The Battlegrounds of Bio-science

The start of the new millennium has seen the dawn of Charles Darwin's dream - the synthesis of the physical, biological, and social sciences, what E. O. Wilson (who author Tom Wolfe dubbed 'Darwin II') has called 'consilience.' But to a vast portion of the American population, especially the Religious Right, not only Christian, but Muslim as well, human evolution itself is a dangerous heresy. They fear that emerging neo-Darwinian disciples such as Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology are heading us to a world where the 'there are no absolutes and anything goes.' Many on the Far Left, including radical deconstructionists, militant feminists, and unrepentant Marxists, the explosion of knowledge on the genetic basis of disease and behavior as leading to a newer, seemingly more acceptable Social Darwinism. They fear the rise of a dangerous from of corporate-controlled biotechnology and eugenics where 'the strong do as they will and the weak suffer what they must.' What all these very strange bedfellows share is that they are all subscribe to the dogma that a certain collection of written words (whether attributed to God, Allah, one man, or 'womyn,' must take priority over observations of the real world. The dawn of the Darwinian dream also marks the dawn of the Darwinian dilemma - has today's knowledge of genetic basis of life, disease, and intelligence, and the evolutionary origins of parental care, violence, and race hatred outstripped the ability of our evolved brains to process that information wisely. Those are among the questions I explored in my Skeptic Magazine interviews with some of today's most controversial and far thinking scholars. Under skeptical cross-examination, their opposing points of view map the dimly seen borderlands the where science, ethics, and politics will meet in the next century. The result will be a new definition of life, intelligence, and of no less than what it means to be human. Also included are my Skeptic Magazine 'Quick and Dry' Gu