“And yet it moves” – supposedly the rider Galileo Galilei added to his confession to the Inquisition when questioned about the earth’s movement around the sun.
And clock hands move too – across timezones. That makes it comfortably still 15th February in my equal most favouritistical country, the USA – so, HAPPY BIRTHDAY GALILEO!
To tell you all about him: heeeeeeeere’s Carl…..
As any Darwin aficionado will tell you, as this celebratory week draws to a close, there is one biography of Charles Darwin that stands out from the crowd.
Not only is Adrian Desmond’s and James Moore’s 1991 ‘Darwin‘ comprehensive at 677 pages before the notes, it’s brick-like iconicity somehow speaks of closure, the last word, to any further debate about Darwin.
On a personal note, not withstanding Janet Browne’s Voyaging and Power of Place, which are both excellent reads, and show that Darwin was not in fact the last word, I have a particular affection for the Desmond and Moore biography. It’s simply one of the few books of length that I’ve ever found the right combination of time and inclination to read right through non-stop; it took about a week one Christmas holiday. And as with all good biographies of departed figures, that level of immersion leaves one genuinely saddened when the subject dies.
So it was with some interest last Monday, that I walked the whole 100 feet or so from my department at Imperial College to the Great Hall, to join a public conversation with Olivia Judson interviewing Adrian Desmond and James Moore. The theme – the authors’ NEW book, ‘Darwin’s Sacred Cause‘.
This post isn’t a book review. As much as I’d like to drop everything else and read it – I haven’t found the time yet! Thankfully, it looks nothing in length like (as Desmond reminded us at this session) ‘the brick’.
Rather – before it becomes completely old news, I’ll point you to this online lecture podcast from Imperial College that helpfully captures the whole session.
That said, as a brief preview, the focus of the conversation is around Darwin and race, and the argument that man (as opposed to finches and other animals) was the core motivation behind developments in the theory of natural selection and the writing of the Origin of Species. The Origin itself, we are told, was originally conceived to include extensive discussion on man and race. The authors further link Darwin’s feelings about race back to a family upbringing and tradition steeped in benevolence and an active opposition to slavery.
Enough said for now – maybe more when I’ve read the book!
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I’ve just returned from the annual British Humanist Association Darwin Day Lecture, this year delivered by Sir David King at a session chaired by Richard Dawkins.
King is a former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government, and now heads up a multi-disciplinary organisation tackling climate change – The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment- at Oxford University.
His talk entitled ‘Can British Science Rise to the New Challenges of the Twenty First Century?’ was very similar in content to one I watched him give at a PAWS event in November, and dealt less with British Science, and more with the complexities of tackling global climate change. There were some new angles, but I’d refer you to my previous blog HERE – inspired by Sir David’s earlier talk – rather than repeat myself. I believe a podcast of tonight’s event will appear on the BHA site in due course.
So perhaps, given the greater relevance to current debate over poor media reporting of science, and particularly that related to MMR (and the Goldacre/LBC radio encounter), you’d like to hear what Sir David volunteered tonight on that subject. It came up in response to a question from the floor about the Daily Mail. Sir David’s transposed response:
“We’ve now got a measles epidemic growing in this country, and the measles epidemic is the result directly of a very poor piece of science from John Wakefield, somehow being published in the Lancet – should never have been published – the database was far too small. And then gaining momentum in the media, and it’s not only the Daily Mail, John Humphreys was one of those pushing that… that the connection between MMR and autism raised real questions, and the take-up of the MMR vaccine began to fall very dramatically. And my prediction a few years ago was that we would approach something like a hundred deaths a year from, amongst children, from measles as a measles outbreak occured, inevitably.
If you do models and you drop below 80% uptake of the vaccine, the measles must come back. Of course the Daily Mail’s campaign was one of the instruments that got people very worried about that particular issue. So I think that was an example where the science was so clear. Let me tell you. There was a Danish study of all the children born in Denmark over ten years of whom 15% had not had the MMR vaccine, and 85% had. The statistical incidence of autism in the two groups was the same. Now just to be on the…on the…..when I say the same within statistical error. The nice thing was, from the point of view of those who were sceptics, that amongst the group who didn’t have the vaccine, there was a slight larger number- larger percentage – with autism. Now any parent worrying about the situation, just needs surely to be given that set of statistics, and yet the Daily Mail wouldn’t publish it when I went to them. What am I saying, [finding his words]well, it rarely gets their story right. There is…there is a sort of disbelief, but I’m afraid when a newspaper is running a campaign, there’s very little can stop the train”
To which Richard Dawkins, with a look of amazement and with apparent reference to the Daily Mail not printing the Denmark evidence, said – “I’m shocked”
The National Secular Society’s annual award for Secularist of the Year has been awarded jointly to Dr Evan Harris MP and Lord Avebury, for their success in getting blasphemy laws abolished. I joined the event this afternoon, which was also a celebration of Charles Darwin’s 200th anniversary, at the Imperial Hotel in central London.
The awards were made by Professor Richard Dawkins, and comprised a golden ammonite trophy and a cheque for £5000. Both winners declined to keep the money and donated it instead for next year’s prize.
A range of politicians, scientists, celebrities, and commentators of various types were in the audience: including from the scientific community Prof.Peter Atkins. Prof.Steve Jones, a previous year’s winner of the prize, sent best wishes. Science journalists included Simon Singh (Fermat’s Last Theorem), and Ben Goldacre (Bad Science). I also spotted former news presenter Anna Ford, and comedian Robin Ince.
The abolition of the blasphemy law in 2008 was something of a coup for the NSS. Secularists have been fighting for years what has seemed like an unwinnable battle, and I sense the movement still can’t quite believe its success. While not used since the 1970s, Christian evangelicals had been pushing for a revival in the application of the law.
A statement on the NSS website after the event said: ‘The ancient law was called the common law offence of blasphemous libel, and was widely thought to be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Despite this, the Government had not been keen to abolish it, we believe because of fear of discomforting the Established Church. They see abolition as an attack on their privileged position and a possible first step towards disestablishment.’
It was a lively afternoon, where the company, food, and entertainment were all excellent. The formal entertainment took the form of a re-enactment of a debate held in Oxford in 1860 between Thomas Huxley (Darwin’s Bulldog) and the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce (Soapy Sam). In ultimate irony, Wilberforce was (a little too convincingly) played by Terry Sanderson, the President of the NSS. Given the audience, the winner of the debate was never at issue.
Joint winner Lord Avebury’s story is equally ironic. His grandfather, one of Darwin’s great supporters and a member of the ‘X Club‘ with Huxley, was not actually an atheist: he was too ‘conventional’, Avebury said. Indeed, incongruous with his grandson’s award today, his grandfather had been instrumental in having Darwin buried in Westminster Abbey.
Evan Harris, who one critic has described as humourless, was everything but, quipping in surprise as he received his golden ammonite trophy: “I was always taught at Hebrew School that the Ammonites were slain by the Israelites”.
One short post as Christmas Eve draws to a close on the west coast of America.
And a flavourful evening it’s been too, in both the culinary and scientific senses; for tonight I dined at CalTech’s Athenaeum Club in Pasadena, California.
The first club dinner in February 1931 was attended by Albert Einstein, Robert A. Millikan, and A. A. Michelson; the club has since hosted the likes of Richard Feynman (physicist), David Baltimore (biologist) and Maarten Schmidt (Astronomer). I got through the door on the strength of my father-in-law’s double qualification as Caltech graduate and former Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) employee.
I’ve eaten in the main dining room before, but tonight was especially interesting as we were hosted in one of the more private library rooms. That meant I got to enjoy the somewhat surreal experience of tucking into my prime rib surrounded by the last fifty years’ worth of Chemical Abstracts; food for thought as it were….groan.
Clearly time to stop, take the indigestion tablets, and go to bed.
Merry Christmas.
It was inevitable. The indefinable, yet almost tangible buzz of excitement that has for weeks held cyberspace in a grip of nervous anticipation: it all makes sense now. For yesterday evening, to tumultuous public acclaim, the Zoonomian Science Centre opened its doors to residents of Second Life.
O.K. – if my brother hadn’t monopolised model railway construction when we were kids, maybe I’d have gotten this sort of thing out of my system earlier. But all the same, putting this creation together has been a lot of fun and there is a serious side to it all.
Virtual worlds have been with us for a while, as has their use for promoting interaction in science and technology; and indeed, for science communication.
There are many real world businesses, universities, museums, and even embassies represented in Second Life; most of which you can just turn up to and walk right in. I particularly like NASA’a site, despite their copy restrictions preventing my placing the Saturn V launch vehicle as sentinel to the ZSC. The NASA site is part of what is probably the major nexus for science and technology in Second Life: the SciLands Virtual Continent. The Nature Publishing Group and Macmillan Publishing also have a substantial SL presence at the Elucian Islands – Second Nature – which hosts events such as the recent Virtual Conference on Climate Change and CO2 Storage, held in association with my own Imperial College.
Second Life is the best known virtual world, but there are dozens of others – some, like OpenSim, snapping at its heels.
I’ve previously discussed Second Life here, in the context of societies with boundless resource; and most recently here, when I first bought land and installed a giant gibbon on it. (If anybody is missing the gibbon, don’t worry, she and others are likely to return with a vengeance.) In the former post, I referred to owner Linden’s claim that 70,000 thousand residents were ‘in-world’ at any one time; I’ve seen between 45,000 and 75,000, so that seems realistic.
So, much more importantly – what am I going to do with this space?
As a conventional museum with exhibits, there are no limits – save those dictated by the bounds of copyright and creative ingenuity; but mainly cost – of time and money. Media: such as web pages, music, and movies, can be streamed into the Centre via two media panels. The default is set to this blog, with which you can interact from within SL.
There is also the potential for groups to meet up at the centre to share media materials, films, podcasts etc, and to hold mini-conferences to which a broader public might be invited.
And I guess this brings us to the big difference bewteen a straight web page interaction and an interaction in Second Life. SL and its ilk are spaces where people who are geographically far apart in the real world can meet to share content and have discussions. You might say you could do that sitting at your PC? But then of course that’s exactly where you would be. The claim is that a virtual world gives you more degrees of freedom for expression. For sure, if during an SL discussion at the conference table, a guest gets up and orders a drink from the bar (did I not mention the bar?), then spends the rest of the meeting pacing around, that would send a certain kind of message.
If you want to visit the Zoonomian Science Centre, you will need to register for free at Second Life and get yourself a name. Then come to this location in the Haddath Region. Haddath has ‘mature’ status – so adults only please. The Centre is normally open to all, but just come back later if not; it just means I’m working on the place and don’t want to jump out of my skin when someone walks up behind me and starts chatting.
Of course, the main pupose of the Zoonomian Science Centre has been as a learning exercise for me; Second Nature can relax after all. That said: “from small acorns……”
Oh yes – if you are reading this at the Centre…..Welcome ! Enjoy!
Early warning of three events into the new year that folk might like to consider joining. The Darwin related talks will sell out fast for sure – so think ahead – like me.
‘Weird Science’, Saturday 17th January 2009, London
Organised by the Centre for Inquiry, this all-day event promises to explore ‘Weird Science – science of the weird, and weird and flaky science’ . So pretty weird.
Expect presentations from Ben Goldacre, Richard Wiseman, Chris French and Steven Law. The venue is Conway Hall, Red Lion Square. Details at Centre for Inquiry.
Darwin Day Lecture, 12th February 2009, London
You’ll be aware from previous posts that Darwin will be a bigger deal than usual next year, and appreciate the need to book early for events like the NSS lunch on 7th February. An event guaranteed to be even more popular is the BHA’s annual Darwin Day Lecture, given by Professor Sir David King on ‘Can British Science Rise to the New Challenges of the Twenty First Century?’ Good question. The event will be held at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 on Thursday 12th February at 6.30pm. Attendance at the lecture is £5 for members of the BHA and £7 for others. Tickets are available from the British Humanist Association on 020 7079 3580 or by email on info@humanism.org.uk
Dan Dennett Lecture, 19th March 2009, London
I’m not alone in tagging Dan Dennett as the more philosophical, patient, and possibly more persuasive member of the media-branded atheist quartet of Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris.
On 19th March we will get to hear what will doubtless be an insightful and balanced analysis on ‘A Darwinian Perspective on Religions: Past, Present and Future’. Who better to deliver that than the author of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (Penguin Science)
The location, prices, and contact details are as for the Darwin Day Lecture above.
I suspect the run up to February 12th 2009 is going to be a bit like Christmas. A lunch here, a dinner there, an afternoon tea at Downe House, an evening at the Natural History Museum. Because February 12th 2009, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the Origin of Species, is a very important date. Well at least for some people.
So where are you going to party?
UK readers might consider joining the event being organised by the National Secular Society in London on Saturday 7th February. The NSS is moving its annual Secularist of the Year Award presentation to coincide with the Darwin 200th birthday celebrations – making one big party.
Three-course lunches are promised, plus entertainment that will include a reconstruction of the well known confrontation between Thomas Huxley and the Bishop of Oxford, ‘Soapy Sam’ Wilberforce, at the British Association in 1860. (Scholars amongst you must surely join this just to dissect the production’s ‘angle of spin’?) And as the NSS blurb states – you will be expected to take sides!
You don’t need to be a rabid secularist to join and, if you are a student, tickets are only £15 (£45 for normal people).
Tickets are on sale at the NSS online shop.
Yesterday evening I joined the British Film Institute’s ‘BFI 75 – A Story in Pictures’ on London’s South Bank, celebrating 75 years of film and TV culture through a mix of archive clips and interviews.
The evening was hugely enjoyable. What a delight to see Leslie Phillips, beloved of the Doctor and Carry-On films, take up the microphone with his trade mark saucy “Hello” . And to be transported back to 1901 with big screen footage from the Mitchell and Kenyon archive, beautifully restored, complete with live piano accompaniment.
Science and technology was represented by films about the railways and telephony. From John Grierson’s GPO Film Unit, that produced industry and transport films in the 1930s, was a sequence from ‘The Fairy of the Phone’, a fantasy involving female telephonists singing and standing atop telegraph poles.
Ironically, given the light coverage of science in the main program, later discussions and guest commentaries addressed the role of technology for enabling positive change in the industry, like the accessibility of professional quality, low cost, equipment. More exotically, Frank Skinner looked forward to a cinema world of wrap-around 3D, while another pundit held out for the holy grail of odorama (a low tech scratch ‘n’ sniff version has been done).
For further Reading on science in documentary film and T.V. See Timothy Boon’s Films of Fact: A History of Science Documentary on Film and Television
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
That sentiment will be endorsed when, on 8th November, John Adams’s opera Dr Atomic is broadcast live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York City to cinema venues across the world.
Taking as its theme the first U.S. atomic bomb tests in 1945, Doctor Atomic draws on declassified documents to inform a production that explores the tensions, dilemmas, and decisions that occupied the minds of J.Robert Oppenheimer and his project associates in the weeks leading up to detonation.
In London, the 3hr 21m performance starts at 18.00 GMT, relayed to the BFI IMAX, Barbican, Curzon Mayfair, and Greenwich Picturehouse cinemas, amongst others.
Thanks to C and J for the tip-off.
