WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.380 Good evening everyone and welcome to Designing the Universe at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas. 2 00:00:06.400 --> 00:00:07.400 We are not modest. 3 00:00:09.600 --> 00:00:18.040 I'm Warwick Fraser and it's my very pleasant task tonight, I think, simply to direct the intellectual traffic. 4 00:00:18.320 --> 00:00:22.880 I think I'll feel a bit like one of those traffic cops on an island in Malaysia 5 00:00:22.880 --> 00:00:27.260 where you're only safe if you're sort of standing there and everything else is whirling around you. 6 00:00:28.140 --> 00:00:31.500 I'd like you to welcome our guests. I'll introduce them individually later. 7 00:00:31.680 --> 00:00:34.100 But please could you welcome our five distinguished panellists. 8 00:00:41.940 --> 00:00:42.900 Designing the Universe. 9 00:00:44.740 --> 00:00:50.080 In 1816, a group of English expats were gathered together in Geneva. 10 00:00:50.380 --> 00:00:52.940 It was probably a night a bit like this, a bit cold. 11 00:00:53.460 --> 00:00:57.220 And one of them thought he'd devise a sort of a little festival. 12 00:00:57.260 --> 00:00:58.080 A mini festival of ideas. 13 00:00:58.420 --> 00:01:00.860 So he asked everyone if they would do something. 14 00:01:01.100 --> 00:01:03.140 Now the he was Lord Byron. 15 00:01:03.460 --> 00:01:08.840 And he asked his friends if they would write a ghost story to pass the time. 16 00:01:09.520 --> 00:01:10.420 And they did. 17 00:01:10.600 --> 00:01:15.980 And of course you'll know the ghost story that's come down to us, 18 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:19.980 the only one we remember of that night, was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. 19 00:01:21.560 --> 00:01:25.620 And when she wrote that story nearly 200 years ago, 20 00:01:26.500 --> 00:01:27.100 what she did... 21 00:01:27.260 --> 00:01:29.420 I think was let the genie out of the bottle, 22 00:01:29.540 --> 00:01:37.620 so that all of our folk fears and our folk hopes about science and technology were let loose. 23 00:01:37.700 --> 00:01:42.120 It was a rewrite of a Promethean creation myth. 24 00:01:42.300 --> 00:01:43.620 So it was enormously attractive. 25 00:01:44.020 --> 00:01:48.460 If you think about Frankenstein, what it does is, well, it fascinates us, 26 00:01:48.540 --> 00:01:53.340 because we love to think that we can design the universe, we can make life. 27 00:01:53.680 --> 00:01:55.440 It's a gothic horror story too. 28 00:01:55.520 --> 00:01:57.160 It's assembled of sort of sundry, 29 00:01:57.260 --> 00:02:02.680 body parts that Victor Frankenstein then, through medical magic, 30 00:02:02.960 --> 00:02:07.140 puts together, seams up in this ungainly way and animates. 31 00:02:09.040 --> 00:02:15.180 It taps into our deepest fears and our deepest hopes, as I said. 32 00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:16.880 And it's still with us. 33 00:02:16.960 --> 00:02:22.200 I mean, every kid, I think, has a Cornflakes box plastic figure 34 00:02:22.200 --> 00:02:26.900 that owes something to Frankenstein's tragic monster. 35 00:02:28.380 --> 00:02:34.720 And it's a story that contains and articulates our ambivalence 36 00:02:34.720 --> 00:02:39.520 and our fascination with, our ambivalence about and fascination with science 37 00:02:39.520 --> 00:02:41.360 and with technology. 38 00:02:42.540 --> 00:02:45.420 Can we design the universe? 39 00:02:45.520 --> 00:02:48.380 Can we use science to make us live forever? 40 00:02:48.520 --> 00:02:49.460 Can it fix everything? 41 00:02:49.880 --> 00:02:51.340 Will it get out of control? 42 00:02:51.460 --> 00:02:53.100 Have we ever been in control of it? 43 00:02:53.480 --> 00:02:56.100 How much control do we need to be? 44 00:02:56.600 --> 00:02:57.240 Can we... 45 00:02:57.240 --> 00:03:02.000 Can we design the world and the universe the way we do design genes? 46 00:03:02.740 --> 00:03:06.340 Now, they're the very simple questions that we put to our extremely eminent panel 47 00:03:06.340 --> 00:03:10.880 and we expect very straightforward answers from all of them. 48 00:03:11.360 --> 00:03:14.440 And by the end of the evening, a unified theory of everything. 49 00:03:15.980 --> 00:03:19.800 So let me now, with those sort of parameters drawn up, 50 00:03:20.680 --> 00:03:22.480 introduce them to you. 51 00:03:22.500 --> 00:03:23.760 Or perhaps I should say this first. 52 00:03:25.180 --> 00:03:26.560 Part of the fears... 53 00:03:27.440 --> 00:03:32.680 are balanced, I think, by some of the extraordinary kind of conflicts of hope. 54 00:03:33.040 --> 00:03:39.160 I mean, you will have noted recently that the leader of the most powerful democracy in the world, 55 00:03:39.200 --> 00:03:42.600 a democracy that may come to a place near you very soon, 56 00:03:45.640 --> 00:03:49.760 declared that we didn't really have to worry about putting bits and bridles 57 00:03:49.760 --> 00:03:53.740 on oil and fossil fuel emissions 58 00:03:53.740 --> 00:03:56.880 because basically we were going to use technology, 59 00:03:57.240 --> 00:03:58.820 to sort out global warming. 60 00:03:59.520 --> 00:04:02.340 So that's one extreme expression of the kind of hope 61 00:04:02.340 --> 00:04:04.260 that we vest in science and technology. 62 00:04:04.740 --> 00:04:08.420 But I don't have to spell out for you 63 00:04:08.420 --> 00:04:12.580 the balancing, counterbalancing fears that we also have. 64 00:04:12.660 --> 00:04:16.080 So that's the kind of territory that we're in tonight. 65 00:04:16.400 --> 00:04:22.140 And I can't imagine a better constellation of people 66 00:04:22.140 --> 00:04:24.700 to actually take this on, all of them, as I am not, 67 00:04:24.760 --> 00:04:27.140 as experts in science and their own areas. 68 00:04:28.400 --> 00:04:30.640 Let's start with physics. 69 00:04:31.380 --> 00:04:34.400 And our first speaker, Robert Matthews. 70 00:04:34.660 --> 00:04:38.520 If you've been lucky enough to have heard Robert over the last few days here at the conference, 71 00:04:38.620 --> 00:04:41.100 you will have caught something of the energy and enthusiasm 72 00:04:41.100 --> 00:04:44.360 that he brings to every aspect of science, 73 00:04:44.520 --> 00:04:47.340 whether it's the physics that he read at Oxford 74 00:04:47.340 --> 00:04:49.460 or the science that he now teaches 75 00:04:49.460 --> 00:04:51.400 or the science about which he writes. 76 00:04:52.820 --> 00:04:54.220 He's an award-winning journalist. 77 00:04:54.320 --> 00:04:56.660 He writes for the Sunday Telegraph, the Financial Times, 78 00:04:57.240 --> 00:04:58.320 and The New Scientist. 79 00:04:58.860 --> 00:05:01.740 Robert uses maths as a kind of probe 80 00:05:01.740 --> 00:05:06.320 to establish for himself a critical stance about science. 81 00:05:06.680 --> 00:05:09.460 He's a very straight speaker and a very fast speaker. 82 00:05:09.580 --> 00:05:11.840 Can I ask you to welcome Robert Matthews. 83 00:05:20.540 --> 00:05:22.080 Thanks very much, Maureen. 84 00:05:22.460 --> 00:05:24.740 I'm glad to see so many people out here tonight. 85 00:05:25.360 --> 00:05:27.220 It's a very calm... 86 00:05:27.240 --> 00:05:29.780 cold Adelaide winter's evening, 87 00:05:29.900 --> 00:05:34.080 but we'd be really glad of this in summer back in England, I tell you. 88 00:05:36.720 --> 00:05:37.860 Okay, so... 89 00:05:38.960 --> 00:05:40.960 One morning about 40 years ago, 90 00:05:42.140 --> 00:05:45.240 a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 91 00:05:45.240 --> 00:05:46.520 called Ed Lawrence 92 00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:50.980 took the most significant coffee break in scientific history. 93 00:05:52.060 --> 00:05:55.720 At the time, he was running a mathematical model, 94 00:05:55.860 --> 00:05:56.700 a toy model, 95 00:05:56.700 --> 00:05:59.800 of the climate captured by a few equations. 96 00:06:00.040 --> 00:06:00.840 Very simple thing. 97 00:06:00.920 --> 00:06:04.020 He was running it on an old-fashioned Royal McBee computer 98 00:06:04.020 --> 00:06:07.220 that was capable of about 10 calculations a second, 99 00:06:07.320 --> 00:06:10.160 about 100 million times slower than the thing 100 00:06:10.160 --> 00:06:12.400 that's doing your word processing these days. 101 00:06:13.260 --> 00:06:17.340 And after a while, he got bored with waiting for the computer 102 00:06:17.340 --> 00:06:18.600 to finish its calculations, 103 00:06:20.540 --> 00:06:23.180 looking at how conditions in the climate would change 104 00:06:23.180 --> 00:06:24.100 according to these equations. 105 00:06:24.220 --> 00:06:25.380 So he went off for a cup of coffee. 106 00:06:25.380 --> 00:06:28.040 When he came back, he saw that the computer 107 00:06:28.040 --> 00:06:30.420 had finished one set of calculations. 108 00:06:31.520 --> 00:06:35.100 So he thought, okay, I'll just go back a little bit 109 00:06:35.100 --> 00:06:36.320 to where it's finished, 110 00:06:36.940 --> 00:06:37.820 run the... 111 00:06:38.380 --> 00:06:40.920 see where it was about five minutes before, 112 00:06:41.660 --> 00:06:45.100 set the machine running back at those parameters 113 00:06:45.100 --> 00:06:46.600 and go off and have another cup of coffee. 114 00:06:47.020 --> 00:06:49.180 When he came back from his second cup of coffee, 115 00:06:49.300 --> 00:06:50.680 what he noticed was, 116 00:06:51.600 --> 00:06:53.800 although he'd put in exactly the same values 117 00:06:53.800 --> 00:06:55.220 as he had... 118 00:06:55.900 --> 00:06:57.220 as the machine had reached 119 00:06:57.220 --> 00:06:58.680 just before it had stopped, 120 00:06:58.940 --> 00:07:02.660 it had failed to retrace exactly the same steps 121 00:07:03.180 --> 00:07:04.500 of that last sequence 122 00:07:04.500 --> 00:07:07.060 and seemed to be going off in a completely different direction. 123 00:07:07.420 --> 00:07:09.500 And so he did what we all do to this day, 124 00:07:09.600 --> 00:07:10.540 he blamed the computer, 125 00:07:11.560 --> 00:07:14.120 and he looked at all the possible things 126 00:07:14.120 --> 00:07:15.300 that could've gone wrong with the computer, 127 00:07:15.420 --> 00:07:17.680 and the valves that operated it and all the other things, 128 00:07:17.800 --> 00:07:22.500 and then he couldn't reach any obvious cause 129 00:07:22.500 --> 00:07:25.360 for the reason it hadn't retraced its steps exactly, 130 00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:47.520 And then he realized that, incredibly, although he had put back the figures that the computer had picked out to about two places of decimals, rather than the sort of three or four that he had calculated them to, just by having that slight difference in accuracy had led the computer onto a completely different trajectory. 131 00:07:47.520 --> 00:07:55.960 Quite an extraordinary result, because in science up until then, the idea was that just small changes have small consequences. 132 00:07:56.380 --> 00:08:01.460 And what he discovered was the essence of what's now called chaos. 133 00:08:01.520 --> 00:08:16.300 The nonlinear, that means sort of complex interactions that were taking place in this very simple climate model were enough to generate this effect whereby just a small change in the initial conditions can make a big difference to the outcome. 134 00:08:17.900 --> 00:08:32.520 And ever since then, we've been aware of what Lawrence himself came to call the butterfly effect, which is, as he picturesquely put it in about 1972, that the idea that a single butterfly's wings flapping in Texas can trigger a typhoon on the other side of the world. 135 00:08:32.820 --> 00:08:41.480 And what we have since discovered since then is that nature is full of nonlinear systems where small differences don't necessarily produce small consequences. 136 00:08:41.840 --> 00:08:43.960 And we see these systems everywhere. 137 00:08:44.120 --> 00:08:47.300 But what concerns me in the question of whether we can design the universe. 138 00:08:47.520 --> 00:08:52.740 Is whether we've actually taken on board the lessons that were first made apparent in that coffee break. 139 00:08:53.400 --> 00:09:05.820 Like in economics in the 1970s, there was a big obsession amongst Eastern and Western economists in controlling the economy, pulling these different levers of interest rates and monetary supply and things like that. 140 00:09:06.580 --> 00:09:10.860 To try and get the economy to give the rate of growth that was required. 141 00:09:11.180 --> 00:09:16.660 And then sometime in the mid-70s, they hit into this phenomenon called stagflation, which was simultaneous. 142 00:09:16.720 --> 00:09:17.500 High efficiency. 143 00:09:17.520 --> 00:09:17.900 High inflation. 144 00:09:18.020 --> 00:09:18.820 And high unemployment. 145 00:09:19.260 --> 00:09:21.780 Not thought to be theoretically impossible. 146 00:09:22.800 --> 00:09:29.240 The result of nonlinear interactions in the economy that threw off all these predictions. 147 00:09:29.600 --> 00:09:39.640 In the life sciences, we've had a lot of interest recently in the genome, in mapping the genes that appear in the DNA of all sorts of living creatures. 148 00:09:39.900 --> 00:09:46.540 One of the most shocking discoveries there is that we have far fewer genes in our DNA. 149 00:09:46.640 --> 00:09:47.500 Look in our DNA. 150 00:09:47.520 --> 00:09:48.260 We have more genes in our DNA than we thought. 151 00:09:48.440 --> 00:09:52.100 And the differences between us and things like mice are very, very small. 152 00:09:52.340 --> 00:09:56.300 There are only 300 genes difference between us and a mouse. 153 00:09:56.640 --> 00:09:59.000 Now, I know, you know, a lot of us like cheese. 154 00:09:59.080 --> 00:10:03.020 And a lot of the time we think that our lives are a bit like running around all day on a treadmill. 155 00:10:03.340 --> 00:10:07.800 But the fact of the matter is that we are pretty noticeably different from mice. 156 00:10:07.860 --> 00:10:17.380 Yet according to this simplistic view of genes producing, coding for proteins and producing an end result, there's only 300 genes difference. 157 00:10:17.520 --> 00:10:23.980 Just less than 1% of our total, slightly more than 1% of our total gene count can create this huge difference. 158 00:10:24.280 --> 00:10:29.880 And what that's telling us is that in the genome, we're getting all sorts of nonlinear behavior. 159 00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:32.820 And the pharmaceutical industry is running into this problem now. 160 00:10:32.980 --> 00:10:41.400 Where for years, the standard way of deciding what's likely to be a good candidate drug is to test it on animals like mice. 161 00:10:44.740 --> 00:10:47.500 Mammals, sometimes higher price, not very often these days. 162 00:10:47.520 --> 00:10:51.300 And we do that and then we put it in humans. 163 00:10:51.440 --> 00:10:52.040 And what happens? 164 00:10:52.380 --> 00:10:58.140 90% of those candidate drugs just keel over and get nowhere when they're put in humans. 165 00:10:58.860 --> 00:11:08.440 These animal experiments, even though there's only like 300 genes difference between us and a mouse, the predictive value of these models is very limited. 166 00:11:08.620 --> 00:11:10.660 And then finally, you've got climate change. 167 00:11:11.260 --> 00:11:14.960 Where Lawrence showed that climate is a very nonlinear system. 168 00:11:15.540 --> 00:11:16.860 And so, you know, 169 00:11:16.860 --> 00:11:17.500 And so, you know, 170 00:11:17.520 --> 00:11:22.300 it raises questions about our ability to engineer the climate in the way that we want. 171 00:11:22.400 --> 00:11:29.800 And we're already seeing this appear in models of the climate that we're running on computers now, 172 00:11:29.940 --> 00:11:37.040 whereby the planet is heating under the warmth trapping effect of greenhouse gases. 173 00:11:37.400 --> 00:11:39.720 And so, you expect the planet to warm up, okay? 174 00:11:39.960 --> 00:11:41.300 Yeah, well, not in Britain. 175 00:11:42.240 --> 00:11:43.260 That's not going to happen. 176 00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:47.340 I mean, I don't know how we've wangled this, but one of these surprising nonlinear effects, 177 00:11:47.520 --> 00:11:55.620 is the effect that that heating of the atmosphere can have on oceanic circulation by an interaction with the polar ice cap, 178 00:11:55.760 --> 00:12:00.960 cold, fresh water going in, having effects on ocean currents that shifts the ocean currents, 179 00:12:01.120 --> 00:12:04.380 cuts down their ability to transfer heat up to our latitudes. 180 00:12:04.680 --> 00:12:08.380 Result, polar bears in Britain, in a hotter world. 181 00:12:08.540 --> 00:12:09.260 How is that possible? 182 00:12:09.400 --> 00:12:15.420 These are all warnings about the dangers of thinking that we can actually control what we, 183 00:12:15.540 --> 00:12:17.500 the consequences we get out of, 184 00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:20.940 of nonlinear systems that surround us in the natural world. 185 00:12:21.340 --> 00:12:32.140 So, in conclusion, I mean, I would wholeheartedly support Reinald Niebuhr's desire that we acquire the serenity 186 00:12:32.140 --> 00:12:37.040 to accept the things we cannot change and the courage to change the things that we can. 187 00:12:37.420 --> 00:12:41.280 But more than anything else, I think we need to acquire the wisdom to know the difference. 188 00:12:41.740 --> 00:12:42.700 Thanks very much. 189 00:12:49.160 --> 00:12:50.020 Thank you. 190 00:12:51.480 --> 00:12:51.920 Thank you. 191 00:12:51.920 --> 00:12:53.900 It's very becoming modest of you, Robert. 192 00:12:53.960 --> 00:12:54.640 Thank you very much. 193 00:12:55.040 --> 00:12:57.800 Our next speaker is David Chalmers. 194 00:12:58.200 --> 00:13:01.340 Now, Canberra's a pretty funny place, and that's where David is at the moment, 195 00:13:01.400 --> 00:13:05.220 but it doesn't really explain the funniness of Canberra, 196 00:13:05.220 --> 00:13:09.160 the fact that, oh, 12 months ago, maybe two years ago, in the middle of a freezing cold winter, 197 00:13:09.300 --> 00:13:17.620 I saw a theatre about this size, filled with people who came out to listen to a philosopher talk about metaphysics. 198 00:13:17.700 --> 00:13:18.980 He was also talking about the matrix, 199 00:13:19.080 --> 00:13:19.920 but that was David. 200 00:13:20.020 --> 00:13:20.440 David Chalmers. 201 00:13:20.900 --> 00:13:22.380 Very interesting phenomenon. 202 00:13:22.680 --> 00:13:28.360 All these kids coming out to listen to a philosopher in the freezing cold Canberra winter. 203 00:13:30.280 --> 00:13:32.260 David's now a professor of philosophy. 204 00:13:32.580 --> 00:13:34.340 He's a Federation fellow. 205 00:13:34.580 --> 00:13:38.460 He's taken up that Federation fellowship in Canberra, so we got him back. 206 00:13:38.680 --> 00:13:46.440 But previously, he'd been in Arizona, where he headed up the Center for Consciousness Studies. 207 00:13:47.420 --> 00:13:49.540 He began here in Adelaide, studied maths. 208 00:13:50.020 --> 00:13:52.700 And then, as a Rhodes Scholar, went to Oxford. 209 00:13:53.200 --> 00:13:59.900 He's famous for a book called The Conscious Mind, in search of a fundamental theory. 210 00:14:00.660 --> 00:14:06.020 And I think notorious for the enthusiasm with which he attacks absolutely everything. 211 00:14:06.320 --> 00:14:07.220 David Chalmers. 212 00:14:15.360 --> 00:14:17.340 Thanks, Morag. 213 00:14:18.460 --> 00:14:19.300 Good to see you. 214 00:14:20.020 --> 00:14:23.240 Actually, it's good timing being on this session tonight. 215 00:14:24.400 --> 00:14:28.040 Because just last night, as it happens, I was designing a universe. 216 00:14:30.840 --> 00:14:32.820 Actually, it wasn't so much me. 217 00:14:33.240 --> 00:14:35.840 It was more my five-year-old nephew, Tom. 218 00:14:37.600 --> 00:14:42.560 I went round to dinner at my brother's house in Unley Park. 219 00:14:43.180 --> 00:14:44.080 Had a nice dinner. 220 00:14:44.180 --> 00:14:45.180 After dinner, Tom said, 221 00:14:45.420 --> 00:14:48.380 Uncle Dave, come along. I've got to show you this cool new game. 222 00:14:48.380 --> 00:14:53.700 It was SimCity 4 on the PC. 223 00:14:54.040 --> 00:14:55.320 He said, OK, look, here's what we do. 224 00:14:56.040 --> 00:14:58.860 He got it out, and there was a whole world before us. 225 00:14:58.920 --> 00:15:00.460 There's an island, an ocean. 226 00:15:00.720 --> 00:15:01.460 And he said, OK. 227 00:15:02.580 --> 00:15:15.480 He started setting up some hills, some mountains, and some valleys, some trees, some farms, some towns, some roads. 228 00:15:15.540 --> 00:15:18.360 He was designing a whole universe before him. 229 00:15:18.360 --> 00:15:20.440 And this went on for 15 or 20 minutes. 230 00:15:20.680 --> 00:15:23.320 And then he said, now we get to the fun part. 231 00:15:24.060 --> 00:15:34.980 And then he went down to another panel, and he found the volcanoes, the meteors, the fires, the floods, the tornadoes. 232 00:15:35.160 --> 00:15:38.360 And so he just brought it all crashing down. 233 00:15:39.920 --> 00:15:42.720 Well, finally I understand the God of the Old Testament. 234 00:15:48.980 --> 00:15:52.180 So, OK, it was just SimCity. 235 00:15:53.140 --> 00:15:54.500 It wasn't SimUniverse. 236 00:15:55.240 --> 00:15:59.000 But we're going to have SimUniverse before too long, I guess. 237 00:15:59.060 --> 00:16:02.140 They started off with SimCity a while back. 238 00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:04.500 Then it was SimLife, The Sims. 239 00:16:05.740 --> 00:16:11.080 Simulated universes aren't, I think, too far away in the grand scheme of things. 240 00:16:11.480 --> 00:16:15.240 And I submit to you that if we're going to be designing universes, 241 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:19.640 that's the way that we're going to end up doing it. 242 00:16:19.700 --> 00:16:23.860 Our universe, as all of us know, is hard enough to control. 243 00:16:24.060 --> 00:16:27.360 Not too much you can do about the laws of physics. 244 00:16:27.640 --> 00:16:31.680 Not all that much you can do about the body and the brain and so on. 245 00:16:31.740 --> 00:16:37.000 Maybe we can fiddle with it in delicate ways and over time make some changes. 246 00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:44.460 But the domain where we have control, where we have more or less complete control, is information technology. 247 00:16:44.680 --> 00:16:45.220 Because it's a domain. 248 00:16:45.240 --> 00:16:52.320 Computation, by its nature, is flexible, reconfigurable, and controllable. 249 00:16:52.620 --> 00:16:57.860 So, before long, there's going to be the possibility before us 250 00:16:57.860 --> 00:17:02.640 that we're going to be designing complete computational worlds. 251 00:17:02.940 --> 00:17:06.720 Worlds with, perhaps, their own physics, with their own biology, 252 00:17:06.840 --> 00:17:13.480 with systems within them like suns, planets, biological evolution, 253 00:17:13.480 --> 00:17:18.680 simulated biological evolution, and perhaps even simulated creatures, 254 00:17:18.980 --> 00:17:20.920 like you and like me. 255 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:23.480 And at the beginning, this is going to be like SimCity, 256 00:17:24.020 --> 00:17:26.460 a mere entertainment, perhaps. 257 00:17:26.680 --> 00:17:29.540 But it's not always going to be a mere entertainment. 258 00:17:30.340 --> 00:17:33.300 And somewhere down the line, we're going to be faced with the question, 259 00:17:33.400 --> 00:17:35.420 just say things happen in our universe, 260 00:17:36.120 --> 00:17:40.440 our universe no longer becomes a completely desirable place to inhabit, 261 00:17:40.620 --> 00:17:42.340 if, you know, fuels run out, 262 00:17:42.340 --> 00:17:47.080 if we devastate it through war, which is not at all impossible, 263 00:17:47.680 --> 00:17:48.840 we're going to be faced with a choice. 264 00:17:49.400 --> 00:17:54.480 Do we want to inhabit a designed universe like this, a simulated universe? 265 00:17:55.180 --> 00:17:57.680 And, you know, we're in effect going to have the choice. 266 00:17:57.980 --> 00:18:00.720 Do we want to enter the matrix? 267 00:18:01.000 --> 00:18:02.200 Of course, you know, and the matrix, 268 00:18:03.360 --> 00:18:05.900 this matrix that we might design is going to have, you know, 269 00:18:05.940 --> 00:18:06.820 it could be a wonderful world. 270 00:18:07.300 --> 00:18:12.060 It could be designed and developed to be the world, 271 00:18:12.060 --> 00:18:15.000 exactly as we wish it to be. 272 00:18:15.140 --> 00:18:16.700 You know, kind of like our world, 273 00:18:16.740 --> 00:18:18.200 with many of the beautiful features of our world, 274 00:18:18.280 --> 00:18:20.200 but the sunsets will be even pinker, 275 00:18:20.320 --> 00:18:23.820 and the hills will be even greener, and so on. 276 00:18:23.920 --> 00:18:27.740 And without any of the, without so many of the difficult features of our world, 277 00:18:27.780 --> 00:18:32.400 like, you know, old age, and death, taxes, and so on. 278 00:18:33.840 --> 00:18:36.280 And we're going to be faced with the choice. 279 00:18:36.400 --> 00:18:39.540 Who's going to enter the matrix? 280 00:18:39.640 --> 00:18:41.600 I think this is going to be a pretty serious choice. 281 00:18:42.160 --> 00:18:43.520 I'm going to put up my hand and say, 282 00:18:44.520 --> 00:18:47.060 given the choice in an appropriately designed universe, 283 00:18:47.780 --> 00:18:52.880 I would actually think pretty seriously about entering a designed universe. 284 00:18:53.040 --> 00:18:54.000 Some people hate the idea. 285 00:18:54.080 --> 00:18:56.700 They think it would be a life without meaning, 286 00:18:56.880 --> 00:18:58.720 a life that's purely empty. 287 00:18:58.880 --> 00:19:01.960 But I think if we set up a universe set up in the right way, 288 00:19:02.040 --> 00:19:03.900 a virtual reality set up in the right way, 289 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:06.480 with a clear, open future, not under our control, 290 00:19:08.340 --> 00:19:09.960 but full of play and possibility, 291 00:19:10.420 --> 00:19:11.860 it could be a world, 292 00:19:11.860 --> 00:19:14.120 where we could live a very rich and meaningful life. 293 00:19:14.220 --> 00:19:15.560 So I put that on the table for you, 294 00:19:15.620 --> 00:19:19.540 as one interesting question to ask about designing a universe. 295 00:19:19.680 --> 00:19:21.960 Is this a future that's worth contemplating, 296 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:23.780 or a future too horrifying to consider? 297 00:19:23.880 --> 00:19:28.420 The other, the other place where information technology enters here, 298 00:19:28.520 --> 00:19:31.540 is in the possibility of designing people. 299 00:19:32.960 --> 00:19:34.800 We're people. Were we designed? Who knows? 300 00:19:36.680 --> 00:19:39.340 But, yeah, artificial intelligence is, as yet, 301 00:19:39.420 --> 00:19:40.860 in a pretty primitive stage, 302 00:19:41.040 --> 00:19:43.840 but, you know, this isn't always going to be so. 303 00:19:43.940 --> 00:19:46.380 Somewhere down the line, we're going to reach the point 304 00:19:47.040 --> 00:19:49.800 where we can design creatures, say, artificial brains, 305 00:19:50.040 --> 00:19:52.380 which have something like the complexity of our own, 306 00:19:52.420 --> 00:19:55.540 perhaps through a process of artificial evolution. 307 00:19:55.860 --> 00:19:59.100 I think this is probably going to be the way we end up getting there. 308 00:19:59.180 --> 00:20:02.200 Get the computer up and running through a process of natural selection, 309 00:20:02.380 --> 00:20:04.180 the way it got going in our world, 310 00:20:04.260 --> 00:20:08.700 get the systems competing with each other at the end of the day, 311 00:20:10.020 --> 00:20:11.020 through survival of the human race, 312 00:20:11.040 --> 00:20:12.920 through the fittest reproduction with variation and so on. 313 00:20:13.100 --> 00:20:14.740 Maybe there's going to be a system design 314 00:20:14.740 --> 00:20:17.520 which is smarter than anything, you know, 315 00:20:17.520 --> 00:20:19.480 we could come up with directly ourselves. 316 00:20:19.860 --> 00:20:21.040 And this is going to raise the question. 317 00:20:21.240 --> 00:20:25.080 What happens when these computers get to be as smart as we are? 318 00:20:25.320 --> 00:20:28.800 When these artificial people get to be as smart as we are? 319 00:20:28.880 --> 00:20:31.500 Because, of course, you know, the moment they're as smart as we are, 320 00:20:31.540 --> 00:20:33.760 a second later, they're smarter than we are. 321 00:20:34.220 --> 00:20:35.500 And once they're smarter than we are, 322 00:20:35.560 --> 00:20:38.480 they're also a bit better at designing computers than we are. 323 00:20:39.300 --> 00:20:41.020 So they can design a genus of a human, 324 00:20:41.040 --> 00:20:44.720 a generation of computers that's a bit better than the generation we design, 325 00:20:44.840 --> 00:20:45.980 namely that's a bit better than themselves, 326 00:20:46.300 --> 00:20:48.200 before long, you see how it goes, 327 00:20:48.360 --> 00:20:50.740 the runaway, the Frankenstein. 328 00:20:50.800 --> 00:20:54.120 This is the Frankenstein of the 21st or the 22nd century. 329 00:20:54.400 --> 00:20:56.580 And this is a possibility we have to envisage too. 330 00:20:57.200 --> 00:20:59.380 And I think, you know, it's obviously a possibility 331 00:20:59.380 --> 00:21:00.940 that we're going to have to think about pretty seriously. 332 00:21:00.980 --> 00:21:04.360 Not yet, but when the point gets here. 333 00:21:04.440 --> 00:21:06.540 I think we might well want to start thinking about the possibility 334 00:21:06.540 --> 00:21:10.320 of not, once the point gets there, designing, for example, robots. 335 00:21:11.040 --> 00:21:12.780 That will be competing with us for resources. 336 00:21:12.980 --> 00:21:15.080 But of designing artificial intelligences 337 00:21:15.080 --> 00:21:16.720 that inhabit their own universe, 338 00:21:16.940 --> 00:21:20.040 a virtual universe, the matrix, and so on. 339 00:21:20.100 --> 00:21:23.380 That way, these artificial creatures, these designed people, 340 00:21:23.500 --> 00:21:25.800 can inhabit their own worlds, 341 00:21:25.920 --> 00:21:29.200 free to consume its resources, live in it as they please, 342 00:21:29.320 --> 00:21:30.840 will inhabit our world, 343 00:21:30.980 --> 00:21:33.680 and perhaps there'll be some possibility for coexistence. 344 00:21:33.940 --> 00:21:37.860 Finally, having put these possibilities on the table for you, 345 00:21:38.560 --> 00:21:39.480 designed universes, 346 00:21:39.480 --> 00:21:41.000 designed people, 347 00:21:41.180 --> 00:21:43.500 I'd at least want to, you know, raise the question. 348 00:21:44.740 --> 00:21:46.120 In the history of the universe, 349 00:21:46.260 --> 00:21:49.720 there may be many of these designed universes. 350 00:21:50.380 --> 00:21:53.060 There may be many designed people. 351 00:21:53.260 --> 00:21:56.360 In an appropriately complex and long-living universe, 352 00:21:56.620 --> 00:21:59.080 you might expect there'll be many, many civilizations, 353 00:21:59.480 --> 00:22:03.320 each of which attains the capacity to design universes, 354 00:22:03.660 --> 00:22:06.840 each of which ends up designing universes left and right 355 00:22:06.840 --> 00:22:09.460 in their own, on their computers. 356 00:22:09.480 --> 00:22:11.660 In their spare time, and so on. 357 00:22:11.660 --> 00:22:13.180 Each of which ends up designing people. 358 00:22:13.420 --> 00:22:14.560 Of course, each of these designed universes 359 00:22:14.560 --> 00:22:17.000 will have their own designed and simulated universes. 360 00:22:17.340 --> 00:22:18.220 And so on. 361 00:22:18.260 --> 00:22:20.460 Universes within universes within universes. 362 00:22:20.680 --> 00:22:21.620 Turtles all the way down. 363 00:22:23.360 --> 00:22:24.760 You then raise the question here. 364 00:22:24.880 --> 00:22:26.740 Billions and billions of simulated worlds. 365 00:22:27.020 --> 00:22:29.340 Billions and billions of simulated people. 366 00:22:30.400 --> 00:22:33.480 Just one level zero real world. 367 00:22:33.660 --> 00:22:36.420 Just a few level zero real people. 368 00:22:37.920 --> 00:22:39.080 I ask you, look around. 369 00:22:39.480 --> 00:22:42.440 What are the chances that we're one of the lucky ones? 370 00:22:42.800 --> 00:22:45.860 What are the chances that we're at level zero? 371 00:22:46.160 --> 00:22:48.940 So, you know, maybe this is a question to leave ourselves with. 372 00:22:49.060 --> 00:22:51.600 Is it possible that this is us? 373 00:22:51.620 --> 00:22:54.540 That we're living in a designed, simulated universe? 374 00:22:54.620 --> 00:22:57.100 That we are ourselves designed people? 375 00:22:58.140 --> 00:23:00.360 I don't think this is a possibility we can rule out. 376 00:23:00.440 --> 00:23:04.060 I think it may even be on some reflections quite likely. 377 00:23:05.540 --> 00:23:07.960 This, I think, leads to an interesting take on theology. 378 00:23:08.260 --> 00:23:09.340 Think of this as a... 379 00:23:09.480 --> 00:23:12.800 Think of this as a new spin on the way the world got created. 380 00:23:12.920 --> 00:23:15.300 We're used to the idea that our world was created and designed. 381 00:23:15.940 --> 00:23:17.440 Here we have a new creation myth. 382 00:23:17.540 --> 00:23:20.000 A creation myth for the information age. 383 00:23:20.980 --> 00:23:24.620 Our universe got created, simulated, designed, of course. 384 00:23:25.960 --> 00:23:27.880 This is a new take, though, on the god of our world. 385 00:23:27.980 --> 00:23:28.500 It may not be... 386 00:23:28.500 --> 00:23:30.760 The god of our world, let's reflect, 387 00:23:30.840 --> 00:23:34.360 may not end up being the guy sitting in the white chair 388 00:23:34.360 --> 00:23:36.500 with the white beard up in heaven. 389 00:23:37.900 --> 00:23:39.140 Let's at least think about the possibility 390 00:23:39.480 --> 00:23:41.260 that the guy in the next universe up may be a hacker 391 00:23:41.260 --> 00:23:42.360 sitting at his computer. 392 00:23:42.460 --> 00:23:44.220 It might even be my five-year-old nephew, Tom. 393 00:23:44.820 --> 00:23:45.560 Thanks very much. 394 00:23:47.060 --> 00:23:47.440 APPLAUSE 395 00:23:54.100 --> 00:23:55.020 Thanks, David. 396 00:23:58.860 --> 00:24:01.560 If you've been listening to the ABC any time in the last, 397 00:24:01.720 --> 00:24:03.660 oh, I don't know, 18 months, 398 00:24:03.920 --> 00:24:07.780 it's very likely that you would have heard Susan Greenfield 399 00:24:07.780 --> 00:24:08.980 talking in her... 400 00:24:08.980 --> 00:24:14.260 ..clearly and incisively about science and about medicine. 401 00:24:14.800 --> 00:24:16.560 And we'll be hearing a lot more 402 00:24:16.560 --> 00:24:19.840 through the Thinkers in Residence program in South Australia. 403 00:24:20.300 --> 00:24:22.760 Professor Susan Greenfield, she's a neuroscientist, 404 00:24:22.820 --> 00:24:26.460 she's the director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 405 00:24:26.460 --> 00:24:29.500 and she's professor of pharmacology at Oxford. 406 00:24:30.580 --> 00:24:32.000 She's also an Oxford graduate. 407 00:24:32.180 --> 00:24:35.640 She's worked in France, in the USA, in the UK, 408 00:24:35.760 --> 00:24:37.880 and in the course of that work, 409 00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:38.460 she's... 410 00:24:39.200 --> 00:24:41.220 ..gathered up, like some of us do, luggage. 411 00:24:42.860 --> 00:24:44.380 21 honorary degrees. 412 00:24:45.320 --> 00:24:47.680 She's worked a lot with Alzheimer's disease. 413 00:24:48.000 --> 00:24:51.240 She's also one of those sort of science entrepreneurs 414 00:24:51.240 --> 00:24:53.900 and communicators par excellence. 415 00:24:54.020 --> 00:24:58.200 And one of the ways in which people's fears about science 416 00:24:58.200 --> 00:25:02.060 is allayed if the communicators are good and quick and incisive. 417 00:25:02.560 --> 00:25:05.100 She's worked with government. 418 00:25:06.160 --> 00:25:07.800 She's active in science policy. 419 00:25:07.800 --> 00:25:10.200 She's a consultant at 10 Downing Street. 420 00:25:10.340 --> 00:25:12.920 And she's currently heading a government task force 421 00:25:12.920 --> 00:25:16.580 investigating the problem of women in science. 422 00:25:17.640 --> 00:25:21.520 She was granted a life peerage in 2001 423 00:25:21.520 --> 00:25:23.020 and she's been awarded the CBE. 424 00:25:23.420 --> 00:25:24.560 Susan Greenfield. 425 00:25:26.060 --> 00:25:26.780 APPLAUSE 426 00:25:28.800 --> 00:25:28.960 APPLAUSE 427 00:25:30.580 --> 00:25:31.300 APPLAUSE 428 00:25:32.660 --> 00:25:33.380 OK. 429 00:25:34.060 --> 00:25:34.780 APPLAUSE 430 00:25:35.760 --> 00:25:36.960 Good evening. 431 00:25:37.460 --> 00:25:40.860 Before I start, just to follow on from David's superb presentation, 432 00:25:41.140 --> 00:25:43.040 I'd like to recommend to you a writer, 433 00:25:43.060 --> 00:25:44.340 someone you may know called Borges. 434 00:25:44.420 --> 00:25:45.180 I don't know if you know Borges. 435 00:25:45.800 --> 00:25:48.480 Who actually wrote a short story about a man 436 00:25:48.480 --> 00:25:51.060 who met someone who dreamt a dream of a man 437 00:25:51.060 --> 00:25:53.040 and then, of course, he himself, the narrator, 438 00:25:53.160 --> 00:25:56.080 ended up being a figment of somebody else's dream. 439 00:25:56.240 --> 00:25:57.820 So it's a rather nice idea. 440 00:25:59.140 --> 00:26:00.900 Again, quoting other people, 441 00:26:02.240 --> 00:26:04.140 really what's put me in mind this evening, this debate, 442 00:26:04.160 --> 00:26:06.820 is of Carl Sagan, now sadly dead, 443 00:26:06.820 --> 00:26:08.340 an astronomer who said, 444 00:26:08.460 --> 00:26:13.480 it is suicide to live in a society dependent on science and technology 445 00:26:14.160 --> 00:26:18.800 where virtually no-one understands anything about science and technology. 446 00:26:19.440 --> 00:26:22.240 And I think the first point I want to make 447 00:26:22.240 --> 00:26:24.960 is perhaps the basic premise that scientists on the whole 448 00:26:24.960 --> 00:26:26.980 are not out to design universes, 449 00:26:27.620 --> 00:26:29.480 they're not architects of grand design. 450 00:26:29.520 --> 00:26:32.700 They know a very narrow range of specialised facts 451 00:26:32.700 --> 00:26:34.740 and they're so busy getting grants to get funding 452 00:26:34.740 --> 00:26:36.140 for those specialised facts in the research. 453 00:26:36.820 --> 00:26:39.340 That having the grand scope of designing universes, 454 00:26:39.760 --> 00:26:42.180 and I use universe here in a metaphorical way, of course, 455 00:26:42.220 --> 00:26:45.280 meaning to have a grand sweep of power, 456 00:26:45.780 --> 00:26:48.200 is usually not on their horizons at all. 457 00:26:48.260 --> 00:26:50.180 I'd like to challenge anyone here, perhaps in the Q&A, 458 00:26:50.280 --> 00:26:53.680 to name one scientist who would be a candidate for universe designer. 459 00:26:54.360 --> 00:26:56.060 I myself can't think of any. 460 00:26:56.520 --> 00:26:59.500 But rather, I think it's important that we are here this evening 461 00:26:59.500 --> 00:27:02.560 because it does raise the critical issue of the perception of scientists 462 00:27:03.360 --> 00:27:05.540 by everyone else, and not least the media. 463 00:27:05.740 --> 00:27:06.760 And I think this is important. 464 00:27:06.760 --> 00:27:08.160 Because we have a choice, really. 465 00:27:08.520 --> 00:27:11.940 We are living in a society dependent on science and technology. 466 00:27:12.120 --> 00:27:13.020 It's not going to go away. 467 00:27:13.460 --> 00:27:16.360 We can't suddenly go back to a world that never was, 468 00:27:16.440 --> 00:27:19.360 where no one died in childbirth, no one had toothache, 469 00:27:19.460 --> 00:27:21.400 everyone lived to a ripe old age. 470 00:27:21.480 --> 00:27:24.740 There was soft brass band music coming in perpetually from outside. 471 00:27:24.920 --> 00:27:27.820 We all lived in nice thatched cottages that of course didn't leak. 472 00:27:28.340 --> 00:27:30.280 Everyone was warm, everyone was well fed. 473 00:27:31.080 --> 00:27:33.920 This is the kind of dream, dare I say it, of the heir to the throne. 474 00:27:34.100 --> 00:27:36.740 As though the evil scientists then came in, 475 00:27:36.760 --> 00:27:40.520 and the brass band music stopped, and the soft music faded, 476 00:27:40.600 --> 00:27:45.200 and suddenly you have this dysfunctional nerd in a white coat trying to take over. 477 00:27:46.280 --> 00:27:47.320 We have a choice. 478 00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:49.140 Now let's get to reality. 479 00:27:49.360 --> 00:27:54.240 We have a choice in reality, which is either we sleepwalk into nanotechnology 480 00:27:54.760 --> 00:27:56.780 and biotechnology and information technology, 481 00:27:57.120 --> 00:28:00.740 all these amazing yet very, very potent technologies 482 00:28:00.740 --> 00:28:02.540 which are coming thick and fast at us now, 483 00:28:02.660 --> 00:28:04.460 which are really the products of the basic science 484 00:28:04.460 --> 00:28:06.740 done in actually the first half of the world. 485 00:28:06.760 --> 00:28:09.020 The 20th century, the products of quantum theory, many of them. 486 00:28:09.680 --> 00:28:12.860 We're now reaping the harvest of that, and it's our choice. 487 00:28:12.920 --> 00:28:14.420 We either sleepwalk into these things, 488 00:28:15.080 --> 00:28:17.100 find we have a world we don't want to live in, 489 00:28:17.240 --> 00:28:19.380 cry foul and point the finger at the scientist, 490 00:28:20.140 --> 00:28:22.740 or we gather together on events like this evening 491 00:28:22.740 --> 00:28:25.460 and we decide what kind of world do we want collectively. 492 00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:28.540 And then we ask the scientist, or we ask science and technology, 493 00:28:28.780 --> 00:28:30.260 please deliver this to us. 494 00:28:30.900 --> 00:28:33.740 And I'd like to obviously commend the latter over the former. 495 00:28:34.280 --> 00:28:36.660 Obviously this is a wide area, and I thought I'd take two examples. 496 00:28:37.120 --> 00:28:38.580 A specific and a general. 497 00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:41.640 The specific one is my own area. 498 00:28:41.860 --> 00:28:43.500 We were advised that perhaps people 499 00:28:43.500 --> 00:28:45.760 like to hear about the actual things we were doing, 500 00:28:45.840 --> 00:28:50.180 as opposed to just sort of arm-waving in great generalities. 501 00:28:50.540 --> 00:28:53.200 I'm very delighted to be able to have a platform to talk for five minutes, 502 00:28:53.260 --> 00:28:54.580 or however many minutes I've got left, 503 00:28:55.620 --> 00:28:57.540 on my own work on neurodegeneration, 504 00:28:57.640 --> 00:29:00.260 because I think this is something that everyone is scared of 505 00:29:00.260 --> 00:29:01.580 and everyone is intrigued by. 506 00:29:01.640 --> 00:29:04.420 And it's a very good example of what scientists are really doing, 507 00:29:04.940 --> 00:29:06.480 rather than sitting back trying to plan 508 00:29:06.760 --> 00:29:07.740 how they're going to take over the world. 509 00:29:08.580 --> 00:29:12.120 It's more the kinds of issues that we are trying to tackle which are upon us. 510 00:29:12.200 --> 00:29:15.620 Because one of the marvelous benefits of this society 511 00:29:15.620 --> 00:29:17.120 is that we're all living longer. 512 00:29:17.260 --> 00:29:19.340 People are giving up smoking, they're having a healthy diet, 513 00:29:19.500 --> 00:29:21.620 we're eradicating lots of diseases. 514 00:29:22.340 --> 00:29:24.540 The wonders of medical technology enable 515 00:29:24.540 --> 00:29:28.560 at least areas of the body below the eyebrows to be transplanted 516 00:29:28.560 --> 00:29:29.680 with increased facility. 517 00:29:29.940 --> 00:29:30.620 You might not like that, 518 00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:32.880 but it's obviously a better alternative to death. 519 00:29:33.700 --> 00:29:35.800 Which means that we're all aging. 520 00:29:35.800 --> 00:29:36.980 And as we are aging, 521 00:29:37.100 --> 00:29:39.440 the diseases of old age are coming more to the fore. 522 00:29:39.860 --> 00:29:41.940 In my mother's day, in the middle of the 20th century, 523 00:29:42.160 --> 00:29:43.720 no one had heard of Alzheimer's disease. 524 00:29:44.040 --> 00:29:47.100 One was frightened of cancer or tuberculosis. 525 00:29:47.180 --> 00:29:48.980 You weren't frightened of neurodegenerative diseases. 526 00:29:49.200 --> 00:29:51.060 That phrase just wasn't on anyone's lips at all. 527 00:29:51.080 --> 00:29:51.760 No one knew what it meant. 528 00:29:52.060 --> 00:29:54.300 But now, as soon as I say I work on Alzheimer's disease, 529 00:29:54.880 --> 00:29:57.520 people always say, suddenly, you can hear the catch of a breath, 530 00:29:57.520 --> 00:29:59.020 are you any nearer to getting a cure? 531 00:30:00.180 --> 00:30:02.040 Because clearly this is something we all fear. 532 00:30:02.080 --> 00:30:05.100 We fear it more than cancer or heart disease, I think, 533 00:30:05.100 --> 00:30:08.040 because although cancer and heart disease are very serious illnesses, 534 00:30:08.100 --> 00:30:11.120 of course, they do not take away your personality. 535 00:30:11.500 --> 00:30:15.640 And I think people fear Alzheimer's inordinately more than other diseases 536 00:30:15.640 --> 00:30:17.880 because you feel you're being dismantled as a person. 537 00:30:17.940 --> 00:30:20.680 You feel it's targeting the very thing you hold most dear, 538 00:30:20.820 --> 00:30:24.680 which is your personality, yourself, the essence of you. 539 00:30:25.320 --> 00:30:27.440 Now, of course, I can't, in the short time remaining, 540 00:30:28.060 --> 00:30:29.900 and given I'm going to talk about something else as well, 541 00:30:30.540 --> 00:30:32.260 I can't really drill down too much. 542 00:30:32.320 --> 00:30:33.180 But let me just give you an overview, 543 00:30:33.300 --> 00:30:34.840 because I think there's grounds for both hope 544 00:30:35.100 --> 00:30:37.360 and at the same time moments of caution. 545 00:30:37.540 --> 00:30:41.680 The first issue, I think, to establish is that no one at the moment 546 00:30:41.680 --> 00:30:45.140 is inventing a magic pill that means tomorrow we'll all be able to take that 547 00:30:45.140 --> 00:30:46.420 and not have Alzheimer's disease. 548 00:30:47.180 --> 00:30:50.740 But at the same token, I think that whereas in the old days, 549 00:30:50.780 --> 00:30:53.880 cancer, for example, was something that everyone feared. 550 00:30:54.060 --> 00:30:56.040 I remember when I was growing up, we used to wet the C word. 551 00:30:56.160 --> 00:30:57.680 I remember my family talking about the C word, 552 00:30:57.740 --> 00:30:59.920 the very idea that if you said cancer, 553 00:31:00.060 --> 00:31:02.900 somehow the gods would give it to you or something like this. 554 00:31:02.940 --> 00:31:03.940 You didn't even dare say it. 555 00:31:05.100 --> 00:31:08.300 Although it is a serious illness, as I'm sure many people in the room will know, 556 00:31:09.100 --> 00:31:13.060 there's means of better prevention, better stabilization, 557 00:31:13.340 --> 00:31:16.240 quite often a cure, people go into remission. 558 00:31:16.600 --> 00:31:19.600 One has much more ideas of prevention of cancer, 559 00:31:19.720 --> 00:31:21.260 of diets and health and so on. 560 00:31:21.300 --> 00:31:24.300 So that now, there are many different types and treatments 561 00:31:24.300 --> 00:31:26.580 and prospects of people who have that diagnosis, 562 00:31:26.800 --> 00:31:31.140 so that it is no longer the blanket sentence that it once was. 563 00:31:31.220 --> 00:31:33.220 And I think with neurodegeneration, it's going to be a bit like that. 564 00:31:33.260 --> 00:31:34.920 Slowly, we're learning more. 565 00:31:35.100 --> 00:31:37.560 Slowly, we'll advance on prevention, 566 00:31:37.880 --> 00:31:39.420 on earlier diagnosis, 567 00:31:39.820 --> 00:31:42.580 on means of stabilizing and making people more comfortable 568 00:31:42.580 --> 00:31:43.840 and prolonging the time they have. 569 00:31:43.980 --> 00:31:46.860 So that gradually, gradually, imperceptibly, 570 00:31:47.480 --> 00:31:51.780 we might make it something that is part of the landscape of getting older, 571 00:31:51.920 --> 00:31:53.860 but not the dreaded part that it is now. 572 00:31:54.340 --> 00:31:56.060 Just let me give you one or two overviews. 573 00:31:56.060 --> 00:31:58.440 First of all, with epidemiology, people are looking at pesticides, 574 00:31:58.760 --> 00:32:01.680 insecticides and predisposing factors such as that. 575 00:32:01.880 --> 00:32:05.080 People are also looking at genes in families that seem to have it wrong. 576 00:32:05.100 --> 00:32:05.720 And that's the kind of thing that's running in the family. 577 00:32:05.840 --> 00:32:07.800 But I think we have to be cautious here because in Alzheimer's, 578 00:32:07.820 --> 00:32:10.640 only 5% is so-called familial, the rest is sporadic, 579 00:32:10.760 --> 00:32:14.420 which is to say there are many genes making many proteins that contribute. 580 00:32:14.720 --> 00:32:17.460 And indeed, in a groundbreaking study actually here in Australia, 581 00:32:18.080 --> 00:32:21.540 from the Florey Institute, it was shown that with Huntington's chorea, 582 00:32:21.620 --> 00:32:26.220 which is a disease characterized by wild involuntary flinging of the limbs 583 00:32:26.220 --> 00:32:28.900 in a grotesque form of dancing, hence the name chorea, 584 00:32:28.900 --> 00:32:31.400 that with mice who are deliberately having their gene, 585 00:32:31.500 --> 00:32:34.520 their single gene tweaked that gave them the mouse equivalent 586 00:32:35.100 --> 00:32:39.100 of a single gene disorder, that that could be offset by stimulating the environment, 587 00:32:39.260 --> 00:32:40.740 which for a mouse isn't any great deal. 588 00:32:40.860 --> 00:32:42.900 It's not like flying them to the Caribbean or anything like this. 589 00:32:43.240 --> 00:32:46.020 All they have to have is a few ladders and wheels. 590 00:32:46.220 --> 00:32:48.980 And it was found amazingly in mice that were doomed genetically 591 00:32:48.980 --> 00:32:51.820 to have Huntington's chorea that this could be offset. 592 00:32:51.940 --> 00:32:55.380 The degree of impairment was much more modest and the age of onset much later 593 00:32:55.380 --> 00:32:58.320 in animals that had had a degree of environmental stimulation. 594 00:32:58.340 --> 00:33:01.420 So that shows you even for a single gene disorder such as that, 595 00:33:01.540 --> 00:33:05.080 you have to be very careful about the power you aspire to have 596 00:33:05.100 --> 00:33:05.720 when you prescribe to the genes. 597 00:33:05.920 --> 00:33:08.240 That said, the new genetic technologies are coming up 598 00:33:08.240 --> 00:33:09.680 with a whole new range of medicines. 599 00:33:10.740 --> 00:33:14.740 When we think about chemicals, again, people turn to manipulating chemicals with drugs. 600 00:33:14.800 --> 00:33:17.800 That's the traditional way of treating Alzheimer's and Parkinson's 601 00:33:17.800 --> 00:33:18.800 and indeed motor neuron disease. 602 00:33:19.060 --> 00:33:21.760 But my own view is that's tackling the symptom, not the cause. 603 00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:23.380 And although it might be palliative at the moment, 604 00:33:23.560 --> 00:33:25.200 what we need is a grand theory. 605 00:33:25.740 --> 00:33:29.180 Needless to say, I think I'm working on a grand theory. 606 00:33:29.360 --> 00:33:31.340 So it's not so much a grand design of the universe, 607 00:33:31.560 --> 00:33:34.360 but scientists will have grand theories about what they work on. 608 00:33:35.100 --> 00:33:37.320 And with the privilege of standing up here, I can share that with you. 609 00:33:37.340 --> 00:33:38.980 But I'd like to stress this is speculation. 610 00:33:39.060 --> 00:33:40.680 It's not a view shared by everyone necessarily. 611 00:33:40.940 --> 00:33:45.080 But it gives you an idea of the kind of portfolio of ideas that are out there. 612 00:33:45.140 --> 00:33:46.980 And this is, after all, a festival of ideas. 613 00:33:47.240 --> 00:33:51.260 Our idea is that Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neuron disease 614 00:33:51.260 --> 00:33:54.060 share something in common more than they have a part. 615 00:33:54.280 --> 00:33:57.740 So although they are different diseases, there is an essential common factor. 616 00:33:58.100 --> 00:34:01.700 And what we think is that that common factor is that special cells 617 00:34:02.180 --> 00:34:04.640 in the brain are primarily targeted. 618 00:34:05.100 --> 00:34:06.600 Because we know that you can have a stroke, 619 00:34:06.700 --> 00:34:08.740 and you do not automatically get neurodegeneration. 620 00:34:08.740 --> 00:34:11.760 My own father had a stroke, and he now has his driving licence back, 621 00:34:11.840 --> 00:34:13.460 much to our horror, and he's 90. 622 00:34:13.700 --> 00:34:16.000 We don't let him use it, of course, but he has it back, 623 00:34:16.100 --> 00:34:16.940 and he feels very happy. 624 00:34:17.260 --> 00:34:19.280 And he had his stroke about 15 years ago. 625 00:34:19.500 --> 00:34:22.460 And he went from not racking his eyes in anyone to having a driving licence back. 626 00:34:22.720 --> 00:34:25.520 So I'm sure similarly people here would have similar stories 627 00:34:25.520 --> 00:34:27.520 of amazing and wonderful recoveries. 628 00:34:27.560 --> 00:34:30.900 So it is not a generic feature of brain cells that if they are damaged, 629 00:34:30.960 --> 00:34:34.400 you automatically are sentenced to neurodegeneration. 630 00:34:35.100 --> 00:34:36.880 So what is it special about those cells? 631 00:34:36.960 --> 00:34:39.140 And what we think is special is there are certain cells in the brain, 632 00:34:39.220 --> 00:34:42.100 and it happens to be the ones that are primarily affected in those three disorders, 633 00:34:42.720 --> 00:34:44.680 that retain their ability to grow again. 634 00:34:45.040 --> 00:34:47.220 Now that sounds rather good. 635 00:34:47.320 --> 00:34:49.060 Surely you want cells to grow again. 636 00:34:49.240 --> 00:34:52.260 And as it happens, they occupy a hub deep down in the brain, 637 00:34:52.380 --> 00:34:56.220 so that if one area is damaged, that would present as Parkinson's. 638 00:34:56.220 --> 00:34:59.060 If another area is damaged, as Alzheimer's or motor neuron. 639 00:34:59.220 --> 00:35:02.240 And if there's more extensive damage, then as frequently you find clinically, 640 00:35:02.440 --> 00:35:05.080 a co-pathology where Alzheimer's and Parkinson's will carry on. 641 00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:10.080 So that's the problem. 642 00:35:10.080 --> 00:35:16.580 So what we think happens is that this hub in the brain is very special, 643 00:35:16.620 --> 00:35:17.520 with these very special properties. 644 00:35:17.640 --> 00:35:19.720 In fact, they come from a different part of the embryo when they're developing. 645 00:35:19.920 --> 00:35:21.800 And they have this ability to grow again. 646 00:35:22.000 --> 00:35:22.920 Now why is that bad? 647 00:35:23.040 --> 00:35:27.180 Well, the problem is that to grow again, you trigger off certain features, 648 00:35:27.400 --> 00:35:29.460 which are wonderful in the embryo. 649 00:35:29.460 --> 00:35:30.700 That's just what the embryo needs. 650 00:35:31.100 --> 00:35:34.320 But the problem is the landscape of the adult brain is very different 651 00:35:34.320 --> 00:35:37.780 in how it handles these chemicals to the immature brain. 652 00:35:37.940 --> 00:35:40.300 So actually, these cells, when they try and grow again 653 00:35:40.300 --> 00:35:42.940 and bring into play mechanisms that they have, 654 00:35:42.980 --> 00:35:44.040 that other brain cells don't have, 655 00:35:44.480 --> 00:35:46.360 actually, and this is, I hate the metaphor, 656 00:35:46.500 --> 00:35:47.880 but they are shooting themselves in the foot. 657 00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:49.160 Not that literally, of course, they're doing that. 658 00:35:49.240 --> 00:35:50.940 But it's equivalent to doing that. 659 00:35:51.000 --> 00:35:53.920 They're bringing into play mechanisms that actually kill off more of them. 660 00:35:54.420 --> 00:35:57.600 And so what we're trying to do is understand more about the molecules 661 00:35:58.320 --> 00:36:00.500 that are responsible in this developmental process, 662 00:36:00.700 --> 00:36:04.300 because we think that neurodegeneration is an aberrant form of degeneration. 663 00:36:04.320 --> 00:36:05.400 And so we're trying to do that. 664 00:36:05.400 --> 00:36:06.380 And the more we understand the mat, 665 00:36:06.920 --> 00:36:09.720 eventually we could get to a drug target that would be oral. 666 00:36:09.860 --> 00:36:11.660 And I think oral medication has to be the answer 667 00:36:11.660 --> 00:36:13.540 because few people want to have brain surgery. 668 00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:16.940 And even stem cells, much as they're vaunted in the press, 669 00:36:17.080 --> 00:36:20.060 stem cells, if they're left to proliferate to turn into neurons 670 00:36:20.060 --> 00:36:22.480 in a way that's not regulated, could become a tumor. 671 00:36:22.660 --> 00:36:23.700 So you have to be very careful. 672 00:36:23.760 --> 00:36:26.540 Also, you have to be careful about how much of the chemicals they're releasing, 673 00:36:26.680 --> 00:36:28.740 because that might cure you of Parkinson's disease 674 00:36:28.740 --> 00:36:29.640 but actually give you schizophrenia. 675 00:36:30.540 --> 00:36:32.780 So you have to be very, very cautious about how they're handled. 676 00:36:32.780 --> 00:36:33.900 That's not to say it's not possible, 677 00:36:34.040 --> 00:36:36.440 but it's not viable across a wide community. 678 00:36:36.620 --> 00:36:39.100 It's not viable in the world in terms of economics 679 00:36:39.100 --> 00:36:41.880 or indeed of hazard or desirability or comfort. 680 00:36:42.000 --> 00:36:45.440 So I think oral medication is really what we're all after. 681 00:36:45.660 --> 00:36:47.620 And if we could have an oral medication, therefore, 682 00:36:48.080 --> 00:36:50.100 that targeted this particular mechanism, 683 00:36:50.220 --> 00:36:52.260 that stopped the cells trying to grow again 684 00:36:52.260 --> 00:36:54.900 by virtue of these molecules that are used in development, 685 00:36:55.160 --> 00:36:57.160 then we could stop the brain cells dying. 686 00:36:57.220 --> 00:36:58.240 So you could say to a patient, 687 00:36:58.480 --> 00:37:00.880 okay, you're having a few memory problems now. 688 00:37:00.960 --> 00:37:02.400 You're having difficulty turning in bed, 689 00:37:02.780 --> 00:37:03.200 you're having a lot of symptoms, 690 00:37:03.200 --> 00:37:04.500 you're moving, Parkinson's disease. 691 00:37:04.660 --> 00:37:06.840 But if you take this medication, it won't get any worse. 692 00:37:07.440 --> 00:37:08.400 It won't get any worse. 693 00:37:08.460 --> 00:37:11.440 Imagine what that would do for people and their hope. 694 00:37:11.700 --> 00:37:12.900 Now, let's go on further. 695 00:37:13.060 --> 00:37:16.280 If you had some marker in the blood that was easy to assess 696 00:37:16.740 --> 00:37:20.040 in everyone at risk or everyone, let's say, over 50 or over 60, 697 00:37:21.060 --> 00:37:25.540 then what you could do is tell that someone was showing signs of neurodegeneration 698 00:37:25.540 --> 00:37:26.720 before they had the symptoms, 699 00:37:26.920 --> 00:37:28.700 start them on that stabilizing medication, 700 00:37:29.100 --> 00:37:31.020 which means they would never have the symptoms present. 701 00:37:31.020 --> 00:37:32.800 And in that way, we'd have a cure. 702 00:37:33.180 --> 00:37:34.500 And that's what we're working towards. 703 00:37:34.660 --> 00:37:36.200 We are not trying to design the universe. 704 00:37:36.380 --> 00:37:37.100 We're trying to do that. 705 00:37:38.460 --> 00:37:41.120 Let's widen out a bit and think of, in general, 706 00:37:41.260 --> 00:37:44.840 the implications, I think, of science and of living longer. 707 00:37:44.920 --> 00:37:47.480 Because this is, we have to accept this, 708 00:37:47.520 --> 00:37:49.920 we are living in a society dependent on science and technology. 709 00:37:51.320 --> 00:37:52.640 What are the implications of this, 710 00:37:52.680 --> 00:37:55.120 given that I hope I've persuaded you that the scientists are there 711 00:37:55.120 --> 00:37:57.660 to try and help people live longer and more comfortable lives 712 00:37:57.660 --> 00:38:00.960 rather than to, we'd be politicians if we wanted power, 713 00:38:01.020 --> 00:38:02.400 we wouldn't be scientists, for heaven's sake. 714 00:38:04.520 --> 00:38:06.440 Let's widen it out, because I do come from a country, 715 00:38:06.520 --> 00:38:07.860 as I'm sure many of you are familiar, 716 00:38:08.080 --> 00:38:10.460 that has recently reeled from three crises, 717 00:38:10.580 --> 00:38:13.940 first mad cow disease, then GM foods, genetic modified crops, 718 00:38:14.160 --> 00:38:15.480 and then foot and mouth disease, 719 00:38:16.480 --> 00:38:18.900 where in all instances the scientist was held to account. 720 00:38:18.980 --> 00:38:22.020 It was the scientist who was, of course, the villain for doing all this. 721 00:38:22.840 --> 00:38:26.820 Bob May, an Australian who was at the time science advisor to the cabinet, 722 00:38:26.940 --> 00:38:30.220 said that the problem that mad cow disease had shown in England 723 00:38:30.220 --> 00:38:33.500 was the problem in science and the public and the media, 724 00:38:33.620 --> 00:38:36.680 was that we didn't consult widely enough, as scientists, 725 00:38:37.380 --> 00:38:40.220 we didn't admit transparency to people, 726 00:38:40.640 --> 00:38:42.480 and above all we didn't admit of uncertainty. 727 00:38:42.880 --> 00:38:44.700 This became known as the May's Principles. 728 00:38:44.800 --> 00:38:46.360 And that's something that's been taken on board, 729 00:38:46.420 --> 00:38:47.960 and I speak now wearing my other hat, as you heard, 730 00:38:48.040 --> 00:38:50.620 I'm actually in the upper house, the House of Lords in England, 731 00:38:50.840 --> 00:38:53.680 and so I do have a toe in the, wherever you have toes in, 732 00:38:53.700 --> 00:38:56.100 whether it's doors or swimming pools, I'm not sure where you put your toe, 733 00:38:56.180 --> 00:38:59.440 but my toe is there, or small part, my toenail is there at least. 734 00:39:00.220 --> 00:39:04.020 So, in terms of seeing how politicians embrace science or don't, 735 00:39:04.040 --> 00:39:07.720 and I think part of the problem is that you have three constituencies, 736 00:39:08.180 --> 00:39:10.300 politicians, the media, and scientists. 737 00:39:10.760 --> 00:39:13.840 And one would think they are delivering to the general public the truth, 738 00:39:14.040 --> 00:39:17.860 and I think that that is far down, really, the agenda of all. 739 00:39:17.980 --> 00:39:21.800 The agenda of the scientists is to get research money to carry on their work, 740 00:39:21.860 --> 00:39:23.720 and they care passionately about the truth, 741 00:39:23.760 --> 00:39:25.740 but not necessarily delivering it to the general public, 742 00:39:25.860 --> 00:39:29.660 because up until now, what they've had to do is to show their peers, 743 00:39:29.660 --> 00:39:32.780 that's to say people who are expert, like themselves, in their area, 744 00:39:33.300 --> 00:39:35.420 to show them that they're doing good work, 745 00:39:35.540 --> 00:39:38.400 so that on these peer review panels for grants they will get money, 746 00:39:38.520 --> 00:39:40.580 because if they don't have money, if you're a scientist 747 00:39:40.580 --> 00:39:42.400 and you don't have money for your research, you don't do research. 748 00:39:43.040 --> 00:39:47.280 So, the first thing you need is to be acceptable to your peers, 749 00:39:47.300 --> 00:39:49.140 to show them you do good work and to get research money. 750 00:39:49.520 --> 00:39:51.020 The other issues are secondary. 751 00:39:51.560 --> 00:39:55.680 The media, their agenda, because otherwise they're out of business, 752 00:39:55.740 --> 00:39:58.660 is to sell copy, or indeed, if they're in the broadcast media, 753 00:39:58.760 --> 00:39:59.640 to get good viewing. 754 00:39:59.660 --> 00:40:00.940 They're not viewing figures, otherwise they're out of a job. 755 00:40:01.440 --> 00:40:03.420 So, clearly, that's high on their agenda. 756 00:40:03.700 --> 00:40:07.800 The politicians' agenda is to stay in power, otherwise they're out of a job. 757 00:40:08.340 --> 00:40:10.960 So, clearly, these three agendas were understandably, 758 00:40:11.020 --> 00:40:13.500 the first issue is to stay in your job. 759 00:40:13.840 --> 00:40:15.100 They're necessarily discrepant. 760 00:40:15.540 --> 00:40:18.600 Staying in power, selling copy, and getting money for your research 761 00:40:18.600 --> 00:40:21.220 do not necessarily automatically cross-fertilize, 762 00:40:21.260 --> 00:40:23.240 and they're not necessarily served in the same way. 763 00:40:23.300 --> 00:40:25.580 And I think the more we realize that, and the faster we realize that, 764 00:40:26.120 --> 00:40:28.780 the less sneering and sniping there'll be at each other, 765 00:40:28.780 --> 00:40:32.380 and the more we might be able to devise ways in which we can work together. 766 00:40:32.520 --> 00:40:34.780 And that's incidentally one of the reasons I'm here as Synchron Residence. 767 00:40:34.920 --> 00:40:37.120 I'm here as a scientist to work with those other sectors 768 00:40:37.120 --> 00:40:40.420 to try to bring into play machinery or systems 769 00:40:40.420 --> 00:40:45.400 that will enable us all to understand, at least, where we're all coming from. 770 00:40:45.660 --> 00:40:47.900 And I think the other problem is one of perception, 771 00:40:48.120 --> 00:40:51.700 because a media person will want an answer within half an hour. 772 00:40:51.800 --> 00:40:57.140 A scientist will take months, sometimes, to work up a good report. 773 00:40:58.020 --> 00:41:00.240 Politicians want things quickly as well. 774 00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:03.720 Politicians want something that is easy, black or white, 775 00:41:03.780 --> 00:41:05.540 and they will stick by that, of course, as we know. 776 00:41:06.020 --> 00:41:09.520 The media wants something that is a sound bite or something that is very unambiguous. 777 00:41:09.780 --> 00:41:11.700 And science is the opposite of those things. 778 00:41:12.220 --> 00:41:13.440 Science is areas of gray. 779 00:41:13.540 --> 00:41:16.520 You have scientists disagreeing with each other on how they interpret data, 780 00:41:16.660 --> 00:41:19.200 what they accept as a good finding or the truth. 781 00:41:19.280 --> 00:41:22.280 And the truth is always relative, always questionable by further facts. 782 00:41:22.400 --> 00:41:26.080 So, again, in England, the MMR vaccine, triple vaccine, 783 00:41:26.080 --> 00:41:28.160 for measles, rubella, and mumps, 784 00:41:29.540 --> 00:41:32.160 was found, or someone said, could be linked with autism. 785 00:41:32.640 --> 00:41:35.000 And then someone who said this changed their mind 786 00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:36.440 because the evidence proved to the contrary, 787 00:41:36.540 --> 00:41:39.320 and they were lampooned in the media for changing their mind 788 00:41:39.320 --> 00:41:40.720 and not adhering to what they wanted. 789 00:41:40.900 --> 00:41:43.080 But that was a politician's standard applied to science, 790 00:41:43.200 --> 00:41:46.360 and it was very unfair for that otherwise very credible scientist 791 00:41:46.360 --> 00:41:47.260 that they were doing that. 792 00:41:48.460 --> 00:41:50.360 So I think, in brief, I ought to wrap up. 793 00:41:50.780 --> 00:41:50.940 Yeah? 794 00:41:54.400 --> 00:41:56.060 That scientists are not... 795 00:41:56.080 --> 00:41:58.180 If we were not here to take over the world, 796 00:41:58.220 --> 00:42:00.500 we wouldn't be scientists because we have all the responsibility, 797 00:42:00.820 --> 00:42:03.060 but it is the politicians who have all the power. 798 00:42:03.340 --> 00:42:05.260 And the disconnect between power and responsibility 799 00:42:05.260 --> 00:42:06.560 has always been very dangerous. 800 00:42:06.660 --> 00:42:07.820 The one should go hand in hand. 801 00:42:07.960 --> 00:42:10.500 And what we should be doing is we should be thinking of ways 802 00:42:10.500 --> 00:42:11.660 in which we can understand. 803 00:42:11.780 --> 00:42:13.520 We don't have to become politicians or scientists. 804 00:42:13.620 --> 00:42:15.380 On heaven's full firm, we don't want them to become scientists. 805 00:42:15.700 --> 00:42:17.540 And certainly we don't want the media to become scientists. 806 00:42:17.780 --> 00:42:20.700 But all we want is for us to understand our agendas 807 00:42:20.700 --> 00:42:23.500 because if you understand why a scientist can't say yes or no 808 00:42:23.500 --> 00:42:26.060 to a simple answer, but says maybe, or could be, 809 00:42:26.080 --> 00:42:28.900 why they can't confirm a negative, 810 00:42:28.980 --> 00:42:31.400 like you can eat this beef, it will definitely not hurt you. 811 00:42:31.880 --> 00:42:34.340 When you understand that, you can see the limits of what it can deliver, 812 00:42:34.500 --> 00:42:37.420 then we would perhaps live in a world that we all want. 813 00:42:37.520 --> 00:42:40.140 But it must be a world that we design together 814 00:42:40.140 --> 00:42:43.000 and you don't have the sciences as a conscience of the nation. 815 00:42:43.160 --> 00:42:43.620 Thank you. 816 00:42:56.080 --> 00:42:56.920 Thank you, Susan. 817 00:42:57.000 --> 00:42:59.980 And that emphasis on getting things done and working together 818 00:42:59.980 --> 00:43:02.400 leads perfectly into our next speaker. 819 00:43:03.160 --> 00:43:07.120 If you were lucky to hear Peter Doherty speaking earlier today, 820 00:43:07.240 --> 00:43:10.160 you heard him talking about scary monsters, 821 00:43:11.260 --> 00:43:13.840 influenza, SARS, AIDS. 822 00:43:14.060 --> 00:43:17.800 But the title of his talk began with the word dealing with. 823 00:43:18.160 --> 00:43:22.700 And if I think about Peter, I always think about someone getting stuff done. 824 00:43:23.300 --> 00:43:25.860 We all know Professor Peter Doherty, 825 00:43:25.860 --> 00:43:29.300 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology in Medicine 826 00:43:29.860 --> 00:43:33.240 with his colleague, Rolf Tinkernagel, in 1996. 827 00:43:34.500 --> 00:43:37.880 He subsequently became an Australian of the Year. 828 00:43:38.140 --> 00:43:41.120 And with Warwick, not just for the scientific discovery, 829 00:43:41.340 --> 00:43:46.200 which was remarkable, but also for the way in which he since communicated 830 00:43:46.860 --> 00:43:51.120 both his passion for getting things done and his science to the general public. 831 00:43:52.120 --> 00:43:55.840 He worked for quite a while in Canberra, 832 00:43:55.860 --> 00:43:58.520 but then he also moved to the US where he was working 833 00:43:58.520 --> 00:44:01.360 at St Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. 834 00:44:01.780 --> 00:44:04.740 But as with David, we've got him back, not all the time. 835 00:44:04.800 --> 00:44:08.140 He divides his time between, well, goes backwards and forwards 836 00:44:08.140 --> 00:44:12.280 between the University of Melbourne, the microbiology 837 00:44:12.280 --> 00:44:16.000 and immunological section of the University of Melbourne and Memphis. 838 00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:22.420 He's a great advocate for science and for getting things done 839 00:44:22.420 --> 00:44:23.880 and for curing people. 840 00:44:23.880 --> 00:44:28.220 And part of that communication, I think, shows in the way in which 841 00:44:28.220 --> 00:44:31.460 Peter Doherty also always insists on letting people know 842 00:44:31.460 --> 00:44:36.800 that he's the only Nobel science winner who ever started life as a vet. 843 00:44:37.160 --> 00:44:41.840 So if your day job falls through, Peter, you can always go back to the other one. 844 00:44:41.900 --> 00:44:42.860 Professor Peter Doherty. 845 00:44:51.440 --> 00:44:53.860 That was my fallback position to Peter. 846 00:44:53.880 --> 00:44:54.120 I've been in the field for years. 847 00:44:54.980 --> 00:44:58.160 My day job fell through, I could always go back to being a vet. 848 00:44:58.480 --> 00:45:03.240 It's true that I'm actually the only Nobel Prize winner who trained as a vet 849 00:45:03.240 --> 00:45:05.820 and I've certainly been much more intimate with cows 850 00:45:05.820 --> 00:45:07.980 than anyone else that's ever won the Nobel Prize. 851 00:45:10.100 --> 00:45:12.240 You just heard from two brain scientists. 852 00:45:12.320 --> 00:45:15.100 As a vet, I was also trained as a drain scientist. 853 00:45:15.360 --> 00:45:17.720 So the drainage of piggeries was very big. 854 00:45:18.360 --> 00:45:21.000 And, you know, a lot of the problems we face, 855 00:45:21.200 --> 00:45:23.560 some of them are really high technology problems. 856 00:45:23.880 --> 00:45:27.600 And we're going to have to bring fantastic technology to bear on them. 857 00:45:28.380 --> 00:45:30.880 Others are really drain problems. 858 00:45:31.200 --> 00:45:32.720 They're problems about sewage. 859 00:45:32.760 --> 00:45:34.680 They're problems about soil quality. 860 00:45:34.860 --> 00:45:36.800 They're problems about water availability. 861 00:45:37.340 --> 00:45:40.640 They're problems about salt increasing in soils. 862 00:45:40.800 --> 00:45:44.260 And these are all fairly well understood in many cases, 863 00:45:44.320 --> 00:45:46.880 but the solutions are not so well understood. 864 00:45:46.940 --> 00:45:51.140 And the solutions, to echo what Susan said, require not only science, 865 00:45:51.160 --> 00:45:52.700 they need also political will. 866 00:45:52.700 --> 00:45:55.640 And, of course, where we get into a problem with political will 867 00:45:55.640 --> 00:46:01.360 is where the scientific advice and the necessity of doing something 868 00:46:01.360 --> 00:46:05.940 come into conflict with the needs of... 869 00:46:05.940 --> 00:46:09.060 ..the commercial needs, the financial needs, 870 00:46:09.260 --> 00:46:10.980 the economic needs of a country. 871 00:46:11.100 --> 00:46:13.760 And, of course, that's a lot what, for instance, 872 00:46:13.900 --> 00:46:17.940 President Bush's attitudes concerning global warming are about, 873 00:46:18.060 --> 00:46:19.060 as many of us realise. 874 00:46:19.540 --> 00:46:22.580 Now, I'm a biologist. 875 00:46:22.700 --> 00:46:25.200 I'm not a scientist by training, not actually a medical scientist, 876 00:46:25.320 --> 00:46:26.560 and I think like a biologist. 877 00:46:27.520 --> 00:46:29.840 If you look at the physical world, in a sense, 878 00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:32.600 it does have some sense of design about it. 879 00:46:32.680 --> 00:46:35.340 The physical world obeys, in general, 880 00:46:35.460 --> 00:46:38.760 fairly well understood physical laws, 881 00:46:38.980 --> 00:46:41.220 of course, the element of chaos and so forth, 882 00:46:41.400 --> 00:46:44.120 but one can think it through to a greater extent. 883 00:46:44.280 --> 00:46:46.800 And you can see that in physics because you have a division in physics 884 00:46:46.800 --> 00:46:49.240 between theoretical physics and experimental physics. 885 00:46:49.480 --> 00:46:51.580 You have people like Einstein who thought... 886 00:46:51.580 --> 00:46:54.140 I mean, he did his great work while he was a clerk 887 00:46:54.140 --> 00:46:55.740 in the patent office in Bern, 888 00:46:55.980 --> 00:46:58.800 so he didn't have any fancy lab, there was no white coat, 889 00:46:58.960 --> 00:47:01.760 he was just using his mind, a pencil and some paper, 890 00:47:01.900 --> 00:47:04.000 and actually visualising things in his mind 891 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:05.960 because he thought very visually, I believe. 892 00:47:07.560 --> 00:47:08.800 Biology's not like that. 893 00:47:09.940 --> 00:47:12.460 Biology's not designed, if you look at it. 894 00:47:12.560 --> 00:47:16.620 And the reason it's not designed is because it's an evolving system. 895 00:47:16.920 --> 00:47:20.120 By using the trick of reproduction and mutation, 896 00:47:20.120 --> 00:47:23.820 biology evolves and biological systems evolve, 897 00:47:24.040 --> 00:47:27.440 and as they evolve, they take the best choice that's available to them 898 00:47:27.440 --> 00:47:30.800 from what's there before and from what they can create from that. 899 00:47:31.060 --> 00:47:35.240 So they're not designer systems, they're not Armani or Versace, 900 00:47:35.320 --> 00:47:37.700 they're more like street people 901 00:47:37.700 --> 00:47:39.880 who've picked up a bit from here and a bit from there. 902 00:47:39.960 --> 00:47:41.680 There are bits in the immune system, for instance, 903 00:47:41.920 --> 00:47:45.620 that I think probably were originally brain function-type molecules 904 00:47:45.620 --> 00:47:48.680 because the brain was around before we had an immune system 905 00:47:48.680 --> 00:47:49.520 in the sense that... 906 00:47:49.520 --> 00:47:50.920 ..that we study it today. 907 00:47:51.200 --> 00:47:55.260 Now, my field of science is the immunity to infectious disease. 908 00:47:55.620 --> 00:47:59.020 And as I've had to talk about this much more broadly, 909 00:47:59.080 --> 00:48:01.660 not just focusing on, as Susan said, 910 00:48:01.760 --> 00:48:04.900 the specific questions that a scientist focuses on, 911 00:48:05.020 --> 00:48:09.500 because science is a mechanism for solving little problems one at a time, 912 00:48:09.520 --> 00:48:13.060 often, rather than solving anything enormously big, 913 00:48:13.100 --> 00:48:16.020 and it's that accretion and that transformation 914 00:48:16.020 --> 00:48:18.140 that comes from a new scientific finding 915 00:48:18.140 --> 00:48:19.500 that leads to solutions. 916 00:48:19.520 --> 00:48:23.200 But thinking about biology, 917 00:48:23.480 --> 00:48:27.500 I think very much that my life has been spent being instructed by nature. 918 00:48:27.680 --> 00:48:31.180 And I think as we think about how we're going to design our universe, 919 00:48:31.300 --> 00:48:32.260 and when you think about it, 920 00:48:32.280 --> 00:48:34.000 the only universe we can really design, 921 00:48:34.100 --> 00:48:35.480 apart from a virtual universe, 922 00:48:35.800 --> 00:48:38.700 is the universe of this world and what's in it. 923 00:48:38.760 --> 00:48:41.560 We can't really do much about the universe out there. 924 00:48:41.700 --> 00:48:44.440 If a massive asteroid is heading towards Earth 925 00:48:44.440 --> 00:48:47.040 and it's going to block out the sun 926 00:48:47.040 --> 00:48:49.500 and maybe lead to the death of all larger life forms, 927 00:48:50.080 --> 00:48:52.480 there's really not much we're going to be able to do about that either. 928 00:48:52.600 --> 00:48:54.780 I don't think we're going to be able to deflect it or whatever. 929 00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:57.860 So there are certain things out there we can't control in any sense. 930 00:48:58.040 --> 00:49:01.880 But what we can do something about is our own physical world. 931 00:49:02.000 --> 00:49:04.280 And we have to do something, I believe. 932 00:49:05.760 --> 00:49:07.700 I think a lot in terms of numbers. 933 00:49:08.400 --> 00:49:11.580 If you think of the numbers of people on the planet at the time of Christ, 934 00:49:11.660 --> 00:49:13.040 you had about 300 million people. 935 00:49:13.500 --> 00:49:16.940 By the beginning of the 19th century, we were up to about a billion. 936 00:49:17.200 --> 00:49:18.740 By the end of the 19th century, 937 00:49:18.740 --> 00:49:20.440 we were up to 1.6 billion. 938 00:49:20.780 --> 00:49:23.820 Science itself cuts in at about the 16th century. 939 00:49:23.920 --> 00:49:26.960 That's when we started to do the type of science that led to advances, 940 00:49:27.040 --> 00:49:30.180 where we did systematic studies, we did experiments, observations, 941 00:49:30.560 --> 00:49:33.300 wrote them up so people could repeat them and all the rest of it. 942 00:49:33.440 --> 00:49:36.160 And that's how science has advanced, by this steady accumulation, 943 00:49:36.620 --> 00:49:39.160 with, of course, sudden breaks in understanding 944 00:49:39.160 --> 00:49:41.320 as we make a totally unexpected discovery. 945 00:49:41.820 --> 00:49:45.140 That has led to this population increase in a sense. 946 00:49:45.360 --> 00:49:48.180 It's been partly about drains, it's been about sanitation, 947 00:49:48.740 --> 00:49:50.820 and it's been partly about things like immunisation, 948 00:49:50.860 --> 00:49:52.800 which has been enormously successful. 949 00:49:52.840 --> 00:49:55.780 But we didn't even understand infectious disease 950 00:49:55.780 --> 00:49:57.560 until the middle of the 19th century. 951 00:49:57.720 --> 00:50:01.060 And even though we had Jenna's smallpox vaccine before that, 952 00:50:01.180 --> 00:50:05.000 we didn't start the rational design of vaccines until after that. 953 00:50:05.240 --> 00:50:07.600 So, through the 19th century, 954 00:50:07.760 --> 00:50:11.860 the excess people were got rid of from places like England and Ireland 955 00:50:11.860 --> 00:50:15.520 and so forth by sending them to Australia or the United States 956 00:50:15.520 --> 00:50:18.720 or these various places that Britain used to dump its human waste. 957 00:50:18.740 --> 00:50:21.160 We used to dump human debris, our grandparents and so forth. 958 00:50:21.500 --> 00:50:22.060 And... 959 00:50:24.200 --> 00:50:26.100 Some of them return, like Bob May. 960 00:50:28.940 --> 00:50:29.500 And... 961 00:50:30.560 --> 00:50:32.440 But through the 20th century, 962 00:50:32.660 --> 00:50:36.780 the population has gone from 1.6 billion to 6.4 billion. 963 00:50:36.960 --> 00:50:40.280 So we have a world population increase of four times. 964 00:50:40.600 --> 00:50:43.380 Now, this has produced enormous environmental degradation. 965 00:50:43.880 --> 00:50:46.940 It's produced erosion of soils, 966 00:50:46.940 --> 00:50:48.640 a major problem in our country, 967 00:50:48.680 --> 00:50:50.820 where the soil quality is very poor anyway. 968 00:50:51.140 --> 00:50:54.540 It's produced tremendous degradation in Africa, deforestation. 969 00:50:54.800 --> 00:50:58.820 With the deforestation and the move of populations into forest areas, 970 00:50:58.940 --> 00:51:01.020 we've had more infectious diseases coming out. 971 00:51:01.500 --> 00:51:02.960 AIDS is one of those. 972 00:51:03.680 --> 00:51:04.800 Ebola is another. 973 00:51:05.980 --> 00:51:08.640 Influenza comes from animals across into us. 974 00:51:08.920 --> 00:51:11.420 And so, as we look at the 21st century, 975 00:51:11.460 --> 00:51:15.440 we have to think that we are pretty much getting maxed out 976 00:51:15.440 --> 00:51:16.780 on size of the human population. 977 00:51:17.240 --> 00:51:18.920 We've got 6.4 billion. 978 00:51:18.980 --> 00:51:20.300 It looks as though we'll go to nine. 979 00:51:21.200 --> 00:51:25.880 And even with 300 million people a year dying of AIDS currently, 980 00:51:26.060 --> 00:51:27.260 and that probably will increase, 981 00:51:27.560 --> 00:51:29.620 we're still going to go to those sorts of levels. 982 00:51:29.840 --> 00:51:31.360 There's nowhere for us to go. 983 00:51:31.480 --> 00:51:32.500 We're not going to Mars. 984 00:51:32.760 --> 00:51:34.820 I mean, President Bush would like to think so, 985 00:51:34.880 --> 00:51:37.060 because spending money on Mars exploration 986 00:51:37.060 --> 00:51:40.060 is a very good way of funding your high-technology friends 987 00:51:40.060 --> 00:51:41.820 in the private sector with public dollars, 988 00:51:41.900 --> 00:51:44.320 and it also funds the armaments industry and all that sort of thing. 989 00:51:44.460 --> 00:51:46.520 So we've got to do something 990 00:51:46.780 --> 00:51:48.200 in this context. 991 00:51:48.640 --> 00:51:51.840 And we've got the buzzword for the 21st century 992 00:51:51.840 --> 00:51:53.240 and the word that we have to... 993 00:51:53.240 --> 00:51:55.600 We have to somehow get through to people, 994 00:51:55.680 --> 00:51:58.060 get through to politicians, get through to scientists, 995 00:51:58.240 --> 00:51:59.540 get through to the general public, 996 00:51:59.700 --> 00:52:02.120 and everyone concerned, is the word sustainability. 997 00:52:02.660 --> 00:52:04.840 We have to find sustainable solutions. 998 00:52:05.080 --> 00:52:06.800 We have to find sustainable solutions. 999 00:52:06.860 --> 00:52:08.540 I think the biggest single thing 1000 00:52:08.540 --> 00:52:10.420 we have to find a sustainable solution to 1001 00:52:10.420 --> 00:52:11.720 is the energy equation. 1002 00:52:12.060 --> 00:52:14.100 If we can get energy, we can do a lot. 1003 00:52:14.340 --> 00:52:15.940 But we can't continue, obviously, 1004 00:52:15.940 --> 00:52:18.120 to burn oil. 1005 00:52:18.340 --> 00:52:19.260 That's going to run out. 1006 00:52:19.880 --> 00:52:21.740 The strategy here for burning coal 1007 00:52:21.740 --> 00:52:24.060 is going to be to pump the carbon dioxide back into the ground. 1008 00:52:24.200 --> 00:52:25.380 Hopefully that will work. 1009 00:52:25.460 --> 00:52:27.000 We need other solutions as well. 1010 00:52:27.200 --> 00:52:29.000 We need sustainable solutions. 1011 00:52:29.180 --> 00:52:30.920 And that's what the science needs to be about. 1012 00:52:31.080 --> 00:52:32.640 And we can't set aside science 1013 00:52:33.160 --> 00:52:36.000 because the only way we're going to get sustainable solutions 1014 00:52:36.000 --> 00:52:37.000 to many of these problems 1015 00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:38.960 is to do very high-quality science indeed. 1016 00:52:39.340 --> 00:52:41.940 Some of the solutions are going to be 1017 00:52:41.940 --> 00:52:44.840 in the area of genetic engineering of plants. 1018 00:52:44.840 --> 00:52:47.620 Some of them, it may even have to be nuclear. 1019 00:52:47.660 --> 00:52:48.160 I don't know. 1020 00:52:48.240 --> 00:52:50.380 That seems a terrible way to have to go 1021 00:52:50.380 --> 00:52:51.800 considering the pollution problems. 1022 00:52:52.140 --> 00:52:53.860 But it's hard to see, for instance, 1023 00:52:53.920 --> 00:52:56.360 how the northern hemisphere is going to be heated 1024 00:52:56.360 --> 00:52:59.280 in the short term without using nuclear energy. 1025 00:52:59.560 --> 00:53:00.860 And of course, a lot of the energy 1026 00:53:00.860 --> 00:53:02.560 that's used in England now, 1027 00:53:02.620 --> 00:53:04.420 a lot of the electricity is generated 1028 00:53:04.420 --> 00:53:06.700 by nuclear energy from France 1029 00:53:06.700 --> 00:53:08.120 and it goes across in the grid. 1030 00:53:08.500 --> 00:53:10.880 So, sustainable solutions 1031 00:53:10.880 --> 00:53:12.600 are what it's going to have to be about. 1032 00:53:12.760 --> 00:53:14.680 And we're going to have to somehow 1033 00:53:14.840 --> 00:53:17.000 get the politicians on this wavelength, 1034 00:53:17.260 --> 00:53:19.560 get the economists on the wavelength. 1035 00:53:19.740 --> 00:53:20.740 The economists, of course, 1036 00:53:20.860 --> 00:53:22.800 want to grow populations indefinitely. 1037 00:53:23.300 --> 00:53:25.980 The holy grail for an economist 1038 00:53:25.980 --> 00:53:27.920 is to have more and more and more people 1039 00:53:27.920 --> 00:53:29.620 because you have more and more economic activity. 1040 00:53:29.920 --> 00:53:31.560 That, in the long run, can't work. 1041 00:53:31.840 --> 00:53:35.840 And how we are able to tune globally expectations 1042 00:53:35.840 --> 00:53:38.000 and tune the global system 1043 00:53:38.000 --> 00:53:40.080 to some sort of sustainable system, 1044 00:53:40.140 --> 00:53:42.440 I think, is going to be an enormous challenge. 1045 00:53:42.460 --> 00:53:43.480 But if we don't meet it, 1046 00:53:43.520 --> 00:53:44.820 we're in very great trouble. 1047 00:53:46.080 --> 00:53:46.680 APPLAUSE 1048 00:53:57.680 --> 00:53:59.520 Thank you very much, Peter. 1049 00:53:59.760 --> 00:54:03.340 Now, we've had a physicist who's a journalist. 1050 00:54:03.520 --> 00:54:07.220 We've had a mathematician who became a philosopher. 1051 00:54:07.480 --> 00:54:10.360 We've had a neuroscientist who's also an entrepreneur 1052 00:54:10.360 --> 00:54:14.800 and a vet biologist advocate, so to speak. 1053 00:54:14.800 --> 00:54:15.180 And we've had a lot of great people described. 1054 00:54:15.560 --> 00:54:18.180 And our next speaker, who views himself, I think, 1055 00:54:18.180 --> 00:54:19.900 as the control on this panel, 1056 00:54:20.800 --> 00:54:22.400 is...he's actually a social scientist... 1057 00:54:23.800 --> 00:54:26.980 ..John Carroll, professor of sociology at La Trobe University. 1058 00:54:27.180 --> 00:54:29.240 But even he's flying with mixed colours 1059 00:54:29.240 --> 00:54:31.820 because John's got degrees in mathematics and economics 1060 00:54:31.820 --> 00:54:35.300 and sociology from the universities of Melbourne and Cambridge. 1061 00:54:36.060 --> 00:54:37.940 He's a very prolific author, 1062 00:54:38.200 --> 00:54:41.620 very interested in cultural movements, 1063 00:54:41.900 --> 00:54:43.640 what we lack, what we have. 1064 00:54:43.640 --> 00:54:45.840 Books like Ego and the Soul, 1065 00:54:46.000 --> 00:54:47.440 The Modern West in a Search of Meaning, 1066 00:54:48.500 --> 00:54:50.080 A Western Dreaming, 1067 00:54:50.160 --> 00:54:53.400 Meditation on Terror that was published after 2000... 1068 00:54:53.400 --> 00:54:55.640 ..September 11th, 2001. 1069 00:54:56.360 --> 00:54:59.480 And a book called The Wreck of Western Culture, 1070 00:54:59.600 --> 00:55:02.720 which is an early book called Humanism, 1071 00:55:02.740 --> 00:55:03.800 coming out under that name. 1072 00:55:04.600 --> 00:55:09.040 John's a genuine public intellectual. 1073 00:55:09.240 --> 00:55:10.540 If there's an issue going, 1074 00:55:11.300 --> 00:55:16.300 you're likely to hear John talking articulately and eruditely on it. 1075 00:55:16.720 --> 00:55:17.620 John Carroll. 1076 00:55:18.920 --> 00:55:19.560 APPLAUSE 1077 00:55:26.440 --> 00:55:28.820 Can you hear me up the back? 1078 00:55:29.500 --> 00:55:31.200 Yes, yes, thank you. 1079 00:55:31.960 --> 00:55:33.620 My interest is culture, 1080 00:55:33.760 --> 00:55:37.640 and in this particular discussion, 1081 00:55:37.720 --> 00:55:40.520 the cultural consequences of it. 1082 00:55:40.540 --> 00:55:41.060 The cultural consequences of science. 1083 00:55:41.640 --> 00:55:43.820 And above all, 1084 00:55:43.860 --> 00:55:46.120 the disenchanting cultural consequences 1085 00:55:46.120 --> 00:55:48.200 of modern Western science. 1086 00:55:49.540 --> 00:55:53.140 There was a headline in one of the newspapers today, 1087 00:55:53.460 --> 00:55:55.540 Australian newspapers today, 1088 00:55:55.720 --> 00:55:57.360 that went something like, 1089 00:55:57.540 --> 00:55:58.900 The Death of Death. 1090 00:56:01.320 --> 00:56:05.100 It was being the year 2005, 1091 00:56:05.440 --> 00:56:09.640 a reference to the triumph of science, 1092 00:56:09.640 --> 00:56:11.420 or the possible triumph of science, 1093 00:56:11.740 --> 00:56:15.260 which may mean that at some point in the near or distant future, 1094 00:56:15.480 --> 00:56:17.460 we can live forever. 1095 00:56:19.920 --> 00:56:22.420 The phrase comes from Martin Luther, 1096 00:56:22.600 --> 00:56:25.360 although I assume the journalist didn't know this. 1097 00:56:26.520 --> 00:56:27.160 LAUGHTER 1098 00:56:27.160 --> 00:56:33.340 The founder of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. 1099 00:56:34.820 --> 00:56:37.780 Luther's use of the death of death 1100 00:56:37.780 --> 00:56:43.700 was a focus on the metaphysical question. 1101 00:56:43.920 --> 00:56:46.420 And science is metaphysically dumb, 1102 00:56:46.660 --> 00:56:50.000 in the full Anglo-American sense of the word dumb. 1103 00:56:50.140 --> 00:56:53.040 Science is metaphysically dumb, or culturally dumb. 1104 00:56:53.360 --> 00:56:57.160 This is not an area in which it is any good at all. 1105 00:56:57.480 --> 00:57:00.060 So when we get a headline about the death of death, 1106 00:57:00.660 --> 00:57:03.360 we're merely referring to the human body 1107 00:57:03.360 --> 00:57:05.580 as an organism, as a material organism. 1108 00:57:06.400 --> 00:57:07.760 Luther, when he refers to death, 1109 00:57:07.780 --> 00:57:08.760 referred to the death of death, 1110 00:57:08.920 --> 00:57:13.220 was taking on the central big question for any human culture. 1111 00:57:13.540 --> 00:57:16.440 And that is the question of what happens to us when we die. 1112 00:57:18.280 --> 00:57:19.260 Do we... 1113 00:57:19.780 --> 00:57:22.380 And of course there are many, many different answers. 1114 00:57:22.540 --> 00:57:26.420 For some reason, and I would suggest it's constitutive of the human species, 1115 00:57:27.060 --> 00:57:28.760 death is a problem for us. 1116 00:57:29.100 --> 00:57:31.360 We need a meaningful answer 1117 00:57:31.360 --> 00:57:35.220 that death is not like a fish rotting and stinking on a beach. 1118 00:57:35.480 --> 00:57:36.840 There is more to death 1119 00:57:37.780 --> 00:57:38.220 than that. 1120 00:57:38.580 --> 00:57:41.640 And it is the central task of all cultures 1121 00:57:41.640 --> 00:57:44.120 at their most serious level 1122 00:57:44.120 --> 00:57:45.900 to answer the big questions like 1123 00:57:45.900 --> 00:57:47.320 what happens to me when I die? 1124 00:57:47.600 --> 00:57:49.400 What should I do with my life? 1125 00:57:49.680 --> 00:57:51.180 And where do I come from? 1126 00:57:52.520 --> 00:57:55.400 Now science, the charisma of science, 1127 00:57:55.600 --> 00:57:57.380 and this is not really the fault of the scientists, 1128 00:57:57.460 --> 00:58:00.360 it's the fault of some of the scientists, the fundamentalists. 1129 00:58:00.560 --> 00:58:03.040 Some of the best scientists are fundamentalists 1130 00:58:03.040 --> 00:58:07.760 in the sense that I'll hope make sense. 1131 00:58:07.760 --> 00:58:09.920 I hope I'm clear or a little bit clear to you. 1132 00:58:10.040 --> 00:58:14.680 The Nobel winning 20th century scientist Francis Crick, 1133 00:58:14.880 --> 00:58:16.520 DNA fame, 1134 00:58:17.760 --> 00:58:21.500 he said, I think later in life, 1135 00:58:22.000 --> 00:58:25.140 the soul is a mere assembly of nerve cells. 1136 00:58:25.700 --> 00:58:29.020 The soul is a mere assembly of nerve cells. 1137 00:58:30.720 --> 00:58:31.480 Now, 1138 00:58:32.900 --> 00:58:34.820 he is treading, I think, 1139 00:58:34.820 --> 00:58:37.940 where it is presumptuous for someone who assumes 1140 00:58:37.940 --> 00:58:40.440 that there are only material explanations for things, 1141 00:58:40.560 --> 00:58:41.880 there are only material truths, 1142 00:58:42.160 --> 00:58:44.600 and he's presumptuous for someone with those assumptions 1143 00:58:44.600 --> 00:58:50.100 to move into the area in which virtually all humans 1144 00:58:50.100 --> 00:58:51.920 who've ever lived as far as we know 1145 00:58:51.920 --> 00:58:56.080 believe that there is something in us human individuals, 1146 00:58:56.220 --> 00:58:58.340 call it a soul or call it whatever, 1147 00:58:58.580 --> 00:59:03.040 which is more than our physical bodies, 1148 00:59:03.120 --> 00:59:04.460 that perhaps, 1149 00:59:04.820 --> 00:59:06.680 existed before we were born, 1150 00:59:06.860 --> 00:59:10.300 that perhaps existed, transformed or not, 1151 00:59:10.440 --> 00:59:13.000 exists after we die. 1152 00:59:14.020 --> 00:59:15.620 Caught up in the death of, 1153 00:59:15.660 --> 00:59:18.060 the serious Luther death of death question is, 1154 00:59:18.100 --> 00:59:19.360 of course, issues like, 1155 00:59:19.480 --> 00:59:21.260 do we have a soul or whatever, 1156 00:59:21.460 --> 00:59:23.140 and what form does it take, 1157 00:59:23.220 --> 00:59:24.860 where does it come from, 1158 00:59:25.820 --> 00:59:28.600 and it's not very satisfactory to postulate a big bang 1159 00:59:28.600 --> 00:59:30.240 somewhere way back when. 1160 00:59:31.260 --> 00:59:34.680 A material Darwinian explanation for that, 1161 00:59:34.680 --> 00:59:35.680 that particular creation, 1162 00:59:36.020 --> 00:59:41.140 which is of central interest to almost all human beings. 1163 00:59:41.720 --> 00:59:45.140 Now the moment that someone of the eminence of Francis Crick, 1164 00:59:45.300 --> 00:59:47.700 with the enormous prestige of modern science, 1165 00:59:47.840 --> 00:59:49.140 can dismissively say, 1166 00:59:49.300 --> 00:59:52.660 the soul is a mere assembly of nerve cells, 1167 00:59:53.680 --> 00:59:58.360 this is a signal to the modern West predominantly, 1168 00:59:59.680 --> 01:00:01.420 that the disenchanting force, 1169 01:00:02.680 --> 01:00:03.660 it's no wonder, 1170 01:00:03.660 --> 01:00:04.800 it's no wonder, 1171 01:00:04.980 --> 01:00:07.160 that we have generations, 1172 01:00:07.160 --> 01:00:09.180 which are struggling to find, 1173 01:00:09.300 --> 01:00:11.040 some sort of central meaning, 1174 01:00:11.200 --> 01:00:13.660 in what we humans are born here on the earth, 1175 01:00:14.440 --> 01:00:16.540 to do with our lives. 1176 01:00:17.460 --> 01:00:19.360 I'd also put it to you, 1177 01:00:19.500 --> 01:00:22.740 if you ask the questions about the important things, 1178 01:00:22.860 --> 01:00:23.800 that happened to you, 1179 01:00:24.400 --> 01:00:25.520 you won't find, 1180 01:00:25.780 --> 01:00:28.280 you probably won't find any significant answers, 1181 01:00:28.400 --> 01:00:30.240 never mind scientific answers. 1182 01:00:30.660 --> 01:00:31.800 Why were you born, 1183 01:00:31.940 --> 01:00:33.080 when you were born, 1184 01:00:33.080 --> 01:00:34.400 into the particular society, 1185 01:00:34.600 --> 01:00:36.280 in which you were born? 1186 01:00:36.420 --> 01:00:38.400 Why were you born to those particular parents? 1187 01:00:39.280 --> 01:00:41.980 How is it that you met certain people, 1188 01:00:42.040 --> 01:00:44.060 or have met certain people in your lives, 1189 01:00:44.140 --> 01:00:46.060 who for some reason became significant, 1190 01:00:46.200 --> 01:00:47.320 or very significant? 1191 01:00:49.500 --> 01:00:51.140 Do you know how, 1192 01:00:51.340 --> 01:00:51.680 when, 1193 01:00:51.800 --> 01:00:52.400 or why, 1194 01:00:52.500 --> 01:00:53.360 you will die? 1195 01:00:54.960 --> 01:00:56.000 Almost all, 1196 01:00:56.040 --> 01:00:56.860 perhaps all, 1197 01:00:57.120 --> 01:00:59.420 the big questions, 1198 01:00:59.440 --> 01:01:02.080 which are of central significance to human life, 1199 01:01:02.080 --> 01:01:05.280 are elusive to modern Western material, 1200 01:01:05.740 --> 01:01:08.980 post-Darwinian, post-Darwinian science. 1201 01:01:10.080 --> 01:01:12.000 And that would not be a problem, 1202 01:01:12.100 --> 01:01:14.280 if Luther, by the way, called, 1203 01:01:15.080 --> 01:01:18.120 Luther sort of suits my talk tonight, 1204 01:01:18.400 --> 01:01:20.800 Luther called reason the devil's whore, 1205 01:01:20.900 --> 01:01:22.820 the devil's prostitute. 1206 01:01:24.020 --> 01:01:26.980 Reason, we could substitute science, 1207 01:01:27.020 --> 01:01:28.780 in this particular discussion, 1208 01:01:29.020 --> 01:01:30.620 science is the devil's whore, 1209 01:01:30.620 --> 01:01:33.020 because Luther, 1210 01:01:33.180 --> 01:01:36.000 give science a free rein, 1211 01:01:36.200 --> 01:01:36.900 give reason, 1212 01:01:36.960 --> 01:01:39.380 give human intelligence a free rein, 1213 01:01:39.600 --> 01:01:42.140 then it will go into all sorts of places 1214 01:01:42.140 --> 01:01:43.120 where it shouldn't go. 1215 01:01:43.700 --> 01:01:46.480 It gains airs and graces. 1216 01:01:46.780 --> 01:01:47.780 It is inevitable, 1217 01:01:47.940 --> 01:01:48.980 this was Luther's prediction, 1218 01:01:49.120 --> 01:01:52.100 that the moment you free reason, science, 1219 01:01:52.400 --> 01:01:53.420 God is dead. 1220 01:01:54.060 --> 01:01:57.680 And we have moved, post-Darwin, 1221 01:01:57.880 --> 01:02:00.600 in relationship to one of the books, 1222 01:02:00.620 --> 01:02:01.600 to the big questions, of course, 1223 01:02:01.600 --> 01:02:02.860 into more and more confidence 1224 01:02:02.860 --> 01:02:04.740 about the scientific explanation 1225 01:02:04.740 --> 01:02:06.160 for the creation, 1226 01:02:06.400 --> 01:02:08.180 not just of humanity, 1227 01:02:08.500 --> 01:02:09.780 of life, of the universe, 1228 01:02:10.060 --> 01:02:13.380 and so on, so on, going back. 1229 01:02:14.880 --> 01:02:15.840 Another dimension 1230 01:02:16.620 --> 01:02:19.820 of the disenchanting quality of science, 1231 01:02:19.940 --> 01:02:21.420 and this is a sort of simple, 1232 01:02:21.560 --> 01:02:23.060 is a simple example, 1233 01:02:23.120 --> 01:02:26.420 and I'm just working by accumulation here, 1234 01:02:26.500 --> 01:02:28.000 it's, we've been, 1235 01:02:28.120 --> 01:02:30.220 the five of us talking for quite a while, 1236 01:02:30.620 --> 01:02:32.040 and so if you'll excuse me 1237 01:02:32.040 --> 01:02:33.480 being simple about this. 1238 01:02:34.940 --> 01:02:37.060 Many of us, on a spring morning, 1239 01:02:37.100 --> 01:02:39.260 when we hear magpies in Australia singing, 1240 01:02:39.900 --> 01:02:42.020 are moved by the beauty 1241 01:02:42.020 --> 01:02:44.340 of the uplifting early morning beauty 1242 01:02:44.340 --> 01:02:45.900 of the song of the magpies. 1243 01:02:46.520 --> 01:02:48.400 If someone comes as you're listening 1244 01:02:48.400 --> 01:02:49.460 to the magpies singing, 1245 01:02:49.520 --> 01:02:50.480 comes along and says, 1246 01:02:50.640 --> 01:02:51.460 oh, well, you know, 1247 01:02:51.540 --> 01:02:52.640 this is just a warning 1248 01:02:52.640 --> 01:02:53.880 defending their territory, 1249 01:02:56.020 --> 01:02:57.280 attempted, it may be, 1250 01:02:57.320 --> 01:02:58.760 I don't know if it's true or false, 1251 01:02:58.820 --> 01:02:59.540 but it's an attempt 1252 01:02:59.540 --> 01:03:00.800 at a scientific explanation, 1253 01:03:01.200 --> 01:03:02.160 a material explanation 1254 01:03:02.160 --> 01:03:04.380 of why the magpies are singing. 1255 01:03:04.720 --> 01:03:06.720 It is inevitable that the moment 1256 01:03:06.720 --> 01:03:09.060 you start to think in that sort of way, 1257 01:03:09.180 --> 01:03:10.780 and we all, of course, 1258 01:03:10.860 --> 01:03:12.100 we're born into science, 1259 01:03:12.180 --> 01:03:13.980 we're all scientists in the modern West, 1260 01:03:14.240 --> 01:03:15.640 the moment you start to think 1261 01:03:15.640 --> 01:03:16.680 in that sort of way, 1262 01:03:16.880 --> 01:03:18.880 the song of the magpie will lose 1263 01:03:18.880 --> 01:03:19.960 some of its magic, 1264 01:03:20.180 --> 01:03:21.360 some of its charm. 1265 01:03:23.020 --> 01:03:24.300 Charles Darwin himself, 1266 01:03:24.480 --> 01:03:25.680 in his autobiography, 1267 01:03:25.720 --> 01:03:27.140 admitted that when he was young 1268 01:03:27.140 --> 01:03:28.740 and he went into the Brazilian forest, 1269 01:03:28.900 --> 01:03:29.460 he was moved 1270 01:03:29.540 --> 01:03:32.080 by the grandeur of the forests. 1271 01:03:32.360 --> 01:03:33.840 But later in life, 1272 01:03:33.880 --> 01:03:35.340 they left him completely cold. 1273 01:03:35.460 --> 01:03:38.520 The calculating, analytical method 1274 01:03:38.520 --> 01:03:40.680 that had taken him over 1275 01:03:40.680 --> 01:03:42.540 and which he was so brilliant at, 1276 01:03:42.600 --> 01:03:47.280 which he was such a virtuoso scientist using, 1277 01:03:47.520 --> 01:03:49.940 had taken the magic 1278 01:03:49.940 --> 01:03:53.040 of that simpler experience away. 1279 01:03:54.920 --> 01:03:56.720 My simple theme, then, 1280 01:03:56.780 --> 01:03:59.520 is science is an extraordinary thing, 1281 01:03:59.540 --> 01:04:00.480 an extraordinary, powerful tool, 1282 01:04:00.620 --> 01:04:01.300 and we are all 1283 01:04:01.300 --> 01:04:03.040 the extraordinary beneficiaries of it. 1284 01:04:03.080 --> 01:04:04.560 We live in the comforts 1285 01:04:04.560 --> 01:04:06.720 of the modern Western cities 1286 01:04:06.720 --> 01:04:07.820 like Adelaide, 1287 01:04:08.000 --> 01:04:10.960 creations of modern Western science. 1288 01:04:11.380 --> 01:04:14.100 And it would be disingenuous of me 1289 01:04:14.100 --> 01:04:17.160 not to laud those achievements. 1290 01:04:17.560 --> 01:04:19.920 But it is inherent in the logic 1291 01:04:19.920 --> 01:04:21.260 of modern Western science 1292 01:04:21.260 --> 01:04:23.080 that it gets airs 1293 01:04:23.080 --> 01:04:25.180 in the way that Luther predicted, 1294 01:04:25.380 --> 01:04:27.900 that it leads almost from within 1295 01:04:27.900 --> 01:04:28.320 to the inner world. 1296 01:04:28.320 --> 01:04:28.920 And it is in its own logic, 1297 01:04:29.160 --> 01:04:32.240 assumptions like that of Francis Crick, 1298 01:04:32.400 --> 01:04:34.940 the soul, life after death, 1299 01:04:35.140 --> 01:04:37.380 whatever metaphysical question you want to put, 1300 01:04:37.920 --> 01:04:41.180 is a mere assembly of nerve cells. 1301 01:04:42.340 --> 01:04:43.900 That's a theory, by the way, 1302 01:04:43.960 --> 01:04:45.460 that I think is as persuasive 1303 01:04:45.460 --> 01:04:47.260 as the person who thinks 1304 01:04:47.260 --> 01:04:48.260 that television programs 1305 01:04:48.260 --> 01:04:50.080 are created in the television aerial. 1306 01:04:52.100 --> 01:04:53.920 I mean, you won't get your television program 1307 01:04:53.920 --> 01:04:55.480 unless the aerial's on the roof. 1308 01:04:55.480 --> 01:04:57.240 But to assume that, therefore, 1309 01:04:57.340 --> 01:04:58.540 the aerial on the roof 1310 01:04:58.540 --> 01:04:59.860 creates the television program 1311 01:05:00.480 --> 01:05:02.100 is like assuming that the soul 1312 01:05:02.100 --> 01:05:03.540 is an assembly of nerve cells. 1313 01:05:03.760 --> 01:05:04.200 Thank you. 1314 01:05:16.020 --> 01:05:17.900 Now we get to do two things. 1315 01:05:18.380 --> 01:05:19.820 I'm going to ask a question 1316 01:05:19.820 --> 01:05:20.780 of all of the panel 1317 01:05:20.780 --> 01:05:22.360 which they will variously answer. 1318 01:05:22.500 --> 01:05:24.840 And then they're going to ask questions 1319 01:05:24.840 --> 01:05:25.740 of one another. 1320 01:05:25.960 --> 01:05:28.440 And then we're going to turn it open to you. 1321 01:05:29.220 --> 01:05:30.520 Now, as I've been listening, 1322 01:05:30.660 --> 01:05:32.800 these are some phrases that sprung out at me. 1323 01:05:33.120 --> 01:05:36.200 We might sleepwalk our way into nanotechnology. 1324 01:05:37.240 --> 01:05:38.920 We don't consult enough. 1325 01:05:39.740 --> 01:05:42.220 The phrase gather together came in there. 1326 01:05:43.840 --> 01:05:45.560 The presumption of science. 1327 01:05:46.280 --> 01:05:48.760 We're all scientists in the modern West. 1328 01:05:50.280 --> 01:05:51.580 Those phrases came in 1329 01:05:51.580 --> 01:05:53.660 and they made me wonder, 1330 01:05:53.660 --> 01:05:56.540 and this is a question to all of the panel, 1331 01:05:56.620 --> 01:05:58.360 and they can answer it as they like. 1332 01:05:59.860 --> 01:06:02.680 Given the complexity of all that we've heard talked about 1333 01:06:02.680 --> 01:06:06.400 and the need for complex understandings, 1334 01:06:06.500 --> 01:06:10.640 do the panel think that scientists talk enough 1335 01:06:10.640 --> 01:06:13.080 to one another across their specialist disciplines? 1336 01:06:13.800 --> 01:06:16.540 And an associated question of all of you, 1337 01:06:18.060 --> 01:06:20.860 what obligation is there upon scientists 1338 01:06:20.860 --> 01:06:23.640 to communicate their knowledge, 1339 01:06:23.660 --> 01:06:26.180 their science to the rest of us 1340 01:06:26.180 --> 01:06:28.460 so that we understand the complexities 1341 01:06:28.460 --> 01:06:30.500 so that there are not as many misunderstandings? 1342 01:06:30.540 --> 01:06:31.780 So, they're the two questions. 1343 01:06:31.980 --> 01:06:33.820 Do you talk enough across disciplines 1344 01:06:33.820 --> 01:06:34.800 and do you need to? 1345 01:06:34.900 --> 01:06:36.880 And who's responsible for communicating? 1346 01:06:37.340 --> 01:06:38.480 I don't mind who starts. 1347 01:06:38.940 --> 01:06:40.080 Do you want to, Robert? 1348 01:06:40.580 --> 01:06:45.160 Yes, I certainly don't think scientists communicate enough 1349 01:06:45.160 --> 01:06:46.020 with one another. 1350 01:06:46.280 --> 01:06:48.160 I mean, scientists are very fond of sticking the boot 1351 01:06:48.160 --> 01:06:52.080 into the ignorance of the public on basic science. 1352 01:06:52.260 --> 01:06:53.640 But if you take an astrophysicist, 1353 01:06:53.660 --> 01:06:57.100 and ask him how you get from a single gene defect 1354 01:06:57.100 --> 01:06:58.660 to a disease like cystic fibrosis, 1355 01:06:59.320 --> 01:07:01.440 they'll be as gormless for an answer 1356 01:07:01.440 --> 01:07:04.160 as anybody you grab in a saloon bar. 1357 01:07:04.500 --> 01:07:06.660 And equally, if you asked a biologist 1358 01:07:06.660 --> 01:07:11.440 to explain how you get from a large star 1359 01:07:11.440 --> 01:07:13.600 down to a compressed black hole, 1360 01:07:13.940 --> 01:07:17.740 they would be no better than the barman behind the bar 1361 01:07:17.740 --> 01:07:18.760 in the saloon. 1362 01:07:19.100 --> 01:07:22.920 So, yes, there's enormous need 1363 01:07:22.920 --> 01:07:25.580 to talk across disciplines. 1364 01:07:25.900 --> 01:07:27.820 But there are many barriers. 1365 01:07:28.060 --> 01:07:29.380 They're very tribal. 1366 01:07:29.660 --> 01:07:31.360 They speak different languages. 1367 01:07:31.580 --> 01:07:33.800 It's very difficult to jump across some of these barriers. 1368 01:07:33.980 --> 01:07:38.240 One of the reasons being that the biggest barrier 1369 01:07:38.240 --> 01:07:39.840 is the mathematical boundary, 1370 01:07:40.080 --> 01:07:44.580 where a lot of people who work in the softer sciences 1371 01:07:45.420 --> 01:07:48.060 really do just curl up into a little ball 1372 01:07:48.060 --> 01:07:49.820 and start moaning quietly to themselves 1373 01:07:49.820 --> 01:07:51.980 when faced with differential equations, 1374 01:07:51.980 --> 01:07:54.200 which a physicist would just laugh at. 1375 01:07:54.420 --> 01:07:58.280 And equally, a physicist wouldn't have the faintest clue 1376 01:07:58.280 --> 01:08:01.780 how to set up a really watertight experiment 1377 01:08:01.780 --> 01:08:03.040 in social psychology 1378 01:08:03.040 --> 01:08:06.500 along the lines of the work of people like Stanley Milgram 1379 01:08:06.500 --> 01:08:09.440 with the famous experiment on obedience to authority 1380 01:08:09.440 --> 01:08:10.980 involving the electrocution, 1381 01:08:12.000 --> 01:08:13.140 the mock electrocution experiment. 1382 01:08:13.640 --> 01:08:17.980 So there is an enormous need for cross-fertilization. 1383 01:08:18.780 --> 01:08:21.140 But the barriers are not to be sniffed at. 1384 01:08:21.240 --> 01:08:21.960 They are really important. 1385 01:08:21.980 --> 01:08:23.220 They are very serious indeed. 1386 01:08:23.560 --> 01:08:23.960 Peter? 1387 01:08:24.300 --> 01:08:27.800 Yeah, a lot of the best books about science now 1388 01:08:27.800 --> 01:08:32.240 are written by journalists, not by scientists. 1389 01:08:32.460 --> 01:08:34.540 They're written by people like Jonathan Glick, for instance, 1390 01:08:34.680 --> 01:08:36.200 who wrote the book about Richard Feynman. 1391 01:08:36.420 --> 01:08:39.480 There's a very fine book by John Barry 1392 01:08:39.480 --> 01:08:40.740 about the great influenza. 1393 01:08:41.520 --> 01:08:45.140 Now, if you read those books and you're not in the specialty, 1394 01:08:45.660 --> 01:08:49.220 they're as accessible to any normally educated person, 1395 01:08:49.320 --> 01:08:51.000 even if they don't know very much science, 1396 01:08:51.000 --> 01:08:52.380 as they are to many other scientists. 1397 01:08:52.780 --> 01:08:56.880 I've had people in the humanities tell me about nuclear physics 1398 01:08:56.880 --> 01:09:00.980 because they've read a good account and I don't understand it. 1399 01:09:01.040 --> 01:09:03.640 Now, that's exactly what Robert was saying, 1400 01:09:03.700 --> 01:09:06.860 is that we're no more informed. 1401 01:09:07.000 --> 01:09:08.020 We're highly specialized. 1402 01:09:08.540 --> 01:09:10.900 Some of us are less narrow than others. 1403 01:09:10.980 --> 01:09:14.200 I work on a fairly big scope because of infectious disease, 1404 01:09:14.300 --> 01:09:16.580 which takes me in all sorts of different areas. 1405 01:09:16.760 --> 01:09:19.760 But we're very specialized and we don't necessarily... 1406 01:09:19.760 --> 01:09:22.900 I can understand more or less what the brain scientists are saying, 1407 01:09:22.960 --> 01:09:24.600 but I can't really access... 1408 01:09:24.600 --> 01:09:24.620 More than I can. 1409 01:09:26.340 --> 01:09:26.780 Sorry. 1410 01:09:27.600 --> 01:09:29.180 Not in the detail you do. 1411 01:09:29.260 --> 01:09:30.060 No, I said more than I can. 1412 01:09:30.380 --> 01:09:31.740 Yes. No, I lied. 1413 01:09:33.060 --> 01:09:36.860 But the other thing is that scientists are very worried about this 1414 01:09:36.860 --> 01:09:40.500 because when I started in science, which is now many years ago, 1415 01:09:40.780 --> 01:09:44.420 I could cover the whole of my field of immunology really quite well, 1416 01:09:44.500 --> 01:09:46.520 and I knew pretty much what was going on. 1417 01:09:46.640 --> 01:09:48.920 Now I can only cover a very small field of it. 1418 01:09:48.920 --> 01:09:52.120 Now, a little bit of that has got to do with what Susan was talking about, 1419 01:09:54.020 --> 01:09:54.800 neurodegenerative disease. 1420 01:09:55.460 --> 01:09:58.440 I think of it as protein folding disease, actually. 1421 01:09:58.820 --> 01:10:03.500 But a lot of it is to do with the fact that there's been an enormous expansion 1422 01:10:03.500 --> 01:10:05.840 of very, very detailed and specific knowledge 1423 01:10:05.840 --> 01:10:08.720 that's really come from the molecular biology revolution 1424 01:10:08.720 --> 01:10:10.980 that Francis Crick and Jim Watson kicked off. 1425 01:10:11.240 --> 01:10:13.480 And so it's very difficult. 1426 01:10:13.540 --> 01:10:15.200 We're living in a Tower of Babel. 1427 01:10:15.680 --> 01:10:18.200 Not only do we have the Tower of Babel 1428 01:10:18.200 --> 01:10:23.960 but politicians, lawyers, scientists don't speak the same language. 1429 01:10:24.040 --> 01:10:26.400 For instance, if you use the word evidence, 1430 01:10:26.720 --> 01:10:28.800 if a lawyer uses the word evidence, 1431 01:10:28.840 --> 01:10:32.240 it's totally different from what an advertising executive may use. 1432 01:10:32.700 --> 01:10:36.240 If a politician uses the word evidence, you probably should reach for your gun. 1433 01:10:36.480 --> 01:10:40.020 And if a scientist uses the word evidence, 1434 01:10:40.100 --> 01:10:41.220 they're probably being very specific. 1435 01:10:41.300 --> 01:10:43.000 They are talking about data. 1436 01:10:43.200 --> 01:10:45.700 But there's no mutual understanding of what those words mean. 1437 01:10:46.560 --> 01:10:47.040 Semantics. 1438 01:10:48.200 --> 01:10:48.660 I think that's a very important field. 1439 01:10:49.800 --> 01:10:50.160 Susan? 1440 01:10:50.340 --> 01:10:52.180 Yeah, I feel I have to take a stand here. 1441 01:10:52.580 --> 01:10:55.180 Can I have bags, by the way, in advance to ask a question of John? 1442 01:10:55.660 --> 01:10:57.100 Because we were asking questions of each other. 1443 01:10:57.380 --> 01:11:00.880 I obviously want to go in there in the red corner or the blue corner 1444 01:11:00.880 --> 01:11:01.800 or whatever corner I'm going to be in. 1445 01:11:01.880 --> 01:11:05.560 But pending that happy moment, just address your two questions. 1446 01:11:06.360 --> 01:11:08.740 I wonder if there's any historians here, for example. 1447 01:11:09.040 --> 01:11:11.440 And if you are, let's say, an ancient historian, 1448 01:11:11.580 --> 01:11:15.200 how often do you sit down with a 20th century historian, I wonder? 1449 01:11:15.720 --> 01:11:17.520 And are you demonized for not doing that? 1450 01:11:18.200 --> 01:11:19.820 So why should scientists be demonized? 1451 01:11:19.820 --> 01:11:21.240 Because we have our particular disciplines. 1452 01:11:21.280 --> 01:11:25.700 Because we don't necessarily, in the normal bump and grind of our everyday work, 1453 01:11:25.900 --> 01:11:28.820 sit down and automatically go across disciplines. 1454 01:11:29.380 --> 01:11:31.580 That said, there's now a great emphasis, 1455 01:11:31.700 --> 01:11:33.280 and I really feel I have to put a marker down here, 1456 01:11:33.300 --> 01:11:35.960 as I've thought quite strongly, towards multidisciplinarity. 1457 01:11:35.960 --> 01:11:36.640 There has to be. 1458 01:11:36.820 --> 01:11:38.740 If you take nanotechnology, for example, 1459 01:11:38.740 --> 01:11:41.980 that has ramifications in material science and in biomedical science 1460 01:11:41.980 --> 01:11:43.280 that is astonishing. 1461 01:11:43.480 --> 01:11:45.880 And increasingly, we in the neurosciences and biomedical sciences 1462 01:11:45.880 --> 01:11:47.760 have to work with engineers and computer scientists. 1463 01:11:48.200 --> 01:11:49.180 So we're actually seeing, 1464 01:11:49.420 --> 01:11:51.140 and I really think this is very important, 1465 01:11:51.220 --> 01:11:52.660 if I was to say anything important this evening, 1466 01:11:52.780 --> 01:11:53.500 perhaps some people do, 1467 01:11:53.620 --> 01:11:54.560 it is this, 1468 01:11:54.640 --> 01:11:57.960 that the old traditional easy slagging off of scientists 1469 01:11:57.960 --> 01:11:59.520 as thinking inside their box, 1470 01:11:59.680 --> 01:12:03.300 being nerdy little people who are just obsessed with one tiny thing, 1471 01:12:03.340 --> 01:12:05.480 we are trying to challenge that, and we are changing it. 1472 01:12:05.520 --> 01:12:07.480 Not because we want to, but because we have to. 1473 01:12:07.620 --> 01:12:10.040 And because the new technologies and the new problems 1474 01:12:10.040 --> 01:12:11.940 are multidisciplinary questions and problems. 1475 01:12:12.200 --> 01:12:13.480 So yes, we are talking. 1476 01:12:13.600 --> 01:12:14.480 We're not doing it well, 1477 01:12:15.200 --> 01:12:16.680 but I'd like to see the historians do it. 1478 01:12:16.680 --> 01:12:18.660 You know, why should it be the scientists who are demonized? 1479 01:12:18.780 --> 01:12:19.180 Please. 1480 01:12:24.820 --> 01:12:27.720 Yeah, my Texas evening is we are, after all, only human. 1481 01:12:28.060 --> 01:12:28.440 Yeah? 1482 01:12:28.900 --> 01:12:32.400 Then the other issue is the issue of communicating with the public. 1483 01:12:32.600 --> 01:12:35.200 And again, I'm very proud to be director of the Royal Institution, 1484 01:12:35.360 --> 01:12:37.480 which for 200-odd years in London 1485 01:12:37.480 --> 01:12:39.740 has been diffusing science for the common purposes of life. 1486 01:12:39.880 --> 01:12:42.320 I might add two of the directors of the Royal Institution 1487 01:12:42.320 --> 01:12:44.300 were both born here, William and Lawrence Bragg, 1488 01:12:44.420 --> 01:12:45.720 who are sons of Adelaide, 1489 01:12:45.720 --> 01:12:48.220 and that's why I'm here to initiate something called the Bragg Initiative, 1490 01:12:48.440 --> 01:12:50.820 which will, I hope, forge links between the Royal Institution and Adelaide. 1491 01:12:51.060 --> 01:12:54.280 So for 200 years, the Royal Institution, I hope, 1492 01:12:54.280 --> 01:12:55.500 and others in our following, 1493 01:12:55.620 --> 01:12:57.960 have been very sensitive to the Sagan issue. 1494 01:12:58.120 --> 01:13:00.480 You know, that it is suicide to live in a society 1495 01:13:00.480 --> 01:13:02.300 dependent on science and technology 1496 01:13:02.300 --> 01:13:05.020 unless we actually share and diffuse that with the public. 1497 01:13:05.060 --> 01:13:08.040 And the public have a hand in directing and harnessing 1498 01:13:08.040 --> 01:13:10.980 and curbing where that technology is taking us. 1499 01:13:11.120 --> 01:13:13.400 Now, that ain't easy, and it ain't easy if you're a scientist 1500 01:13:13.400 --> 01:13:15.700 who's already over-audited, doing research, 1501 01:13:15.720 --> 01:13:16.460 who's too much teaching, 1502 01:13:16.620 --> 01:13:18.300 who is worried about their next grant coming, 1503 01:13:18.460 --> 01:13:20.160 who's having whiny post-docs who are leaving, 1504 01:13:20.880 --> 01:13:21.480 who's having... 1505 01:13:21.480 --> 01:13:23.460 Why are people going to take your lab space away? 1506 01:13:23.600 --> 01:13:24.720 What committee you're on, 1507 01:13:24.800 --> 01:13:25.580 whether you're going to get promotion. 1508 01:13:25.920 --> 01:13:28.580 The last thing on your mind, because you're not applauded for it, 1509 01:13:28.640 --> 01:13:31.820 is to get out in the evening and to talk to the general public. 1510 01:13:32.240 --> 01:13:35.120 And what we have to do is to think about ways to making that possible, 1511 01:13:35.180 --> 01:13:36.560 rather than sneering at the scientists 1512 01:13:36.560 --> 01:13:39.440 and chopping them off at the knees, because they don't do this. 1513 01:13:39.780 --> 01:13:41.500 So I think it's something we have to work together. 1514 01:13:41.580 --> 01:13:43.960 Already we're starting, and over the last 10 or 20 years, 1515 01:13:44.120 --> 01:13:45.240 there's been a huge change. 1516 01:13:45.300 --> 01:13:45.700 And what you've seen, 1517 01:13:45.720 --> 01:13:47.440 is that we've changed to have the unfortunate acronym PUSS, 1518 01:13:47.820 --> 01:13:49.340 the Public Understanding of Science. 1519 01:13:49.440 --> 01:13:51.060 That's now changed to things like... 1520 01:13:51.900 --> 01:13:53.880 That's now changed to things like science and society, 1521 01:13:54.160 --> 01:13:56.440 because I think people feel that that is more acceptable, 1522 01:13:56.820 --> 01:13:58.440 that it's more kind of PC, you know? 1523 01:13:58.500 --> 01:13:59.460 It's more kind of interactive, 1524 01:13:59.700 --> 01:14:01.300 and it doesn't suggest that we are coming down 1525 01:14:01.300 --> 01:14:03.980 talking to the great unwashed, you know, with pearls of wisdom, 1526 01:14:04.020 --> 01:14:05.320 and that we're all kind of in this together. 1527 01:14:05.960 --> 01:14:07.580 All of which, you know, I strongly commend, 1528 01:14:07.680 --> 01:14:08.520 because I think that is the case. 1529 01:14:08.640 --> 01:14:11.860 But you might like to look at our Royal Institution website, 1530 01:14:12.320 --> 01:14:13.380 Google on Royal Institution. 1531 01:14:13.480 --> 01:14:15.100 You'll see that the kind of things we do 1532 01:14:15.100 --> 01:14:15.700 and the kind of things we do 1533 01:14:15.720 --> 01:14:16.840 that are going to start happening here, 1534 01:14:16.980 --> 01:14:17.960 again, that's why I'm here, 1535 01:14:18.140 --> 01:14:20.840 is to actually get everyone engaged in the big issues 1536 01:14:20.840 --> 01:14:21.980 and what we're going to do about it. 1537 01:14:22.040 --> 01:14:25.240 The big problem is to help the scientists do this, 1538 01:14:25.280 --> 01:14:27.200 because your average scientist, you know, 1539 01:14:27.200 --> 01:14:28.800 shouldn't be demonized, but they should be helped, 1540 01:14:28.860 --> 01:14:30.720 because they really are overworked, 1541 01:14:31.360 --> 01:14:32.960 they're undervalued, they're stressed out, 1542 01:14:33.040 --> 01:14:33.960 they're on short-term money. 1543 01:14:34.160 --> 01:14:36.680 And rather than add to their worries 1544 01:14:36.680 --> 01:14:39.280 by telling them how short-sighted and nerdy they are, 1545 01:14:39.440 --> 01:14:40.680 one should think of machinery 1546 01:14:40.680 --> 01:14:44.020 for rewarding them and helping them help you. 1547 01:14:44.160 --> 01:14:44.740 Thank you. 1548 01:14:47.120 --> 01:14:47.560 APPLAUSE 1549 01:14:53.440 --> 01:14:54.340 John, the phrase, 1550 01:14:54.460 --> 01:14:56.440 we're all scientists in the 21st century, 1551 01:14:56.520 --> 01:14:57.040 was yours, 1552 01:14:57.160 --> 01:15:01.720 but you obviously don't think that science covers enough. 1553 01:15:02.240 --> 01:15:03.800 Do you want to speak to that? 1554 01:15:04.160 --> 01:15:04.900 Sorry, I... 1555 01:15:04.900 --> 01:15:06.480 I said, yours was the phrase, 1556 01:15:06.600 --> 01:15:08.680 we're all scientists in the 21st century, 1557 01:15:10.060 --> 01:15:12.040 but that was not enough for you. 1558 01:15:12.580 --> 01:15:13.660 Well, let me... 1559 01:15:13.660 --> 01:15:14.500 I mean, this... 1560 01:15:14.500 --> 01:15:17.880 We haven't introduced any of the moral dilemmas in science, 1561 01:15:17.960 --> 01:15:19.840 so perhaps I can use that as a cue to... 1562 01:15:20.800 --> 01:15:21.280 Yes, of course. 1563 01:15:21.280 --> 01:15:23.120 ..raise a story that I think we're... 1564 01:15:23.120 --> 01:15:26.660 we all have difficulty with, or most people have difficulty with. 1565 01:15:26.800 --> 01:15:28.460 There was an experiment in Adelaide, 1566 01:15:28.520 --> 01:15:30.740 I think Queen Elizabeth Hospital, could that be right? 1567 01:15:30.960 --> 01:15:32.760 I'm not sure. I forget the details. 1568 01:15:33.020 --> 01:15:37.460 About 20 years ago, in which I think it was rat over, 1569 01:15:37.500 --> 01:15:39.300 were fertilized with human sperm. 1570 01:15:42.420 --> 01:15:43.140 IVF experiments. 1571 01:15:43.140 --> 01:15:43.460 Yeah. 1572 01:15:44.900 --> 01:15:45.460 Experimentation. 1573 01:15:46.680 --> 01:15:50.860 There was a little bit of protest in some Catholic periodicals, 1574 01:15:50.860 --> 01:15:52.360 this is about 20 years ago, 1575 01:15:52.420 --> 01:15:54.960 fertilizing rat over with human sperm. 1576 01:15:57.120 --> 01:15:58.720 Now, not much... 1577 01:15:58.720 --> 01:16:01.580 Not long ago in the culture of the West, 1578 01:16:01.860 --> 01:16:03.580 and we don't have to go back to the Middle Ages, 1579 01:16:04.280 --> 01:16:09.720 it was the devil who produced hybrid human monsters. 1580 01:16:09.940 --> 01:16:12.440 The paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, some of you may know, 1581 01:16:13.260 --> 01:16:17.140 portrayed just simply half human, half beast. 1582 01:16:17.980 --> 01:16:21.100 Now, 20 years ago, and I'm sure it would be the same today, 1583 01:16:21.700 --> 01:16:24.420 it passed with virtually out the question 1584 01:16:24.420 --> 01:16:27.320 whether this sort of research is justified. 1585 01:16:28.560 --> 01:16:30.440 Crossbreeding humans and rats, just to overdramatize, 1586 01:16:31.320 --> 01:16:34.420 to do a media take on this particular experiment. 1587 01:16:35.120 --> 01:16:38.420 Now, the moment I think any of us start to think about it, 1588 01:16:38.460 --> 01:16:42.420 well, you know, this is being done to help infer to us, you know, 1589 01:16:42.420 --> 01:16:43.580 that all couples have children. 1590 01:16:44.480 --> 01:16:48.320 In many of those cases, the most important happiness in their lives, 1591 01:16:48.360 --> 01:16:51.220 potential happiness in their lives, is being denied them. 1592 01:16:51.460 --> 01:16:54.260 If an experiment, even of this sort, 1593 01:16:54.400 --> 01:17:00.620 contributes to that sort of level of unquestionable happiness 1594 01:17:00.620 --> 01:17:03.660 in a significant number of individuals in our society, 1595 01:17:03.860 --> 01:17:06.140 then, you know, it doesn't... 1596 01:17:06.140 --> 01:17:08.000 We're a bit squeamish about it, 1597 01:17:08.060 --> 01:17:12.320 and maybe it does transgress some moral spirit, 1598 01:17:12.420 --> 01:17:14.040 some spiritual, whatever, boundary, 1599 01:17:14.220 --> 01:17:16.700 and we really don't like the idea of that. 1600 01:17:16.920 --> 01:17:21.020 But, now, this is what I meant, that we're all scientists. 1601 01:17:21.440 --> 01:17:23.720 We all are in the... We all think... 1602 01:17:23.720 --> 01:17:27.080 Well, most of us now think, and I certainly do too, 1603 01:17:27.200 --> 01:17:31.780 in this situation, is it justified? 1604 01:17:31.900 --> 01:17:33.300 And probably at the end of the day, 1605 01:17:33.340 --> 01:17:36.140 most of us will shrug our shoulders and say, why not? 1606 01:17:37.160 --> 01:17:40.840 Now, the problem... Most of us. I didn't say all of us. 1607 01:17:40.840 --> 01:17:44.520 Because it's now... We've now moved into this blurred area 1608 01:17:44.520 --> 01:17:47.600 where we're back with the death of death, which I started with, 1609 01:17:47.760 --> 01:17:50.380 that there's been this great slippage 1610 01:17:50.380 --> 01:17:54.600 about the important answer to death that we humans need, 1611 01:17:54.740 --> 01:17:57.940 which is a metaphysical one, into that, well, 1612 01:17:58.060 --> 01:18:00.940 if we can get five more years of life or ten more years of life, 1613 01:18:01.100 --> 01:18:03.020 that really is happiness. 1614 01:18:04.300 --> 01:18:09.060 Now, I think most of us in a Western society like ours today 1615 01:18:09.060 --> 01:18:10.400 are in this difficult position 1616 01:18:10.840 --> 01:18:12.800 of struggling with these issues, 1617 01:18:12.940 --> 01:18:15.960 with the power of the scientific paradigm 1618 01:18:15.960 --> 01:18:18.580 and its great successes on the one side, 1619 01:18:18.660 --> 01:18:23.360 plus the fact there are these infertile couples 1620 01:18:23.360 --> 01:18:27.560 who may be helped by an experiment in Adelaide 20 years ago 1621 01:18:27.560 --> 01:18:29.740 fertilising rat over with human sperm. 1622 01:18:30.180 --> 01:18:31.200 What do we think? 1623 01:18:34.360 --> 01:18:36.120 Does anyone want to say what we think? 1624 01:18:36.500 --> 01:18:38.220 Susan, do you want to ask your question now? 1625 01:18:38.400 --> 01:18:38.540 Yeah. 1626 01:18:38.540 --> 01:18:43.040 As always, it's to take extreme examples out of context, 1627 01:18:43.100 --> 01:18:45.600 and I'd even say the Francis Crick quote, 1628 01:18:45.740 --> 01:18:46.860 which I wouldn't endorse whatsoever, 1629 01:18:47.620 --> 01:18:49.840 is not necessarily representing all science, 1630 01:18:49.940 --> 01:18:53.000 and to pick very isolated or extreme examples 1631 01:18:53.000 --> 01:18:56.020 is doing a disservice to the general thesis 1632 01:18:56.020 --> 01:18:58.380 and to what science really is. 1633 01:18:58.420 --> 01:19:00.580 Science is really about the quest for truth, 1634 01:19:00.660 --> 01:19:02.860 to try and understand things more, 1635 01:19:03.020 --> 01:19:06.080 both from the academic through to the applied, 1636 01:19:06.240 --> 01:19:08.520 and I think it's a disservice, actually, 1637 01:19:08.520 --> 01:19:10.620 and it's something, dare I say, that journalists might sometimes do, 1638 01:19:10.660 --> 01:19:12.840 which is to take the exotic, the extreme, 1639 01:19:12.940 --> 01:19:14.520 the outlandish, the caricature, 1640 01:19:14.580 --> 01:19:15.760 and build a case on that. 1641 01:19:15.980 --> 01:19:17.180 And I'd like to challenge John, 1642 01:19:17.280 --> 01:19:18.800 but I don't want to give away my question 1643 01:19:18.800 --> 01:19:20.700 because I want to still have bags of my questions. 1644 01:19:21.520 --> 01:19:24.100 But if I'm allowed, therefore, a subsidiary attack on John. 1645 01:19:24.240 --> 01:19:25.840 I don't want to say attack, sorry, but, you know, 1646 01:19:26.680 --> 01:19:28.420 subsidiary, because I don't want to be a bad scientist 1647 01:19:28.420 --> 01:19:30.620 looking as though aggressive as well as everything else, you know. 1648 01:19:33.440 --> 01:19:34.940 No, no, I'd like to ask you... 1649 01:19:34.940 --> 01:19:37.260 What process of thinking would you go through 1650 01:19:37.260 --> 01:19:39.260 in an equivalent situation to that, 1651 01:19:39.440 --> 01:19:41.100 which would...what would go... 1652 01:19:41.100 --> 01:19:43.940 I mean, what is weighed up in the question, 1653 01:19:44.040 --> 01:19:45.980 should I conduct this experiment or not? 1654 01:19:47.040 --> 01:19:48.180 That's really what I'm asking. 1655 01:19:48.220 --> 01:19:51.200 OK, well, nowadays, the usual reason for conducting an experiment 1656 01:19:51.200 --> 01:19:52.700 is the alleviation of human suffering, 1657 01:19:52.840 --> 01:19:55.020 and certainly in the UK, and I'm sure it's the same here, 1658 01:19:55.080 --> 01:19:58.820 you have draconian policing by the government, by the Home Office, 1659 01:19:58.920 --> 01:20:01.400 to justify every single animal experiment you do, 1660 01:20:01.500 --> 01:20:03.260 and the reasons for doing it, and it is not gratuitous, 1661 01:20:03.800 --> 01:20:07.200 and it would never, ever, ever be for a soundbite or a media appearance. 1662 01:20:07.260 --> 01:20:07.640 Ever. 1663 01:20:08.420 --> 01:20:09.840 And I don't know what gave you that idea. 1664 01:20:09.920 --> 01:20:11.160 No scientist would be steered by that. 1665 01:20:11.480 --> 01:20:13.820 But my question is, do you give me another example? 1666 01:20:14.080 --> 01:20:15.480 Give me another crick-type example 1667 01:20:16.300 --> 01:20:18.400 of these airs and graces that scientists have, 1668 01:20:18.640 --> 01:20:21.580 of this trespassing of the magic that you put such a premium upon. 1669 01:20:22.540 --> 01:20:25.260 And I want to ask you what is so special about magic, incidentally, 1670 01:20:25.260 --> 01:20:27.400 that it has the monopoly on charm, but anyway... 1671 01:20:28.640 --> 01:20:31.280 Give me another example, because I think we have to do this. 1672 01:20:31.400 --> 01:20:33.440 If you're going to make general statements about science, 1673 01:20:33.540 --> 01:20:35.040 you can't base them on one extreme example. 1674 01:20:35.520 --> 01:20:35.620 Yeah. 1675 01:20:35.620 --> 01:20:37.500 Also, I mean, you couldn't... 1676 01:20:38.340 --> 01:20:41.440 You could never get through a human ethics committee 1677 01:20:41.440 --> 01:20:43.900 an experiment that says you're going to take, 1678 01:20:43.920 --> 01:20:46.540 deliberately take sperm from a human... 1679 01:20:46.540 --> 01:20:47.500 So that you can be on telly. 1680 01:20:47.680 --> 01:20:50.140 Yeah, so that you can be on telly, or so that you can do it. 1681 01:20:50.220 --> 01:20:52.420 I mean, you couldn't do it, because we have very strict... 1682 01:20:52.420 --> 01:20:54.420 There are very strict ethical controls now 1683 01:20:54.420 --> 01:20:56.380 of all human and animal experimentation. 1684 01:20:57.500 --> 01:21:00.520 Well, can I just put a counter to that? 1685 01:21:00.740 --> 01:21:03.860 If people tomorrow morning go off to the newsagents 1686 01:21:03.860 --> 01:21:05.560 and get hold of new scientists, they'll find out, 1687 01:21:05.620 --> 01:21:08.160 and I'll get a scandalous article written by somebody 1688 01:21:08.160 --> 01:21:11.420 called Robert Matthews, describing how... 1689 01:21:12.300 --> 01:21:15.180 There's a paper in the current issue of Clinical Trials Journal 1690 01:21:16.000 --> 01:21:18.460 where some scientists have been looking back 1691 01:21:18.460 --> 01:21:23.000 at a trial of a particular therapy. 1692 01:21:23.220 --> 01:21:24.620 I won't go into too many technical details. 1693 01:21:24.920 --> 01:21:33.320 But basically, this particular therapy was tested in the 1980s. 1694 01:21:33.500 --> 01:21:35.420 By the early 1990s, 1695 01:21:35.620 --> 01:21:38.020 it was clear as the result of randomized controlled trials 1696 01:21:38.020 --> 01:21:39.720 that it was a very effective drug. 1697 01:21:39.960 --> 01:21:42.500 It was approved by the FDA for general release. 1698 01:21:43.120 --> 01:21:45.680 And then it went on wards. It's widely used now. 1699 01:21:45.740 --> 01:21:50.580 Routinely saves many lives in major cardiac surgery. 1700 01:21:51.860 --> 01:21:57.660 And despite that, for the subsequent 10 years 1701 01:21:57.660 --> 01:22:01.280 after it was granted this approval and everybody was using it, 1702 01:22:01.420 --> 01:22:04.960 scientists were still carrying out randomized controlled trials, 1703 01:22:04.960 --> 01:22:06.120 of this drug. 1704 01:22:06.540 --> 01:22:09.420 And this wasn't to find out more sort of clever things like, 1705 01:22:09.440 --> 01:22:11.020 you know, dose levels and things like this. 1706 01:22:11.160 --> 01:22:14.340 This was just to find out if the drug was effective. 1707 01:22:14.780 --> 01:22:16.500 Now you're thinking, well, hang on a minute. 1708 01:22:16.580 --> 01:22:17.820 It's been approved by the FDA. 1709 01:22:17.980 --> 01:22:19.760 We've got all these randomized controlled trials. 1710 01:22:20.440 --> 01:22:22.000 And it's widely used in hospitals. 1711 01:22:22.160 --> 01:22:23.860 What more do you need to find out exactly? 1712 01:22:25.340 --> 01:22:28.540 And these scientists who carried out this retrospective study 1713 01:22:28.540 --> 01:22:33.120 on this particular drug decided to look back 1714 01:22:33.120 --> 01:22:34.940 to see why were these people doing this exercise. 1715 01:22:34.940 --> 01:22:36.040 And they did this experiment yet again. 1716 01:22:36.280 --> 01:22:38.660 Because if you carry out a randomized controlled trial, 1717 01:22:38.760 --> 01:22:42.900 you have to get a cohort of patients who need this particular therapy. 1718 01:22:43.020 --> 01:22:44.100 And you split them in half. 1719 01:22:44.220 --> 01:22:45.740 And you give half the therapy. 1720 01:22:45.860 --> 01:22:50.020 And you give half either the old therapy or a placebo as a control. 1721 01:22:50.900 --> 01:22:53.340 Now, when all the evidence is already showing 1722 01:22:53.940 --> 01:22:56.020 that you've got this drug that is completely effective, 1723 01:22:56.400 --> 01:23:00.180 it is utterly unethical to then randomize a whole set of people, 1724 01:23:00.940 --> 01:23:03.820 denying them access to this particular therapy. 1725 01:23:03.820 --> 01:23:06.180 So these scientists were quite interested to see 1726 01:23:06.180 --> 01:23:09.960 just how these people justified carrying out randomized controlled trials 1727 01:23:09.960 --> 01:23:12.520 of this drug years after it was case closed. 1728 01:23:12.880 --> 01:23:16.520 And the answer was lurking in the reference list at the bottom. 1729 01:23:16.660 --> 01:23:19.960 It turns out that the researchers who had set up 1730 01:23:19.960 --> 01:23:21.480 these randomized controlled trials subsequently 1731 01:23:21.480 --> 01:23:25.260 just couldn't be fagged to do the research, to read the literature. 1732 01:23:25.500 --> 01:23:29.940 The same papers were being quoted in the same papers. 1733 01:23:30.040 --> 01:23:33.160 Classic symptom of people just not doing literature research, 1734 01:23:33.240 --> 01:23:33.800 but just cramming it in. 1735 01:23:33.820 --> 01:23:35.140 And then they were just scribbling off each other. 1736 01:23:35.420 --> 01:23:38.480 And then going to an ethics committee and saying, 1737 01:23:38.560 --> 01:23:39.700 we need to test this drug. 1738 01:23:39.740 --> 01:23:41.060 And the ethics committee said, do okay. 1739 01:23:41.840 --> 01:23:43.580 Allowing them to recruit new patients, 1740 01:23:44.160 --> 01:23:48.000 randomize, deny people access to this particular drug. 1741 01:23:49.500 --> 01:23:51.180 And put out a paper saying, 1742 01:23:51.320 --> 01:23:54.320 oh, we found yet more evidence that this drug works. 1743 01:23:54.540 --> 01:23:56.240 And now I know what Susan's going to say. 1744 01:23:56.280 --> 01:23:58.100 She's going to say, oh, you've taken another extreme example. 1745 01:23:58.120 --> 01:23:58.820 It's just a one-off. 1746 01:23:58.820 --> 01:23:59.260 I'm not going to say that. 1747 01:23:59.260 --> 01:23:59.900 Okay, fine, good. 1748 01:24:00.660 --> 01:24:01.620 Not now, anyway. 1749 01:24:01.620 --> 01:24:03.320 I just thought I'd get my rejection in first. 1750 01:24:05.240 --> 01:24:10.380 So, because the fact of the matter is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. 1751 01:24:10.540 --> 01:24:11.660 And if you go back into the literature, 1752 01:24:11.820 --> 01:24:15.180 you'll find that scientists have discovered other examples of this. 1753 01:24:15.340 --> 01:24:18.680 Randomized controlled trials being done on drugs where it's case closed. 1754 01:24:19.720 --> 01:24:21.500 Decades after it was case closed. 1755 01:24:21.540 --> 01:24:24.820 Carrying on randomizing these stuff because they can't be bothered to do a good thing. 1756 01:24:24.940 --> 01:24:27.280 The ethics committees have just been asleep on the job. 1757 01:24:27.460 --> 01:24:29.360 The journals have accepted the papers. 1758 01:24:29.600 --> 01:24:31.420 The referees have been asleep on the job. 1759 01:24:31.420 --> 01:24:33.040 Nobody's been checking these things. 1760 01:24:33.220 --> 01:24:39.240 And it's a scandal that's denied tens of thousands of people access to effective drugs. 1761 01:24:39.400 --> 01:24:42.360 It also works the other way where drugs have been rejected as useless. 1762 01:24:42.640 --> 01:24:47.880 And the people have been given this drug as a result of having their health impaired. 1763 01:24:48.260 --> 01:24:51.180 So the idea that these ethics committees do a wonderful job, 1764 01:24:51.240 --> 01:24:54.900 you know, it looks good on paper, but I'm afraid in practice it just totally sucks. 1765 01:24:55.200 --> 01:24:55.700 Right. 1766 01:25:01.700 --> 01:25:02.020 Okay. 1767 01:25:02.260 --> 01:25:03.580 So, point one. 1768 01:25:04.920 --> 01:25:08.720 My basic thesis was never that ethics committees do a brilliant job. 1769 01:25:09.640 --> 01:25:10.520 No, it wasn't yours. 1770 01:25:10.680 --> 01:25:11.060 It was the thesis. 1771 01:25:11.060 --> 01:25:12.660 Well, that's not the issue. 1772 01:25:12.740 --> 01:25:16.060 And of course, I go back to my basic text, we're only human, aren't we? 1773 01:25:16.080 --> 01:25:19.960 And I'm not using that to justify, but it is not the case that a scientist says, 1774 01:25:20.020 --> 01:25:21.240 oh, I can't be fagged to look up. 1775 01:25:21.280 --> 01:25:23.820 I know I'm going to put loads of human beings through a load of suffering. 1776 01:25:23.900 --> 01:25:25.220 I think that's easier rather than... 1777 01:25:25.220 --> 01:25:26.120 They're not like that. 1778 01:25:26.160 --> 01:25:26.660 Of course not. 1779 01:25:26.700 --> 01:25:27.440 So how else do you explain it? 1780 01:25:27.440 --> 01:25:27.620 No, no. 1781 01:25:27.700 --> 01:25:28.980 It's not that you can't be fagged. 1782 01:25:28.980 --> 01:25:32.120 It's thoughts in the system, which is wonderful you as a journalist are highlighting, 1783 01:25:32.280 --> 01:25:36.300 and I congratulate you for that because it means that we can stop such things happening in the future. 1784 01:25:36.420 --> 01:25:41.060 But you shouldn't use things like that to sneer or to demonize all science or say all science is wrong, 1785 01:25:41.140 --> 01:25:46.880 just because inevitably within a system, any system, anywhere, there will always be problems, imperfections, 1786 01:25:46.940 --> 01:25:50.140 human weaknesses, frailties, et cetera, et cetera, errors. 1787 01:25:50.400 --> 01:25:54.640 And what you do, you learn from those errors and you build it better and make it better. 1788 01:25:54.720 --> 01:25:58.960 You don't sit back and laugh and sneer and try and, I say, demonize or snitch. 1789 01:25:58.980 --> 01:26:03.320 You don't stop it because for every one of those scientists in their clinical trials that, 1790 01:26:03.360 --> 01:26:09.220 you know, unfortunately, and I'm sure not by design, cause human suffering, look how many more, 1791 01:26:09.400 --> 01:26:12.340 and I point to every single drug that anyone in this room has taken, 1792 01:26:13.040 --> 01:26:18.160 every single drug that's gone through clinical trials, let's look at the vast benefit against these one or two examples. 1793 01:26:18.320 --> 01:26:20.220 So I'm not saying it's a freak example. 1794 01:26:20.500 --> 01:26:22.640 It's a very, thank God we've got media people. 1795 01:26:22.760 --> 01:26:24.360 I've seen the point of having these media. 1796 01:26:24.420 --> 01:26:25.520 They actually point out the problems. 1797 01:26:25.560 --> 01:26:25.940 That's great. 1798 01:26:25.980 --> 01:26:26.780 We can regulate better. 1799 01:26:26.880 --> 01:26:28.480 We can start to improve the system. 1800 01:26:28.880 --> 01:26:30.180 But the logic is weak. 1801 01:26:30.200 --> 01:26:35.640 But the logic is weak if you say because of this, all scientists can't be fags, all clinical trials are bad. 1802 01:26:35.640 --> 01:26:36.100 Did I say that? 1803 01:26:36.160 --> 01:26:37.520 Did anybody hear me say that? 1804 01:26:37.780 --> 01:26:42.320 No, but you just said, ah, but you just said that I couldn't say it was an extreme example. 1805 01:26:42.340 --> 01:26:43.300 You can't have it both ways. 1806 01:26:43.520 --> 01:26:49.060 I know John's frothing at the mouth, but I just want at this point to bring the philosopher in because I'm interested, David. 1807 01:26:49.580 --> 01:26:55.780 There was a time, I'm sure, in the 20th century when philosophy and science were not talking, and they certainly are now. 1808 01:26:55.860 --> 01:26:57.120 I mean, you work in cognitive science. 1809 01:26:57.120 --> 01:27:04.100 And I'm just wondering what you think philosophy brings to science, but also what science, what's the two-way traffic there? 1810 01:27:04.240 --> 01:27:06.260 And does it answer any of these ethical questions? 1811 01:27:07.740 --> 01:27:11.840 Oh, so far we haven't had to put our philosophical thought experiments before ethics committees. 1812 01:27:12.020 --> 01:27:12.440 Thanks, guys. 1813 01:27:14.660 --> 01:27:15.620 Yeah, indeed. 1814 01:27:15.880 --> 01:27:16.280 Yeah. 1815 01:27:16.400 --> 01:27:16.660 Yeah. 1816 01:27:17.940 --> 01:27:23.620 We mistreat some of those hypothetical people quite badly when we talk about them. 1817 01:27:23.720 --> 01:27:26.760 No, philosophy used to be, I mean, philosophy and science have a long history. 1818 01:27:26.760 --> 01:27:27.500 They've been interconnected. 1819 01:27:27.840 --> 01:27:29.820 They went through a period of being disconnected. 1820 01:27:30.100 --> 01:27:33.700 In recent years, it's actually the connections have been huge. 1821 01:27:34.060 --> 01:27:37.720 I mean, I'm not a scientist myself these days, but my background is in science. 1822 01:27:37.800 --> 01:27:42.640 I actually got into philosophy because this was a way of making contact. 1823 01:27:42.840 --> 01:27:49.600 I was interested in every area of science, not just one, physics, neuroscience, computer science, medicine, mathematics, and so on. 1824 01:27:49.600 --> 01:27:53.760 Doing philosophy is a way to stay in touch with each of these fields simultaneously. 1825 01:27:54.360 --> 01:27:56.740 The field I've got myself into now is the field of philosophy. 1826 01:27:56.760 --> 01:28:00.700 The field I've got myself into now is the science of consciousness, which brings in almost every, 1827 01:28:00.840 --> 01:28:07.520 the science of the human mind, interestingly enough, brings in almost every area of science you can think of. 1828 01:28:07.680 --> 01:28:13.220 I mean, obviously the neuroscientists and the psychologists and the physicists have got their ideas about the bearing of quantum mechanics. 1829 01:28:13.520 --> 01:28:17.900 The medical people have brought in their ideas about the treatment of the mind. 1830 01:28:18.060 --> 01:28:19.340 The mathematicians come in. 1831 01:28:19.460 --> 01:28:23.500 And of course there are going to be, so I spend a lot of time talking to each of these people, 1832 01:28:23.640 --> 01:28:26.740 of course there are going to be, at the end of the day, pretty serious ethical questions. 1833 01:28:26.740 --> 01:28:28.700 And I think that's the way that we're going to be dealing with ethical issues arising in the science of the mind, 1834 01:28:28.800 --> 01:28:33.840 in a way that's already arisen in the sciences of medicine, of life, and so on. 1835 01:28:33.960 --> 01:28:43.260 I mean, there's a, in the science of the mind, there is a history of pretty important experiments with fairly serious ethical consequences, 1836 01:28:43.580 --> 01:28:47.520 which were nonetheless extremely informative for our understanding of the mind. 1837 01:28:47.680 --> 01:28:55.720 One famous experiment was the experiments done at Yale by Milgram in the 1960s on the infliction of pain. 1838 01:28:55.720 --> 01:29:03.220 And the study of cooperation of people under orders, I mean, I think deliberately designed to highlight, you know, 1839 01:29:03.220 --> 01:29:06.160 things that might have been going on in regimes like Nazi Germany, 1840 01:29:06.400 --> 01:29:14.020 but where people were instructed to inflate pain, go higher on the meter, go higher on the meter. 1841 01:29:14.120 --> 01:29:16.620 They say, oh, but the person's screaming pretty badly. 1842 01:29:17.520 --> 01:29:19.340 I'm sorry, you must cooperate. 1843 01:29:19.640 --> 01:29:20.500 This is the rules of the experiments. 1844 01:29:20.620 --> 01:29:25.160 You know, 60% of the people went up to the point on the scale which was XXX beyond the point, 1845 01:29:25.160 --> 01:29:30.260 where, you know, the noises from the next room just gave out. 1846 01:29:30.400 --> 01:29:31.440 That's pretty scary. 1847 01:29:31.680 --> 01:29:36.160 You can't, but it was extreme, and you can't, in fact, get that kind of experiment past an ethics committee anymore, 1848 01:29:36.900 --> 01:29:41.060 but it was extremely important to our understanding of the human condition. 1849 01:29:41.940 --> 01:29:44.920 You know, obviously, you can't get that experiment past an ethics committee anymore, 1850 01:29:45.000 --> 01:29:47.900 because this is traumatic for the people who did it. 1851 01:29:48.660 --> 01:29:55.140 The Zimbardo prison experiments at Stanford in the later 1960s divided into the prisoners and the guards. 1852 01:29:55.160 --> 01:29:57.280 Many of you have probably seen the movie. 1853 01:29:57.520 --> 01:30:00.040 We learned an awful lot about the human condition from that, 1854 01:30:00.820 --> 01:30:06.680 something which has bearing on, which really ought to have had a bearing on the way that people set up the prisons in Iraq and so on. 1855 01:30:06.760 --> 01:30:08.680 Likewise, you can't get that kind of, you know, quite reasonably, 1856 01:30:08.740 --> 01:30:11.840 you can't get that kind of experiment past an ethics committee anymore 1857 01:30:11.840 --> 01:30:14.000 because of the serious consequences for the people involved. 1858 01:30:14.280 --> 01:30:18.420 Nonetheless, there is, you know, this brings out, there's a very delicate balance 1859 01:30:18.420 --> 01:30:22.160 between the progress of understanding and the ethical restraints. 1860 01:30:22.980 --> 01:30:25.140 I'm, by and large, I'm, by and large, pro-striking. 1861 01:30:25.160 --> 01:30:25.280 I'm pro-science. 1862 01:30:25.540 --> 01:30:28.940 And I'm inclined to think that the increase in our understanding in the long run 1863 01:30:29.480 --> 01:30:33.580 is going to have an awfully, awfully large series of benefits, 1864 01:30:33.680 --> 01:30:37.960 which may, which means we ought to take, be prepared to take some risks 1865 01:30:37.960 --> 01:30:41.620 just because the benefit, potential benefits are so large. 1866 01:30:41.700 --> 01:30:46.540 But I think it's just obvious that the right balance is somewhere in the middle. 1867 01:30:46.760 --> 01:30:50.940 I think it's worth just interjecting there that with those Stanley Milgram experiments, 1868 01:30:52.100 --> 01:30:54.300 no humans were harmed during the, you know, 1869 01:30:55.160 --> 01:30:55.760 the first time they were coming out of the experiment. 1870 01:30:55.880 --> 01:30:58.580 It was just an actor who was pretending to be electrocuted. 1871 01:30:58.820 --> 01:31:00.900 Let me just say no humans were, no humans were physically harmed. 1872 01:31:00.960 --> 01:31:01.200 Right. 1873 01:31:01.200 --> 01:31:05.540 Yeah, there was debate afterwards about the psychological harm of taking part in the experiment. 1874 01:31:05.860 --> 01:31:09.940 Can I just follow on from David in Dors, how I think philosophy and science, 1875 01:31:10.340 --> 01:31:13.340 and philosophy and neuroscience certainly do go so closely together. 1876 01:31:13.420 --> 01:31:15.720 I'm very excited we've just got this money in Oxford. 1877 01:31:16.260 --> 01:31:19.100 Those of you who heard us this morning talk, I gave the plug for the website, 1878 01:31:19.320 --> 01:31:20.980 which is the Pharmacology Development website, Oxford. 1879 01:31:21.180 --> 01:31:23.120 Look up Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind. 1880 01:31:23.220 --> 01:31:24.900 And we are in equal numbers there. 1881 01:31:25.520 --> 01:31:29.240 Theologians, I stress theologians, philosophers, neuroscientists, 1882 01:31:29.300 --> 01:31:33.380 neurosurgeons and psychologists are working together on some of the big issues. 1883 01:31:33.520 --> 01:31:34.280 And it's very exciting. 1884 01:31:34.580 --> 01:31:36.700 And this is an example of the multidisciplinarity. 1885 01:31:36.840 --> 01:31:39.440 Now, can I just ask John my question now before I run out of time? 1886 01:31:39.520 --> 01:31:44.120 My question to John is why he puts such a premium on magic 1887 01:31:44.120 --> 01:31:46.800 and why he thinks magic equals charm. 1888 01:31:47.120 --> 01:31:49.520 And does he think it's a monopoly on charm? 1889 01:31:52.520 --> 01:31:55.040 One of the most influential, 1890 01:31:55.160 --> 01:32:01.620 a Frenchman called Durkheim suggested that the distinction between the sacred and the profane 1891 01:32:01.620 --> 01:32:04.380 is the most important distinction in human thought. 1892 01:32:04.960 --> 01:32:13.220 What he was gesturing towards is that the things in life that we regard as profane, 1893 01:32:15.100 --> 01:32:17.260 disenchanted, ordinary, everyday things, 1894 01:32:17.400 --> 01:32:22.180 from stuff we turn our nose up to cups of coffee, 1895 01:32:22.940 --> 01:32:24.160 is quite distinct. 1896 01:32:24.460 --> 01:32:28.600 It's distinct in its plain from what we regard as sacred. 1897 01:32:29.320 --> 01:32:34.900 For some reason, culture and meaning and the way we make sense of our lives 1898 01:32:34.900 --> 01:32:40.000 depends on what he called, or what you can technically call, the sacred. 1899 01:32:40.140 --> 01:32:51.340 An enchanted or a metaphysical or a non-material theory explanation of what we're doing. 1900 01:32:51.720 --> 01:32:54.440 But let me actually, let me give another example. 1901 01:32:54.460 --> 01:32:57.100 Which was actually what I wanted to say anyway. 1902 01:32:57.260 --> 01:32:59.520 And this is from the Humanities and it's from theology. 1903 01:32:59.860 --> 01:33:03.960 So Susan will appreciate that I'm continuing her remark about theologians. 1904 01:33:05.240 --> 01:33:10.620 I've spent a lot of the last three or four years reading biblical scholarship and biblical commentary. 1905 01:33:11.840 --> 01:33:17.420 It's to do with a current project of mine on the fundamental Western stories. 1906 01:33:18.460 --> 01:33:24.120 And I've been struck amongst many things by the fact that the vast bulk, 1907 01:33:24.460 --> 01:33:28.540 of biblical commentary and scholarship for the last 150 years, 1908 01:33:28.740 --> 01:33:33.140 has been caught up in the question of the historical Jesus, as it's usually called. 1909 01:33:33.320 --> 01:33:35.320 The quest for the historical Jesus. 1910 01:33:35.480 --> 01:33:42.480 The vast majority of the books, and there are hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands of them. 1911 01:33:42.760 --> 01:33:49.400 Now, some of this quest started in the mid-19th century in order to try and show that Jesus didn't exist. 1912 01:33:49.540 --> 01:33:53.040 And therefore, you know, explode Christianity and that would be the end of it. 1913 01:33:53.260 --> 01:33:54.440 And so, you know, I've been struck by that. 1914 01:33:54.440 --> 01:33:54.920 And so forth. 1915 01:33:55.140 --> 01:33:58.620 But most biblical commentators and scholars are practicing Christians. 1916 01:33:58.980 --> 01:34:01.460 And they've continued this tradition. 1917 01:34:01.960 --> 01:34:05.300 Now, it is an utterly futile quest. 1918 01:34:05.640 --> 01:34:07.440 And it's got nowhere. 1919 01:34:07.660 --> 01:34:15.320 Basically, there are two contemporary historians or there are two contemporary documents from the first century 1920 01:34:15.320 --> 01:34:18.080 that refer to a Jesus Christ. 1921 01:34:18.540 --> 01:34:20.340 One's Jewish and one's Roman. 1922 01:34:20.360 --> 01:34:23.320 And all they say is that there was a Jesus Christ and he was crucified. 1923 01:34:24.440 --> 01:34:27.800 That's basically all we know from contemporary accounts. 1924 01:34:28.920 --> 01:34:35.140 The Jesus Christ of Christianity and of Western culture basically is a figure produced in four stories. 1925 01:34:35.820 --> 01:34:38.460 He's a creation of four stories. 1926 01:34:38.680 --> 01:34:48.020 And the attempt to somehow base this figure or think that he would be a more successful presence 1927 01:34:48.020 --> 01:34:51.460 with practicing Christians, obviously this is the motive. 1928 01:34:51.620 --> 01:34:53.800 If we can prove that he actually existed, 1929 01:34:53.800 --> 01:34:58.480 and that in the year four and in December or whenever he did this, 1930 01:34:58.600 --> 01:35:00.300 and that he actually was crucified, 1931 01:35:00.720 --> 01:35:04.700 that there's been this incredible impulse to find facts. 1932 01:35:05.000 --> 01:35:09.940 And I'm sure it's because of the charisma of the scientific paradigm. 1933 01:35:10.300 --> 01:35:15.100 And instead of settling back with what real cultures based on stories, 1934 01:35:15.180 --> 01:35:19.640 charged, mythic, magical stories, 1935 01:35:19.900 --> 01:35:23.780 instead of just accepting that these are four of the most powerful, 1936 01:35:23.780 --> 01:35:25.600 most potent stories in Western culture, 1937 01:35:25.720 --> 01:35:29.320 and accept that that's the Jesus who is the Jesus. 1938 01:35:29.600 --> 01:35:32.720 I think biblical commentary and scholarship has really been corrupted 1939 01:35:32.720 --> 01:35:36.140 by this pseudo-scientific impulse. 1940 01:35:44.480 --> 01:35:47.680 Most scientists who've had any contact with religion, 1941 01:35:47.820 --> 01:35:49.980 or many of us who've brought up in religion one way or another, 1942 01:35:50.140 --> 01:35:52.380 would be perfectly happy with what you've just said. 1943 01:35:52.380 --> 01:35:56.440 That basically these are marvelous stories 1944 01:35:56.440 --> 01:36:01.300 which define a whole set of beliefs and so forth. 1945 01:36:01.440 --> 01:36:04.260 But the problem is with the fundamentalists 1946 01:36:04.260 --> 01:36:05.980 who say that the stories are literal truth, 1947 01:36:06.280 --> 01:36:11.460 who are trying to convert what is symbol and myth 1948 01:36:11.460 --> 01:36:14.620 into some sort of objective reality. 1949 01:36:14.860 --> 01:36:16.380 That's not the fault of the scientists. 1950 01:36:16.400 --> 01:36:18.540 Most of these biblical commentators and scholars 1951 01:36:18.540 --> 01:36:20.300 are not fundamentalists in your sense. 1952 01:36:20.380 --> 01:36:22.300 They don't believe in the literal truth of the Bible. 1953 01:36:22.300 --> 01:36:26.720 My point is rather it's, obviously accepting your point, 1954 01:36:26.820 --> 01:36:29.660 my point is about the cultural consequences of science. 1955 01:36:30.100 --> 01:36:32.600 And if we go outside the areas of science, 1956 01:36:32.720 --> 01:36:36.080 we find this very distinguished community 1957 01:36:36.080 --> 01:36:38.000 of thousands and thousands of scholars 1958 01:36:38.000 --> 01:36:40.260 spending a huge amount of effort 1959 01:36:40.260 --> 01:36:43.000 trying to find facts where they can't find facts. 1960 01:36:43.200 --> 01:36:45.200 So they're misinterpreting the nature of science. 1961 01:36:45.320 --> 01:36:48.040 And for many scientists, many scientists read poetry, 1962 01:36:48.120 --> 01:36:49.320 some even write poetry. 1963 01:36:49.400 --> 01:36:51.860 Some of us even have emotions and rational things like that. 1964 01:36:52.500 --> 01:36:53.200 Some of us. 1965 01:36:54.820 --> 01:36:59.140 We don't approach our relationships with our significant others 1966 01:36:59.140 --> 01:37:01.080 in the way that we would approach an experiment. 1967 01:37:01.400 --> 01:37:02.660 I figured this point was important. 1968 01:37:02.660 --> 01:37:04.000 Can I follow on from that? 1969 01:37:04.060 --> 01:37:04.880 Because I think it's really important. 1970 01:37:05.100 --> 01:37:05.720 It's so important. 1971 01:37:05.880 --> 01:37:06.040 Very quick. 1972 01:37:06.420 --> 01:37:08.260 We're here, we're living in a world currently 1973 01:37:08.260 --> 01:37:10.180 where in the states, in the southern states, 1974 01:37:11.040 --> 01:37:14.200 people are actually not teaching kids evolution anymore 1975 01:37:14.200 --> 01:37:15.680 or telling them that it's just a theory. 1976 01:37:15.800 --> 01:37:17.380 And I think we have to be very clear here. 1977 01:37:17.400 --> 01:37:21.040 We don't get too misty-eyed about magic and sacred 1978 01:37:21.040 --> 01:37:24.900 and reductionist facts and these cruel facts and so on. 1979 01:37:25.200 --> 01:37:28.520 Surely it is better for a human being to try and understand, 1980 01:37:28.720 --> 01:37:29.980 to try and find something out, 1981 01:37:30.140 --> 01:37:31.520 than to be told what to think. 1982 01:37:31.700 --> 01:37:33.380 Look what being told what to think, 1983 01:37:33.540 --> 01:37:38.140 look what these constraints has imposed on our society today. 1984 01:37:38.240 --> 01:37:39.900 Bombs in my own city two days ago 1985 01:37:39.900 --> 01:37:42.980 arose from people perhaps who haven't questioned enough, 1986 01:37:43.220 --> 01:37:46.960 who've adopted a magical or mystical or charismatic narrative. 1987 01:37:47.160 --> 01:37:48.100 And look where it's got us. 1988 01:37:54.100 --> 01:37:56.300 We're going to have to adjourn later, the five, 1989 01:37:56.400 --> 01:37:57.780 to ask questions of one another 1990 01:37:57.780 --> 01:38:00.500 because it's time to open the floor, I think. 1991 01:38:00.580 --> 01:38:03.120 So there's a microphone here and there's one... 1992 01:38:03.120 --> 01:38:04.840 Am I right thinking there's one up there? 1993 01:38:05.620 --> 01:38:06.060 OK. 1994 01:38:06.240 --> 01:38:08.620 If you would like to come to the mic down here. 1995 01:38:08.860 --> 01:38:10.000 At this time of night, 1996 01:38:10.040 --> 01:38:12.440 could you make them questions and not statements, please? 1997 01:38:13.960 --> 01:38:16.740 Yes, I'd like to put a question to the panel 1998 01:38:16.740 --> 01:38:18.280 about pus and politicians, 1999 01:38:19.020 --> 01:38:21.020 picking up on Susan's last question. 2000 01:38:21.040 --> 01:38:23.360 I think it's a very important point about emotionality 2001 01:38:23.360 --> 01:38:27.380 because, you know, we're here at the Festival of Ideas. 2002 01:38:27.400 --> 01:38:29.800 This is a city that has a program of thinkers and residents. 2003 01:38:30.020 --> 01:38:31.680 The government sponsors this. 2004 01:38:32.940 --> 01:38:36.900 But the problem is when ideas become confounded with emotions, 2005 01:38:37.080 --> 01:38:41.080 when rationality becomes eroded by sentiment. 2006 01:38:43.040 --> 01:38:46.940 And Morag's comment about Frankenstein is a very good example 2007 01:38:46.940 --> 01:38:49.880 because the whole symbol of Frankenstein 2008 01:38:49.880 --> 01:38:52.040 is actually about First World War veterans 2009 01:38:52.040 --> 01:38:55.780 who had been reconstructed by plastic surgeons. 2010 01:38:55.880 --> 01:39:00.360 And the plastic surgeons presented a symbol of traumatised people 2011 01:39:00.880 --> 01:39:03.920 to our society, which people at large couldn't cope with. 2012 01:39:04.880 --> 01:39:08.960 Now, Susan said that politicians hate scientists 2013 01:39:08.960 --> 01:39:10.900 who come up with the wrong answers. 2014 01:39:12.200 --> 01:39:13.940 And the question is, 2015 01:39:14.020 --> 01:39:16.900 how do we deal with that hatred in the politicians? 2016 01:39:17.080 --> 01:39:18.340 Because that is an emotion, 2017 01:39:18.340 --> 01:39:21.360 and it doesn't matter how many facts we put to them, 2018 01:39:22.920 --> 01:39:26.140 reason and discourse isn't the simple solution. 2019 01:39:26.500 --> 01:39:28.260 And to bring it back to South Australia, 2020 01:39:28.340 --> 01:39:30.320 we're in the midst of a royal commission at the moment 2021 01:39:30.320 --> 01:39:33.940 about the death of a cyclist who was killed by a barrister 2022 01:39:34.960 --> 01:39:37.640 who the expert evidence says is dissociated. 2023 01:39:37.720 --> 01:39:43.340 Now, the royal commission is essentially trying to address... 2024 01:39:44.400 --> 01:39:45.980 Perhaps we could focus back on the question. 2025 01:39:46.040 --> 01:39:47.080 Yes, but the process is, 2026 01:39:47.080 --> 01:39:50.320 how do you deal with the politicians' inability 2027 01:39:50.320 --> 01:39:53.420 to deal with the scientists coming up with an answer 2028 01:39:53.420 --> 01:39:54.320 that they didn't like 2029 01:39:55.080 --> 01:39:59.280 because it didn't confer with the public sentiment? 2030 01:40:00.140 --> 01:40:00.700 OK. 2031 01:40:01.740 --> 01:40:05.320 I don't think I said exactly that they hate scientists 2032 01:40:05.320 --> 01:40:07.560 because they say things that they don't like. 2033 01:40:07.700 --> 01:40:10.220 It would be more they say things they don't understand 2034 01:40:10.220 --> 01:40:13.420 or they say things in a way that they can't understand. 2035 01:40:14.480 --> 01:40:16.840 I think it's dangerous to try and separate 2036 01:40:17.380 --> 01:40:19.100 rational from emotions. 2037 01:40:19.340 --> 01:40:20.400 As the great Niels Bohr said, 2038 01:40:20.480 --> 01:40:21.700 a physicist, he said to a student once, 2039 01:40:21.940 --> 01:40:24.280 you're not thinking, you're just being logical. 2040 01:40:25.220 --> 01:40:27.620 And we all use, in science all the time, 2041 01:40:27.640 --> 01:40:29.360 we're using intuition, we're using a hunch 2042 01:40:29.360 --> 01:40:32.640 when we try and interpret something or have an idea. 2043 01:40:32.880 --> 01:40:35.560 This is not necessarily planned out 2044 01:40:35.560 --> 01:40:37.100 or mapped out through a series of algorithms. 2045 01:40:37.320 --> 01:40:39.280 It's something where we use this curious feature 2046 01:40:39.280 --> 01:40:41.180 that we human beings have and robots don't have 2047 01:40:41.180 --> 01:40:44.480 of intuition, common sense and hunches and so on. 2048 01:40:44.540 --> 01:40:45.840 So I don't want to divorce, 2049 01:40:45.860 --> 01:40:47.680 and I don't think we should divorce, 2050 01:40:47.900 --> 01:40:50.480 hard, cold, reductionist facts, either for good or ill, 2051 01:40:50.560 --> 01:40:52.780 away from touchy-feely or wishy-washy, 2052 01:40:52.800 --> 01:40:54.180 according to which side you look at emotions. 2053 01:40:54.440 --> 01:40:55.680 They could be called either of that. 2054 01:40:55.740 --> 01:40:59.440 I think that all of what we do and think and feel 2055 01:40:59.440 --> 01:41:01.080 will be charged, because we're human beings, 2056 01:41:01.360 --> 01:41:03.840 with some kind of emotion or some kind of bias. 2057 01:41:04.140 --> 01:41:06.620 And perhaps the saddest emotion of all 2058 01:41:06.620 --> 01:41:08.620 is the one of anger or fear. 2059 01:41:08.880 --> 01:41:11.960 And anger and fear, which is directed usually at scientists, 2060 01:41:12.160 --> 01:41:13.420 by politicians possibly, 2061 01:41:13.660 --> 01:41:15.840 is always rooted in not understanding 2062 01:41:15.860 --> 01:41:18.960 and I think what we need to tackle is understanding. 2063 01:41:19.120 --> 01:41:20.500 As soon as you understand something, 2064 01:41:20.620 --> 01:41:21.600 you might not go along with it, 2065 01:41:21.660 --> 01:41:23.300 but you're not as frightened or as angry. 2066 01:41:23.560 --> 01:41:24.860 Once you understand something, 2067 01:41:25.080 --> 01:41:27.160 you can come to terms with how to cope with it, 2068 01:41:27.220 --> 01:41:29.140 how to deal with it, how to change it even. 2069 01:41:29.520 --> 01:41:31.460 And so what I would like to put a premium on 2070 01:41:31.460 --> 01:41:34.300 is not so much, again, demonising people 2071 01:41:34.300 --> 01:41:38.240 or compartmentalising people into card-hole ruthless people 2072 01:41:38.240 --> 01:41:41.360 or nasty politicians or touchy-feely scientists or whatever, 2073 01:41:41.540 --> 01:41:44.560 but more that these are examples of discrepancy and understanding. 2074 01:41:44.560 --> 01:41:47.220 And it's only by working together, 2075 01:41:47.340 --> 01:41:50.080 rather than pointing the finger and pea-shooting at each other, 2076 01:41:50.300 --> 01:41:51.340 that we'll get anywhere. 2077 01:41:55.660 --> 01:41:57.140 Thank you. Yes. 2078 01:41:58.080 --> 01:42:00.860 A very quick question on Alzheimer's disease. 2079 01:42:01.040 --> 01:42:04.360 I was very impressed reading the nun's story 2080 01:42:04.360 --> 01:42:08.780 and the contributions that Sister Mary gave us. 2081 01:42:09.160 --> 01:42:11.500 Can you comment on this research, please? 2082 01:42:11.820 --> 01:42:14.220 Yes, I can't remember the paper in great detail, 2083 01:42:14.220 --> 01:42:15.760 but the basic idea, 2084 01:42:16.020 --> 01:42:18.000 I'm sure my friend here from the New Scientist 2085 01:42:18.000 --> 01:42:19.260 will be able to give the details, 2086 01:42:19.460 --> 01:42:22.580 but the basic conclusion of the so-called nun's study, 2087 01:42:22.700 --> 01:42:24.040 which in itself sounds very strange 2088 01:42:24.040 --> 01:42:26.580 because it worked with nuns who'd entered a convent, 2089 01:42:26.720 --> 01:42:28.640 and it was looking basically at the relationship 2090 01:42:29.220 --> 01:42:31.160 between education, IQ, 2091 01:42:31.400 --> 01:42:33.660 and possibility of getting Alzheimer's disease. 2092 01:42:33.860 --> 01:42:36.460 And the conclusion, which is a very interesting one, 2093 01:42:37.220 --> 01:42:40.960 is not that Alzheimer's disease is negatively correlated, 2094 01:42:41.140 --> 01:42:42.660 that's to say you have less chance, 2095 01:42:42.660 --> 01:42:45.440 if you are intelligent as such, 2096 01:42:45.520 --> 01:42:47.380 and look at Iris Murdoch, a brilliant writer, 2097 01:42:47.480 --> 01:42:50.080 and Bernard Levin, another brilliant mind in England, 2098 01:42:50.140 --> 01:42:51.500 both of whom were victims of that disease, 2099 01:42:51.680 --> 01:42:53.740 but more it correlates negatively with education. 2100 01:42:54.240 --> 01:42:56.140 And I think what that tells us, 2101 01:42:56.180 --> 01:42:58.900 that incidentally, you know, of course you can be educated, 2102 01:42:58.960 --> 01:43:01.760 and that's no guarantee that you're not going to get Alzheimer's, 2103 01:43:01.800 --> 01:43:04.540 but what it suggests is the critical factor there 2104 01:43:04.540 --> 01:43:06.140 is how much you can stimulate your brain 2105 01:43:06.140 --> 01:43:08.140 to offset the ravages of the disease. 2106 01:43:08.340 --> 01:43:10.620 The brain is like a muscle, you use it all and you lose it, 2107 01:43:10.640 --> 01:43:11.580 and the more you stimulate it, 2108 01:43:11.680 --> 01:43:12.640 then the stronger the disease is. 2109 01:43:12.640 --> 01:43:13.640 The stronger you're making the connection. 2110 01:43:13.900 --> 01:43:15.140 So if you are having Alzheimer's disease, 2111 01:43:15.240 --> 01:43:17.640 you could offset it, possibly by stimulation. 2112 01:43:17.860 --> 01:43:18.820 That's something we're working on, 2113 01:43:18.860 --> 01:43:21.740 is devising software for people with early cognitive impairment. 2114 01:43:22.160 --> 01:43:25.480 So it's not to do with IQ, whatever that is, whatever IQ is, 2115 01:43:25.540 --> 01:43:27.500 and we haven't got time now to discuss what IQ is, 2116 01:43:27.520 --> 01:43:29.060 I'm sure that would be another whole thinking debate, 2117 01:43:29.240 --> 01:43:32.240 but more the issue of how much you've had the privilege of education 2118 01:43:32.240 --> 01:43:34.580 that may help you offset the disease. 2119 01:43:35.120 --> 01:43:36.560 Thank you. Yes. 2120 01:43:39.320 --> 01:43:42.260 This is my first Festival of Ideas. 2121 01:43:42.640 --> 01:43:43.800 I'm no scientist, no intellect, 2122 01:43:43.960 --> 01:43:48.500 but I've been just so inspired by what I've heard since Thursday night, 2123 01:43:48.680 --> 01:43:51.120 and I was thinking about the topic tonight, 2124 01:43:51.280 --> 01:43:52.800 and designing the universe, 2125 01:43:53.000 --> 01:43:55.080 and I thought if there was somebody missing, 2126 01:43:55.140 --> 01:43:56.920 maybe it was like the Dalai Lama. 2127 01:43:58.260 --> 01:44:00.980 Because we haven't, well, at least what I've been to so far, 2128 01:44:01.040 --> 01:44:04.980 we haven't really touched much on, I don't know, 2129 01:44:05.000 --> 01:44:06.600 peace and serenity and meditation 2130 01:44:06.600 --> 01:44:08.340 and the power of those sorts of things. 2131 01:44:08.460 --> 01:44:10.840 And I went to see a movie recently, 2132 01:44:10.840 --> 01:44:12.640 and they talked about a study in Washington 2133 01:44:12.640 --> 01:44:15.080 where 400 people came together, 2134 01:44:15.140 --> 01:44:16.560 400, 4,000, I don't know, 2135 01:44:16.660 --> 01:44:22.180 and it related directly to the crime rate in that area, 2136 01:44:22.380 --> 01:44:23.900 that it had dropped dramatically. 2137 01:44:24.140 --> 01:44:26.420 So I just wonder, in designing this universe 2138 01:44:26.420 --> 01:44:28.080 and talking about all of the sciences 2139 01:44:28.080 --> 01:44:30.000 and all of the problems of the world, 2140 01:44:30.160 --> 01:44:32.900 and there were many discussed on Thursday night, 2141 01:44:33.100 --> 01:44:36.180 you know, inequality, greed, whatever, 2142 01:44:36.400 --> 01:44:39.020 you know, what's the role of, you know, 2143 01:44:39.020 --> 01:44:40.540 the energy that we have together, 2144 01:44:40.540 --> 01:44:44.640 in terms of meditation or serenity and peace, 2145 01:44:44.800 --> 01:44:46.580 and I don't know, maybe the big one, 2146 01:44:46.640 --> 01:44:48.220 which is God, which maybe is love. 2147 01:44:49.200 --> 01:44:52.280 You know, where is that in the design of the universe 2148 01:44:52.280 --> 01:44:53.300 we've been talking about? 2149 01:44:54.460 --> 01:44:54.940 Peter. 2150 01:44:55.080 --> 01:44:56.800 I just happened... 2151 01:44:59.960 --> 01:45:01.560 During a time in the US, 2152 01:45:01.580 --> 01:45:04.640 I just happened to pick up a copy of the New York Times 2153 01:45:04.640 --> 01:45:07.080 where there was an op-ed piece by the Dalai Lama 2154 01:45:07.080 --> 01:45:10.300 which described how he had initiated 2155 01:45:10.540 --> 01:45:13.700 discussions with cognitive neuroscientists 2156 01:45:13.700 --> 01:45:17.560 to try and interest them in studying meditation 2157 01:45:17.560 --> 01:45:20.320 through modern scientific techniques and technology. 2158 01:45:20.600 --> 01:45:23.380 And his interest particularly was, could we... 2159 01:45:23.380 --> 01:45:25.700 It was a very sensible, very practical article. 2160 01:45:25.820 --> 01:45:28.740 And his interest particularly is, could we find solutions, 2161 01:45:30.200 --> 01:45:33.360 good, sound, scientifically-based solutions through meditation 2162 01:45:33.360 --> 01:45:35.440 that would, for instance, substitute for drugs 2163 01:45:35.440 --> 01:45:38.380 and perhaps lead to an extension of those types of approaches? 2164 01:45:38.680 --> 01:45:40.520 So I think, at least from the bottom of my heart, 2165 01:45:40.540 --> 01:45:42.480 from a Buddhist perspective, as I understand it, 2166 01:45:42.520 --> 01:45:44.340 there's no hostility towards science 2167 01:45:44.340 --> 01:45:45.660 and a desire to work with it. 2168 01:45:46.020 --> 01:45:48.460 And indeed, on a more straightforward level, 2169 01:45:49.160 --> 01:45:50.640 let's take somewhere like the Middle East 2170 01:45:50.640 --> 01:45:52.120 where there's a discrepancy in the GDP 2171 01:45:52.120 --> 01:45:55.360 between some countries and others by a factor of three or even more. 2172 01:45:55.980 --> 01:45:58.020 Surely, if you were able to give people 2173 01:45:58.540 --> 01:46:00.300 a good roof over their head, 2174 01:46:00.380 --> 01:46:04.380 education for their kids, a stimulating and secure career or job, 2175 01:46:04.500 --> 01:46:08.060 then you might be able to fuse some of the extreme ideologies 2176 01:46:08.060 --> 01:46:09.640 that are fomenting such trouble. 2177 01:46:10.540 --> 01:46:11.880 And my own view is that if you're to do that, 2178 01:46:11.960 --> 01:46:13.220 you have to turn to science and technology 2179 01:46:13.220 --> 01:46:16.440 because in the 21st century, as we're shifting into the information age, 2180 01:46:16.600 --> 01:46:20.100 it's science and technology that will provide prosperity and wealth creation 2181 01:46:20.100 --> 01:46:23.740 in all regions of the world and especially in regions such as that. 2182 01:46:23.860 --> 01:46:25.200 And science, therefore, can promote peace, 2183 01:46:25.360 --> 01:46:28.660 not even as sophisticatedly or elegantly 2184 01:46:28.660 --> 01:46:31.240 as looking at brain scans and meditating or anything like that, 2185 01:46:31.280 --> 01:46:34.100 but simply by introducing technologies and knowledge 2186 01:46:34.600 --> 01:46:36.420 into an area in the 21st century 2187 01:46:36.420 --> 01:46:38.760 where people can actually improve their working lives. 2188 01:46:38.760 --> 01:46:41.300 Robert, David, John, any of you want to add? 2189 01:46:41.300 --> 01:46:44.880 Yeah. I'm a Buddhist, as it happens, 2190 01:46:45.060 --> 01:46:47.940 and so I have a lot of sympathy with the Dalai Lama's attitude 2191 01:46:47.940 --> 01:46:55.120 towards initiating research that looks at what is likely to improve 2192 01:46:55.120 --> 01:46:56.540 the sum total of human happiness. 2193 01:46:56.800 --> 01:47:01.600 And often a lot of the research that I read in scientific journals, 2194 01:47:01.660 --> 01:47:03.920 you're thinking, well, they've made certain assumptions here 2195 01:47:03.920 --> 01:47:06.840 about whether we want these things investigating or not. 2196 01:47:06.960 --> 01:47:08.660 Like, for example, in the consumer's assumptions, 2197 01:47:08.760 --> 01:47:10.560 in society it's generally taken as a given 2198 01:47:10.560 --> 01:47:13.340 that choice, more choice, is better. 2199 01:47:13.780 --> 01:47:17.260 Now, very recently, psychologists have been doing research into choice, 2200 01:47:17.360 --> 01:47:18.640 and it's been discovered that, in fact, 2201 01:47:18.680 --> 01:47:20.680 the more choice we're presented with in the supermarket, 2202 01:47:20.920 --> 01:47:23.320 the more unhappy and anxious we become, 2203 01:47:23.500 --> 01:47:26.060 because for all sorts of evolutionary reasons, possibly, 2204 01:47:26.800 --> 01:47:30.260 we are more concerned about making the wrong decision 2205 01:47:30.260 --> 01:47:33.260 than we feel joy from having made the correct decision. 2206 01:47:33.420 --> 01:47:35.400 We get the thing that we actually want, 2207 01:47:35.540 --> 01:47:37.700 and then we think, okay, yeah, it's the latest BMW, 2208 01:47:37.700 --> 01:47:41.020 but it doesn't have quite as good air conditioning as the Lexus. 2209 01:47:41.200 --> 01:47:41.620 Okay? 2210 01:47:42.100 --> 01:47:44.980 So the joy of what we think making the correct decision 2211 01:47:44.980 --> 01:47:50.340 is more than offset by the concern of having made the wrong decision. 2212 01:47:50.660 --> 01:47:52.540 And so I'd be very interested in, 2213 01:47:52.640 --> 01:47:56.460 and maybe Susan would have some suggestions here, 2214 01:47:56.540 --> 01:48:02.420 finding avenues that allow people to say, 2215 01:48:02.500 --> 01:48:04.840 can we just look at this area of research? 2216 01:48:04.840 --> 01:48:09.040 Can scientists stop deciding what ought to be studied 2217 01:48:09.040 --> 01:48:12.740 and what's likely to bring the biggest sum total to human happiness? 2218 01:48:13.320 --> 01:48:16.240 Can science start to address questions 2219 01:48:17.800 --> 01:48:21.620 that address this issue of increasing the sum total of human happiness? 2220 01:48:21.700 --> 01:48:23.040 Maybe it's meditation or whatever. 2221 01:48:23.320 --> 01:48:26.780 How can we get that dialogue to get the public 2222 01:48:26.780 --> 01:48:29.160 to direct the scientific research agenda 2223 01:48:29.160 --> 01:48:31.220 on these issues that affect us all? 2224 01:48:32.080 --> 01:48:32.600 Okay. 2225 01:48:36.000 --> 01:48:37.460 Okay, well, sorry, okay. 2226 01:48:37.620 --> 01:48:38.960 There's a song called Bernays, 2227 01:48:38.960 --> 01:48:39.840 who's a nephew to Freud, 2228 01:48:40.040 --> 01:48:41.340 and some of you may have heard of, 2229 01:48:41.400 --> 01:48:42.980 who in the first half of the 20th century 2230 01:48:44.060 --> 01:48:46.220 worked out a very devious way of persuading people 2231 01:48:46.220 --> 01:48:47.640 to buy things they didn't need, 2232 01:48:47.820 --> 01:48:49.440 but that he would persuade them they wanted. 2233 01:48:49.600 --> 01:48:50.560 And he hit on the very good idea 2234 01:48:50.560 --> 01:48:52.140 of using things to be symbolic of things. 2235 01:48:52.320 --> 01:48:54.100 So for example, he persuaded young women, 2236 01:48:54.140 --> 01:48:56.140 who at that time never smoked culturally, 2237 01:48:56.280 --> 01:48:57.940 it was against their style, 2238 01:48:58.200 --> 01:48:59.560 to actually have cigarettes 2239 01:48:59.560 --> 01:49:01.080 because they were the torches of freedom. 2240 01:49:02.180 --> 01:49:02.540 Right? 2241 01:49:03.540 --> 01:49:04.820 So one can then extend the question, 2242 01:49:04.820 --> 01:49:05.180 extend this, 2243 01:49:05.280 --> 01:49:06.780 and you only have to look at adverts even today, 2244 01:49:06.940 --> 01:49:09.600 which is the sofa that says something about you. 2245 01:49:10.220 --> 01:49:10.580 Yeah? 2246 01:49:11.420 --> 01:49:12.580 As unique as you are, 2247 01:49:12.660 --> 01:49:14.660 that's an almost paradox in terms. 2248 01:49:15.160 --> 01:49:16.820 Everyone's buying things as unique as they are. 2249 01:49:16.920 --> 01:49:18.940 So the same thing that's as unique as they are. 2250 01:49:19.000 --> 01:49:20.860 But anyway, people seem to buy into this. 2251 01:49:20.940 --> 01:49:23.220 And I think that what's this hitting on very cleverly, 2252 01:49:23.820 --> 01:49:25.540 and this is the cognitive sciences, if you like, 2253 01:49:25.680 --> 01:49:28.600 is people now feel a desire to be individuals, 2254 01:49:28.760 --> 01:49:30.220 to say something about themselves. 2255 01:49:30.360 --> 01:49:31.420 Now, of course they get thwarted 2256 01:49:31.420 --> 01:49:33.120 because you then find everyone's got the sofa, 2257 01:49:33.280 --> 01:49:34.280 everyone's got the thing. 2258 01:49:34.280 --> 01:49:35.020 And it's not unique, 2259 01:49:35.100 --> 01:49:36.480 and it's not saying anything about you at all. 2260 01:49:36.920 --> 01:49:38.900 Or if it is, it's saying you're the same as everyone else, 2261 01:49:38.980 --> 01:49:40.020 which is even more depressing. 2262 01:49:40.660 --> 01:49:43.720 And I think we are in a kind of crisis at the moment, 2263 01:49:43.760 --> 01:49:46.340 and it's something I really like to explore, 2264 01:49:46.540 --> 01:49:49.380 which is this notion of how you say something about yourself 2265 01:49:49.380 --> 01:49:51.040 and why it's important to have this status. 2266 01:49:51.140 --> 01:49:52.480 And it's something we all want to do. 2267 01:49:53.560 --> 01:49:56.880 The alternatives are to have the technology imploding upon us 2268 01:49:56.880 --> 01:49:57.800 where we end up just saying, 2269 01:49:57.840 --> 01:49:58.280 yuck and wow, 2270 01:49:58.920 --> 01:50:00.140 and I'm going to say more about that tomorrow. 2271 01:50:00.280 --> 01:50:01.080 That's a plug for tomorrow. 2272 01:50:01.820 --> 01:50:03.940 So you're either obliterating the ego, 2273 01:50:04.020 --> 01:50:04.260 if you will, 2274 01:50:04.280 --> 01:50:07.280 or it's being inappropriately symbolized 2275 01:50:07.860 --> 01:50:09.840 by these ubiquitous unique items. 2276 01:50:10.880 --> 01:50:14.800 Or it's being obliterated in a public ego 2277 01:50:14.800 --> 01:50:15.460 that is a narrative, 2278 01:50:15.560 --> 01:50:17.300 a collective narrative as in fundamentalism, 2279 01:50:17.320 --> 01:50:19.320 where everyone is acting out the same storyline. 2280 01:50:19.920 --> 01:50:22.800 So you're like a cohesive whole personality 2281 01:50:22.800 --> 01:50:24.740 of which one component can easily kill themselves 2282 01:50:24.740 --> 01:50:26.760 and that narrative carries on. 2283 01:50:26.840 --> 01:50:28.000 But the fourth way of doing this, 2284 01:50:28.080 --> 01:50:29.680 and I think that science can help here, 2285 01:50:29.820 --> 01:50:31.860 is to understand more about the creative process 2286 01:50:31.860 --> 01:50:34.100 because we've all had those wonderful eureka moments. 2287 01:50:34.100 --> 01:50:35.360 And isn't it wonderful 2288 01:50:35.360 --> 01:50:37.060 when you have that idea or that insight, 2289 01:50:37.280 --> 01:50:38.560 you don't have to paint the Mona Lisa 2290 01:50:38.560 --> 01:50:40.200 or write the Fifth Symphony. 2291 01:50:40.340 --> 01:50:42.520 You suddenly have an insight or an idea 2292 01:50:42.520 --> 01:50:43.900 that's truly creative, 2293 01:50:44.000 --> 01:50:44.980 that's bringing together two things 2294 01:50:44.980 --> 01:50:45.920 that haven't come together before. 2295 01:50:46.040 --> 01:50:47.640 And then you really feel like a fulfilled person 2296 01:50:47.640 --> 01:50:48.720 for about a second, of course. 2297 01:50:48.840 --> 01:50:49.320 But you know, 2298 01:50:49.960 --> 01:50:51.300 and you want to rush out. 2299 01:50:51.340 --> 01:50:52.480 And that says something about you 2300 01:50:52.480 --> 01:50:53.500 that truly is unique. 2301 01:50:53.580 --> 01:50:55.040 And I think what we should be doing in sciences, 2302 01:50:55.220 --> 01:50:56.260 in brain sciences, 2303 01:50:56.760 --> 01:50:59.420 is exploring ways in which we can help people, 2304 01:50:59.460 --> 01:51:00.520 especially in the education system, 2305 01:51:00.780 --> 01:51:03.020 get to that eureka moment as often as possible 2306 01:51:03.020 --> 01:51:04.080 because then that eureka moment 2307 01:51:04.080 --> 01:51:05.080 would be a way of fostering individuality 2308 01:51:05.600 --> 01:51:06.740 and then you wouldn't need to buy the sofa 2309 01:51:06.740 --> 01:51:08.180 and you wouldn't need the night care trainers. 2310 01:51:09.100 --> 01:51:09.900 Just quick. 2311 01:51:12.480 --> 01:51:14.720 Yeah, I think it's a really good question. 2312 01:51:14.940 --> 01:51:17.460 And in fact, in the area I work in, 2313 01:51:17.500 --> 01:51:18.320 the science of consciousness, 2314 01:51:18.520 --> 01:51:20.400 in just the last few years, 2315 01:51:20.420 --> 01:51:21.600 there's really been an increasing dialogue 2316 01:51:21.600 --> 01:51:23.180 between the Western scientists 2317 01:51:23.180 --> 01:51:27.240 and the members of the Eastern contemplative tradition. 2318 01:51:27.540 --> 01:51:30.080 It's been actually a dialogue in both directions. 2319 01:51:30.120 --> 01:51:31.020 Some people have thought 2320 01:51:31.020 --> 01:51:33.080 that we could take some ideas from these traditions 2321 01:51:33.660 --> 01:51:34.060 and then we could actually 2322 01:51:34.080 --> 01:51:34.840 use them as methodology 2323 01:51:34.840 --> 01:51:36.760 for helping to study the mind. 2324 01:51:36.920 --> 01:51:38.720 This is a tradition which has studied the mind 2325 01:51:38.720 --> 01:51:41.180 from the inside for thousands of years 2326 01:51:41.180 --> 01:51:43.080 and has arrived at methods 2327 01:51:43.080 --> 01:51:44.940 for studying the mind from the inside, 2328 01:51:44.980 --> 01:51:46.820 for studying consciousness from the inside 2329 01:51:46.820 --> 01:51:48.580 that go well beyond any methods, 2330 01:51:48.720 --> 01:51:50.380 which straightforward, relatively simplistic 2331 01:51:50.860 --> 01:51:52.680 Western science has come up with. 2332 01:51:52.800 --> 01:51:55.920 So that's been one direction. 2333 01:51:56.180 --> 01:51:56.780 There's been a lot of dialogue. 2334 01:51:57.020 --> 01:51:57.780 But in the other direction 2335 01:51:58.340 --> 01:52:00.560 has also been the thought that the science of... 2336 01:52:01.480 --> 01:52:04.260 The scientific study of happiness 2337 01:52:05.180 --> 01:52:07.700 is something which could actually give us some ideas 2338 01:52:07.700 --> 01:52:10.820 about how to set up society. 2339 01:52:11.260 --> 01:52:13.080 There's been some really fascinating experiments 2340 01:52:13.080 --> 01:52:16.360 from the last few years 2341 01:52:16.360 --> 01:52:19.560 showing investigating ways 2342 01:52:19.560 --> 01:52:21.580 in which different changes to people's lives 2343 01:52:21.580 --> 01:52:24.500 actually make a difference to their happiness. 2344 01:52:24.900 --> 01:52:26.720 And it's really very surprising. 2345 01:52:26.880 --> 01:52:27.760 One thing you find, for example, 2346 01:52:27.860 --> 01:52:28.700 maybe not so surprising, 2347 01:52:28.840 --> 01:52:30.480 is that happiness doesn't correlate 2348 01:52:30.480 --> 01:52:32.020 terribly much with income. 2349 01:52:32.900 --> 01:52:33.780 Not so surprising. 2350 01:52:33.840 --> 01:52:34.520 You're rich, you're not happy. 2351 01:52:35.260 --> 01:52:36.060 Another thing you find, 2352 01:52:36.200 --> 01:52:37.340 big changes in your life 2353 01:52:37.340 --> 01:52:39.100 make surprisingly little difference 2354 01:52:39.100 --> 01:52:39.900 to your happiness. 2355 01:52:40.200 --> 01:52:41.600 You win a lottery, 2356 01:52:42.000 --> 01:52:43.360 people go up on the happiness scale 2357 01:52:43.360 --> 01:52:44.820 a few points for a few months. 2358 01:52:45.000 --> 01:52:47.080 A year or two, they come back down. 2359 01:52:47.760 --> 01:52:49.200 On the other hand, people get... 2360 01:52:49.200 --> 01:52:51.660 People say, lose a limb. 2361 01:52:52.000 --> 01:52:53.460 Something really terrible happens to them. 2362 01:52:53.520 --> 01:52:54.460 Within a year or two, 2363 01:52:54.580 --> 01:52:56.600 their level of happiness comes back up. 2364 01:52:56.720 --> 01:52:57.760 There's a couple of things you can do 2365 01:52:57.760 --> 01:52:59.700 that will make a difference. 2366 01:52:59.700 --> 01:53:00.860 Turns out, you know, 2367 01:53:00.880 --> 01:53:02.280 getting married helps you for a few years. 2368 01:53:04.240 --> 01:53:06.380 Then you come back down. 2369 01:53:06.480 --> 01:53:08.140 But given that we're all in this, 2370 01:53:08.160 --> 01:53:09.320 we're all in this for happiness, 2371 01:53:09.480 --> 01:53:11.660 all of this ought to really make us seriously reflect 2372 01:53:11.660 --> 01:53:13.400 about what we're doing in designing society, 2373 01:53:13.640 --> 01:53:14.520 the role of money, 2374 01:53:14.700 --> 01:53:16.300 the role of all of this. 2375 01:53:16.400 --> 01:53:17.600 And I think this is a place where science 2376 01:53:17.600 --> 01:53:18.740 really can make us reflect 2377 01:53:18.740 --> 01:53:20.680 on how we can build a more happy society. 2378 01:53:20.880 --> 01:53:21.920 I want to make some more questioners happy. 2379 01:53:22.060 --> 01:53:22.960 Thank you, David. 2380 01:53:23.260 --> 01:53:24.720 Yes, please, the gentleman just there. 2381 01:53:25.660 --> 01:53:26.360 Thank you all. 2382 01:53:27.420 --> 01:53:29.680 I have a question arising from one of the questions 2383 01:53:29.700 --> 01:53:30.700 about what I perceive as a tension 2384 01:53:30.700 --> 01:53:33.800 between what John Carroll has raised 2385 01:53:35.340 --> 01:53:38.620 with the modern scientific paradigm 2386 01:53:39.700 --> 01:53:42.000 and something that Susan said 2387 01:53:42.000 --> 01:53:44.320 about science as a quest for truth. 2388 01:53:45.360 --> 01:53:50.880 And I have to say something of a short statement as a... 2389 01:53:50.880 --> 01:53:52.060 Very short, please. 2390 01:53:52.120 --> 01:53:52.460 Very short. 2391 01:53:52.560 --> 01:53:54.820 It seems that most of our human life 2392 01:53:54.820 --> 01:53:58.460 has to do with the essential aspects of it, 2393 01:53:58.460 --> 01:53:59.660 not non-material things. 2394 01:54:00.200 --> 01:54:02.840 There are material things we are surrounded by, 2395 01:54:03.000 --> 01:54:04.180 brought us here, 2396 01:54:04.380 --> 01:54:08.380 but are they the essential things 2397 01:54:08.380 --> 01:54:11.080 or is it the non-material things that brought us here tonight? 2398 01:54:12.000 --> 01:54:14.900 For me, at least, it was the non-material things. 2399 01:54:15.480 --> 01:54:16.660 In the quest... 2400 01:54:16.660 --> 01:54:18.720 The question is, in the quest for truth, 2401 01:54:21.780 --> 01:54:24.380 can that quest for truth encompass 2402 01:54:26.600 --> 01:54:28.440 more than is normally needed 2403 01:54:28.460 --> 01:54:32.340 to be encompassed by the scientific endeavour? 2404 01:54:33.820 --> 01:54:34.940 Do you want to start, John? 2405 01:54:36.340 --> 01:54:38.960 Well, I'd say, quite simply, 2406 01:54:39.120 --> 01:54:41.040 that the metaphysical truths 2407 01:54:41.640 --> 01:54:44.340 and also the moral truths about... 2408 01:54:44.340 --> 01:54:48.120 The Socratic truths about what it is to be a good person, 2409 01:54:48.200 --> 01:54:49.500 what it is to be a just person, 2410 01:54:49.600 --> 01:54:51.500 how to conduct your life in those terms, 2411 01:54:51.840 --> 01:54:53.700 modern Western science has no answer. 2412 01:54:53.820 --> 01:54:57.780 It's not its orbit and it simply doesn't... 2413 01:54:57.780 --> 01:54:58.440 It's not its orbit. 2414 01:54:58.440 --> 01:54:59.760 It's not its area of strength. 2415 01:55:00.200 --> 01:55:00.880 It's not its... 2416 01:55:00.880 --> 01:55:04.800 It doesn't belong to its universe or its logic. 2417 01:55:05.060 --> 01:55:07.540 And so the very simple answer is, 2418 01:55:07.640 --> 01:55:12.120 science should stick to where it's good and where it belongs. 2419 01:55:16.360 --> 01:55:17.060 Yes. 2420 01:55:19.120 --> 01:55:20.200 I'm a scientist 2421 01:55:20.200 --> 01:55:23.360 and I've greatly appreciated your comments tonight. 2422 01:55:23.700 --> 01:55:25.840 But I also work for an organisation 2423 01:55:25.840 --> 01:55:27.620 that I see as a scientific organisation. 2424 01:55:28.440 --> 01:55:28.740 And I've worked with a number of scientists 2425 01:55:28.740 --> 01:55:32.160 going through all of those aspects that you raised, Susan, 2426 01:55:32.240 --> 01:55:36.060 of chasing the dollars in a control mentality 2427 01:55:36.060 --> 01:55:38.760 and what I call a production line sense 2428 01:55:38.760 --> 01:55:40.180 about what science is about. 2429 01:55:40.680 --> 01:55:43.980 And it strikes me that one of the consequences of that 2430 01:55:43.980 --> 01:55:47.260 is that we are starting to lose the soul 2431 01:55:48.140 --> 01:55:50.200 of people as scientists. 2432 01:55:50.680 --> 01:55:53.480 And I wonder whether that's one of the reasons 2433 01:55:53.480 --> 01:55:55.260 why we're having increasing difficulty 2434 01:55:55.260 --> 01:55:58.720 in communicating what science is about 2435 01:55:59.280 --> 01:56:01.320 to those people who are not necessarily 2436 01:56:02.420 --> 01:56:04.120 imbibed with scientific training. 2437 01:56:04.640 --> 01:56:05.540 Yeah, thank you very much. 2438 01:56:05.580 --> 01:56:07.680 I think that's a really exciting question. 2439 01:56:08.640 --> 01:56:11.180 I think, first, though, we ought to just make sure 2440 01:56:11.180 --> 01:56:13.020 that you're using soul there metaphorically, 2441 01:56:13.120 --> 01:56:15.040 not in the kind of theological sense of it. 2442 01:56:15.160 --> 01:56:20.440 So we're using here soul as being that spark of intuition, 2443 01:56:20.660 --> 01:56:23.520 that unique-to-you insight 2444 01:56:24.060 --> 01:56:25.000 that comes... 2445 01:56:25.000 --> 01:56:26.980 when you have a certain result 2446 01:56:26.980 --> 01:56:27.900 or when you have an idea 2447 01:56:27.900 --> 01:56:30.180 that then you're going to test empirically. 2448 01:56:30.260 --> 01:56:31.540 And I think that's very important because... 2449 01:56:31.540 --> 01:56:33.600 and I will, I hope, get very political now. 2450 01:56:33.760 --> 01:56:36.200 I think that at the moment, the way the public sector, 2451 01:56:36.580 --> 01:56:38.200 certainly the UK, are funding science 2452 01:56:38.200 --> 01:56:40.420 is to put a premium on what is safe, 2453 01:56:41.000 --> 01:56:42.680 what is going to yield easy results, 2454 01:56:42.860 --> 01:56:45.620 what is a variation on what's been done already, 2455 01:56:45.740 --> 01:56:47.860 which operates in what people call an existing paradigm 2456 01:56:48.420 --> 01:56:50.460 that doesn't challenge existing dogma. 2457 01:56:50.680 --> 01:56:51.960 The most exciting science, 2458 01:56:52.100 --> 01:56:54.860 and I would certainly metaphorically call this 2459 01:56:54.860 --> 01:56:56.160 the soul, if you like, 2460 01:56:56.860 --> 01:56:58.280 is that which challenges dogma, 2461 01:56:58.300 --> 01:57:00.500 which does say something that's different, 2462 01:57:00.620 --> 01:57:02.720 that is heretical in every sense. 2463 01:57:02.940 --> 01:57:04.620 Now, the downside of the heretical, 2464 01:57:04.860 --> 01:57:06.960 the speculative, the paradigm shift, 2465 01:57:07.420 --> 01:57:09.560 is that a lot of the time, 2466 01:57:09.560 --> 01:57:10.700 you're going to be wrong. 2467 01:57:11.320 --> 01:57:13.820 Then people might accuse you of wasting taxpayers' money. 2468 01:57:14.060 --> 01:57:15.860 You're going to have editorials written about you 2469 01:57:15.860 --> 01:57:17.120 and how scandalous this is and so on. 2470 01:57:17.180 --> 01:57:20.000 Now, you have to live in a society where people understand 2471 01:57:20.000 --> 01:57:23.220 that in order to ask the very bold, the very big, 2472 01:57:23.300 --> 01:57:24.840 the very dogma-challenging question, 2473 01:57:24.840 --> 01:57:27.360 means that you will often get negative results 2474 01:57:27.360 --> 01:57:28.660 or results that you weren't expecting. 2475 01:57:29.000 --> 01:57:30.780 And that's fine if you're a scientist 2476 01:57:30.780 --> 01:57:31.820 and you have the confidence 2477 01:57:31.820 --> 01:57:33.780 and the confidence of the society that are paying you, 2478 01:57:33.860 --> 01:57:36.320 that you're going to learn from those mistakes 2479 01:57:36.320 --> 01:57:37.380 because they're not mistakes. 2480 01:57:37.720 --> 01:57:39.660 They are findings you weren't expecting. 2481 01:57:39.920 --> 01:57:41.560 And the exciting thing about science 2482 01:57:41.560 --> 01:57:43.220 is to actually ride with the things. 2483 01:57:43.360 --> 01:57:44.600 You think it's one thing or another, 2484 01:57:44.700 --> 01:57:45.360 and it's the third thing. 2485 01:57:45.520 --> 01:57:47.460 But sadly, and I agree with you, 2486 01:57:47.480 --> 01:57:48.840 you've sat down with the questioner, 2487 01:57:48.860 --> 01:57:51.280 that sadly we're living in an audit-ridden, 2488 01:57:52.820 --> 01:57:54.440 completely risk-averse society, 2489 01:57:54.940 --> 01:57:57.320 where people think that a good experiment 2490 01:57:57.320 --> 01:57:59.180 is one that gives you the result that you're expecting. 2491 01:57:59.540 --> 01:58:02.380 And I really fear that that might actually be jeopardising 2492 01:58:02.380 --> 01:58:03.460 public sector-funded science, 2493 01:58:03.540 --> 01:58:04.320 and indeed, increasingly, 2494 01:58:04.540 --> 01:58:06.560 is favouring research in the private sector, 2495 01:58:06.660 --> 01:58:07.780 which was previously reviled 2496 01:58:07.780 --> 01:58:09.580 as being kind of techy and dull and applied. 2497 01:58:09.840 --> 01:58:11.460 And now you find in the biotech companies, 2498 01:58:11.540 --> 01:58:13.140 who have to innovate, otherwise they're dead, 2499 01:58:13.320 --> 01:58:16.140 that often you're getting very exciting data from them as well. 2500 01:58:21.500 --> 01:58:23.340 This will be our last question, too. 2501 01:58:23.420 --> 01:58:24.780 Two or three years ago, Roger, 2502 01:58:24.780 --> 01:58:27.420 Roger Scruton wrote a book called The West and the Rest, 2503 01:58:27.600 --> 01:58:28.580 a very short little book, 2504 01:58:29.240 --> 01:58:32.680 in which he made the point that the great virtue 2505 01:58:32.680 --> 01:58:35.020 of the Christian and post-Christian West 2506 01:58:35.780 --> 01:58:38.560 was render the Caesar the things of the Caesar, 2507 01:58:38.720 --> 01:58:40.020 and the God the things of the God, 2508 01:58:40.080 --> 01:58:43.060 which enabled the separation of science and theology. 2509 01:58:43.620 --> 01:58:46.140 And he's using particularly the example of Islam, 2510 01:58:46.360 --> 01:58:49.880 where theology takes your whole life from top to bottom, 2511 01:58:49.980 --> 01:58:51.520 and you cannot separate them. 2512 01:58:51.920 --> 01:58:54.700 I spent 10 years working in Africa and Pakistan, 2513 01:58:54.780 --> 01:58:59.100 and I found them pretty revolting societies compared to ours. 2514 01:58:59.280 --> 01:59:01.140 So I think he was completely right. 2515 01:59:01.780 --> 01:59:04.260 Professor Carroll, please comment. 2516 01:59:14.820 --> 01:59:19.140 I think the separation of church and state 2517 01:59:19.140 --> 01:59:23.640 is a different issue than the separation of God from science. 2518 01:59:23.640 --> 01:59:25.600 But in both areas, 2519 01:59:25.880 --> 01:59:28.820 the West is happier for that separation. 2520 01:59:29.180 --> 01:59:34.800 And my worry tonight has been the sort of charisma of science 2521 01:59:34.800 --> 01:59:40.740 is meaning that our serious thinking in the metaphysical area 2522 01:59:40.740 --> 01:59:44.020 is not as strong as it should be. 2523 01:59:45.820 --> 01:59:46.840 Anyone else? 2524 01:59:48.860 --> 01:59:51.320 Well, I think it's no accident 2525 01:59:51.320 --> 01:59:53.620 that science developed in the way it did in Christianity. 2526 01:59:53.620 --> 01:59:53.840 And I think it's a good thing that we have a lot of Christian societies 2527 01:59:55.080 --> 01:59:57.820 that there were elements about Christianity 2528 01:59:57.820 --> 01:59:59.800 that allowed that process to go forward. 2529 01:59:59.960 --> 02:00:02.340 And it did flourish for a time under Islam, 2530 02:00:02.600 --> 02:00:04.640 but that was over by about 1200. 2531 02:00:05.080 --> 02:00:06.060 And I'd like to add, 2532 02:00:06.100 --> 02:00:06.960 what's wrong with charisma? 2533 02:00:07.060 --> 02:00:08.700 You're just saying it's good for other things. 2534 02:00:08.760 --> 02:00:10.260 Why can't scientists have charisma as well? 2535 02:00:13.360 --> 02:00:14.840 As indeed they have. 2536 02:00:14.920 --> 02:00:16.140 Could I ask you to thank 2537 02:00:18.460 --> 02:00:22.320 Robert Matthews, David Chalmers, Susan Greenfield, Peter Doughty, and John Carroll. 2538 02:00:31.060 --> 02:00:33.020 Thank you.