Fwd: Edge 221: LIFE: What a concept! An Edge Special Event

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Edge <editor@edge.org>
Date: 6 Sep 2007 22:20
Subject: Edge 221: LIFE: What a concept! An Edge Special Event
To: Rhys Evans <wheresrhys@gmail.com>

               "Life/Consists of propositions about life"
                - Wallace Stevens, "Men Made out of Words"

Edge 221
September 05, 2007

(5,000 words)

This online EDGE edition with streaming video is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge221.html

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THE THIRD CULTURE
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LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT!
An Edge Special Event at Eastover Farm

This year's Annual Edge Event took place at Eastover Farm in Bethlehem, CT on Monday, August 27th. Invited to address the topic "Life: What a Concept!" were Freeman Dyson, J. Craig Venter, George Church, Robert Shapiro, Dimitar Sasselov, and Seth Lloyd, who focused on their new, and in more than a few cases, startling research, and/or ideas in the biological sciences.

(EDGE video for each speaker)

A small group of journalists interested in the kind of issues that are explored on EDGE were present: Corey Powell,DISCOVER, Jordan Mejias,FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG, Heidi Ledford, MATURE, Greg Huang, NEW SCIENTIST, Deborah Treisman, NEW YORKER, Edward Rothstein, NEW YORK TIMES, Andrian Kreye, SUDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, Antonio Regalado, WALL STREET JOURNAL.

(NOTE: Over the weekend both FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG and SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG ran front page articles in their Feuilletons covering the event, Full translations are provided online.)

We are witnessing a point in which the empirical has intersected with the epistemological: everything becomes new, everything is up for grabs. Big questions are being asked, questions that affect the lives of everyone on the planet. And don't even try to talk about religion: the gods are gone.

Following the theme of new technologies=new perceptions, I asked the speakers to take a third culture slant in the proceedings and explore not only the science but the potential for changes in the intellectual landscape as well.

VIDEO: We are pleased to present streaming video clips from each of the talks (links below). During the fall season EDGE will publish features on each of the talks with complete texts and discussions.

[more]

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FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG
August 31, 2007
FEUILLETON - Front Page

Let's play God!; Life's questions: J. Craig Venter programs the future (Lasst uns Gott spielen!)
By Jordan Mejias

Was Evolution only an interlude?  At the invitation of John Brockman, science luminaries such as J. Craig Venter, Freeman Dyson, Seth Lloyd, Robert Shapiro and others discussed the question: What is Life?

[more]

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SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG
September 3, 2007
FEUILLETON - Front Page

DARWIN WAS JUST A PHASE
(Darwin war nur eine Phase)
By Andrian Kreye

Country Life in Connecticut: Six scientists find the future in genetic engineering

The origins of life were the subject of discussion on a summer day when six pioneers of science convened at Eastover Farm in Connecticut. The physicist and scientific theorist Freeman Dyson was the first of the speakers to talk on the theme: "Life: What a Concept!" An ironic slogan for one of the most complex problems. Seth Lloyd, quantum physicist at MIT, summed it up with his remark that scientists now know everything about the origin of the Universe and virtually nothing about the origin of life. Which makes it rather difficult to deal with the new world view currently taking shape in the wake of the emerging age of biology.

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THE REALITY CLUB

RICHARD DAWKINS-FREEMAN DYSON: AN EXCHANGE

RICHARD DAWKINS: ...I would say competition between genes within gene pools. The difference between those two ways of putting it is small compared with Dyson's howler (shared by most laymen: it is the howler that I wrote The Selfish Gene partly to dispel, and I thought I had pretty much succeeded, but Dyson obviously hasn't read it!) that natural selection is about the differential survival or extinction of species. ...[more]

FREEMAN DYSON: ...First response. What I wrote is not a howler and Dawkins is wrong. Species once established evolve very little, and the big steps in evolution mostly occur at speciation events when new species appear with new adaptations. ... [more]

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LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT!

FREEMAN DYSON

To me the most interesting question in biology has always been  how it all got started, so that has been a hobby of mine. And we're all equally ignorant as far as I can see which is why someone like me can pretend to be an expert. ... [more] - Streaming Video

J.CRAIG VENTER

I have come to think of life in much more a gene-centric view than even a genome-centric view, although it kind of oscillates.  And when we talk about the transplant work, genome-centric becomes more important than gene-centric. But we now have a pool, just from the first third of the expedition we discovered roughly 6 million new genes that doubled the number in the public databases when we put them in a few months ago, and we are probably a short ways from doubling that entire number again. ...[more] - Streaming Video

GEORGE CHURCH

Many of the people here worry about "What is life?" But maybe we need to view it in a slightly more general way-not just ribosomes, but inorganic life. Would we know it if we saw it? It's important as we go and discover other worlds, and as we start creating more complicated robots and so forth, to decide where do we draw the line. I think that's interesting. ...[more] - Streaming Video

ROBERT SHAPIRO

I looked at the papers published on the origin of life and decided that it was absurd, the thought that nature of its own volition putting together a DNA or RNA molelcule was unbelievable. I'm always running out of metaphors to try and explain what the difficulty is. ... [more] - Streaming Video

DITIMAR SASSELOV

We often imagine our place in the universe in the same way we experience our lives and the places we inhabit. We imagine a practically static eternal universe where we, and life in general, are born, grow up, and mature; we are merely one of numerous generations. ... This is so untrue! We now know that the universe is 14 and Earth life is 4 billion years old: life and the universe are almost peers. If the universe were a 55-year old, life would be a 16-year old teenager. The universe is nowhere close to being static and unchanging either.... [more] - Streaming Video

SETH LLOYD

Because the universe is, at bottom, processing information, simple systems such as atoms and molecules must necessarily give rise complex structures such as life, and life itself must give rise to even greater complexity, such as human beings, societies, and whatever comes next.... [more] - Streaming Video

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THIRD CULTURE NEWS
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J. CRAIG VENTER INSTITUTE
The first publication of a diploid human genome from one person
Press Release

... "Today, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute, along with collaborators from Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, the University of California, San Diego, and the Universidad de Barcelona in Spain have published the first diploid genome of an individual-Dr. Venter, in PLoS Biology. This analysis and assembly of the 20 billion base pairs of Dr. Venter's DNA is the first look at both sets of his chromosomes (one inherited from each of his parents) and has shown a greater degree and more kinds of genetic variation with human to human variation five to seven times greater than in previous genome analysis....

[More]
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PLOS BIOLOGY
The Diploid Genome Sequence of an Individual Human. Levy S, Sutton G, Ng PC, Feuk L, Halpern AL, et al.


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THE NEW YORK TIMES
September 4, 2007

In the Genome Race, the Sequel Is Personal
By Nicholas Wade

...But the loser in the race, Dr. Venter, could still have the last word. In a paper published today, his research team is announcing that it has decoded a new version of the human genome that some experts believe may be better than the consortium's....

[More]

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CNN
Genetic variation greater than expected

... The difference between then and now is that many of the questions today center on what you can learn from reading your genetic code and how soon they can get their genomes sequenced....

[More]

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SCIENCE
How to Build a Craig Venter
By Jon Cohen

...For the first time, researchers have published the DNA sequence from both sets of chromosomes in a single person. That person is none other than pioneering genome researcher J. Craig Venter. The new sequence suggests that there is substantially more variation between humans than previously recognized and pushes personalized medicine a step closer. ...

[More]

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THE GUARDIAN
DNA pioneer publishes own genome
Ian Sample, science correspondent

... Based on the study, the team concluded that genetic variation between humans is more than seven times greater than previously thought....

[More]

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XCONOMY | Kendall Square
August 30, 2007

Rubbing Elbows and Dodging Bees With Synthetic Biology Pioneer George Church
By Gregory T. Huang

...It all took place under a white tent on an impossibly pleasant late-summer day in the Connecticut countryside. We were hosted by the literary agent and cultural impresario John Brockman, who regularly brings together well-known visionaries and thinkers as part of his nonprofit Edge Foundation. ...

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EL NORTE - MEXICO
August 25, 2007

Tercera cultura y política
Alfonso Elizondo

...Para orientarse en los debates ecológicos, sobre el uso de las energías  disponibles y desde el punto de vista de la sustentabilidad, ayuda mucho la idea de la entropía descrita por Nicolás Georgescu-Roegen y Barry Commoner. Para entender a la ética ambientalista no antropocéntrica sirve mucho la comprensión de la teoría sintética de la evolución de S.J. Gould. Para justificar la defensa de la biodiversidad y de la igualdad social ayuda comprender la genética y la biología molecular de Dobzhansky, y para combatir el racismo y la xenofobia conviene conocer los trabajos de genética de poblaciones de Cavalli Sforza y de Jared Diamond. ...

[More]

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THE NEW YORK TIMES
August 28, 2007
SCIENCE TIMES

Through Analysis, Gut Reaction Gains Credibility
By Claudia Dreyfus

...Dr. Gigerenzer, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, is known in social science circles for his breakthrough studies on the nature of intuitive thinking. Before his research, this was a topic often dismissed as crazed superstition. Dr. Gigerenzer, 59, was able to show how aspects of intuition work and how ordinary people successfully use it in modern life....

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NEW SCIENTIST
August 26, 2007

Evidence for unified theory may lie in black holes
Zeeya Merali

That may not sound much, but Dirac originally envisaged magnetic monopoles as being a single point without volume. Davies believes that if magnetic monopoles have size, and therefore mass, then adding them to a black hole would increase its entropy, even if it is also shrinking ( www.arxiv.org/abs/0708.1783). "It turns out that there's a very subtle balance between these effects, which help to save the monopole," he says.

[More]

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NEW SCIENTIST
August 25, 2007

Editorial: The power of fiction

....We take worthy tomes on vacation, only to sneakily open up a Henry James or a Dan Brown when we get down to the beach. So why do we feel guilty? Why do we feel the need to justify those hours spent curled up with a good book? Why would Rebecca Goldstein, the lead essayist in this week's Science in Fiction special (see "Science in fiction: Essay by Rebecca Goldstein"), feel she needs to defend her life as a novelist?

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NEW SCIENTIST
August 25, 2007

Science in Fiction: Essay by Rebecca Goldstein

...Can we make art that reflects on the world with which we've been presented by our ever more powerful sciences? Can we explore what these discoveries mean in human terms? Richard Powers's The Time of Our Singing meditates on the non-linear notion of time in the very structure of the story he tells. I tried to do something similar in Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal and Quantum Physics, though, as the sub-title signals, I dwell more on the disruptions to our natural ways of thinking prompted by quantum mechanics, by ideas such as quantum non-locality and entanglement. ...

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NATURE
August 22, 2007

FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE

...What do Eric Lander, Frank Wilczek, James Randi and Martha Stewart have in common? The answer can be found at Nautilus ( http://tinyurl.com/35xbq9): all attended the recent Science Foo Camp, co-organized by Nature Publishing Group, O'Reilly Media and Google, and hosted at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California...

[More]

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VANITY FAIR
September, 2007

God Bless Me. It's a Best-Seller!
The author's book tour-for God Is Not Great-takes a few miraculous turns, including the P.R. boost from Jerry Falwell's demise, a chance encounter with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and surprising support for an attack on religion.

By Christopher Hitchens

[More]

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THE COLBERT REPORT
August 21, 2007

Dr. Michael Shermer

Is Michael Shermer, the publisher of skeptic Magazine, a professional buzz-kill?

[More]

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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
September 2007

SKEPTIC
Rational Atheism
An open letter to Messrs. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens

By Michael Shermer

...Whenever religious beliefs conflict with scientific facts or violate principles of political liberty, we must respond with appropriate aplomb. Nevertheless, we should be cautious about irrational exuberance. I suggest that we raise our consciousness one tier higher for the following reasons.

1. Anti-something movements by themselves will fail. Atheists cannot simply define themselves by what they do not believe. As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises warned his anti-Communist colleagues in the 1950s: "An anti-something movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be."...

[More]

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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
September 2007
ANTIGRAVITY

What's the Big Idea?
When the lightbulb above your head is truly incendiary

By Steve Mirsky

...The book includes 108 contributions, some of which go egghead-to-egghead. For example, physicist and computer scientist W. Daniel Hillis's dangerous idea is "the idea that we should all share our most dangerous ideas." Whereas psychologist Daniel Gilbert's dangerous idea is "the idea that ideas can be dangerous." I both agree and disagree with both....

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THE NEW YORK TIMES
August 21, 2007
SCIENCE TIMES

Sleights of Mind
Some magicians have intuitively mastered some of the lessons being learned in the laboratory about the limits of cognition and attention.

By George Johnson

...In his opening address, Michael Gazzaniga, the president of the consciousness association, had described another form of prestidigitation - a virtual reality experiment in which he had put on a pair of electronic goggles that projected the illusion of a deep hole opening in what he knew to be a solid concrete floor. Jolted by the adrenaline rush, his heart beat faster and his muscles tensed, a reminder that even without goggles the brain cobbles together a world from whatever it can..."In a sense our reality is virtual," Dr. Gazzaniga said. "Think about flying in an airplane. You're up there in an aluminum tube, 30,000 feet up, going 600 miles an hour, and you think everything is all right."...

[More]

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SLATE
August 18, 2007

THE UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST: THE ECONOMIC MYSTERIES OF DAILY LIFE

Milton Friedman, Meet Richard Feynman
How physics can explain why some countries are rich and others are poor.

By Tim Harford

If economics can tell us something useful about crime, marriage, or carpooling-as I believe it can-then other academic disciplines should have something to tell us about economies. Last month, Science published an example that may turn out to be important. Two physicists, Cesar Hidalgo and Albert-László Barabási, and two economists, Bailey Klinger and Ricardo Hausmann, have been drawing unusual pictures of economic "space" that promise a deeper understanding of the biggest question in economics: why poor countries are poor.

[More]

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NATURE
August 23, 2007
Correspondence

Scientists should unite against threat from religion
By Sam Harris

...At a time when Muslim doctors and engineers stand accused of attempting atrocities in the expectation of supernatural reward, when the Catholic Church still preaches the sinfulness of condom use in villages devastated by AIDS, when the president of the United States repeatedly vetoes the most promising medical research for religious reasons, much depends on the scientific community presenting a united front against the forces of unreason.

There are bridges and there are gangplanks, and it is the business of journals such as Nature to know the difference.

[More]
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NEW SCIENTIST
August 25, 2007

Comment: Atheism à la carte
Lawrence Krauss

But having said that, what on earth does Dawkins think his latest campaign will achieve? It seems to me to be as ill-advised as attempting to label atheists as "brights" - with its implication that those who are not atheists are dumb. Dawkins has a great record of using sound intellectual arguments to try to convince the faithful to abandon their faith and persuade non-believers to be open about their scepticism. But before embarking on this new effort to appeal to people's emotions, he might have been well advised to consult a public relations firm. The scarlet A is strongly reminiscent of the A for "adulterer" in Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel The Scarlet Letter. I don't know who thought that this, combined with the phrase "coming out" with its gay connotations, and references to a "Jewish lobby", would win hearts and minds in middle America, but I can't imagine that it will.

[More]

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SCIENCE
August 24, 2007

Sacred Barriers to Conflict Resolution
Scott Atran, Robert Axelrod, and Richard Davis

Efforts to resolve political conflicts or to counter political violence often assume that adversaries make rational choices (1). Ever since the end of the Second World War, "rational actor" models have dominated strategic thinking at all levels of government policy (2) and military planning (3). In the confrontations between nation states, and especially during the Cold War, these models were arguably useful in anticipating an array of challenges and in stabilizing world peace enough to prevent nuclear war. Now, however, we are witnessing "devoted actors" such as suicide terrorists (4), who are willing to make extreme sacrifices that are independent of, or all out of proportion to, likely prospects of success. Nowhere is this issue more pressing than in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute (5). The reality of extreme behaviors and intractability of political conflicts there and discord elsewhere--in the Balkans, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, and beyond--warrant research into the nature and depth of commitment to sacred values....

[More]
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This online EDGE edition is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge221.html
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EDGE

John Brockman, Editor and Publisher
Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher
Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant

Copyright (c) 2007 by EDGE Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022

EDGE Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private  operating foundation under
Section 501(c)(3) of  the Internal Revenue Code.
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