. When we find that the writings of Marx, Kant and many other giants of that Century can no longer instruct us, we shall find this one still penetratingly relevant. ... Read more

Book Description

This volume presents a definitive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of science. Each of the chapters – written especially for this volume by internationally distinguished scholars – reviews a problem, examines the current state of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discusses possible futures of the field. Topics covered include experiment and observation, evolution, molecular and developmental biology, cognitive science, and feminist philosophy of science. The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Science engages both general readers and specialists and provides a solid foundation for further study. ... Read more

Book Description

This is a history of how physics has drawn some inspiration from economics and how economics has sought to emulate physics, especially with regard to the theory of value.The author traces the development of the energy concept in Western physics and its subsequent effect on the invention and promulgation of neoclassical economics, the modern orthodox theory. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Excellent Book
Mirowski's argument is that economists as it is practiced today is simply thermodynamics circa-1855. The neoclassical notion of "utility" is the thermodynamic notion of potential energy, which is a version of the vis viva of Kant. The Laplacian dream of a perfectly mathematizable, atomic world is preserved, as if mummified, in economics even though the mathematics (and the physics) is nearly 150 years old. Mirowski goes back to Adam Smith and notes that in Smith there is the same dream of a "social physics," except that Smith understood physics more as Cartesian vortices than Newtonian gravity. Mirowski has a very interesting story to tell, the basic problem is that he mixes it with his own homegrown theory of Western Civilization that only confuses the basic argument. The equation of body-motion-energy may or may not be a central motif in economic history, but that argument is separate from the very interesting story of economics as social physics. Too bad he didn't save his little pet theory for another book.

Imaginary worlds of theory
This fascinating upgrage of the author's earlier _Against Mechanism_ gives a severe account of the state of mathematical economics as it has been since the marginalist revolution. It is a reminder that mathematical technique and basic modeling are two separate activities and that understanding what it is that one is attempting to make into a science is not so easy. It is probably true no deterministic mathematical science of any type known is possible in a medium involving human consciousness. Yet the obsession to treat these different domains of discourse as analogous to physics or amenable to predictive science via the apparatus of differential equations simply refuses to die. It is a peculiar history, that some very good mathematicians of the nineteenth century, who understood the physics, found bizarre at the start, before the bad habits of phantom thinking became institutionalized. Mirowski's expose of the whole game is priceless, and almost unnerving. Hm, ideology perhaps Very important book.

Update
Since having reviewed this book in September 1999, I was inspired by it to resolve Mirowski's Thesis in a recent paper called 'The Futility of Utility' (Physica A,2000). My resolution shows that both Varian and Mirowski were partly wrong. Mirowski is right in one sense: when dynamics is taken into account in the theory of production then the generic case (nonintegrable dynamics) is that utility is a path-dependent functional, and so doesn't exist mathematically as a function of demand. In this case (as Osborne observed from empirical data) price as a function of demand does not exist (the 'cartoons' passing as graphs in Samuelson's textbook can't be constructed from real market data). Varian was wrong: the most trivial integrability conditions are violated in this case because utility as a function cannot be postulated but either exists or doesn't according to dynamics. On the other hand, Mirowski was wrong that an analog of kinetic energy, or even a conserved quantity, is required. Utility is not, as Mirowski believed, analogous to potential energy: it is analogous to what physicists call the action. When optimization-control dynamics (Hamiltonian dynamics in econometrics) is integrable, then the action is a function, not merely a path-dependent functional (see Liouville's integrability theorem, ca. 1880, also discussed in 1916 by Einstein in the context of why Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization fails).

A DAUNTING MASTERPIECE
Mirowski's incredible work deserves better than a 1000-word review by a layman. And yet the reviews of other economists have often been inept and misleading. (When a scholar allows a major mistake to see print, that's regarded as a pretty serious intellectual shortcoming. But there's a worse one. Accusing a scholar of making a major mistake he didn't actually commit. That's essentially what the well-known economist Hal Varian did in his review.)

As a history of the energy concept, MORE makes for facinating if demanding reading. An interest in economics is not at all required for that section of the book. Anyone with a little curiosity about physics and its history will be intrigued.

When it comes to criticizing neoclassical economics, Mirowski is in a class by himself. Witty but substantive zingers abound. Zingers that can't be dismissed as mere rhetorical potshots.

The grace and depth of MORE HEAT THAN LIGHT readily justify the effort required to finish it. Still, for laymen unwilling to tackle Mirowski, there is a pale substitute. Paul Ormerod's [spelling?] THE DEATH OF ECONOMICS. That's a breezy critique of neoclassical doctrine aimed at the general reader.

Whether you plan to ever look at it or not, buy Mirowski's book NOW. Forget rave reviews -- what he really deserves (to strike the proper, academic note)is your money.

Theoretical economics as pseudo-physics
This is an amazing book! It exposes what is hidden in Samuelson and every other economics text, namely, that the theory of equilibria and utility were merely lifted from physics (Hamiltonian dynamics) without any support from economic data. What is more amazing is the complete discussion presented by the author that 'utility' doesn't exist mathematically because the required differential form is nonintegrable. Economists and statisticians may not be able to undestand this point, but it should be familiar to researchers in dynamical systems theory. The inventors of marginal utility theory, Fisher, Walras, and Pareto, literally did not know enough mathematics to know what they were talking about. Equilibrium can't be reached in a Hamilton system (there is no friction to permit the approach to equilibrium), but this contradiction was no worse than all the others inherent in econo-pseudophysics.

This book should be read and understood by every economics student who reads Samuelson and asks: what has 'utility' to do with the data. A very good complementary book is Osborne's "The stock market from a physicist's viewpoint". Osborne introduced tha idea of lognormal stock prices (thereby paving the way for the Black-Scholes equation and derivatives trading). In his first two chapters, without the benefit of the historic perspective offered by Mirowski, Osborne explains why the supply-demand curves drawn by Samuelson are wrong and misleading, and then goes on to illustrate how one could obtain correct discrete plots real data. For example: if 25 tomatoes are available (supply) then what's the price? Clearly, there is no answer. Price does not exist as a function of supply, nor of demand (nonuniqueness). Osborne goes on to suggest that the three related assumptions of equilibrium, continous price changes and efficiency are not supported by the data, and observes that there are traders who make money out of the inefficiency of the market. Mirowski and Osborne are strongly recommended to anyone who wants to understand economics. ... Read more

Book Description

A raucous tour of the fast-fading borderland between fringe and mainstream science.

In California, a woman desperately hoping to usher in a new spiritual age conspires with her scientist boyfriend to clone herself. In Massachusetts, the founder of a famous biotech company strives to deliver on the apocalyptic vision of human immortality. In Arizona, an iconoclastic billionaire establishes a handful of fledgling companies promising an enhanced human future and super-long life. Meanwhile, some of the world's most renowned scientists begin speaking openly about genetically engineering people and rebuilding human bodies. The two sides are merging, and Brian Alexander takes readers to the on ramp.

Alexander traces the story of William Haseltine, one of the most famous, and richest, of a new breed of biotechnology entrepreneurs. A former Harvard professor and now CEO of Human Genome Sciences, Haseltine is considered the father of "regenerative medicine." With his reputation as a biotech bad-boy and lover of controversy, he has become a high priest of the new biotech religion, looked upon by life extensionists as "a hero." Alexander examines his career and shows how little separates the science elite from the dreamers who believe a new human age is about to begin. Funny, bizarre, yet always fascinating, Rapture takes readers into the surprising stories behind cloning, stem cells, miracle drugs, and genetic engineering to explore how we got here and why we'll go where nobody thought we could. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Excellent Book - Noteworthy History of Transhumanism
This book has got the buzz and the facts clear. It is a book about the "pioneers" of transhumanism and what they did early on that has set the pace for the futurists today.

Who else is going to tell the story but a writer that admires the ideas of transhumanists and also can laugh with us? If you cannot laugh at yourself, what is the point of living a long and enjoyable life? There isn't, and this is to Brian Alexander's credit.

We owe a lot to the Los Angeles Transhumanists - FM Esfandiary, Natasha Vita-More, Eric Drexler, Max More, Ralph Merkle, Greg Fahy - the entire gang.

If you want to read a book that literally gets you to go to the frig and get a beer, kick back on the sofa, and dream of a long life - this is the book!

Left of Center - but thinking toward the future.

Jason Jefferson

A brilliant history of scientific & spiritual thought
I know many of the people outlined in this book and am deeply involved in cloning. Alexander's portrayal of me and my activities was accurate & pithy but was unduly one-dimensional.
However, this is a brilliant work which ties together ideas that have combined within the past decade or so to become a movement called Transhumanism.
By connecting the thoughts of early scientific dreamers with the realities of modern day biotechnology, Brian Alexander deserves the glowing cover blurb by Glen McGee:
"Brian Alexander has turned the most important scientific revolution since Galileo into an adventure story that touches your mind and soul. No writer has ever dug this deep or looked forward this imaginatively. With Rapture, Alexander has become the voice of biotechnology for the 21st Century."
As a cloning activist, I usually end up debating McGee on the air. However, he is right on target here. Alexander is quite right that science and biotechnology have become a new religion for disparate groups that believe in cryonics, cloning, life extension, etc. Many don't like the label "religion" because religionists are usually the ones persecuting them. The historic philosophical roots of this religion versus science debate provide a useful perspective to the new debates we are having in this new age.
If I could give it ten stars, I would. It is really the most informative "connecting" book I have ever read.

It's not "religious" if you can do it
Brian Alexander writes about many people I happen to know. In fact, his description of the Extropian movement in the early 1990's made me rather nostalgic.

But he doesn't seem to understand why people would want to conquer aging and death, and he performs a disservice by characterizing the movement as a "religion," by which he means a belief system that's impractical or lacking factual support. Scientists have radically extended the lives of certain species of laboratory animals in apparent good health. Because of the conservative nature of the genome across species, similar biochemical pathways probably exist in humans that we might be able to use to retard aging and greatly extend our healthy lives well past 120 years.

Religions, by contrast, don't have anything like an animal model to demonstrate that their beliefs can send animals' "souls" to otherworldly heavens, much less human "souls." So comparing physical immortalism with a religion is patently absurd.

Still, I gave the book three stars because Alexander provides some valuable information and historical insight into a social movement that promises to revolutionize the human condition, unless the Kassian "Yuck" faction succeeds in suppressing it. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Some love it, some hate it, but The Emperor's New Mind, physicist Roger Penrose's 1989 treatise attacking the foundations of strong artificial intelligence, is crucial for anyone interested in the history of thinking about AI and consciousness. Part survey of modern physics, part exploration of the philosophy of mind, the book is not for casual readers--though it's not overly technical, it rarely pauses to let the reader catch a breath. The overview of relativity and quantum theory, written by a master, is priceless and uncontroversial. The exploration of consciousness and AI, though, is generally considered as resting on shakier ground.

Penrose claims that there is an intimate, perhaps unknowable relation between quantum effects and our thinking, and ultimately derives his anti-AI stance from his proposition that some, if not all, of our thinking is non-algorithmic. Of course, these days we believe that there are other avenues to AI than traditional algorithmic programming; while he has been accused of setting up straw robots to knock down, this accusation is unfair. Little was then known about the power of neural networks and behavior-based robotics to simulate (and, some would say, produce) intelligent problem-solving behavior. Whether these tools will lead to strong AI is ultimately a question of belief, not proof, and The Emperor's New Mind offers powerful arguments useful to believer and nonbeliever alike. --Rob Lightner ... Read more

Reviews (47)

A poor man's Godel Escher Bach
Readers must wade through a several-hundred page exhaustive, sometimes interesting, always tedious, usually irrelevant review of modern physics before the author even begins to address the supposed main subject of the book -- will a computer ever be able to do everything a human mind can do? The final conclusion is this: Scientists don't understand consciousness; another area of poorly-understood scientific inquiry is quantum gravity...therefore, the two must be related somehow. As an intellectual exercise this book is extremely disappointing, and I urge readers with even a remote interest in the subject matter to immediately purchase Douglas R. Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach instead

Penrose's Fascinating Summary of Modern Science
Roger Penrose, one of the world's top physicists, summarizes modern science, examining topics including Turing machines, relativity, quantum physics, black holes, etc. At the end, he argues that the human mind can not be simulated by computers or anything algorithmic. The Emperor's New Mind is my favorite book, although I didn't feel that way the first time I read it. It is quite technical, compared to, for instance, A Brief History of Time, which covers some of the same topics. The second time I read the book, I really dedicated a lot of time to understand the material as well as I could, often working out problems with paper and pencil. This was necessary for me to see that his conclusion was related to the rest of the book. While Penrose obviously can not "prove" his belief, he gives a strong, fascinating arguement, and the book has definitely affected my philosophical views concerning consciousness.

Inconclusive, but worth its weight in transistors
To all those who wish to dismiss this book: Let's give Roger Penrose a break. After all, he's pretty smart (ahem!), and even if he turns out to be incorrect in suggesting that consciousness can be explained physically using physics we don't have yet, the book is a vigorous and entertaining attempt to put forth the case. He states up front that _we don't have the physics yet_, so where's the controversy?

I find the claim that Penrose simply rejects the view that the mind is a (computational) system, because no system can be both consistent and complete, a little misleading and certainly no substitute for reading the book. To address this on just one front, there is also a positive side to Penrose's argument, namely, that the mathematical insight needed to recognize undecidability and related arguments as legitimate--an insight he tries to defend against competing philosophies of math--would itself appear to lie outside the realm of computation.

As for the idea that ENM is a poor man's GEB, I see the two books as completely different in motivation. In GEB, Goedel is central in leading to the conclusion that some sort of self-reference lies at the heart of intelligence. In ENM, Goedel is important in flushing out regions of mathematical thought that appear to be non-computational, but the overarching suggestion is that consciousness will someday be explained using as-yet-undiscovered physics.

For me, the attractiveness of both books lies in their "vigor with rigor," that combination of mastery, humility, and generosity one longs for in science writing.

The argument is 25 years old and invalid.
Ok so here is Penrose's argument:

1: Acourding to Gödels theorem no system is 100% consistent and complete
2:An algorithm is a system
3:Therefore the human mind is not representable by an algorithm.

There you have it folks! Its the book in a nutshell. Penrose simply ignores the fact that the exact same argument can be used to show that a human mind cannot be 100% consistent and complete. He also ignores the fact that humans make mistakes, and so the entire argument in the book falls. A more detailed explanation why this argument is invalid is to be found in Hofstadter's excelent book "Gödel Escher Bash an Eternal Golden Braid" which was first published in 1979.

As when it comes to Penrose's idea that Quantum Mechanics plays a part in the human mind, he has no proof or justification whatsoever. It sounds cool and Quantum Mechanics is a hot topic right now, but with the level of justification that Penrose has put forward he could just as well have claimed that one can determine someones personality from the dents in the persons skull.

"Poor man's GEB" is half-right
I don't think I can finish the book in its entirety--partly because it's clumsy and difficult and partly because Penrose has given me no reason to buy into the big-picture arguments he makes on consciousness.

Whether his motivation is theism or simply a "science is presumptuous and arrogant" mindset, it seems to me that Penrose fundamentally operates in a nonscientific manner here. He takes an incompletely-understood effect (human consciousness), rejects the simplest explanation (materialism), and crafts a clouded and speculative alternative explanation instead.

Whatever happened to Occam's Razor? Do we really need to invoke such esoteric explanations for human consciousness? And at what biological level does Penrose believe that algorithmic, materialist processes stop accounting for the observed level of awareness--bacterium? Insect? Chimpanzee?

Another reader characterized this book as "a poor man's Gödel, Escher, Bach." I agree, in that it reiterates many of the topics that Hofstadter's brilliant work covered nearly a decade earlier. There are at least two huge differences, though: first, the magic of GEB is the remarkable way that Hofstadter tied everything together into his grand thesis. In contrast, Penrose throws in ideas like non-periodic tiling but does not manage to integrate them into his whole. Of course, the huge difference is that GEB was a great ode to the limitlessness of conscious reason (whether human or not), while this book seems like little more than a rear-guard lament.

Granted, some will still read my review as an arrogant, presumptuous, and ill-informed diatribe. Well, I'll stick to science and progressivism. We still haven't lost a knowledge battle--there are just some we haven't won yet. ... Read more

Book Description

From the bestselling author of The End of Nature comes a passionate plea to limit the technologies that could change the very definition of who we are

We are on the verge of crossing the line from born to made, from created to built. Sometime in the next few years, a scientist will reprogram a human egg or sperm cell, spawning a genetic change that could be passed down into eternity. We are sleepwalking toward the future, argues Bill McKibben, and it’s time to open our eyes.

In The End of Nature, nearly fifteen years ago, McKibben demonstrated that humanity had begun to irrevocably alter—and endanger—our environment on a global scale. Now he turns his eye to an array of technologies that could change our relationship not with the rest of nature but with ourselves. He explores the frontiers of genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology—all of which we are approaching with astonishing speed—and shows that each threatens to take us past a point of no return. We now stand at a critical threshold, poised between the human past and a post-human future.

Ultimately, McKibben offers a celebration of what it means to be human, and a warning that we risk the loss of all meaning if we step across the threshold. His wise and eloquent book argues that we cannot forever grow in reach and power—that we must at last learn how to say, “Enough.”
... Read more

Reviews (16)

Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age by Bill McKibben
Although this book should get 5 stars for imagination and style,
I disagree with its premise.
We humans already have built into our systems, the trait of curiosity as well as the strong desire to survive as a species.
We're going to move forward with genetic research, stem cell
research and cloning organs in the 21st Century. We're also
excited with the prospect of space travel and intelligent life
elsewhere in the universe.
The author thinks that we must stop developing our human-ness, at
this time because we need to stick with what's "natural."

Is it natural to have the ability to cure all diseases by manipulating genes and stem cells, but NOT do it?...for fear of
not being "natural?" Is it natural NOT to live 200 years, if we
have it within our power to do so? As long as we solve the
problems of overpopulation, what's wrong with living 200 years?

At this time, we're replacing damaged human parts with new high
tech man-made materials? Is it unnatural to have a prosthetic
arm, leg, hand, etc.? In some cases, we're also using animal
cells to cure human brain diseases. Some people have used
transplanted animal hearts. Is this unnatural...to want to live,
no matter what? Would it be better to die then to have an
animal or prosthetic part?
Cloning human organs simply refines the above procedures, and
nothing more.

In the 21st Century we already know that machines are putting many out of work. We know that computers can "think" faster than most humans, and yet we want them to make our lives more
convenient. Our desire to choose our own destiny could come to
an end if we were NOT to enhance our brain power vis a vie these
existing machines. What is wrong with that?

Is it unnatural to want to have higher intelligence than the machines in our lives?
Through the development of machines, computer chips, satellites,
space ships, and the e*world in general, we have changed our
environment. The "medium is the message" should be pretty clear
here. Now, we need to adapt to the very environment that we
have wrought. The reason that homo sapiens have come this far, is the ability of our brains to adapt to an assortment of environments. Of course, we need to develop our intelligence so
that we are the masters of the machines and...beyond. Wouldn't
it be grossly unnatural NOT to be smarter than the machines we
build?

There's no doubt that most humans who think about space travel,
are smart enough, in the present time, to know that we humans
will NOT be able to do this, in our present form. If we ever reach the point of being able to chart a destination...it wouldn't be possible to arrive at that goal, in our present state. No doubt, to send a space ship out into the universe to
some distant planet or moon with humans on board to inhabit that
celestial place, our Planet Earth ancestors will have to create
a nearly new species... a more sophisticated primate. Perhaps,
humanoids with highly enhanced brains and no legs will navigate
a cargo of suspended fertilized eggs, as well as humans long in
hibernation. But how is this not natural? Isn't it very natural to want to explore our universe? Isn't it extremely
natural to want to survive a collision with a meteor or comet, if
it's "humanly" possible?

It would seem that NOT to do all of the above, would hold back
our VERY NATURAL human drives of survival and exploration.
I applaud the author for pointing out some pitfalls that technology might lead us into. Taking these into consideration,
we humans, have no choice but to move forward into gradually
expanding brave new worlds, which is what we have always done, in
order to make our species stronger and able to survive.

He's right!!!!! .....ENOUGH
Very readable. A minor knowledge of genetics and cursory knowledge of robotics will get you through this book without confusion. Nanotechnology is so new that few of us have even a fundamental knowledge of its workings. Fortunately, Mr. McKibben recognizes this and spares us baffling jargon on most all issues. Recommended reading for any parent having more than half a child, or considering having a child.

Perhaps I was fortunate to have read Francis Fukuyama's "Our Posthuman Future" and Greg Stock's "Redesigning Humans" just prior to reading Mr. McKibben's book. As Mr. McKibben says in his book, Fukuyama used an [unremarkable] style to get the message across that something must be done now to begin to internationally regulate the ethical boundaries of, and path forward for, genetics.

Mr. McKibben is clearly well read on a number of subjects and takes a pragmatic yet fatalistic view of the future considering the current trend of science. He talks of the perils and pitfalls that could accompany the genetic revolution, while giving a fair and balanced view of the merits of the field in disease prevention. What he does extremely well in this book, "Enough", is to draw attention to the paralleling emerging technologies of genetics, nanotechnology and robotics (GNR as he has labeled it), and the confluence of these three fast-paced advancing technologies.

Although an interesting and well written book, I cannot refrain from commenting (as Mr. McKibben politely did) on the conclusions drawn in Gregory Stock's book. Mr. Stock takes the view that the momentum is too great now and is unstoppable (heaven forbid that he is correct). Mr. McKibben is thorough and visionary in helping us understand the burning issue at hand in the bioethical decisions we must make in thwarting this burgeoning push towards germinal technology. The burning issue.... the future of our children (or wandering humans without meaning...whatever...) in that they will inevitably bear the consequences of inaction within the coming ten, twenty or fifty years from now if this current generation of commercial decision makers is left to their own devices. The exact timing is debatable. The outcome, if unchecked, is only a question of severity of the consequences, not when.

Mr. McKibben's forward thinking scenarios of what the human may evolve to if some or all of this modification occurs paints a stark... no dark, picture of the "human" of the future. Wandering aimlessly without family ties and wondering if the enhancements bequeathed upon them by their ancestors predisposed them to their calling in life, or if their physical and intellectual successes were of their own ability, or the results of their modifications.

He closes with several brief conclusions shared by other academics in that it is a "freight train" (my words) that could only be stopped by a police state. The choice...Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", a return to a caste system liking that of India in past years, or George Orwell's "1984". Take your pick.

I admit to be one to worry about what the future holds for my children in any event. That's my job. However, this book helped me to finally draw a clear conclusion that a sad destiny is upon us if something is not done. As Mr. McKibben points out, we are a species that has, in the past, said "Enough" when the consequences were unmistakably too grave. It can be done again. I am of the mind that we should do it again. That we just say enough, and begin to regulate it in the face of the commercial proponents.

I was truly taken aback by Mr. McKibben's simple comment that we may be the last generation to be able to make this choice. The Mother of all choices as it may turn out.

For the immediate, the best thing we could do would be to see a few more books realizing the need for a fast track plan to educate our children about the oncoming freight train. This would allow them to at least begin to understand and be aware of the potential danger of the outcome, and hopefully, to choose to oppose it in the coming years.

Well done Bill. One of the best books on bioethics I have read to date. It should be mandatory for all parents. Five Stars in my book.

By Stephan Agnitsch, an American in Malaysia
sagnitsch@pc.jaring.my

Look out Galileo, Copernicus, Dr. Frankenstein, et al!
The only thing new about this book is the author and the printing date. Its premise is as old as recorded history. "Man dare not venture into some areas or he risks waking the demon, being eaten by the sea monster, incurring the wrath of the gods, creating the Frankenstein monster, etc."

First of all, these dire predictions seldom (if ever) come to pass. Nuclear power is an excellent example. In spite of the dire warnings and gloomy scenarios, some how we've managed to avoid annihilation (I can hear the collective "well, not yet" issuing from the Naderites), much to the chagrin of doom-prophets like McKibben, I'm sure. We seem to manage to stay alive and even prosper whatever technologies we happen develop.

Most importantly, McKibben's proposal that we ban, cease, outlaw, restrict, move backwards, whatever, is untenable. You cannot stop people from eventually exploring these areas. The technologies will be developed. Pass all the laws you want. Set up all the inquisitions you can muster. Burn all the heretics you can round up. The Bible will still be translated into English. The printing press will still disseminate information to the masses. The world will still revolve around the sun, not vice versa. Even though God didn't give man wings he can still fly. The automobile will replace the horse. It will still be possible to exceed the speed of sound. Man will still be descended from lower life forms, and on and on.

McKibben challenges us to face the "fact" that things are as good as we need them to be. He asks us to imagine how life could actually be any better and believes that we must admit that we can't. Well, horse hockey! Ask someone at the end of the 19th century the same question and they would probably not be able to imagine the world we live in. They would probably have agreed with the statement, "Life can't get any better than it is right now." Point is we can't know what all this will mean for the future of mankind. I, for one, am not willing to abandon possibilities based on the fear mongering of a twenty-first century naysayer.

As for his argument that all this is somehow dehumanizing, nothing is more human than improving who we are and how we live. That is exactly how we've survived for the past 3.5 million years. Sorry Bill, but you can take your place with the old wives and leave the rest of us alone.

I'm glad McKibben has the ability to say what he says. He needs to thank technological advancement for the opportunity. Other wise, he'd still be plowing a field to put bread on the table instead of cashing a check and going to the store. This book is one of the best examples of cultural lag that I've seen lately. The sad thing is that so many agree with the premise out of ignorance and fear. But, that too has had it evolutionary advantages. Fortunately, it's always been the progressives that adapted and survived. Sorry Bill, I think you're headed for extinction.

Good enough
The book is a discussion of McKibben's opinions of genetic manipulation of humans, the history of stem cell and cloning research and the possible outcomes. It is not a scientific work, but succeeds as a discussion in bioethics.
The book would be very useful for those who are unfamiliar with the subject and those who are only beginning to study bioethics. Some of the information seems too superficial for me, since I am a Family Physician studying for a Master's in Bioethics. I still learned new information and am definitely informed by the author's viewpoint.
I disagree with some of his pessimism about the reaction of the subjects of genetic manipulation since all children have struggled with identity and we've done fairly well so far. However, Dr Leon Kass and other more informed minds agree with McKibben. (I wonder how much of our differing opinions and optimism/pessimism are due to *our* genetics and how much due to that very struggle? How much is nature, how much nurture and the specific portion of our environment that includes these discussions?)

Are we about to make ourselves obsolete? Read the book!
This is one of the most thoughtful, and sobering, books I've ever read. McKibben takes a deep, serious and well-researched look at the implications of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence, and the view is chilling. Whether you are a technophile or a technophobe, read this book. Some version of the post-human future McKibben envisions is racing toward us. Robert Adler, author of _Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome_ and _Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation_. ... Read more

Book Description

A riveting tale of the battle over genetically engineered foods, and an inside look at a biotech food empire.

Once confined to the research laboratory, the genetic engineering of plants is now a big business that is changing the face of modern agriculture. Giant corporations are creating designer crops with strange powers-from cholesterol-reducing soybeans to plants that act as miniature drug factories, churning out everything from vaccines to insulin. They promise great benefits: better health for consumers, more productive agriculture-even an end to world hunger. But the vision has a dark side, one of profit-driven tampering with life and the possible destruction of entire ecosystems. In Lords of the Harvest, Daniel Charles takes us deep inside research labs, farm sheds, and corporate boardrooms to reveal the hidden story behind this agricultural revolution. He tells how a handful of scientists at Monsanto drove biotechnology from the lab into the field, and how the company's opponents are fighting back with every tool available to them, including the cynical manipulation of public fears. A dramatic account of boundless ambition, political intrigue, and the quest for knowledge, Lords of the Harvest is ultimately a story of idealism and of conflicting dreams about the shape of a better world. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Great storytelling
Daniel Charles' "Lords of the Harvest" succeeds in bringing perspective to the biotech industry and the contentious issue of genetically modified food. The author does this by personalizing the protaganists at the heart of the story: the scientists who were driven mainly by the quest for knowledge and discovery; the businesspeople who sought dollar returns from their laboratory investments; and the environmentalists who felt that genetic engineering was simply the latest ugly manifestation of an out-of-control agribusiness industry. The result is a highly entertaining and readable book that should interest a wide audience.

The scientists who invented and nurtured the industry tend to get much better treatment from Charles than either the businesspeople or the environmentalists. As a former science reporter for NPR, Charles seems most comfortable painting psychological portraits of the researchers at Monsanto and elsewhere. Charles lovingly details the innovative and pioneering work that these scientists undertook and the intriguing problems they solved. Charles shows how these early projects gave shape to the modern biotech industry, and his writing in these sections is vivid and interesting. And in the chapter "Infinite Horizons", Charles enthuses about the potential of biotechnology to help solve the world's problems. Throughout, Charles' enthusiasm for science and biotechnology is unmistakable.

On the other hand, the businesspeople of biotech get beat up pretty badly in the book. You get the feeling that Charles seems slightly upset that big business can't figure out how to bring the benefits of painstaking scientific discovery to the people. Specifically, Charles relates the numerous and sometimes humorous mistakes made by executives at Monsanto and Calgene (the inventor of the ill-fated "Flavr Savr" tomato) in their quests to dominate their respective markets. Charles successfully uses these case studies to add color and context to the larger story that he is telling (for example, the author's profile of Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro and his messianic-like appeal to the company's scientists to help save the world with biotechnology). Charles does an excellent job describing the corporate cultures and the motivations of key individuals, rendering his descriptions of the business wheeling-and-dealing that went on behind the scenes that much more interesting. However, I think that Charles is correct in concluding that it was the arrogance of Monsanto's top executives, more than any other single factor, that ultimately led to the company's demise and the public backlash against biotechnology.

Unfortunately, the environmentalists don't get treated much better. Although Charles appears to have abundantly interviewed scientists and businesspeople to gather original material for the book, it doesn't seem that he had much success contacting environmentalists; the profiles of well-known biotech opponents such as Jeremy Rifkin and Benny Sharlin appear to have been drawn from secondary sources. Consequently we don't enjoy the same level of insight regarding their motivations compared with the scientists. So although Charles does a respectable job of reporting why the environmentalists opposed biotech products and the actions that they took, the author's sympathies do not appear to lie with the environmentalists. Instead, Charles deftly swats aside several of the well-known studies that purport to show risks associated with genetically modified crops (such as Dr. Pusztai's rat and John Losey's Monarch butterfly studies). In fact, a certain level of hostility arises when the author makes the charge that environmentalists nevertheless publicized such "murky and ill-defined" (p. 208) studies purporting risk merely as a way to further their own agendas. But it does not seem to occur to Charles that many environmentalists might have organized the challenge to genetically modified food out of genuine concern for the welfare of consumers.

I also take slight issue with Charles on two other issues. First is his silence concerning regulation of the biotech industry. His techno-utopian bias leads him to claim that biotech is not substantially different compared with traditional plant and animal breeding practices, with the implication that the public should not be overly concerned about regulation of the industry. But the scientists' tools to recombine DNA in novel ways are so powerful and the effects are so little understood that it is not unreasonable to suggest that a greater level of corporate accountability should be required to ensure that the public interest is protected.

Second, Charles should have addressed the recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) controversy more adequately, given that this was a major Monsanto initiative (the heart of the book was about Monsanto and its scientists). His relative silence on this issue is defeaning: could it be that the environmentalists' charges about the risks of rBGH have at least some merit?

Still, I believe that Charles has done a good job of navigating some very tricky ideological terrain. "Lords of the Harvest" is probably as balanced a book on the subject of biotechnology as any other you'll likely find, and I highly recommend it.

Right facts, wrong story
As one of Daniel Charles's sources and a very minor character in this book, I was disappointed at how a writer with so much inside information about what happened could tell a story that got what happened so wrong in an effort to make it dramatic and appealing.

Arthur Hailey's novels Airport, Hotel, Wheels, etc. comprise some of the better books that expose and glamorize the inside workings of an otherwise mundane industry. Of course, if it were really that enjoyable and interesting, they wouldn't call it work, they'd call it fishing and we'd do it for free. But Arthur Hailey wrote fiction, and he was smart enough to stay off the farm. Not so with Daniel Charles.

The enterprise of agriculture is more mundane than most, if only because it takes months of gradual growth and development to produce a crop, and years of almost imperceptible change to develop a new product. Much of the time is spent just waiting. Turning science into technology can produce beautiful and interesting results without the process itself being either glamorous or interesting. It's people going to work and doing their jobs. Most of us working in the field believed we knew what could be done and thought we could figure out how to do it. What made the process so difficult were the different visions of that same reality, visions sufficiently disparate that two people coming out of the same meeting had diametrically opposite understandings about what had been said and what had been agreed to. If that sounds like standard operating procedure in corporate America, welcome to the real world. It's three steps forward, two steps back, day after day. You might as well try to glamorize a trip to the barber shop.

Fact-based? It is. Balanced? It may be. But to at least some of us who were (and are) there, it still reads like fiction.

A wonderful storyteller, a thoughtful book
In the epilogue of Lords of the Harvest, Daniel Charles talks about the power of stories to illuminate, and also to obscure. He talks about the mythologies that drive agribusiness and other competing mythologies that drive it's opponents. He can stand at a distance from both kinds of stories, and reflect on how well they are illuminating and obscuring.

On the other hand, Daniel Charles is himself a great storyteller.

I appreciated the way Daniel Charles helped me to think about both these kinds of stories, and what they have to do with food and science, religious faith and moral values in the 21st century. Mostly, Charles stays very close to the "everyday stories of ordinary people," end of the spectrum. How he managed to get so close to the lives of these people is something I wonder about! People on both sides of this issue obviously trust him a great deal, or he would never have been able to write this book.

The "grand myths" he talks about in the epilogue, this was a very nice way to wrap it all up. Part of the difficulty of these issues is that there is no overarching spiritual/ ethical framework that can encompass this conversation. Just competing ideologies, and very little common ground. (Where common ground does exist, Charles is good at finding it.)

It irritates me when scientists who write about agribusiness and genetic engineering castigate others who don't have their scientific credentials for being "sentimental" or ignorant. They do this in a way that intimidates ordinary people who do not have Ph.Ds, as if you have to have a particular diploma to discuss these issues. We need to fight this kind of arrogance and parochialism. Science may be an elite field, but food belongs to everyone.

Daniel Charles makes the discussion accessible to everyday people who want to know what is happening to our food, and who are trying to understand why it is happening.

Lord of Bias
If you are interested in a critical review of the Biotech issues, this is NOT the book for you. If you are searching for arguments against GMO', big business, and pro big government; you have found a source. Daniel Charles has hidden neither his bias nor his ignorance of the subject. He draws on old studies (Monarch Butterfly larvae) and does not discuss the latest findings, because the latest findings do not support his position. He hangs adjutives on employees of the business world to ensure the reader knows they are "evil". The ineptness of big government is never addressed. Having served as a military officer, I can tell you that if the military had been as one-sided in deal