Allergy dangers
Andrew Watson’s article on food allergies was both enlightening and alarming (1 August, p 28).
Our daughter died about three years ago, aged 16, of anaphylaxis following ingestion of nut traces in chocolate. We had known about her allergy since she was a toddler, but the increasing incidence of the warning “may contain nut traces”, particularly on confectionary, proved counterproductive. Blanket labelling seems to have engendered in our invincible teenager a dismissive attitude towards the potential risk. The false sense of security was reinforced by having an “antidote” on tap in the form of an adrenalin autoinjector.
Clearly many people run the risk our daughter did, and I urge them not to.
Given the prevalence of food allergies in the west, I am surprised that our understanding of the condition is so poor. My father and I both suffer from severe shellfish intolerance, and I have always wondered whether there is a genetic element in such allergies.
When I worked as a young scientist with the British firm Beecham Pharmaceuticals in the 1980s, I remember there was an allergy vaccine production facility on the site. Even then, the vaccine was restricted to markets in Canada and Italy. Perhaps the pharmaceutical giants have missed a trick.
Why is it that people allergic to peanuts consider themselves allergic to nuts, when peanuts, or groundnuts, are actually legumes? This confusion also arises in labelling.
What miracle?
Hugh McLachlan argues that natural laws are by definition laws that cannot be transgressed 鈥� even by God (8 August, p 26). He thus displays a defective understanding of what miracles in the Judaeo-Christian world are taken to be. The inhabitants of first-century Palestine understood perfectly well that all births required preceding sexual intercourse, even if they did not understand anything about the mechanism of fertilisation.
The Virgin Birth was considered a miracle then, and is now, because it is predicated upon the belief that there is a God whose distinguishing aspect is that he stands outside of natural law and can suspend it at will.
If, as a scientist, you believe that a child was born as a result of immaculate conception, you must propose an alteration to natural law to explain the event. More power to your elbow if you can get the scientific establishment to accept it. But, if you succeed, these “events” won’t be miracles; they will be part of a better-understood natural world.
I thought the issues Hugh McLachlan raises were laid to rest by C. S. Lewis in Miracles (1947). Lewis tackled the problem by laying down a procedure to assess whether or not any event was a miracle.
He defined a “miracle” narrowly as being an event that breaks the laws of nature. Examples would include humans being turned into animals, such as deer or wolves, and animals being turned into humans.
Lewis said that we must also ask whether the alleged miracle is in keeping with the perceived character of any god or gods we believe in. Christians must, for example, reject the possibility of “miracles” involving men changed into animals, as these would be absolutely alien to the character of their God.
Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, UK
Make war no more
Terence Kealey referred to a comprehensive analysis by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of factors that might explain different growth rates of some of the world’s leading economies (25 July, p 28). This showed that only privately funded research and development led to economic growth, while publicly funded R&D did not.
So where does military R&D expenditure fit in? It seems reasonable to assume that most is publicly funded. So, according to the OECD analysis, one should expect that countries investing most in military R&D as a proportion of their overall spending would experience the least economic growth.
In 1986 I pointed out the strong inverse relation in the UK, West Germany and Japan between the proportion of research funding for defence and civil research performance, which is generally directed towards economic growth (Nature, ).
In 2002, Harold L. Wilensky in Rich Democracies (University of California Press) reviewed 18 countries, including those above, and showed that the proportion of funding for military R&D was still inversely related to their economic performance. No change there, then.
Ewa Bacon claims that war fulfils an evolutionary purpose because it “stimulates technical change and dissemination” (1 August, p 24). Leaving aside the Darwinian and genetic perspectives, her examples are questionable. The earliest metal objects found were designed for hunting.
Examine, for example, the weapons found on “脰tzi the Iceman” in the Austrian Alps, the earliest found in situ on a well-preserved corpse. Original bronze axes possessed narrow heads with a straight edge, suitable for splitting wood or for poleaxing tethered beasts 鈥� and entirely unsuited for fast-moving warfare. Later battleaxes have lengthened and convex edges, to catch and slice a moving man.
The earliest “chariots”, in early Mesopotamia, were lumbering four-wheeled carts drawn by asses and quite unsuited to active battle. The real war-chariot with two large wheels and teams of horses was not developed for another two millennia.
The only weapon I can think of devised, experimented with, then successfully employed as a weapon of war and for nothing else has been the atomic bomb.
Hyperoptimism
Is the pursuit of hypersonic flight the aviation industry’s equivalent of controlled nuclear fusion (25 July, p 30)? Even if sustained hypersonic flight powered by anything other than immensely wasteful rockets proves possible, it is unlikely ever to be practical.
The Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” is the only Mach 3 plane ever built, for good reason: it gets hot enough not only to affect the design of every component, but also to prevent anyone working on it when it lands.
Hypersonic vehicles will get a lot hotter. It would be possible to design an air bridge that allowed passengers off without them having to wait for the vehicle to cool, though emergency escape might be a bit more of an issue. Jet aircraft are practical because they are airborne for many hours a day, not sitting on the ground cooling, congesting airports and racking up interest payments.
Altruism's reward
Kate Douglas suggests that if people get a buzz from altruistic acts, they are not purely altruistic (8 August, p 28). I can certainly attest to this. When cycling along a local street, I am occasionally accosted by people asking for small amounts of money. While I do not know if they are being truthful about what they need it for, I usually give them money anyway. It takes 5 minutes for me to stop smiling.
Odds off
If you place an even-money bet at roulette (red or black) will you inevitably win a small amount if you double your bet after every loss (8 August, p 35)? No, for two reasons. First, casinos set betting limits on each table so if, for example, you have been doubling your bet after consecutive losses and have just lost 拢512, but the table limit is 拢600, you cannot double again and so will have lost 拢1023 in total. Second, the odds are not even on these bets, though the payouts are. Roulette wheels have a green zero, and sometimes a double-zero. Red and black both lose when zeroes come up.
鈥� We were wrong to say that roulette is like the toss of a coin, because of the presence of one or two zeroes. But this does not affect the theoretical outcome of doubling, because the gambler has the advantage of being able to quit as soon as they are ahead. It is true, however, that table limits can foil the doubling strategy.
Two cultures
David Gilbert proposes that a disparity in the “vector relationship” between analysis and creativity explains the segregation of and alienation between the humanities and science (27 June, p 27). It seems to me that the problem of “two cultures” (2 May, p 26) rather arises from the positivism of the French philosopher Auguste Comte, a founder of sociology.
Comte criticised Immanuel Kant’s distinction between Ding-an-sich 鈥� the thing-in-itself about which no knowledge can be derived 鈥� and 顿颈苍驳-蹿眉谤-耻苍蝉, the thing-for-us that obviously can be known. In Comte’s view, Ding-an-sich is a nonsense construct: an object is no more or less than the sum total of properties that can be observed to hold for it.
Nevertheless, since Hegel and Kierkegaard, the humanities have mostly followed Kant, while science has adopted Comte’s positivist position.
Each party therefore comes to the other’s field armed with a preconceived notion of what matters most, and finds none of it. 杏吧原创s find a sea of opinion and not a fact in sight. Those coming from the humanities find scientists talking as if they were the living dead 鈥� discarnate brains with no stake in the outcome.
Both go away feeling the encounter was a complete waste of time, and both are 鈥� from their point of view 鈥� right.
Aye aye, Captain Kirk
I cannot agree with Bryn Glover’s rosy view of Star Trek as a socialist utopia (18 July, p 27). The original series was about a warship and its crew, all dutifully obeying orders and Starfleet regulations. True, many stories did not involve military action, just as armed forces today also do humanitarian operations. We saw nothing of civilian society except on a few outposts. What was apparent was that Starfleet seemed to rule the galaxy and wanted for nothing 鈥� a dream for the Pentagon today.
For the record
鈥� The DOI for Steven Clapcote’s paper on epileptic mice (8 August, p 14) is .
鈥� The Planck length 鈥� the quantum of distance 鈥� is 1.6 脳 10-35 metres, not “about 10-33 metres” (15 August, p 26).