Science in the Soul Read online

  *38 Deuteronomy 20: 16–17. It’s been suggested to me that my use of the German Lebensraum is, in the circumstances, offensive or ‘inappropriate’ (to use the cant word). But I find it impossible to think of any word that is more spot-on, nail-on-head appropriate.

  Speaking up for science: an open letter to Prince Charles

  YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,

  Your Reith Lecture*1 saddened me. I have deep sympathy for your aims, and admiration for your sincerity. But your hostility to science will not serve those aims; and your embracing of an ill-assorted jumble of mutually contradictory alternatives will lose you the respect that I think you deserve. I forget who it was*2 who remarked: ‘Of course we must be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.’

  Let’s look at some of the alternative philosophies which you seem to prefer over scientific reason. First, intuition, the heart’s wisdom ‘rustling like a breeze through the leaves’. Unfortunately, it depends whose intuition you choose. Where aims (if not methods) are concerned, your own intuitions coincide with mine. I wholeheartedly share your aim of long-term stewardship of our planet, with its diverse and complex biosphere.*3

  But what about the instinctive wisdom in Saddam Hussein’s black heart?*4 What price the Wagnerian wind that rustled Hitler’s twisted leaves? The Yorkshire Ripper heard religious voices in his head urging him to kill. How do we decide which intuitive inner voices to heed?

  This, it is important to say, is not a dilemma that science can solve. My own passionate concern for world stewardship is as emotional as yours. But where I allow feelings to influence my aims, when it comes to deciding the best method of achieving them I’d rather think than feel. And thinking, here, means scientific thinking. No more effective method exists. If it did, science would incorporate it.

  Next, Sir, I think you may have an exaggerated idea of the naturalness of ‘traditional’ or ‘organic’ agriculture. Agriculture has always been unnatural. Our species began to depart from our natural hunter-gatherer lifestyle as recently as ten thousand years ago – too short a period to measure on the evolutionary timescale.

  Wheat, be it ever so wholemeal and stoneground, is not a natural food for Homo sapiens. Nor is milk, except for children. Almost every morsel of our food is genetically modified – admittedly mostly by artificial selection not artificial mutation, but the end result is the same. A wheat grain is a genetically modified grass seed, just as a pekinese is a genetically modified wolf. Playing God? We’ve been playing God for centuries!

  The large, anonymous crowds in which we now teem began with the agricultural revolution, and without agriculture we could survive in only a tiny fraction of our current numbers. Our high population is an agricultural (and technological and medical) artefact. It is far more unnatural than the population-limiting methods condemned as unnatural by the Pope. Like it or not, we are stuck with agriculture, and agriculture – all agriculture – is unnatural. We sold that pass ten thousand years ago.

  Does that mean there’s nothing to choose between different kinds of agriculture when it comes to sustainable planetary welfare? Certainly not. Some are much more damaging than others, but it’s no use appealing to ‘nature’, or to ‘instinct’, in order to decide which ones. You have to study the evidence, soberly and reasonably – scientifically. Slashing and burning (incidentally, no agricultural system is closer to being ‘traditional’) destroys our ancient forests. Overgrazing (again, widely practised by ‘traditional’ cultures) causes soil erosion and turns fertile pasture into desert. Moving to our own modern tribe, monoculture, fed by powdered fertilizers and poisons, is bad for the future; indiscriminate use of antibiotics to promote livestock growth is worse.

  Incidentally, one worrying aspect of the hysterical opposition to the possible risks from GM crops is that it diverts attention from definite dangers which are already well understood but largely ignored. The evolution of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria is something that a Darwinian might have foreseen from the day antibiotics were discovered. Unfortunately the warning voices have been rather quiet, and now they are drowned by the baying cacophony: ‘GM GM GM GM GM GM!’

  Moreover if, as I expect, the dire prophecies of GM doom fail to materialize, the feeling of let-down may spill over into complacency about real risks. Has it occurred to you that our present GM brouhaha may be a terrible case of crying wolf?

  Even if agriculture could be natural, and even if we could develop some sort of instinctive rapport with the ways of nature, would nature be a good role model? Here, we must think carefully. There really is a sense in which ecosystems are balanced and harmonious, with some of their constituent species becoming mutually dependent. This is one reason the corporate thuggery that is destroying the rainforests is so criminal.

  On the other hand, we must beware of a very common misunderstanding of Darwinism. Tennyson was writing before Darwin but he got it right. Nature really is red in tooth and claw. Much as we might like to believe otherwise, natural selection, working within each species, does not favour long-term stewardship. It favours short-term gain. Loggers, whalers and other profiteers who squander the future for present greed are only doing what wild creatures have done for three billion years.

  No wonder T. H. Huxley, Darwin’s bulldog, founded his ethics on a repudiation of Darwinism. Not a repudiation of Darwinism as science, of course, for you cannot repudiate truth. But the very fact that Darwinism is true makes it even more important for us to fight against the naturally selfish and exploitative tendencies of nature. We can do it. Probably no other species of animal or plant can. We can do it because our brains (admittedly given to us by natural selection for reasons of short-term Darwinian gain) are big enough to see into the future and plot long-term consequences. Natural selection is like a robot that can only climb uphill, even if this leaves it stuck on top of a measly hillock. There is no mechanism for going downhill, for crossing the valley to the lower slopes of the high mountain on the other side. There is no natural foresight, no mechanism for warning that present selfish gains are leading to species extinction – and indeed, 99 per cent of all species that have ever lived are extinct.

  The human brain, probably uniquely in the whole of evolutionary history, can see across the valley and can plot a course away from extinction and towards distant uplands. Long-term planning – and hence the very possibility of stewardship – is something utterly new on the planet, even alien. It exists only in human brains. The future is a new invention in evolution. It is precious. And fragile. We must use all our scientific artifice to protect it.

  It may sound paradoxical, but if we want to sustain the planet into the future, the first thing we must do is stop taking advice from nature. Nature is a short-term Darwinian profiteer. Darwin himself said it: ‘What a book a devil’s chaplain*5 might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature.’

  Of course that’s bleak, but there’s no law saying the truth has to be cheerful; no point shooting the messenger – science – and no sense in preferring an alternative world-view just because it feels more comfortable. In any case, science isn’t all bleak. Nor, by the way, is science an arrogant know-all. Any scientist worthy of the name will warm to your quotation from Socrates: ‘Wisdom is knowing that you don’t know.’ What else drives us to find out?

  What saddens me most, Sir, is how much you will be missing if you turn your back on science. I have tried to write about the poetic wonder of science myself,*6 but may I take the liberty of presenting you with a book by another author? It is The Demon-Haunted World by the lamented Carl Sagan. I’d call your attention especially to the subtitle: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

  AFTERWORD

  One important principle which I should have mentioned by name in my letter to Prince Charles is the precautionary principle. He is certainly right that, where new and untried technologies are concerned, we should lean towards the conservative. If something is untried and we don’t know the
consequences, it behoves us to err on the side of caution, especially where long-term futures are at stake. It is the precautionary principle that requires apparently promising new cancer drugs to jump through hoops and over hurdles before being certified for general use. Such risk-averse hurdles can reach ludicrous heights, as when patients who are already at death’s door are denied access to experimental drugs which just might save their lives but which have yet to be certified as ‘safe’. Terminal patients have a different conception of ‘safe’. But in general it is hard to deny the wisdom of the precautionary principle, sensibly balanced against the huge advantages that scientific innovation can bring.

  While I’m on the precautionary principle, please forgive a digression into contemporary politics. Normally I would fight shy of up-to-the-minute currency, for fear of anachronizing future editions of a book. J. B. S. Haldane’s and Lancelot Hogben’s otherwise admirable writings of the 1930s are marred by political barbs that are obtrusively incomprehensible today. Unfortunately, the repercussions of at least two of the political events of 2016 – Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and America’s repudiation of international agreements on climate change – have little chance of limitation to the short term. So, without apology, I speak of 2016 politics.

  In 2016 our then Prime Minister David Cameron caved in to pressure from his backbenchers to hold a referendum on British membership of the EU. This was a question of immense complexity involving sophisticated economic ramifications, the full extent of which became only too apparent later in the year when prodigal regiments of lawyers and civil servants had to be employed to cope with the administrative and legal load. If ever there was a matter for lengthy parliamentary debate and cabinet discussion heavily informed by advice from highly qualified experts, it was membership of the EU. Could there be a question less suited to a single plebiscite decision? And yet we were told to mistrust experts (‘You, the voter, are the expert here’) by politicians who presumably would demand an expert surgeon to remove their appendix or an expert pilot to fly their plane. So the decision was handed over to non-experts like me, even people whose stated motives for voting included ‘Well, it’s nice to have a change,’ and ‘Well, I preferred the old blue passport to the European purple one.’ For the sake of short-term political manoeuvring within his own party, David Cameron played Russian roulette with the long-term future of his country, of Europe, even of the world.

  And so, to the precautionary principle. The referendum was about a major change, a political revolution whose pervasive effects would persist for decades if not longer. A huge constitutional change, the sort of change where, if ever, the precautionary principle should have been paramount. When it comes to constitutional amendments, the United States requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress followed by ratification by three-quarters of the state legislatures. Arguably that bar is set a bit too high, but the principle is sound. David Cameron’s referendum, by contrast, asked for only a simple majority on a single yes/no question. Did it not occur to him that so radical a constitutional step might merit stipulation of a two-thirds majority? Or at least 60 per cent? Perhaps a minimum voter turnout to make sure such a major decision was not taken by a minority of the electorate? Maybe a second vote, a fortnight later, to make sure the populace really meant it? Or a second round a year later, when the terms and consequences of withdrawal had become at least minimally apparent? But no, all Cameron demanded was anything over 50 per cent in a single yes/no vote, at a time when opinion polls were yo-yo-ing up and down and the likely result was changing day by day. It is said that a leftover statute of British common law stipulates that ‘no idiot shall be admitted to parliament’. You’d think at least the stricture might apply to Prime Ministers.

  As with Prince Charles’s hostility to aspects of scientific food production, the precautionary principle should be applied judiciously. It can go too far, and it’s arguable, as I said before, that for constitutional amendments in the United States the bar is set too high. It is widely agreed that the Electoral College is an undemocratic anachronism, but also widely accepted that it is almost impossible to abolish it because of the high hurdle of constitutional amendment. It seems that where huge decisions with far-reaching implications, such as constitutional amendments, are concerned, observance of the precautionary principle in politics needs to be pitched somewhere between its current positions in the too risk-averse United States, where the written constitution has fossilized into an object of near-sacred veneration, and in Britain, whose unwritten constitution leaves the door open to the kind of reckless irresponsibility of Cameron’s EU referendum.

  Finally, since this disquisition on the precautionary principle comes at the end of a letter to the Heir Apparent, what of that historic plank of our British unwritten constitution, the hereditary monarchy itself? The monarch is also, of course, head of the Church of England. Her many titles include ‘Defender of the Faith’ which, make no mistake, means specifically defender of one religion against a rival religion or denomination. When the title was invented, the possibility that an heir might grow up to be an atheist (as seems more than likely if current trends continue), or might have a Muslim stepfather (as nearly happened in living memory) never entered anyone’s head.

  Though stripped of most of the dictatorial powers of her earlier predecessors, the monarch still has advisory powers (and Elizabeth II is richly experienced in using them, having gone through no fewer than fourteen Prime Ministers). In extreme cases, the monarch is constitutionally able to dissolve Parliament on her sole initiative, although to do so would precipitate a crisis of uncertain and hazardous outcome. Even setting aside this unlikely possibility, many people find the idea of a hereditary monarchy hard to justify, and there are some who advocate a respectful termination of the institution on the death of the present Queen – which I, for one, hope will be a long time in the future.

  Whenever I talk to avid British republicans, I cannot help making at least a glancing allusion to the precautionary principle. In various forms the monarchy has been soldiering on for well over a thousand years. What are you going to put in its place? A Facebook vote for head of state? King Becks and Queen Posh aboard the Royal Yacht Boaty McBoatface? There are, no doubt, better alternatives than my shamelessly elitist satire. There was a time when I would have pointed to the United States as a role model. But that was before 2016 showed us what the noble democratic ideal, when it turns sour, is capable of delivering.

  * * *

  *1 The annual Reith Lectures, originally broadcast on radio, now also on television, are sponsored by the BBC to commemorate its founding Director General, Lord Reith, an austere Scot whose high ideals the BBC has largely forsaken. It is still considered a great honour in Britain to be invited to give the Reith Lectures. Unusually the 2000 series, on ‘Respect for the Earth’, was divided among five lecturers, of whom Prince Charles was one. This open letter replying to it was first published in the Observer on 21 May 2000.

  *2 It’s often attributed to me but, much as I’d like to own it, I’m pretty sure I got it from somewhere else.

  *3 The Prince’s concerns have become more urgent in the years since he gave his lecture. The signs of drastic climate change have become ever more unmistakable, and there is now serious talk that we may have passed a point of no return. Meanwhile, the incoming US President has publicly announced his view that climate change is a ‘Chinese hoax’. It is still (just) possible to entertain a (decreasingly plausible) argument that humans are not responsible for such trends as the disappearing polar ice. But the reality of dangerous and worsening climate change itself is now plain for all but the deluded to see. In the face of this looming catastrophe, including worldwide flooding of low-lying areas, it is all the more important not to cry wolf with respect to lesser problems in the way that, unfortunately, Prince Charles is wont to do.

  *4 I went on record to deplore, at the time, the execution of Saddam Hussein, not simply because of general opp
osition to the death penalty but for scientific reasons. I would also have spared Hitler’s life if he hadn’t taken it himself. We need all the information we can get to understand the mentality of such monsters; and – because sociopaths are not all that rare – to understand how exceptional examples like Hitler manage to acquire and retain power over other people and even win elections. Was Hitler really a mesmerizing orator with hypnotically compelling eyes, as alleged by some who knew him? Or was that an illusion fostered in hindsight by the aura of power? How would a jailed Hitler have responded to alternative approaches to making him see reason, for example to quiet and sober arguments questioning his pathological hatred of Jews? Could we have gained an understanding of powerful psychopathology which might have been useful for the future? Was there something in Hitler’s childhood, or Saddam Hussein’s, or their early education, that set them on the path to their adult selves? Could some kind of educational reform forestall similar horrors in the future? Killing such odious specimens might satisfy primal vengeance, but closes off avenues of research that could help avoid recurrences.

  *5 I borrowed Darwin’s phrase as the title of my previous anthology, published in 2003.

  *6 In Unweaving the Rainbow.

  Science and sensibility

  WITH TREPIDATION AND humility, I find myself the only scientist in this list of lecturers.*1 Does it really fall to me alone to ‘sound the century’ for science; to reflect on the science that we bequeath to our heirs? The twentieth could be science’s golden century: the age of Einstein, Hawking and relativity; of Planck, Heisenberg and quantum theory; of Watson, Crick, Sanger and molecular biology; of Turing, von Neumann and the computer; of Wiener, Shannon and cybernetics; of plate tectonics and radioactive dating of the rocks; of Hubble’s Red Shift and the Hubble Telescope; of Fleming, Florey and penicillin; of moon landings; and – let’s not duck the issue – of the hydrogen bomb. As George Steiner has noted, more scientists are working today than in all other centuries combined. Though also – to put that figure into alarming perspective – more people are alive today than have died since the dawn of recorded history.