Science

Pluripotent Cells – Pluripotent Debate

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My husband has been getting after me since Christmas to read Rodney Stark’s The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. He was right: Stark’s argument makes sense of much in early American lit. (I’m only half way through.)

He argues Christianity encouraged reason, glorified reason because its believers had a powerful vision of life as purposeful and science as a study, undertaken with humility, of the grand mysteries of nature. Because they assumed it was done with purpose, they comforted themselves that their approach, too, was purposeful: the best way to glorify God was to study not only his word but the harmony & beauty of his creation. Science then was honored because it sought a logical, rational, exploration of what is. Some indeed many, as Stark observes religious beliefs are antithetical to science, but Christianity is not.

The self-righteous assumption of “reason” versus “irrational faith” is often a little irritating, but Stark would say it is also quite wrong. Many sneered that Bush’s position on stem cells was irrational – “faith-based.” This always bothered me. I didn’t share his assumptions, so I didn’t get very worked up about it. But I could see where it was coming from. And, given his assumptions debatable but not stupid ones his was a quite logical position. So, while this isn’t my cause, I was pleasantly surprised by this link to a report by Michael Fumento (thanks to Instapundit):

Yet it’s been virtually a state secret that for over five years researchers, beginning with a team headed by physician Catherine Verfaillie of the University of Minnesota Stem Cell Institute, have been reporting numerous types of adult stem cells (she used those from marrow) that in the lab could form mature cells from three germ layers. Experiments around the world have clearly shown that adult stem cells from one germ layer can be converted into those of another in a living human, such as those that have turned adipose tissue stem cells from the mesoderm germ layer into neuronal cells from the ectoderm among others but these are all germ layer. (It also produced bone; cartilage; skeletal; cardiac muscle; and blood cells – mesodermal.)

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Biopoetics: Brian Boyd Argues His Case

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Last June, Shannon Love began a post: “I am myself an agnostic and a rabid evolutionist,” moving on to describe how those beliefs help him structure his understanding in broad ways: “I am a free-market advocate and a Chicagoboy because I believe the free market is a Darwinian process that reaches better solutions quicker and less selfishly than political systems. In short, an evolutionary viewpoint forms the foundation of my entire world view.”

I thought of that when listening to Brian Boyd last fall; he gave a talk here and the small classroom that had been set aside couldn’t hold the audience, which spilled into the next room (the door was opened, so students could still peek at him) and into the hall. His literary criticism, like Joseph Carroll‘s, is best understood in the context of Pinker’s popular The Blank Slate. We listened to interpretations sensitive and wise. He described the bond of father and son as Odysseus held Telemachus to his chest (loving his child now a man, whom he had last seen suckling at his mother’s breast), the room was quiet: all recognized the power of a father’s love and of the art that communicates it. The biological informs & empowers the aesthetic – all lead to that breathless moment when we understand.

In his “Getting It All Wrong: Bioculture critiques Cultural Critique,” Boyd writes with a clarity and directed passion we are grateful for in literary criticism. Introduced in an earlier post, he teaches at the University of Auckland in New Zealand; his American Scholar essay was linked on Denis Dutton’s Arts & Letters Daily.

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Scientists I Should Know

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This is an awesome pdf if you are a scientist. It is a great graphical representation of how we in the modern world owe our standard of living to a remarkably few people. Lex and I have bantered about how the trust network of the Anglosphere is not necessary for science. It helps, it helps a hell of a lot, but it’s not necessary, or the Russians would have reverted back to the stone age in the USSR.

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Food for Thought

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The annual greatest – at least most numerous (158 Contributors) – glass is half full from Edge. I figure everyone will have different favorites & I’m certainly too tired to skim 110,000 words. But a glance shows it varies from J. Craig Ventor’s optimism that “Evidence-Based Decision Making Will Help Transform Society” to David Gelertner’s belief software is going to become immensely accessible. Of course, Pinker speaks on an old theme for him, but an important one, The Decline in Violence.

I’ve Got Your Methane Right Here, Pal

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A couple of observations on Global Warming brought on by a new-to-me blog Pseudo Polymath. First, he cites a Taipei Times article that reminds me of a journal article that I have in my office. It seems that when Mickey Ds changed over from the styrofoam shells to paper shells for their greaseball hamburgers, they negelected to account for the production energy costs of paper (high) versus styrofoam (low). The net result of the change was either a wash, or a net loss for the environment, depending upon which end of the error bar you take your figures from. Yet the eco-weenies hailed this as a victory.

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