Science for peace
Curtis Bell calls for a pledge from neuroscientists that they will not apply their knowledge to activities that violate international law and human rights (6 February, p 24).
As he states in his article, any body of knowledge can be used for good or ill. This is true of science and technology in general, which has provided knowledge that has led to the incredible machinery for war that exists today.
I propose that we apply Bell’s principles universally to science, strengthening them in such a way that the scientific body of knowledge would not be used for harm. A pledge on these principles might be worded thus:
“Science for peace recognises that the scientific enterprise, with its basic guiding principles, involves a unique and common universal language as well as strains of a common universal vision. While the basic principles of science are global and transcend moral and political concerns, science at a local scale is left morally and politically open.
“Science for peace, in the spirit of this universal vision, calls for a commitment to avoid using scientific research for non-peaceful ends, with careful thought as to the possible applications of all research undertaken.
“Science for peace is a general commitment to practise one’s scientific knowledge and skills for ends that to the best of one’s judgement will not be harmful for life on Earth.”
Draughty houses
Philip Ball mentions termite mounds’ finely crafted ventilation systems as one of the features of insect architecture from which humans could take inspiration (20 February, p 35).
In hot, dry Iran, people have in fact been incorporating wind-catching, passive cooling systems for centuries. Iran’s traditional architecture includes air traps in a variety of shapes tailored to suit local conditions, along with water reservoirs. Together they provide various mechanisms for exchanging heat and fresh air.
Relativistic rabbit
Melanie Bayley’s article on Alice in Wonderland shows how authors can use fiction and satire to protest against goings-on that they profoundly dislike, without getting themselves into too much trouble (19 December 2009, p 38).
As a sequel, Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) wrote the less well-known Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. If he were alive today, he might be tempted to write a further sequel satirising quantum mechanics and some of the new mathematics and physics of the 20th century. I’d suggest Alice in Imaginary Land as a suitable title, with characters that include a white rabbit, representing Einstein, who if late for a meeting could slow down time in Imaginary Land by hopping very fast.
Inherited virus
Frank Ryan reports how, if a virus gets into an organism’s germ line, its genes can be transmitted to future generations (30 January, p 32). I wonder if there could be an additional mechanism.
Microchimerism, where there is an exchange of maternal and fetal cells across the placental barrier, is increasingly used to explain unusual immune situations. If a maternal cell were infected with a virus in an “aggressive symbiosis” situation, and that cell crossed the placenta and ended up in what was destined to be the germ line cells of the developing fetus, might that not also mean the virus could be incorporated in the genome and passed on?
Medical imperialism
Ethan Watter’s article highlighted the damage that can be done by the imposition of western concepts of illness on the rest of the world (23 January, p 26).
The danger goes beyond what Watters calls “upending long-held cultural beliefs about the meaning of illness”. The promotion of western medicine to the exclusion of indigenous medicinal narratives inevitably results in a loss of centuries-old local knowledge of medicinal plants.
The loss to a community of such knowledge is not merely a loss to medicine. Indigenous medicinal concepts typically form part of wider cultural identities which are at risk of being eroded by globalisation.
Loss of indigenous medicinal knowledge coincides with a loss of status among members of the community who would usually carry such information, and who are frequently women. ‘s 2008 study in Economic Botany (vol 62, p 604) describes precisely such a scenario in a rural Mexican community.
Smith-Oka notes that when western medicine is introduced into an indigenous community it can either result in the obliteration of traditional medical practices, or lead to a pluralistic system that incorporates both. We must hope that one day the latter will become the norm.
Ancient and Jung
In her article on rock art, Kate Ravilious notes the existence of numerous cave symbols drawn in the same style in different parts of the world (20 February, p 30). The findings would have delighted Carl Jung, who nearly 100 years ago insisted that human beings everywhere shared a common collective unconscious. The myths, symbols and complex imagery of which it was made could, he proposed, become manifest in art, psychosis, dreams and ancient signs.
From Paul Mealing
In the sidebar “Doodle or da Vinci” on the last page of her article, Kate Ravilious asks if the art in the Lascaux cave, for example, was for an audience or for the artist’s own recreation.
Brian Boyd tackles the same question in relation to storytelling in his book On the Origin of Stories, and goes on to generalise his answers to include all art. He argues that attention-seeking is one of the main drivers behind artistic endeavour, and quotes H. G. Wells: “Scarcely any artist will hesitate in the choice between money and attention.”
Art is the breaking-out of imagination, the physical manifestation of one’s internal world, and I would argue that it requires an audience to make it valid. All art, in all cultures, is effectively the projection of an individual’s imagination as an external manifestation so that others can also experience it. It is this sharing with the community that makes art worthwhile.
I’m sure the cave painters of Stone Age Europe knew their art would transcend generations, though I doubt they would have anticipated it enthralling us 30,000 years later.
Ivanhoe, Victoria, Australia
Clean rice
Anil Ananthaswamy’s article on climate-altering pollutants mentioned that existing methods for growing rice pour large amounts of methane into the atmosphere when the paddies are flooded (20 February, p 38). He bleakly concluded that it would not be easy to get farmers to change their traditional practices.
That may be unduly pessimistic. The developed in Madagascar has already demonstrated in some 38 countries that its methods can raise rice yields while using less water, seed and agrochemicals, and often less labour too.
SRI methods make it profitable for farmers to stop inundating their paddies, and so reduce methane emissions. Evaluations of SRI by researchers in Indonesia and Japan have indicated that the extra organic matter recommended for SRI does not lead to any increases in nitrous oxide emissions.
Getting farmers to change their practices to reduce methane emissions may not be so difficult when they will simultaneously increase their rice yields, use less water and generate more profit.
Why ice floats
Edwin Cartlidge’s article on anomalous properties of water (6 February, p 32) prompted me to reach for my copy of John Comstock’s (49th edition, published in 1844) to compare explanations.
The reason Comstock gives for water’s maximum density at around 4 掳C, and for ice floating on water, is strikingly different from Cartlidge’s. The loss of aquatic life that would result from sinking ice amassing on the seabed is cited by Comstock as evidence for the .
We have come a long way.
CER'N doom
Eric E. Johnson may just save the planet when he argues that there might be a legal case for barring the projected experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (20 February, p 24).
It is foolish for humanity to watch in ignorance as massive sums are spent on an experiment dreamed up by experts in a field that verges on theology, which talks of what happens in the first few microseconds after the big bang. Much greater thinkers who, in contrast to many of today’s fundamental physicists, relied on careful experiments rather than grand-sounding games with numbers, have made mistakes. Take Antoine Lavoisier’s “caloric fluid” explanation of heat transfer, for example.
I, for one, have no confidence in the prediction that the LHC will not destroy us all when ramped up to full power.
Archaic but poetic
Ross Richdale complains about “archaic” measurements in the reporting of the 1000 mph car (6 February, p 27).
His letter reminded me of a story my brother, an electrical engineer in the power industry, told me. During the UK miners’ strike in the early 1980s, power stations burning fuels other than coal had to generate as much electricity as possible to conserve coal stocks. One of the generators at Grain power station in Kent was rated at 690 megawatts, but they managed to run it at 746 MW long enough to achieve a record output of 1 million horsepower. Now that’s what I call archaic.
For the record
鈥� We incorrectly used the word “homocentric” when what we meant was “male-centred” (27 February, p 36).