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News
News: September/October 2001
Spacebug Shock from Cardiff • Biker Gang Avenges Camus • The Brains in Bahrain • APA Centenary • Ape Film Angers Humans
Did Life Come from Space?
Scientists at Cardiff University’s Centre for Astrobiology have been analysing samples of material collected from the stratosphere by high-altitude balloons. Results suggest that the samples contain bacteria which may be of extra-terrestrial origin. Efforts are now underway at the centre to grow them and examine their DNA. The samples had been collected in sterile conditions to avoid contamination. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe has, with others, expounded a controversial theory, known as panspermia, that life originated in space, reaching Earth from the planets. Although Wickramasinghe acknowledges that the material retrieved from a height of 25 miles could be the result of detritus from space missions or terrestrial eruptions, he believes that the large amount detected points strongly to the possibility of an extra-terrestrial source, a view supported by his colleague Professor David Lloyd who led the analysis.
The Brains in Bahrain
In October Vladimir Kramnik, the Russian World Chess Champion,will soon play the world’s most powerful chess computer, Deep F7. The contest will consist of eight games, played over a fortnight, in Bahrain. Promoted as a confrontation between ‘The Brains in Bahrain’, the contest is one that Kramnik, former pupil of, and successor to Gary Kasparov, says he is absolutely sure he has a chance of winning. Since Kasparov was beaten in 1997 by IBM’s Deep Blue many people have believed that the best human players will never again beat the best chess computers. However Nigel Short, British former World Champion, feels that while computers will eventually become invincible in this situation, a win by Kramnik is still possible at this stage.
Kramnik’s own view is that a computer’s main advantage, beyond lightning-fast calculations, is that it does not experience fatigue, nervousness or a loss of confidence. However he feels that the downside of this unwavering stability is that the computer cannot play intuitively. This is where he hopes to have an edge in his battle against Deep F7. Whereas a computer can only calculate a move mathematically, a human can use intuition, what Kramnik calls “a feel for the game,” based on experience of past games and opponents.
Analytic Philosophy Heads South
In July the first ever Latin Meeting in Analytic Philosophy was held in Lisbon. Philosophers from Portugal, France, Spain, Italy and South America gathered to discuss topics such as ‘Do Natural Languages Exist?’ and ‘The Conceptual Nature of Properties’.
The two main approaches to philosophy in the West today are known as ‘Analytic’ and ‘Continental’; the former is dominant in the English-speaking countries (plus Finland), while the latter is predominates in Europe. This geographical split is finally showing signs of breaking down. Some university departments in Britain, the USA and Australia are now very active in Continental philosophy. Conversly, there is now a European Society for Analytic Philosophy, although until it held its Lisbon meeting its activities had tended to be centred in Germany and Scandanavia.
Biker Chainsaw Gang Avenges Albert Camus
The rural highways of France are lined with innumerable graceful plane trees, which give shade to travellers but regularly claim the lives of errant motorists. In 1960 one of them killed the existentialist philosopher and novelist Albert Camus, who was a passenger in a Facel-Vega HK500 travelling to Paris when it collided with plane tree on the RN5. After the recent death of a motorcyclist who hit a plane tree, biking enthusiasts used chainsaws to unilaterally remove 99 neighbouring trees. In an apparent response the French Minister of Agriculture has now decreed, controversially, that all plane trees lining such routes should be axed since they “amount to a public danger”.
US Bans Clone Embryo Research
The US Congress recently voted to ban cloning for research into disease as well for human reproduction. Democrats and Republicans joined forces in the House of Representatives to vote 265-162 against ‘therapeutic cloning’. The debate preceding the Human Cloning Prohibition Bill raised philosophical issues such as the point at which life may be said to begin and whether embryos have souls. One Republican leader is reported to have said “This House should not be giving the green light to mad scientists to tinker with the gift of life.” President Bush’s tone in supporting the vote was more reasoned, if duller, saying that it was “a strong ethical statement which I commend. We must advance the promise and cause of science but must do so in a way that honours and respects life.” The vote will become law if the Senate endorses the result; three years ago a similar proposed cloning ban was defeated at this stage.
Cloning embryos for research into disease is legal in Britain and a ban in the US would almost certainly draw scientists to cross ‘the Pond’ and boost research in the UK.
The Boys from Bologna?
We reported in Issue 31 that Italian gynaecologist Severino Antinori had declared his aim to clone a human being within a year. He has now moved closer to his objective by recruiting over 200 infertile couples, including several British, for his experiments. At a recent conference on Scientific & Medical Aspects of Human Cloning, held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, Dr Antinori and his colleague Professor Panayiotis Zavos faced fierce opposition from some of the world’s leading embryologists and geneticists. There were fireworks all round as the two fertility doctors charged the scientists of ignorance in the matter of reproductive medicine. They in turn were accused by other delegates of advancing proposals that were “scientifically flawed and ethically unthinkable.” Cloning for the purposes of reproduction is not legal in the UK, a position supported by Drs Ian Wilmut and Alan Coleman who were responsible for cloning Dolly the Sheep at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh in 1996. Dr Wilmut is reported to be of the opinion that the likely outcome of human cloning would be “very late abortions; babies who die soon after birth; and those who survive but have abnormalities.” Dr Antinori is no stranger to controversy; several years ago he helped a 63 year-old woman to have a child. He fell foul of the Roman Catholic Church on that occasion and now a representative of the Vatican has said that the doctor is “trying to emulate Hitler.” Support for Antinori and Zavos came from Brigitte Boisselier, a biochemist who also believes that the technology is sufficiently developed to begin human cloning.
APA Centenary
The American Philosophical Association (APA) is a hundred years old this year. The organisation’s vast membership consists mainly of US philosophy professors and graduate students, and in some ways it acts as a trade body for profssional philosophers. It also holds three huge philosophy conferences each year, (the Eastern, Central and Pacific Division meetings.) It decided to mark its centenary, however, not with a big party but with a year of efforts to reach out from the ivory towers. The APA’s new Executive Director Elizabeth Radcliffe told Philosophy Now that “The focus of the centennial year has been on how academic philosophers can bring something to those outside the academy, and establish relationships with the public at large. We want to show what philosophy has to offer to those seeking ideas.” The centennial committee has relied largely on local APA members around the US taking the initiative to organize events to popularize philosophy. However, it is also backing ambitious plans for a philosophy radio talk show. The radio planners are based in Pennsylvania, but once the show has been launched it will be offered to local radio stations across the United States.
Campaigners Go Ape Over Movie
The higly-publicized remake of Planet of the Apes hasn’t been greeted with universal joy. A campaign group known as the Great Ape Project (GAP), which is pressing to extend the concept of ‘human rights’ to cover apes too, is bursting with indignation. In a press release, they complain that “the film helps to perpetuate numerous misunderstandings and problems by featuring nonhuman great apes in a false light.” It goes on: “This mockery is reminiscent of racial jokes and films…Far from ruling the planet, nonhuman great apes are oppressed in almost every way imaginable. Some are … injected with viruses and toxic substances. Still others are kidnapped from their mothers as babies and forced to perform as ‘entertainers’ against their will. These conditions do not reflect the life of one who is in power.”
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