Letter: Viral religions
For Linda Bailey to have failed so completely to understand Mark Ridley’s
‘Infected with science’ article (25 December), I can only imagine she has
not read it.
Religion is only advantageous when the ‘knowledge density’ within a
society is too low to support rationality. Once knowledge rises within a
culture, logical minds can exploit it, conferring upon themselves a selective
advantage in a knowledgeable society.
Assuming we do live in a knowledgeable society, the rejection of irrationality
by Dawkins and Ridley would be the type of selfish behaviour one would expect
to find in a Darwinian scheme of cultural evolution.
David Strange University of Oxford
Letter: Social consciousness
Nicholas Humphrey would have us believe that consciousness is behaviourally
irrelevant and biologically vestigial (‘The private world of consciousness’,
8 January). Both claims are absurd.
Decades after ironclad critiques of epiphenomenalism by T. H. Huxley
and William James, how can Humphrey claim that ‘consciousness ‘has no public
consequences for our behaviour’? Adults teach children the names for qualia,
friends share private experiences, and people during courtship talk incessantly
about their contents and states of consciousness. (‘How blue are thine eyes,
how red thy lips, how unsteady my heart’). ‘Private’ sensations are simply
the sensations of the mute introvert. It is baffling that Humphrey, author
of a deservedly influential 1976 essay on the social functions of intellect,
should overlook the social functions of consciousness.
Surely a species that evolved mental capacities for language, music
and art was subject to some social and sexual selection for the ability
to express internal states of consciousness? A spouse’s ‘inability to express
feelings’ is a commonly cited reason for divorce (at least in my native
USA); clearly selective mate choice favours those whose consciousness is
not entirely private.
The second claim, that consciousness is biologically vestigial, makes
even less sense. If consciousness were irrelevant to behaviour, and therefore
immune to selection, but nonetheless depended on ‘self-sustaining’ activation
patterns in complex, delicate, inherited neural loops, these loops would
be disrupted by recurrent deleterious mutation over a very few generations.
Complex adaptation erodes without continued selection. Vestigial consciousness
would quickly become no consciousness at all.
Humphrey’s portrait of consciousness as a phylogenetically ingrown hair
follicle will not do. The fact that Humphrey can make real money by writing
a real book about ‘private sensations’ indicates that consciousness is neither
epiphenomenal nor vestigial.
Geoffrey Miller University of Sussex
Letter: Right repugnance
I don’t think your editorial will help anyone to think clearly about
the moral issues of using eggs from aborted foetuses for IVF. Whether or
not people object to this technique ever being used will depend mainly on
what respect, if any, they accord to a child in its mother’s womb.
I am outraged by it because I am outraged by abortion. If one accepts
abortion in principle it will be hard to find grounds for more than a certain
disquiet at this new development. But isn’t it rather cavalier to dismiss
the possibility of any psychological effect on the child which is allowed
to live: people’s understanding of themselves is greatly affected by their
knowledge of where and who they came from.
Two other points arise from your treatment of the issues. Talking of
‘essentially private acts’ suggests you lack confidence in your case. Take
a moral example about which most people will agree; theft can be an essentially
private act: its privacy is irrelevant to its being wrong. Moreover, it
does not ring true when you talk of giving the gift of life using eggs from
aborted foetuses when you have just given the gift of death to the foetus
itself.
John Roberts Repton, Derbyshire
Letter: Right repugnance
You cannot remove the ethical content of the issue by dismissing the
feelings of public opinion, and individuals, such as the clergyman you quote,
as an intrusion into an ‘act of love’ between the woman offering her aborted
foetus and the woman desiring a child, because the ‘instinctive repugnance’
you sneer at is the stuff of ethics, whether the issue is IVF, abortion,
homosexuality or legalising hard drugs (Comment, 15 January).
Your argument would carry more weight if it were true that this issue
was only of concern to the two women participating, but there is the child
born as a result of this arrangement to be considered, as you recognise
when you arrogantly describe as ‘nonsense’ the possibility that such a child
might suffer trauma in later life because of the biological process involved.
The assumption you make about the attitude of children born to mothers
using this method of reproduction may prove to be correct; but you should
recognise that you may be wrong, and this possibility adds the moral dimension
you deny exists.
E. Paull London
Letter: Energy efficiency
Campbell implies, oddly, that because both efficiency of energy use
and energy consumption have increased over the past 125 years, energy efficiency
causes increased consumption.
Firstly, there are many reasons for increased consumption: economic,
military, political, the invention of new energy-eating whimwhams, etc.
Secondly, increased energy efficiency derives partly from increased
knowhow, partly from political factors (such as OPEC) and partly from the
certain knowledge that there will be various sorts of trouble if we don’t
get more from less. Without increased efficiency, the increase in fuel use
would be vastly greater than it actually has been. Imagine the 1990s economy
with the technology of 1870.
Thirdly, Campbell calls in evidence the 19th century economist Stanley
Jevons. However, unlike physics, economics is not the same throughout time
and space. Indeed, the alleged ‘association’ between increased efficiency
and increased use reminds one of Jevons’s assertion that there was an ‘association’
between the 11-year sunspot cycles and the 11-year Victorian trade cycles.
Robin Oakley-Hill Sevenoaks, Kent
Letter: Energy efficiency
Of course improving efficiency can reduce electricity consumption. The
trouble is that the electricity companies have been set up in such a way
that they have a vested interest in doing the opposite. The electrical grid
extends from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and any extra load on it is supplied
by certain power stations which are at present mainly coal fired.
Since our coal fired power stations are not particularly efficient,
the use of electrical space heating causes the emission of four times as
much CO2 as does the use of a good gas fired boiler. Not long
ago one of the Scottish electricity companies was offering 拢100 for
every gas fire handed in by a customer who installed their space heating
system.
The Government’s Living to save the planet leaflets have never mentioned
the difference in efficiency between gas fired and electrical heating. As
long as the electricity companies go on actively selling electricity, and
the Department of Energy maintains its lackadaisical attitude to improving
efficiency, electricity consumption probably will go on increasing. But
it is not necessary.
P. Agnew Scottish Green Party Aberfeldy, Tayside
Letter: Energy efficiency
Steuart Campbell (Letters, 15 January) claims that energy consumption
is not the cheapest way to cut the use of fossil fuels and does not represent
a ‘fifth fuel’. He bases his argument on the observation that improvements
in efficiency can lead, not to a reduction in consumption, but an increase.
This is an analogous effect to that seen when the size of a highway
is increased in order to reduce congestion. Invariably, all that happens
is the same level of congestion is reached, but by more vehicles. In order
for energy consumption to be effective, and truly work as a ‘fifth fuel’,
conservation has to be matched by price increases (such as a carbon tax).
This ensures that the energy bill, itself, is not reduced. This approach
has the added benefit that those not participating in reducing their energy
consumption see their bills rise. Which makes for a very good incentive.
David Coley University of Exeter
Letter: Smiling seal
I write to inform that the ‘terrible grin’ reported on the face of the
seal found by Bjorn Lytskjold (In Brief, 15 January) is unlikely to be one
of satisfaction for the singular nature of the extraordinary feat of climbing
to an altitude of 1300 metres at 250 kilometres from the present coast.
I can report that this seal was not the first to accomplish such a seemingly
incredible feat, or at least, was not the first to have his/her herculean
deeds recognised.
At Christmas 1988, my colleague, Chris Harris, and myself found a similarly
misplaced seal carcass at an equivalent altitude and distance inland while
mapping the geology of Tvora Mountain, in western Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica.
On this occasion, we too were astounded at the finding of the creature in
such an unlikely location.
Being earth scientists, and not zoologists, we had difficulty in ascertaining
whether the entire skull was preserved on the carcass which had been crushed
and suffered wind ablation on the exposed surface. I am therefore unable
to confirm the nature of the facial expression. However, I feel that a ‘grin’,
if present, is more likely to have been one of simple resignation on the
part of a seal who, like so many of us, had accepted he/she was not going
to find in life quite what he/she had set out to.
Ron Watkins University College London
Letter: Buzzes and whistles
Roger Lewin states ‘Griffin asserts that animals that think consciously
. . .’
We have six sheep-dogs on our farm – the matriarch being 14 years old.
All are female – abilities being inherited through the female line via our
matriarch. Each dog has a distinctive name which can be shouted over a gale
and in torrential rain on the fells. We do not whistle.
When gathering sheep each dog recognises its name, at a distance remember,
and obeys her individual instructions. The shepherd at that moment may be
one of two or three people capable of performing that particular task. There
will probably be other shepherds there with their dogs, all shouting.
The instructions are various and often interesting, eg: ‘For Christ’s
sake, Fly. Get away, bye.’ or ‘We don’t want it’ or ‘That’ll do’ or ‘Good
dog’ or ‘Let’s have you’ or ‘Stupid bugger’ or ‘What the hell do you think
you’re doing – come back here!’ The dog is picked up by the scruff of the
neck and shaken vigorously while the shepherd shouts in its ear: ‘I’ll kill
you if you don’t use some common bloody sense.’ All homilies containing
a wealth of information for the canine operatives.
And the operatives set about their task with gusto and efficiency.
My daughter has often said ‘I can get 4 dogs in the right place, but
the sodding students – God, they’re thick, always in the wrong spot’.
If our dogs did not think we could never keep sheep.
J. R. Catlin Seascale, Cumbria
Letter: Buzzes and whistles
I have no difficulty in accepting Donald Griffin’s theories of ‘intentional
communication’ by animals where behaviourists see only ‘involuntary responses
to internal states’ (‘I buzz therefore I think’, 15 January). I am writing
a guide book to Gomera Island (near Teneriffe) at present, and the Gomeran
whistling language still used by older people there sounds to the observer
like a simple response to a chirpy mood, but is in fact conveying quite
complex information from one mountain-top to another, such as ‘meet you
for a drink at 12 in the piazza’.
Nicholas Albery Institute for Social Inventions London
Letter: Scum scourge
Feedback’s description of Ralph Lerwin’s explanation for the brown scum
that forms on tea (15 January) allows no interaction with the water employed.
However, making tea with water which has been passed through an activated
charcoal filter always (in my experience) results in a complete absence
of scum.
This is true for all the types of tea and tap water that I have used
in the last 10 years, including whether the tea contains milk and/or sugar
or not.
The protective waxes on the leaves of the tea plants may well play a
necessary part in the formation of tea scum (as Feedback reports) but it
cannot be sufficient: the presence of something which is common in British
tap water is also required.
It is refreshing to be able to discuss matters of such great import
in your letters column, and I look forward to the eventual identification
of the cause of this scourge of society.
I would not be at all surprised if this did not lead to a new EC directive
on the tea-scumming properties of the domestic water supply, but surely
this is part of what civilisation is all about?
Keith Armstrong Oldham, Lancashire
Letter: Viral religions
Several of your correspondents object to religious beliefs being called
irrational and ‘viruses of the mind’ (Letters, 22 January). The reason credal
religions truly deserve the label ‘virus’ is because they contain self-referential
instructions like ‘Belief in me is the supreme virtue’, ‘Failure to believe
in me will result in eternal punishment’, ‘Convert others to this belief’.
These are analogous to the instruction ‘reproduce me’, carried by biological
and computer viruses.
This way of believing can be seen to be intrinsically disordered, because
it can propagate falsehood as easily as truth. Science is not a virus because,
when it is done properly, it accompanies its conjectures by messages of
the form, ‘Here is how to disprove me – have a go’.
Ian Dunbar Warrington
Letter: Unearthing units
The megalithic yard (MY) is not merely a myth, nor is it only a statistic
(Inside Science, 4 December, and Letters, 8 January), although it was used
as an illustration for such in your article.
The MY was indeed proposed and substantiated by Alexander Thom, a professor
of engineering, not archaeology, at Oxford, who also concluded that there
were 40 megalithic inches (MI) in one MY.
It may interest your readers to learn that Bronze Age wooden measuring
staves from Borum Eshoj and Borre Fen in Denmark have notches marking lengths
of 1 MY, and there are bone artifacts from excavations at Balbirnie, Dalgety
and Patrickholm in Scotland which are 1 MI long.
In addition, I recovered an interesting bone artefact from the prehistoric
habitation site at Dalmore, 12km from the famous standing stones of Callanish
in the Outer Hebrides. This square bone has regular zig-zag marks engraved
along an edge, every 4 zig-zags measuring exactly 1 MI.
The study of historic metrology has produced much evidence for the existence
of early units of measurements, some of which, like the Iberian Vara and
the Austrian mining Klafter, are close to 1 MY.
Thus there is more proof of megalithic units of measurement than the
statistical evidence of stone circles. I believe the above rods and bones,
and probably many more not yet recognised, give tangible evidence for prehistoric
units of length.
Margaret Curtis Isle of Lewis
Letter: Mirror image
I have recently encountered the article on Sellafield by Sara Downs
(‘Hiroshima’s shadow over Sellafield’, 13 November). As I read the piece,
I was increasingly puzzled by the accompanying picture on page 25. I found
myself trying to work out from where the shot was taken. I was baffled until
it dawned on me that the lane was one I have travelled regularly, the white
house probably Calder Farm, and the picture was printed in reverse. (It
must be fairly old since it does not show the gas-fired CHP plant).
I found it an interesting example of how a familiar scene can become
quite alien when viewed through a mirror; is there a moral here for our
industry? The response from my colleagues is one heard regularly here about
media coverage of Sellafield: ‘Will they ever get it right?’
P. Burnett Beckermet, Cumbria
Letter: Not enough time
I would like to point out an inconsistency in Charles Arthur’s article
‘Outrage at cuts in schools science . . .’ (This Week, 15 January 1994).
He says that nearly six hours a week are spent teaching science in our
schools at present. That is certainly about the time we need to teach the
present National Curriculum for science effectively, but I am afraid we
get much less time than this. He correctly states that science has allocated
to it 20 per cent of teaching time for the double award GCSE, however, this
works out to be somewhere between four and five hours per week depending
on the school.
The two big questions are, is this enough time to prepare pupils for
‘A’ level and has the double award encouraged more pupils to take science
‘A’ levels? I suspect the answer to both is no.
John Williams New Hall School Chelmsford
Letter: Black and white
Philip Stewart (letters, 8 January) may be a chimera, and developed
from two fertilised eggs. His white haired right breast came from one, his
black haired left breast from the other.
This condition is quite common, particularly in the Far East. Complications
can include unjustified accusations of adultery, based on ‘impossible’ eye
and hair colour of children.
Rhodri Powell Guildford, Surrey
Letter: Solid solution
I think Anik Egan will find (Letters, 15 January and 29 January) that
in all drinks, the pitch rises in direct proportion to the amount of solids
dissolved in the liquid. Since discovering this phenomenon I have found
it invaluable when entertaining in determining whose tea has sugar in it
and whose does not.
Jonathan Stoppi London
Letter: End of civilisation
Feedback’s comments on the problems encountered in the unpacking of
many modern products (22 January) leads me to predict the collapse of civilisation
as we know it. When it takes more energy to unpack food items than is obtained
from consuming them . . .
D. J. Flower Banbury
Letter: Silly solstices
For years I have been wondering why earliest and latest sunrise and
sunset times do not coincide at the solstices.
Sunrise is latest about a week before the mean winter solstice, whilst
sunset is earliest a week before it, the two extremes being at least two
weeks apart. At the summer solstice the opposite is true, with the earliest
sunrise a week before the solstice, and the latest sunset a week after it,
also a net gap of about two weeks between the extremes.
Many a dinner time debate has raged long into the night, and I have
yet to meet anyone who can solve my difficulty. The time has come to appeal
to some higher authority for enlightenment, and who better than you.
Charles Moore Chippenham, Wiltshire