Engineering the Future |
"What do you know about the future of Engineering then, Bish, asked a sceptical cab driver who was helping me to mend our car. He had heard that I was giving the Bridge Lecture. "Not Engineering, the Future but Engineering the Future" I explained.
But indeed I ought to begin with some apology to this distinguished audience for the spectacle with which you are presented this evening of a Bishop, with no very great technical education, addressing many people who are expert in a number of fields and actively at work engineering our future. It must seem to you rather like a witch doctor addressing the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association.
I am encouraged however by the idea of the Bridge Lecture to attempt a discussion of a number of interrelated themes which arise from the astonishing scientific and technological developments of the century we have just quitted. These themes have implications for us all and if democracy is to have any future in our civilisation it is vital that we all attempt to understand the nature of the choices which lie before us. The breakdown of communications between those with a profound scientific and technical culture and those whose education has been in the humanities is frequently deplored but then people, just as frequently, retreat to their bunkers.
This is a university and a City which values joined up thinking and which continues to be a world city as we move into the Knowledge Economy because ideas circulate here with great velocity, so let us risk it together. Bridge-builder, pontifex, is one of the ancient descriptions of a bishop's work so perhaps it is not so inappropriate for me to seek to discern some of the challenges which will confront every citizen in the new millennium.
It is a natural impulse to want to look into the future, hence the significance and commercial success of astrology in our own day.
The Express is celebrating its victory over the Mail in luring away one of the highest paid futurologists in the country, Jonathan Cainer the astrologer. You have to take it seriously because there is so much money at stake. Frivolity is punished. A few years ago, according to an article in the Economist, embarrassed by the non-appearance of its regular astrologer, one newspaper handed the job over to a cynical hack. He relieved his boredom by writing under one star sign "all the sorrows of yesteryear are as nothing compared with what will befall you today." He was sacked when the switchboard was jammed by panicking readers.
I am assuming that had you wanted that kind of Bridge Lecture you would have invited Mystic Meg so I shall focus on more scientifically informed prognostications.
It is however salutary to compare some of the predictions and prophecies of yesteryear with what we know actually happened.
Victor Hugo in celebrating the enhanced power of humanity declared that, "The 19th century is great but the 20th century will be happy. Nothing will be the same as in our former age. There will be no more fear as there is in our times, no more armed conflicts between peoples, no conquest of other countries through war, no invasions, no attacks."
At about the same time Bismarck said, "We Germans fear God and otherwise nothing on earth." Today we may not fear God but otherwise it is impossible to overlook the great fears that many fellow citizens have about virtually everything on earth - atomic power, climate change, genetic engineering to name but a few.
I confess to being thrilled by the potential of recent discoveries. I am the kind of person for whom catalogues of scientific gadgets are designed and I am excited by news items like the invention by scientists at Imperial College of a diagnostic breathalyser which will assist doctors by interpreting the medical evidence provided by the smell of our breath. Like everyone else, however, I am aware of the acceleration of change and that we are in transition "from being passive observers of nature to being active choreographers of nature." Those are the words of Michio Kaku in his book, "Visions" (OUP 1998). He says that "The Age of Discovery in Science is coming to a close, opening up an Age of Mastery."
It is possible to exaggerate the novelty of this shift. From the very beginning of the Western revolution in scientific thought, Francis Bacon predicted that the systematic pursuit of scientific knowledge would lead to "the effecting of all things possible." Likewise, Descartes declared that his method of research and thought would make man, "master and possessor of the earth."
Nevertheless the 20th century has left an extraordinary legacy to our own which has endowed this "mastery" with a hugely increased scope. I am thinking, of course, of the power released by the splitting of the atom but most particularly of the sequence of discoveries which have led to the human genome project.
It was in Coronation year that Crick and Watson working Cambridge identified the double helix structure of DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid] in the nucleus of the living cell. Nature's alphabet A,G,C, and T standing for the chemicals adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine was deciphered and over the following years the tools were assembled for editing and even rewriting the genetic code.
Michio Kaku says, "Instead of watching the dance of life, the biomolecular revolution will ultimately give us the nearly god-like ability to manipulate life almost at will." You will notice the confession of unease in the phrases "nearly god-like ability" and manipulation "almost at will".
It would be mean spirited however to miss the kind of excitement which effervesces in Ben Okri's Anti Spell for the 21st century, a poem which he calls Mental Fight.
We that are here now are touched
In some mysterious way
With the ability to change
And make the future.
The poet calls us to "wake to the wonder of this magic moment".
On 14 September 1990 at Bethesda Institute of Health near Washington, the first successful attempt was made to transplant human genes and inject genetically engineered white blood cells into a four year old girl whose immune system was crippled by an inherited defect. Almost everyone, myself included, welcomed the development. Bethesda is a good example of the huge power and resources now available to advanced medical research in the U.S.
The National Institutes of Health at Bethesda grew from a Laboratory of Hygiene founded in 1887 with a budget of 300 dollars. The annual budget now approaches 11 billion dollars.
Cystic fibrosis is another disease with a genetic component and identifying the gene which is implicated in the condition promises to lead to treatment which will alleviate a great deal of human misery. Sickle-cell anaemia is the world?s second most common genetic disease which is widespread in the continent of Africa. Here however there has been a question for drug companies whether it is sufficiently profitable to spend time or money in developing treatments.
The power unleashed by the human genome project immediately raises particular ethical issues as well as questions about who will wield this power and how it is to be exercised. Broader philosophical questions are also raised. Are human beings more than vehicles for transmitting genetic information from one generation to another? Is human life more than the expression of some computer programme written in the biochemical language of DNA?
In medicine, genetic diagnosis is obviously useful in pre-natal screening for actual genetic defects but it could also be used to identify predispositions to certain conditions and ailments and be the basis of a new style of genetic medicine. These extensions clearly have implications for the insurance industry if near universal genetic screening becomes the norm.
There is an acute issue surrounding genetic privacy. Very soon, presumably, there will be gene scanning available over the counter. Suppose you discover that you have a high risk of developing heart disease and then you join an insurance scheme insisting on the right to genetic privacy. This would seriously disadvantage the other members of the scheme and they may be able to demonstrate a right to know the level of risk you are introducing. It may be that private health insurance will be less able to cope with the results of such a development than all embracing systems like the NHS.
Another issue is the legitimacy of patenting gene sequences in the national and commercial interest to give the confidence needed if large sums of money are to be spent on developing the medical implications. James Watson, who shared the Nobel Prize for his discoveries about DNA, has warned of "a nationalistic approach to science". Who will own the genome, the genetic history of humankind and who will have rights of access to the fruits of research?
In 1980, the US Supreme Court opened the door to patenting products of nature when it decided that a biologist called Chakrabarty could patent a hybridised bacteria, "because his discovery was his handiwork and not that of nature" although the judges agreed by a majority that a "new mineral discovered in the earth or a new plant discovered in the wild is not patentable." In 1998 1,500 patents had been secured on gene sequences. The argument is that innovation is stimulated by certain reward.
This process has its critics. In 1994 the Pope said "We rejoice that numerous researchers have refused to allow discoveries made about the genome to be patented. Since the human body is not an object which can be disposed of at will, the results of research should be made available to the whole scientific community and cannot be the property of a small group." Discoveries these days are often the fruit of shared knowledge and world-wide cooperation. We can be thankful that Crick and Watson were not working for a drug company at the time of their momentous discovery.
But there are also broader moral concerns. Could the power to genetically predict characteristics of the next generation lead to a society in which parents do not so much want what is the best for their child but calculate how to obtain the best child? What about the possibility of selective abortion to achieve the optimum genetic features.
In "Wonderwoman and Superman" by John Harris, the Professor of Applied Philosophy at Manchester writes "For my part I welcome the possibility of a new breed of persons with life chances not available to us now." But to what extent do we wish to design our descendants? James Watson again says, "there are some things about which we must simply say you can't do."
These are questions which concern scientists in the field and indeed all of us. 3% of the budget of the human genome project set aside for the study of the ethical, legal and social implications of our new powers - the so-called ELSI programme. Will parents ask for children who are male, tall, strong and handsome? If we think that the answer is "no" then perhaps we should contemplate the impact of the sonogram in India and China.
Who is to authorise or control such developments? The most likely candidate at the moment appears to be the market. Is it possible that a genetocracy could arise and that this could be the basis for a secession of the successful? The fearful results of the eugenic movement in Nazi Germany have put us on our guard against such developments but perhaps we have too easily assumed that we are inoculated against the gradual re-introduction of eugenic thinking.
We ought to remember that the eugenic approach seemed obvious sense to many people not merely in Germany between the wars. Some of the seminal thinking was done by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton a Professor at University College London in the latter part of the 19th century but the movement secured huge successes in the U.S. after the First World War. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1927 in the case of Buck v Bell upheld, in a Supreme Court judgement on a Virginia statute, the constitutionality of sterilisation. "It is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit for continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes."
Bertrand Russell contemplated the illiberal logic of modern biology as long ago as 1946. "The doctrine that all men are born equal and that the differences between adults are due wholly education are incompatible with Darwin's emphasis on congenital differences between members of the same species."
Earlier in his book "The Scientific Outlook" published in 1931 and widely believed to be a key source for Brave New World, Russell argued that "science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy." Also "men will acquire power to alter themselves and will inevitably use this power" with the consequence that man "will tend more and more to regard himself as a manufactured product."
In post war Europe partly as a reaction to the naturalism of the Nazis the emphasis has been on nurture in the age old debate about the relative significance of nature and nurture in human development. Arguments about the significance of genetic inheritance have not been much heard in debates about the future of the hereditary element in the House of Lords but in the semi-private world of science, nature is once again dominant. The hope of the conquest of disease has readmitted eugenic thinking to the respectable world.
Temporarily, government eugenics is not such a danger although it would be foolish to ignore the likely consequences if a Ceacescu-style regime gained the power to engineer future citizens and not merely as shot-put champions. Today the principal danger is in consumer eugenics and in a secession of the successful like the octogenarian Texas oil millionaire shown in a recent TV film who was funding research into the genetic basis of ageing.
But what about the other danger to which Bertrand Russell alluded that man "will more and more regard himself as a manufactured product"?
If we are to argue from a Kantian or Christian sense of the moral status of the individual person, it is necessary to have a stable sense of what the individual is " where the individual starts, where ends and how he is constituted". Yet as the Harvard biologist, E.O.Wilson puts it "the individual is an evanescent combination of genes drawn from this [the gene] pool, one whose hereditary material will soon be dissolved back into it."
The basis for scientism the most dangerous of all fundamentalisms is the view that whereas ethics are socially conditioned and therefore negotiable, science is pure and value free following the laws of nature. It is not science per se that is at fault but bad, hubristic science that chooses to look at human life in bits and pieces and denies that there are organic wholes, ecosystems and societies.There is, however, huge resistance to the idea that both the opposition to genetic engineering and the science involved are both alike value laden.
Genetic Engineering is sometimes described, critically, as playing at God or intervening in the natural order without due respect to the wisdom of ecological holism. Hubristic autonomy from God is certainly part of the drama played out in the Paradise Garden but in Judaeo-Christian thought we are made "in the image of God". It seems that we are invited to play at God. The vital thing is to retain our balance and as the book of Genesis puts it both "to till the earth and to keep it", to develop and to preserve. This balance is expressed throughout Judaeo-Christian thought and indeed is common to the other faith traditions as well. In the central act of the Christian community, the Eucharist we offer bread and wine "fruit of the earth and the work of human hands".
We all have to be very careful how we describe and speak about these issues. They have the capacity to ignite violent social conflict as we have seen in the pro-life movement in the US. Genuine dialogue is necessary which goes beyond educating the public in the realities of science with the assumption that the public must then be satisfied. Just as much as anyone else, working scientists are stimulated and educated by perspectives outside their own disciplines.
Modernity is open ended, displacing an old world of fixed natural and social order by continual transformation. We find ourselves in an environment which promises adventure and power, transformation of ourselves and the world but which at the same time threatens oblivion to all that we have and know.
Marx's vision of modernity in the Communist Manifesto is perhaps more telling now than when he published it in 1848, "Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social relations, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier times. All fixed fast frozen relationships with their train of venerable ideas and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become obsolete before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and men at last are forced to face with sober senses the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men."
The human body itself of course was largely exempted from this flux as the unchanging ground for our experience of things. With the revolution in genetics this is no longer the case. The question arises of how much change human beings can bear at one time without giving way to destructive, Luddite behaviour.
If we are to make wise choices in this maelstrom of change then we should have some mobilising narrative to inform our choices and to help us cope with the uncertainties and the discontinuities which will be the norm for our children.
There have been attempts in the past at providing some mobilising narratives. One which greatly impressed me as a boy was the film based on H.G.Wells The Shape of Things to Come. The scenes were mostly shot in Shepperton and Isleworth in the Diocese of London using undernourished local extras to perform in the Pestilence scene. They would be harder to find today. This is something to celebrate.
The film was first shown in 1936. Wells had recently visited Jo Stalin to persuade him that "the technicians, scientific workers, medical men?.aviators, operating engineers would and should supply the best material for constructive revolution in the West and that the dictatorship of the Proletariat was a residue of old style thinking." The Dictator was not convinced but Wells had a point.
"Things to Come" was not a commercial success, after all as an American distributor remarked "nobody is going to believe that the world is going to be saved by a bunch of people with British accents."
Dystopias have their role to play also. One of the most influential which I re-read in preparation for this discussion is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
The climax of the book is a confrontation between the Controller and the Savage who has been bred in the way that most of us were.
The Savage says, "I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin." "In fact" said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
The experiences mentioned by the Savage are simply grandiose expressions of the problems of life and those problems can be eliminated. Most of the characters are content to live in a genitally stimulating present with the assurance of continuing youthfulness with memory and prophecy banished in mantra like "was and will, will make me ill"
But perhaps the idea of heavenly comfort is not so very appealing after all if you think about it. There may be problems if we actually get what we want. Julian Barnes explores this idea in his History of the World in 10.5 chapters.
"Heaven is democratic these days" said Margaret the angelic minder, "we don't impose heaven on people anymore. We listen to their needs. If they want it they can have it; if not, not. And then of course they get the sort of heaven they want.
"And what sort do they want on the whole?"
"Well they want a continuation of life, that's what we find."
"Sex, golf, shopping, dinner, meeting famous people and not feeling bad?" I asked a bit defensively.
"It varies. But if I were being honest, I'd say that it doesn't vary all that much."
The protagonist having engineered for himself a world in which he can play a round of golf in 18 shots becomes less than satisfied and even asks for things to go wrong even for a bit of pain.
How far are we capable of designing our own destiny? We have the means to advance towards many of the goals that most of us would regard as desirable but could we find ourselves slipping into a brave new world by default. The quality of our dreaming and the precision and vigour of our debate about the future will be a vital contribution to its quality.
Ethical and other debates in the present media environment accentuates the prominence and exaggerates the significance of extreme positions. A technological advance towards human cloning. There are calls for an ethical enquiry. Those for and against are heard. A committee takes the temperature of public feeling and reports the varying levels of unease. This is of course really politics. So there is constant re-negotiation which is subject to gusts of emotion and manipulation. Perhaps things are not so bad in a time of relative economic stability which obtains for the moment in the countries where the advances are being made but a great deal does depend on how people feel at any one time about dependents and outsiders and recent experience in Austria reminds us of the electoral and democratic success of Hitler.
At present we seem to be in the dangerous position that we do not believe in anything as much as we believe in science. The combination of vast power, a lack of clear standards and inescapable choices is a prescription for a tormented collective soul and at the operational level for intense political conflict. The terms of the old treaty between science and the humanities was that the humanities were about values and the scientific disciplines were value free. The old treaty suggested that they described the world in different but not in contradictory ways.
Now however there is a scientism which has annulled the old treaty and claims to unmask the humanities and religion as mere rhetorical artefacts whose territory will in time be annexed by science. Market forces leave the immediate choices to individuals but who or what informs the choices and who has access to the market place.
This is a question which has to be asked in the context of the growing disparity between rich and poor throughout the world but also in our own society. David Landes in "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" notes that 250 years ago the gap between the per capita income of the richest and poorest nations was 5:1. Now the ratio between Switzerland and Mozambique is 400:1
There has been a debate in the 90's between market and community politics and an attempt in the various "third ways" to reconcile the two, tacking between them in a kind of balancing act. The aim should be to harness the power of markets and community to creating and spreading knowledge and beyond knowledge to creating the conditions for educating all citizens in wisdom.
We must move further away from the idea of education as a rite of passage involving the acquisition of knowledge and qualifications sufficient to gain an adult station in life. Certain capabilities have to be inculcated, literacy and numeracy as well as the ability to act responsibly towards others, to take initiatives and to work creatively and collaboratively. The most important disposition to cultivate is the desire to continue learning and to grow in wisdom about the good life.
Schools and universities are the places where society learns how to transcend itself and there are reports of some interesting developments in educational strategy from places like Singapore in its determination to remain "in time for the future". Schools there have reduced curriculum content by 30% to free time for reflection, cross disciplinary and self directed learning. Central inspection has been replaced by a system of self assessment based on the European Business Excellence Model. Only 50% of the assessment is on results and the rest on processes, teaching methods, leadership and pupil empowerment. I am paraphrasing a communication from Graham Leicester, Director of the Scottish Council Foundation.
A knowledge economy flourishes on public trust and after the BSE crsis and similar scandals there is a danger of a new Ludditism where innovations are concerned. Monsanto?s ability to innovate genetically modified food is determined by scientific know-how but also on winning public trust over its commercial exploitation.
The new economy needs a mobilising vision which must be primarily social, cultural and spiritual. The Greenwich Dome and the debate it has provoked is a symbol of a world of huge technical achievements waiting for its new mobilising narrative to replace the very successful fifties model of mass affluence, constantly improving life style and relative employment stability. We are going to be navigating into the future at a time of unparalleled and disturbing change and if we do not identify a new narrative to capture popular imagination and to inform decisions that have to be made about education and social priorities then we shall face a period of unproductive uncertainty
There will be huge difficulties in moving from where we are now to a wisdom based civilisation but that is the challenge with which we are faced.
Wisdom has an appreciation of limits and the contribution which is made by restraint so that there is room for the other to flourish. Wisdom puts the accent on balance and a relationship with the whole. Wisdom values above all love and compassion.
Knowledge is Power to change things but wisdom is able to discriminate between when to use power and when to refrain. Knowledge can be trawled from the internet. Wisdom is only learnt in relationships.
I shall leave the last word to Ben Okri from the poem I have already mentioned, his Mental Fight An anti-spell for the 21st century.
And because we have too much information,
And no clear direction;
Too many facts,
And not enough faith;
Too much confusion,
And crave clear vision;
Too many fears,
And not enough light ?
I whisper to myself modest maxims
As thought-friends for a new age.
See clearly, think clearly.
Face pleasant and unpleasant truths;
Face reality.
Free the past.
Catch up with ourselves.
Never cease from upward striving.
We are better than we think.
Don't be afraid to love, or be loved.
As within, so without.
We owe life abundant happiness.
We can still astonish the gods in humanity
And be the stuff of future legends,
If we but dare to be real,
And have the courage to see
That this is the time to dream
The best dream of them all.
Select Bibliography
Brian Appleyard - Brave New Worlds. Harper Collins. 1999
Jean Gimpel - The End of the Future. Adamantine Press. 1994
Michio Kaku - Visions. OUP. 1998
Donald and Ann Bruce [edit.] - Engineering Genesis. The Ethics of Genetic Engineering in Non-Human Species. Earthscan. 1998
Christopher Frayling - Things to Come. BFI Film Classics. 1995
Mae-Wan Ho. Genetic Engineering. Gateway Books. 1998
Charles Leadbeater - Living on Thin Air. Viking. 1999
Jon Turney - Frankenstein's Footsteps. Science, Genetics and Popular Culture. Yale 1998.
Tom Wilkie - Perilous Knowledge. Faber and Faber 1993.
H.G.Wells - The Shape of Things to Come. Hutchinson 1933
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World. Chatto and Windus. 1932
Ben Okri - Mental Fight. Phoenix House. 1999.
