tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/royal-society-9244/articlesRoyal Society – The Conversation2023-04-18T16:12:00Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2033082023-04-18T16:12:00Z2023-04-18T16:12:00ZBuilding telescopes on the Moon could transform astronomy – and it’s becoming an achievable goal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520796/original/file-20230413-117-illn0w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C1%2C1013%2C570&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The far side of the Moon is an attractive place to carry out astronomy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11747">NASA / Ernie Wright</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Lunar exploration is undergoing a renaissance. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon">Dozens of missions</a>, organised by multiple space agencies – and increasingly by commercial companies – are set to visit the Moon by the end of this decade. Most of these will involve small robotic spacecraft, but NASA’s ambitious <a href="https://theconversation.com/astronauts-are-returning-to-the-moon-but-they-wont-be-repeating-the-apollo-missions-202489">Artemis programme</a>, aims to return humans to the lunar surface by the middle of the decade.</p>
<p>There are various reasons for all this activity, including geopolitical posturing and the search for lunar resources, such as <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/05/19/1001857/how-moon-lunar-mining-water-ice-rocket-fuel/">water-ice at the lunar poles</a>, which can be extracted and turned into hydrogen and oxygen propellant for rockets. However, science is also sure to be a major beneficiary. </p>
<p>The Moon <a href="https://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/HRE/03_PhysicalSciences_Planetary_Science.pdf">still has much to tell us</a> about the origin and evolution of the solar system. It also has scientific value as a platform for observational astronomy. </p>
<p>The potential role for astronomy of Earth’s natural satellite was discussed at a <a href="https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2023/02/astronomy-moon/">Royal Society meeting</a> earlier this year. The meeting itself had, in part, been sparked by the enhanced access to the lunar surface now in prospect.</p>
<h2>Far side benefits</h2>
<p>Several types of astronomy would benefit. The most obvious is radio astronomy, which can be conducted from the side of the Moon that always faces away from Earth – the far side. </p>
<p>The lunar far side is permanently shielded from the radio signals generated by humans on Earth. During the lunar night, it is also protected from the Sun. These characteristics make it probably <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rsta/2021/379/2188?volume=379&vol=379&issue=2188&publicationCode=rsta">the most “radio-quiet” location in the whole solar system</a> as no other planet or moon has a side that permanently faces away from the Earth. It is therefore ideally suited for radio astronomy.</p>
<p>Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic energy – as are, for example, infrared, ultraviolet and visible-light waves. They are defined by having different wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. </p>
<p>Radio waves with wavelengths longer than about 15m are blocked by Earth’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionosphere">ionoshere</a>. But radio waves at these wavelengths reach the Moon’s surface unimpeded. For astronomy, this is the last unexplored region of the electromagnetic spectrum, and it is best studied from the lunar far side.</p>
<p>Observations of the cosmos at these wavelengths come under the umbrella of “low frequency radio astronomy”. These wavelengths are uniquely able to probe the structure of the early universe, especially the cosmic “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe#Dark_Ages">dark ages</a>” – an era before the first galaxies formed. </p>
<p>At that time, most of the matter in the universe, excluding the mysterious <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter">dark matter</a>, was in the form of neutral hydrogen atoms. These emit and absorb radiation with a characteristic wavelength of 21cm. Radio astronomers have been using this property to study hydrogen clouds in our own galaxy – the Milky Way – since the 1950s. </p>
<p>Because the universe is constantly expanding, the 21cm signal generated by hydrogen in the early universe has been shifted to much longer wavelengths. As a result, hydrogen from the cosmic “dark ages” will appear to us with wavelengths greater than 10m. The lunar far side may be the only place where we can study this. </p>
<p>The astronomer Jack Burns provided a good summary of the relevant <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2019.0564">science background</a> at the recent Royal Society meeting, calling the far side of the moon a “pristine, quiet platform to conduct low radio frequency observations of the early Universe’s Dark Ages, as well as space weather and magnetospheres associated with habitable exoplanets”.</p>
<h2>Signals from other stars</h2>
<p>As Burns says, another potential application of far side radio astronomy is trying to detect radio waves from charged particles trapped by magnetic fields – <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere">magnetospheres</a> – of planets orbiting other stars. </p>
<p>This would help to assess how capable these exoplanets are of hosting life. Radio waves from exoplanet magnetospheres would probably have wavelengths greater than 100m, so they would require a radio-quiet environment in space. Again, the far side of the Moon will be the best location.</p>
<p>A similar argument can be made for <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-astronomers-want-build-seti-observatory-moon-180975966/">attempts to detect signals from intelligent aliens</a>. And, by opening up an unexplored part of the radio spectrum, there is also the possibility of making serendipitous discoveries of new phenomena.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520108/original/file-20230410-5761-65x14.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520108/original/file-20230410-5761-65x14.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520108/original/file-20230410-5761-65x14.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520108/original/file-20230410-5761-65x14.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520108/original/file-20230410-5761-65x14.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520108/original/file-20230410-5761-65x14.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520108/original/file-20230410-5761-65x14.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artist’s conception of the LuSEE-Night radio astronomy experiment on the Moon (credit: Nasa/Tricia Talbert)</span>
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</figure>
<p>We should get an indication of the potential of these observations when NASA’s <a href="https://physics.berkeley.edu/news/lusee-night-will-attempt-first-its-kind-measurements-dark-ages-universe">LuSEE-Night mission</a> lands on the lunar far side in 2025 or 2026. </p>
<h2>Crater depths</h2>
<p>The Moon also offers opportunities for other types of astronomy as well. Astronomers have lots of experience with optical and infrared telescopes operating in free space, such as the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html">Hubble telescope</a> and <a href="https://webb.nasa.gov">JWST</a>. However, the stability of the lunar surface may confer advantages for these types of instrument.</p>
<p>Moreover, there are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanently_shadowed_crater">craters</a> at the lunar poles that receive no sunlight. Telescopes that observe the universe at infrared wavelengths are very sensitive to heat and therefore have to operate at low temperatures. JWST, for example, needs a huge sunshield to protect it from the sun’s rays. On the Moon, a natural crater rim could provide this shielding for free. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A permanently shadowed lunar crater" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520990/original/file-20230414-20-s56de3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520990/original/file-20230414-20-s56de3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520990/original/file-20230414-20-s56de3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520990/original/file-20230414-20-s56de3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520990/original/file-20230414-20-s56de3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520990/original/file-20230414-20-s56de3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520990/original/file-20230414-20-s56de3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles could eventually host infrared telescopes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/inside-dark-polar-moon-craters-water-not-as-invincible-as-expected-scientists-argue">LROC / ASU / NASA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Moon’s low gravity may also enable the <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2019.0570">construction of much larger telescopes</a> than is feasible for free-flying satellites. These considerations have led the astronomer Jean-Pierre Maillard to suggest that the Moon may be the <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2020.0212">future of infrared astronomy</a>. </p>
<p>The cold, stable environment of permanently shadowed craters may also have advantages for the next generation of instruments to detect <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.07255">gravitational waves</a> – “ripples” in space-time caused by processes such as exploding stars and colliding black holes. </p>
<p>Moreover, for billions of years the Moon has been bombarded by charged particles from the sun – solar wind – and galactic cosmic rays. The lunar surface may contain a <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2019.0562">rich record of these processes</a>. Studying them could yield insights into the evolution of both the Sun and the Milky Way. </p>
<p>For all these reasons, astronomy stands to benefit from the current renaissance in lunar exploration. In particular, astronomy is likely to benefit from the infrastructure built up on the Moon as lunar exploration proceeds. This will include both transportation infrastructure – rockets, landers and other vehicles – to access the surface, as well as humans and robots on-site to construct and maintain astronomical instruments.</p>
<p>But there is also a tension here: human activities on the lunar far side may create unwanted radio interference, and plans to extract water-ice from shadowed craters might make it difficult for those same craters to be used for astronomy. As my colleagues and I recently <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.01363">argued</a>, we will need to ensure that lunar locations that are uniquely valuable for astronomy are protected in this new age of lunar exploration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203308/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Crawford is a member of the UK Space Agency's Space Exploration Advisory Committee (SEAC) and has advised the European Space Agency on lunar exploration policy. He is chair of COSPAR sub-commission B3 (Moon), and a member of the Moon Village Association which aims to foster international cooperation in lunar exploration. He was a co-organiser of the recent Royal Society meeting "Astronomy from the Moon."</span></em></p>The current race to the Moon is opening up opportunities for lunar astronomy.Ian Crawford, Professor of Planetary Science and Astrobiology, Birkbeck, University of London, Honorary Associate Professor, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1753642022-01-21T14:47:40Z2022-01-21T14:47:40ZCOVID misinformation is a health risk – tech companies need to remove harmful content not tweak their algorithms<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441996/original/file-20220121-15-o9qy9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C949%2C616&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/businessman-holding-mobile-phone-their-hands-290677832">file404/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many worldwide have now caught COVID. But during the pandemic many more are likely to have encountered something else that’s been spreading virally: misinformation. False information has plagued the COVID response, erroneously convincing people that the virus isn’t harmful, of the merits of various ineffective treatments, or of false dangers associated with vaccines. </p>
<p>Often, this misinformation <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanrhe/article/PIIS2665-9913(21)00154-5/fulltext">spreads through social media</a>. At its worst, it can <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-53755067">kill people</a>. The UK’s <a href="https://royalsociety.org/">Royal Society</a>, noting the scale of the problem, has made online information the subject of its latest <a href="https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/online-information-environment/">report</a>. This puts forward arguments for how to limit misinformation’s harms.</p>
<p>The report is an ambitious statement, covering everything from <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305120903408">deepfake videos</a> to conspiracy theories about <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9780470463710">water fluoridation</a>. But its key coverage is of the COVID pandemic and – rightly – the question of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/covid19-vaccine-hesitancy-in-the-uk-the-oxford-coronavirus-explanations-attitudes-and-narratives-survey-oceans-ii/C30FDB5C3D87123F28E351FDAAD5351A">how to tackle misinformation</a> about COVID and vaccines.</p>
<p>Here, it makes some important recommendations. These include the need to better support factcheckers, to devote greater attention to the <a href="https://everyday-mis.info/">sharing of misinformation</a> on private messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, and to encourage new approaches to online media literacy.</p>
<p>But the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-60036861">main recommendation</a> – that social media companies shouldn’t be required to remove content that is legal but harmful, but be asked to tweak their algorithms to prevent the viral spread of misinformation – is too limited. It is also ill suited to public health communication about COVID. There’s good evidence that exposure to vaccine misinformation <a href="https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/publications/covid-19-vaccine-misinformation-and-disinformation-costs-an-estimated-50-to-300-million-each-da">undermines the pandemic response</a>, making people <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01056-1">less likely</a> to get jabbed and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20563051211008817">more likely</a> to discourage others from being vaccinated, <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19byvaccinationstatusengland/deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31october2021">costing lives</a>.</p>
<p>The basic – <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/1791/1791.pdf">some would say insurmountable</a> – problem with this recommendation is that that it will make public health communication dependent on the good will and cooperation of profit-seeking companies. These businesses are poorly motivated to open up their data and processes, despite being crucial infrastructures of communication. Google search, YouTube and Meta (now the umbrella for Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp) have substantial market dominance in the UK. This is real power, despite these companies’ claims that they are merely “platforms”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A person liking something on Facebook on their phone" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441992/original/file-20220121-19-18umnpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441992/original/file-20220121-19-18umnpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441992/original/file-20220121-19-18umnpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441992/original/file-20220121-19-18umnpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441992/original/file-20220121-19-18umnpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441992/original/file-20220121-19-18umnpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441992/original/file-20220121-19-18umnpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tech companies are unlikely to willingly invite outsiders to scrutinise their algorithms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bangkok-thailand-january-10-2021-facebook-1890672196">Wachiwit/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>These companies’ business models depend heavily on direct control over the design and deployment of their own algorithms (the processes their platforms use to determine what content each user sees). This is because these algorithms are <a href="https://profilebooks.com/work/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/">essential</a> for harvesting mass behavioural data from users and selling access to that data to advertisers.</p>
<p>This fact creates problems for any regulator wanting to devise an effective regime for holding these companies to account. Who or what will be responsible for assessing how, or even if, their algorithms are prioritising and deprioritising content in such a way as to mitigate the spread of misinformation? Will this be left to the social media companies themselves? If not, how will this work? The companies’ algorithms are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/13/good-luck-in-making-google-reveal-its-algorithm">closely guarded commercial secrets</a>. It is unlikely they will want to open them up to scrutiny by regulators.</p>
<p>Recent initiatives, such as Facebook’s hiring of factcheckers to identify and moderate misinformation on its platform, have not involved opening up algorithms. That has been off limits. As leading independent factchecker <a href="https://fullfact.org/blog/2020/dec/full-fact-publishes-new-report-on-facebooks-third-party-fact-checking-programme/">Full Fact has said</a>: “Most internet companies are trying to use [artificial intelligence] to scale fact checking and none is doing so in a transparent way with independent assessment. This is a growing concern.”</p>
<p>Plus, tweaking algorithms will have no direct impact on misinformation circulating on private social media apps such as WhatsApp. The end-to-end encryption on these <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/220414/online-nation-2021-report.pdf">wildly popular</a> services means shared news and information is beyond the reach of all automated methods of sorting content.</p>
<h2>A better way forward</h2>
<p>Requiring social media companies to instead remove harmful scientific misinformation would be a better solution than algorithmic tweaking. The key advantages are clarity and accountability. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research/coronavirus-resources">Regulators</a>, <a href="https://www.counterhate.com/anti-vaxx-industry">civil society groups</a> and <a href="https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus/">factcheckers</a> can identify and measure the prevalence of misinformation, as they have done so far during the pandemic, despite <a href="https://policyreview.info/articles/news/facebook-shuts-gate-after-horse-has-bolted-and-hurts-real-research-process/786">constraints</a> on access. They can then ask social media companies to remove harmful misinformation at the source, before it spreads across the platform and drifts out of public view on WhatsApp. They can show the world what the harmful content is and make a case for why it ought to be removed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A person using WhatsApp" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441993/original/file-20220121-23-1jrcf00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441993/original/file-20220121-23-1jrcf00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441993/original/file-20220121-23-1jrcf00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441993/original/file-20220121-23-1jrcf00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441993/original/file-20220121-23-1jrcf00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441993/original/file-20220121-23-1jrcf00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441993/original/file-20220121-23-1jrcf00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Removing content from social platforms should lessen the amount of misinformation shared on messaging platforms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/kandivali-mumbai-maharashtra-india-october-10-734316403">Rahul Ramachandram/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>There are also ethical implications of knowingly allowing harmful health misinformation to circulate on social media, which again tips the balance in favour of removing bad content. </p>
<p>The Royal Society’s report argues that modifying algorithms is the best approach because it will restrict the circulation of harmful misinformation to small groups of people and avoid a backlash among people who already distrust science. Yet this seems to suggest that health misinformation is acceptable as long as it doesn’t spread beyond small groups. But how small do these groups need to be for the policy to be deemed a success? </p>
<p>Many people exposed to vaccine misinformation are not politically committed anti-vaxxers but instead go online to seek information, support and reassurance that vaccines are safe and effective. Removing harmful content is more likely to be successful in reducing the risk that such people will encounter misinformation that could seriously damage their health. This aim, above all, is what we should be prioritising.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Chadwick currently receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2020-019) and is a member of the Oxford Coronavirus Explanations, Attitudes and Narratives (OCEANS) project, which received funding from the University of Oxford COVID-19 Research Response Fund (0009519), the National Institute of Health Research (II-C7-0117-20001, BRC-1215-20005, and NIHR-RP-2014-05-003) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/V006819/1). The University of Oxford entered into a partnership with AstraZeneca for the development of a coronavirus vaccine. Andrew is an adviser (unpaid) to the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and is an advisory board member (unpaid) of Clean Up The Internet. The views in this article are his alone and not those of funders or affiliates.</span></em></p>New recommendations on how to fix the issue of COVID misinformation don’t go far enough.Andrew Chadwick, Professor of Political Communication, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1581772021-04-06T12:27:48Z2021-04-06T12:27:48ZThe 17th-century cloth merchant who discovered the vast realm of tiny microbes – an appreciation of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392870/original/file-20210331-13-1k3l5mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C7%2C5068%2C3396&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Leeuwenhoek refined the magnifying glass, creating the world's first microscope.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/model-of-leeuwenhoek-microscope-on-book-royalty-free-image/75650913">Tetra Images via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine trying to cope with a pandemic like COVID-19 in a world where microscopic life was unknown. Prior to the 17th century, people were limited by what they could see with their own two eyes. But then a Dutch cloth merchant changed everything. </p>
<p>His name was Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, and he lived from 1632 to 1723. Although untrained in science, van Leeuwenhoek became the greatest lens-maker of his day, discovered microscopic life forms and is <a href="https://makingscience.royalsociety.org/s/rs/people/fst00039851">known today as the “father of microbiology.”</a></p>
<h2>Visualizing ‘animalcules’ with a ‘small see-er’</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392877/original/file-20210331-19-kncz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An oil painting of man with long curly hair holding a pair of tweezers posed next to a globe." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392877/original/file-20210331-19-kncz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392877/original/file-20210331-19-kncz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392877/original/file-20210331-19-kncz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392877/original/file-20210331-19-kncz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392877/original/file-20210331-19-kncz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392877/original/file-20210331-19-kncz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392877/original/file-20210331-19-kncz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Van Leeuwenhoek opened the door to a vast, previously unseen world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ft6mf62b">J. Verolje/Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Van Leeuwenhoek didn’t set out to identify microbes. Instead, he was trying to assess the quality of thread. He developed <a href="https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/museum/leeuwenhoek.html">a method for making lenses</a> by heating thin filaments of glass to make tiny spheres. His lenses were of such high quality he saw things no one else could.</p>
<p>This enabled him to train his microscope – literally, “small see-er” – on a new and largely unexpected realm: objects, including organisms, far too small to be seen by the naked eye. He was the <a href="https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/leeuwenhoek.html">first to visualize red blood cells, blood flow in capillaries and sperm</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392848/original/file-20210331-21-1gy6f72.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pen and ink drawings of four different rod shaped bacteria." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392848/original/file-20210331-21-1gy6f72.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392848/original/file-20210331-21-1gy6f72.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392848/original/file-20210331-21-1gy6f72.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392848/original/file-20210331-21-1gy6f72.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392848/original/file-20210331-21-1gy6f72.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392848/original/file-20210331-21-1gy6f72.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392848/original/file-20210331-21-1gy6f72.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drawings from a van Leeuwenhoek letter in 1683 illustrating human mouth bacteria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leuwenhoek_picture_of_animacules.png">Huydang2910</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Van Leeuwenhoek was also the <a href="https://www.aaas.org/discovery-bacteria">first human being to see a bacterium</a> – and the importance of this discovery for microbiology and medicine can hardly be overstated. Yet he was reluctant to publish his findings, due to his lack of formal education. Eventually, friends prevailed upon him to do so.</p>
<p>He wrote, “Whenever I found out anything remarkable, I thought it <a href="https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/leeuwenhoek.html">my duty to put down my discovery on paper</a>, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.” He was guided by his curiosity and joy in discovery, asserting “I’ve taken no notice of those who have said <a href="https://laurieximenez.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/2-microbe-hunters-paul-de-kruif.pdf">why take so much trouble and what good is it</a>?”</p>
<p>When he reported visualizing “animalcules” (tiny animals) swimming in a drop of pond water, members of the scientific community questioned his reliability. After his findings were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2004.0055">corroborated by reliable religious and scientific authorities</a>, they were published, and in 1680 he was invited to join the Royal Society in London, then the world’s premier scientific body.</p>
<p>Van Leeuwenhoek was not the world’s only microscopist. In England, his contemporary <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-hooke-the-english-leonardo-who-was-a-17th-century-scientific-superstar-119497">Robert Hooke coined the term “cell”</a> to describe the basic unit of life and published his “Micrographia,” featuring incredibly detailed images of insects and the like, which became the first scientific best-seller. Hooke, however, did not identify bacteria.</p>
<p>Despite van Leuwenhoek’s prowess as a lens-maker, even he could not see viruses. They are about 1/100th the size of bacteria, much too small to be visualized by light microscopes, which because of the physics of light <a href="http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/biol/4101/estridge2/tutorial1a.pdf">can magnify only thousands of times</a>. Viruses weren’t visualized until 1931 with the <a href="http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/biol/4101/estridge2/tutorial1a.pdf">invention of electron microscopes</a>, which could magnify by the millions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393164/original/file-20210401-17-bvjvvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white microscopic image showing a cluster of dots." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393164/original/file-20210401-17-bvjvvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393164/original/file-20210401-17-bvjvvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393164/original/file-20210401-17-bvjvvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393164/original/file-20210401-17-bvjvvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393164/original/file-20210401-17-bvjvvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393164/original/file-20210401-17-bvjvvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393164/original/file-20210401-17-bvjvvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An image of the hepatitis virus courtesy of the electron microscope.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Hepatitis/20c83d41c4ef41a593761c96f6565697">E.H. Cook, Jr./CDC via Associated Press</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A vast, previously unseen world</h2>
<p>Van Leeuwenhoek and his successors opened up, by far, the largest realm of life. For example, all the bacteria on Earth <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/all-life-on-earth-chart-weight-plants-animals-pnas">outweigh humans by more than 1,100 times</a> and outnumber us by an unimaginable margin. There is fossil evidence that <a href="https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/bacteriafr.html">bacteria were among the first life forms on Earth</a>, dating back over 3 billion years, and today it is thought the planet houses about <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/158203.stm">5 nonillion (1 followed by 30 zeroes) bacteria</a>.</p>
<p>Some species of <a href="https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/ph/ph709_infectiousagents/PH709_InfectiousAgents4.html">bacteria cause diseases</a>, such as cholera, syphilis and strep throat; while <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2019.00780">others, known as extremophiles</a>, can survive at temperatures beyond the boiling and freezing points of water, from the upper reaches of the atmosphere to the deepest points of the oceans. Also, the number of harmless bacterial cells on and in our bodies <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/scientists-bust-myth-that-our-bodies-have-more-bacteria-than-human-cells-1.19136">likely outnumber the human ones</a>.</p>
<p>Viruses, which include the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19, outnumber bacteria by a factor of 100, meaning there are <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/factors-allow-viruses-infect-humans-coronavirus">more of them on Earth than stars in the universe</a>. They, too, are found everywhere, from the upper atmosphere to the ocean depths.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392874/original/file-20210331-21-1jfdfea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white image showing a segmented sphere shaped item." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392874/original/file-20210331-21-1jfdfea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392874/original/file-20210331-21-1jfdfea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392874/original/file-20210331-21-1jfdfea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392874/original/file-20210331-21-1jfdfea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392874/original/file-20210331-21-1jfdfea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392874/original/file-20210331-21-1jfdfea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392874/original/file-20210331-21-1jfdfea.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A visualization of the human rhinovirus 14, one of many viruses that cause the common cold. Protein spikes are colored white for clarity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rhinovirus_isosurface.png">Thomas Splettstoesser</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Strangely, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-viruses-alive-2004/">viruses probably do not qualify as living organisms</a>. They can replicate only by infecting other organisms’ cells, where they hijack cellular systems to make copies of themselves, sometimes causing the death of the infected cell.</p>
<p>It is important to remember that microbes such as bacteria and viruses do far more than cause disease, and many are vital to life. For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1535370217746612">bacteria synthesize vitamin B12</a>, without which most living organisms would not be able to make DNA.</p>
<p>Likewise, viruses cause diseases such as the common cold, influenza and COVID-19, but they also play a vital role in transferring genes between species, which <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160713100911.htm">helps to increase genetic diversity and propel evolution</a>. Today <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2018/oncolytic-viruses-to-treat-cancer">researchers use viruses to treat diseases such as cancer</a>.</p>
<p>Scientists’ understanding of microbes has progressed a long way since van Leeuwenhoek, including the development of antibiotics against bacteria and vaccines against viruses including SARS-CoV-2. </p>
<p>But it was van Leeuwenhoek who first opened people’s eyes to life’s vast microscopic realm, a discovery that continues to transform the world.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158177/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Van Leeuwenhoek, who discovered bacteria, is one of the most important figures in the history of medicine, laying the groundwork for today’s understanding of infectious disease.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1416812020-07-27T12:13:50Z2020-07-27T12:13:50ZThe mystery of the missing portrait of Robert Hooke, 17th-century scientist extraordinaire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346709/original/file-20200709-62-m6gz0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C1613%2C1995&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Known as Mary Beale's 'Portrait of a Mathematician,' could the circa 1680 painting depict Hooke?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://research.tamu.edu/2019/10/02/has-an-am-biologist-found-one-of-the-holy-grails-of-science-history/">Mary Beale</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Groundbreaking discoveries in science often come with two iconic images, one representing the breakthrough and the other, the discoverer. For example, the page from Darwin’s notebook sketching <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin#/media/File:Darwin_Tree_1837.png">the branching pattern of evolution</a> often accompanies a portrait of Darwin in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin#/media/File:Charles_Darwin_by_G._Richmond.png">his early years when the notebook was written</a>. Likewise the drawing of the <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Sidereus_Nuncius_Medicean_Stars.jpg">orbits of the moons of Jupiter</a> often accompanies a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#/media/File:Justus_Sustermans_-_Portrait_of_Galileo_Galilei,_1636.jpg">portrait of Galileo</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349267/original/file-20200723-33-1crssot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Original etching of cells from a piece of cork" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349267/original/file-20200723-33-1crssot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349267/original/file-20200723-33-1crssot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349267/original/file-20200723-33-1crssot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349267/original/file-20200723-33-1crssot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349267/original/file-20200723-33-1crssot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349267/original/file-20200723-33-1crssot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349267/original/file-20200723-33-1crssot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hooke’s famous etching of the tiny magnified cells he saw in a piece of cork.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RobertHookeMicrographia1665.jpg">Robert Hooke, Micrographia, 1665/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another groundbreaking discovery in science was the discovery of the cell by Robert Hooke (1635-1703). The iconic image of the breakthrough, published in the first scientific bestseller, 1665’s “Micrographia,” is <a href="https://www.archive.org/download/mobot31753000817897/page/n157_w523">an etching of the cells that make up a piece of cork</a>. It’s sliced two ways – across the grain and along the grain, showing not only the cells but also their polarity. However, there is no image of Hooke himself.</p>
<p>The absence of any contemporary portrait of Hooke stands out because he was a founding member, fellow, curator and secretary of the <a href="https://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/">Royal Society of London</a>, a group fundamental to the establishment of our current notion of experimental science and its reporting, which continues to the present day.</p>
<p>As an admirer of Hooke, I couldn’t resist putting aside my day job as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Vdag4_4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">plant cell biology professor</a> to investigate what could be called the mystery of the missing portrait. And without even setting foot in an art gallery, I think <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jmi.12828">I’ve cracked the case</a>.</p>
<p>I started by following up a <a href="https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2010/12/03/hooke-newton-missing-portrait/">rumor behind its absence</a>, that none other than Isaac Newton was somehow involved in its suppression.</p>
<h2>What’s within the frame</h2>
<p>My hypothesis was that the portrait should show someone illustrating a mathematical principle for which Newton claimed credit – that could hint at a motive for why Newton might have suppressed a painting of a scientific rival.</p>
<p>The best candidate for the artist was the well-known portraitist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Beale">Mary Beale</a>, whom Hooke knew and visited, although there’s no explicit record of him sitting for her. Amazingly, when I entered the search terms “Mary Beale mathematician” online, the first link that appeared was (and still is) her “<a href="http://www.historicalportraits.com/Gallery.asp?Page=Item&ItemID=126&Desc=Portrait-of-a-mathematician-%7C-Mary-Beale">Portrait of a Mathematician</a>.”</p>
<p>It matched the <a href="http://www.roberthooke.org.uk/leonardo.htm">physical description of Hooke</a> from contemporary sources: He was known to have gray eyes and natural brown hair that had “an excellent moist curl” and hung down over his forehead. The absence of a periwig indicates that the sitter is not nobility or of high social consequence; indeed, Hooke was one of the first professional scientists. Although he was known to have a disability, spinal curvature, the large mantle worn by the man in the painting would have covered it.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349269/original/file-20200723-25-cbj19a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painted bust of a 17th century Dutch man" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349269/original/file-20200723-25-cbj19a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349269/original/file-20200723-25-cbj19a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349269/original/file-20200723-25-cbj19a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349269/original/file-20200723-25-cbj19a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349269/original/file-20200723-25-cbj19a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349269/original/file-20200723-25-cbj19a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349269/original/file-20200723-25-cbj19a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait by Mary Beale, believed to be chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont, not Hooke.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_Baptist_van_Helmont_portrait.jpg">Mary Beale/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Art historians, however, believe that matching physical descriptions is insufficient to identify the sitter. This blunder was made by historian Lisa Jardine when in 2004 <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-curious-life-of-robert-hooke-lisa-jardine">she misidentified a portrait</a> of 17th-century chemist Jan Baptist Van Helmont <a href="https://doi.org/10.1179/amb.2004.51.3.263">as being Hooke</a>.</p>
<p>So is there other evidence in the Beale painting besides the appearance of the sitter to support the idea that it depicts Hooke?</p>
<p>The sitter openly engages his audience and points to his drawing of elliptical motion. By digitally enhancing the online image, I found that the major lines match those of an <a href="http://physics.ucsc.edu/%7Emichael/hooke5.pdf">unpublished 1685 manuscript by Hooke</a> in which he geometrically proved that a central force that is a constant, or linear, function of the distance between two bodies produces an elliptical orbit.</p>
<p>In his 1687 “Principia Mathematica,” Newton proved the converse and claimed priority. The two men were at odds. Only Hooke possessed the drawing of his version of how things worked. It was starting to look like this painting indeed included visualizations of physics principles important to Newton and that he might not be eager to have on public display.</p>
<h2>Foregrounding clues from the background</h2>
<p>Beale painted a partial view of a device on the table to the man’s left. Completing the model reveals that it is an orrery – a mechanical model of the solar system – depicting Mercury, Venus and Earth elliptically orbiting the Sun. It’s a physical version of the drawing of elliptical motion also displayed on the table. To me, it provides further supporting evidence for the nature of the drawing and that this man is Hooke.</p>
<p>That Beale included the device is interesting in its own right because she painted this portrait decades before the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrery">first modern orrery</a> was constructed in 1704 by an instrument maker and close collaborator of Hooke, Thomas Tompion. The instrument got its name from the 4th Earl of Orrery, a relative of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle">Robert Boyle</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle#/media/File:Boyle-hooke.jpg">for whom Hooke had worked</a> prior to his employment in the Royal Society. I believe she’s painted Hooke’s prototype of an orrery here. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349462/original/file-20200725-25-io84zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Metal model of the solar system from 1767" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349462/original/file-20200725-25-io84zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349462/original/file-20200725-25-io84zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349462/original/file-20200725-25-io84zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349462/original/file-20200725-25-io84zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349462/original/file-20200725-25-io84zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349462/original/file-20200725-25-io84zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349462/original/file-20200725-25-io84zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Orreries became more common throughout the 18th century as models of the solar system, but none had been built yet at the time the portrait was painted.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/harvard-university-campus-the-department-of-the-history-of-news-photo/125328759">Dina Rudick/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The landscape background, rare for Beale, presents a final clue. I hypothesized that Hooke, the city architect of London, had designed the buildings pictured in the painting. Consulting a list of Hooke’s architectural commissions from 1675-1685, the closest visual match was Lowther Castle and its Church of St. Michael. And indeed Hooke had redesigned the latter, with renovations completed in 1686.</p>
<p>The question then became whether Mary Beale could have sketched the castle and church. I was astonished to learn that she had received a remarkable commission for <a href="https://everything2.com/title/Mary+Beale">30 portraits from the Lowther family</a>, so indeed probably knew and sketched the castle and its grounds. </p>
<h2>A visual makeover for a 17th-century scientist</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jmi.12828">If this is indeed Hooke</a>, the portrait provides an iconic image.</p>
<p>So where has it been for more than 300 years?</p>
<p>I turned to the rumor that Newton could have been involved in the portrait’s disappearance. The two scientists did have a quarrelsome history.</p>
<p>One big clash was over the nature of light. Hooke explained his experiments on color as light traveling in waves through thin sheets of the mineral mica. Newton explained his experiments on color as light traveling through prisms as corpuscles or particles. They argued – was light a wave or was it particles?</p>
<p>Newton claimed victory, but admitted, <a href="https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/9792">“If I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders [sic] of Giants”</a> – an unfortunate turn of phrase, given Hooke’s pronounced curvature of the spine. At at any rate, they were both at least partially right: Physicists today appreciate the wave-particle duality of light.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Then there was the dispute perhaps alluded to in the portrait, about the elliptical orbits of the planets. Hooke claimed in 1684 that he could mathematically demonstrate what’s known as Kepler’s first law, which Newton published in his famous “Principia Mathematica” (1687). The upshot was that Newton removed mention of Hooke’s important contributions from his book – and they never got along again.</p>
<p>Hooke died in 1703, the same year that Newton became president of the Royal Society. There is no record for Royal Society ownership of this Beale painting. All Newton had to do was leave it behind when the Society moved official residence in 1710, thereby ridding himself (and history) of hard evidence of Hooke’s claim. </p>
<p>Where the painting has been during the intervening centuries is a matter of conjecture. When it first came to light at a Christie’s auction in the 1960s, it was ironically labeled as a portrait of Isaac Newton. Sotheby’s, the last public auctioneer of the work in 2006, has not revealed the buyer’s identity. I hope the current owner comes forward and sells the portrait to the Royal Society. That’s where it belongs, at long last. I would love to see the original.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to clarify Hooke’s work on elliptical orbits.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141681/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Larry Griffing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Online sleuthing and deductive reasoning identifies what appears to be the only existent portrait painted of the celebrated scientist during his lifetime.Larry Griffing, Associate Professor of Biology, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1375952020-04-30T05:29:41Z2020-04-30T05:29:41ZVale Robert May, the legendary scientist who helped us understand ecosystems, chaos theory and even pandemics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331652/original/file-20200430-42903-1szmoev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C1779%2C1322&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Royal Society</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Lord Robert “Bob” May, Baron May of Oxford, who has died aged 84, was one of the greatest Australian scientists of the past century. </p>
<p>He was awarded virtually every honour the British establishment could offer: a professorship at Oxford, the presidency of the Royal Society of London, a knighthood, a seat in the House of Lords, a role as chief scientific advisor to the UK government, and membership of the Order of Merit, a personal gift of the Queen restricted to only 24 living members. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, he remained a quintessential Australian, with a strong Australian accent and larrikin streak – he claimed to be the first person in the 350-year history of the Royal Society to get a swearword into its minutes.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-hooke-the-english-leonardo-who-was-a-17th-century-scientific-superstar-119497">Robert Hooke: The 'English Leonardo' who was a 17th-century scientific superstar</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>May was born in Sydney in 1936 and originally trained as a physicist, becoming professor of theoretical physics at the University of Sydney in 1969. But in 1973 he shifted both continents and disciplines, becoming a professor of zoology at Princeton University, before moving to Oxford in 1988. </p>
<p>He brought the mathematical insights of a physicist to the then largely descriptive field of ecology, transforming it into a theoretical science with a firm mathematical basis. Nevertheless, he recognised the complexity of ecology in comparison with physics. I recall him saying “ecology is not rocket science – it’s much harder than that”.</p>
<p>His legacy is particularly important in the current crisis. The <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rstb.2001.0866">basic reproductive number of a disease, R0</a>, is a statistical concept that permeates much of the discussion on how to manage the coronavirus pandemic. If we can reduce it to below one and <a href="https://theconversation.com/6-countries-6-curves-how-nations-that-moved-fast-against-covid-19-avoided-disaster-137333">maintain it there</a>, we can eliminate the disease. </p>
<p>With his long-term collaborator, Professor Roy Anderson from Imperial College, May <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1016599411804">brought this concept to the management of infectious diseases</a> more than 40 years ago. This distillation of a complex ecological process into a simple mathematical concept was typical of his scientific insight.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/6-countries-6-curves-how-nations-that-moved-fast-against-covid-19-avoided-disaster-137333">6 countries, 6 curves: how nations that moved fast against COVID-19 avoided disaster</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>May made many other major contributions to ecology. One of his <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691088617/stability-and-complexity-in-model-ecosystems">earliest insights</a>, which remains crucially important today, is that complex ecosystems are not necessarily more resilient than simple ones. </p>
<p>Ecologists had assumed that diverse and complex ecosystems such as coral reefs and tropical rainforests were better able to resist disturbance. But May’s mathematical models showed this was not the case. As we enter an era of unprecedented human impact on the natural world, we would do well to remember this key insight. </p>
<p>May was also one of the leaders in developing chaos theory, <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/186/4164/645">showing</a> that simple ecological systems can show extraordinarily complex and unpredictable behaviour. </p>
<p>More recently, he brought his ecologist’s perspective to bear on another type of complex, dynamic system, by <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/109/45/18338">analysing</a> the behaviour of financial markets.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331645/original/file-20200430-42951-er57uw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331645/original/file-20200430-42951-er57uw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331645/original/file-20200430-42951-er57uw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331645/original/file-20200430-42951-er57uw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331645/original/file-20200430-42951-er57uw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331645/original/file-20200430-42951-er57uw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331645/original/file-20200430-42951-er57uw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331645/original/file-20200430-42951-er57uw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert May (front row, second from right; the author is second from right in the back row) loved walking in nature as well as studying it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hamish McCallum</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although he was in no way a field ecologist, he had a longstanding enthusiasm for nature. Until the final few years of his life, he organised annual walking trips to the European Alps with his ecological colleagues. Fit and wiry, not to mention intensely competitive, he was a hard man to beat to the top of a mountain.</p>
<p>Compared with his huge success in the UK, May remains comparatively unknown in his native Australia. However, he did receive our highest honour, a Companion of the Order of Australia, in 1998. </p>
<p>As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, using the modelling methods he had a hand in developing, we should remember and appreciate his world-class contributions to science.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137595/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hamish McCallum receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the US funding agencies NSF, NIH and DARPA</span></em></p>Lord May was an illustrious scientist, a towering figure in the British establishment, and a quintessential Aussie. His theories help explain everything from complex ecosystems to financial markets.Hamish McCallum, Professor, Griffith School of Environment and Acting Dean of Research, Griffith Sciences, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1306182020-04-27T20:06:21Z2020-04-27T20:06:21ZJoseph Banks: traveller, botanist and agent of the British Empire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311991/original/file-20200127-81352-nq14ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C624%2C773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joseph Banks portrait by Joshua Reynolds (circa 1771-1773).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Portrait Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Sir Joseph Banks is justly celebrated as a “naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences.” His role as an expedition scientist on Captain Cook’s first voyage set a benchmark for rigour, and helped to lift him to election as president of the Royal Society in 1778. From that position, he directed and encouraged multinational scientific endeavours for more than four decades. Less well-known is how he used that science to pursue imperial power.</p>
<p>The role of science in the “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/">Age of Enlightenment</a>” has sometimes been imagined as a bubble of purity, where the hunt for new knowledge outweighed all other considerations. It is certainly true that warring European powers granted safe passage for elite scientific correspondence, and sometimes for individual scholars, or whole expeditions. But the context for this was a consensus on the value of scientific discovery for the pursuit of imperial aggrandisement.</p>
<p>Banks was a <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/joseph-banks">hereditary member of the English establishment</a>. Born in 1743, his father and grandfather had been members of parliament and he inherited extensive Lincolnshire estates at an early age. He blended formal education with self-funded studies, and by his mid-20s, was already a member of the Royal Society, undertaking an expedition to the north-eastern shores of Canada, where he <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UcIXkyf55fMC&pg=PA168&lpg=PA168&dq=joseph+banks+auk&source=bl&ots=3SsEWirQDR&sig=ACfU3U2d8mZUVKGn-dqvqKj_JHZyyIcNvQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjPm66O5KPnAhUOiFwKHf3TA_wQ6AEwD3oECDAQAQ#v=onepage&q=joseph%20banks%20auk&f=false">identified the Great Auk</a> for science.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/cook250-78244"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<h2>Great Southern Continent</h2>
<p>Cook’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/the-voyages-of-captain-james-cook/articles/the-first-voyage-of-james-cook">first voyage</a> was ostensibly to observe the “<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/28may_cook">transit of Venus</a>” across the face of the sun in 1769: thus forming part of a multinational scientific effort to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/may/29/transit-venus-measuring-heavens">map the size of the solar system</a>. But a deeper goal had already been voiced. </p>
<p>The first person the Royal Society suggested to command the voyage was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20633371">Alexander Dalrymple</a>, an eminent Scottish geographer and vocal proponent of the theory that a “Great Southern Continent” awaited discovery. He saw this as an opportunity equivalent to the discovery of the Americas, so great, as he wrote in his 1770/71 volume <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/1142150/an-historical-collection-of-the-several-voyages-and-discoveries-in-the-south">An Historical collection of the several voyages and discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean</a>, that even: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the scraps from this table would be sufficient to maintain the power, dominion, and sovereignty of Britain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dalrymple, however, demanded a full naval captain’s commission, which the Admiralty would not grant to a man who was not a professional seaman. James Cook had the necessary background, and was content with lieutenant’s rank. Cook’s voyage, of course, disproved the theory of a great Terra Australis, while at the same time mapping the outlines of New Zealand and eastern Australia. Banks (who had paid out of his own pocket for eight other scientists and servants to accompany him) both diligently completed his core botanical duties, and returned with clear views on how British imperial power could be enhanced through Cook’s discoveries.</p>
<p>Banks firmly advocated the strategic use of colonisation, vigorously promoting the use of “Botany Bay” as a penal colony. He sought to have interloping American trading vessels excluded from New South Wales “with severity”, but was not averse to other nations setting up settlements elsewhere in Australia, because there was a “moral certainty” that such territories would fall “into our hands in time of war”.</p>
<h2>The Bounty</h2>
<p>Banks was also the guiding light behind the most notorious episode of attempted ecological imperialism in the 1780s: the voyage of the Bounty, which set sail from the south coast of England in 1787, bound for what its crew saw as the very furthest reaches of the world. Banks had personally overseen its refitting, including the transformation of its captain’s cabin into a greenhouse, where hundreds of breadfruit seedlings were to be nurtured.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The much-maligned William Bligh.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Huey (1814), National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ship’s captain, William Bligh – who was only 35, not the grizzled veteran sometimes depicted – had been sailing-master on Cook’s fatal third voyage, and had come under Banks’ subsequent patronage. His mission failed dramatically, not least because of the huge pressure its goals put him under, and the Bounty was lost to Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers in April 1789. Bligh redeemed his naval reputation with a voyage of more than 3,600 nautical miles to safety in an open boat. Only two years later, he led a second voyage of two ships, which did bring breadfruit from Tahiti all the way to the Caribbean. The Royal Society <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41376303?seq=1">awarded him a gold medal</a>.</p>
<p>Breadfruit never became a self-sustaining food crop for Britain’s brutalised plantation slaves, which had been the grim objective at the heart of these voyages. But this was just one small part of Banks’ vision of imperial botany. He took <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/dcd33da0-0e69-11e4-a1ae-00144feabdc0">a leading role</a> in establishing the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew as a centre for the systematic study of the world’s plants. He helped promote a network of such centres, from Calcutta to St Vincent in the Caribbean, and the exchange of species between them.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to Bligh’s departure, Banks had expounded in a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Qfa3CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=joseph+banks+letter+to+Sir+George+Yonge+Mangosteens,+Jacks,+Durians&source=bl&ots=TV13znCp2t&sig=ACfU3U0EAXu116tnGjbEqy-Rt4e2mv2ADg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-zYnlhrnnAhWF8XMBHczVBn0Q6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=cajir&f=false">letter</a> on the benefits of transplantation. From his own previous voyages, he noted the potential value of New Zealand flax for rope-making, and the “Mangosteens, Jacks, Durians” that might be brought westwards from Malaya (now Malaysia). One letter listed more than 30 products of both hemispheres that might be profitably transplanted, from the “lichee” to Basmati rice, “Naugharbussee bamboo” – superior, he noted, to Philippine bamboos already brought to the Caribbean by the Spanish – and what he called the “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_-5rQMHKLi8C&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=Cajir+Gautch&source=bl&ots=STojOEHP1V&sig=ACfU3U3iYCyB9c-NieLokciw6uWympgIRg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6gNOM3KPnAhUIT8AKHX1wB38Q6AEwAHoECDAQAQ#v=onepage&q=Cajir%20Gautch&f=false">Cajir Gautch</a>”, a palm whose sap made an alcoholic drink.</p>
<p>Banks closed this letter by noting how happy and eager he was to take forward such plans “so highly fraught with disinterested benevolence” as they were. His correspondent, however, was His Majesty’s secretary for war <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30223">Sir George Yonge</a>. Sir Joseph Banks, like so many leading lights of his generation, drew no distinction between the advancement of humanity and the interests of the British Empire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Andress does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For celebrated botanist Joseph Banks, his voyage with James Cook was more about extending imperial power than simply discovery.David Andress, Professor of Modern History, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1194972019-07-17T15:50:12Z2019-07-17T15:50:12ZRobert Hooke: The ‘English Leonardo’ who was a 17th-century scientific superstar<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284403/original/file-20190716-173360-1snh4g3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C337%2C1359%2C1133&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">No contemporary portrait of Robert Hooke seems to have survived. This 2004 oil painting is based on descriptions during his lifetime.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:13_Portrait_of_Robert_Hooke.JPG">Rita Greer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Considering his accomplishments, it’s a surprise that Robert Hooke isn’t more renowned. As a physician, I especially esteem him as the person who identified biology’s most essential unit, the cell. </p>
<p>Like <a href="https://theconversation.com/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-leonardo-da-vinci-on-the-500th-anniversary-of-his-death-109318">Leonardo da Vinci</a>, Hooke excelled in an incredible array of fields. The remarkable range of his achievements throughout the 1600s encompassed pneumatics, microscopy, mechanics, astronomy and even civil engineering and architecture. Yet this “<a href="http://www.roberthooke.org.uk/leonardo.htm">English Leonardo</a>” – well-known in his time – <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1293463">slipped into relative obscurity</a> for several centuries.</p>
<h2>His life and times</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.famousscientists.org/robert-hooke/">Hooke’s life</a> is a rags-to-riches tale. Born in 1635, he was educated at home by his clergyman father. Orphaned at 13 with a meager inheritance, Hooke’s artistic talents landed him scholarships to Westminster School and later Oxford University. There he formed relationships with a variety of important people, most notably <a href="https://www.famousscientists.org/robert-boyle/">Robert Boyle</a>. Hooke became the laboratory assistant of this great chemist – the formulator of Boyle’s law, which describes the inverse relation between the pressure and volume of gases.</p>
<p>Unlike his associates, Hooke was not a man of independent means, and he soon took a paying position as “curator of experiments” at the newly formed <a href="https://makingscience.royalsociety.org/s/rs/people/fst00009590">Royal Society</a>, making him England’s first salaried scientific researcher. Hooke soon became a fellow of the Royal Society and was appointed to a professorship at Gresham College.</p>
<p>Never marrying, he dwelt the rest of his life in rooms near the Royal Society’s meeting place. This placed him at the epicenter of one of the most important epochs in the history of science, epitomized by the publication of Isaac Newton’s “<a href="https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-ADV-B-00039-00001">Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy</a>.”</p>
<h2>Experiments and innovations</h2>
<p>For millennia before Hooke, people had regarded air, along with fire, water and earth, as one of the four elemental substances that filled the world, leaving no empty spaces. Working with Boyle, Hooke developed a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16909884">vacuum pump</a> that could empty space. In a vessel so evacuated, a candle couldn’t burn, and a clapping bell was silent, proving that air is necessary for combustion and conducting sound.</p>
<p>Moreover, Hooke showed that air could be expanded and compressed. He also performed foundational experiments on the relationship between air and the process of respiration in living organisms. And he laid the groundwork for thermodynamics, by suggesting that particles in matter move faster as they heat up.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284401/original/file-20190716-173351-60y9r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284401/original/file-20190716-173351-60y9r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284401/original/file-20190716-173351-60y9r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284401/original/file-20190716-173351-60y9r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284401/original/file-20190716-173351-60y9r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284401/original/file-20190716-173351-60y9r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284401/original/file-20190716-173351-60y9r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284401/original/file-20190716-173351-60y9r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A page from ‘Micrographia’ illustrating the tiny cells of cork Hooke saw under the microscope.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/jcm8kb66?wellcomeImagesUrl=/indexplus/image/M0010579.html">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hooke’s most famous work is his beautifully illustrated “<a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/micrographia-by-robert-hooke-1665">Micrographia</a>,” published in 1665. The microscope had been invented 30 years before his birth. Hooke vaulted the technology forward, using an oil lamp as a light source and a water lens to focus its beams in order to enhance visualization.</p>
<p>He showed that the realm of the very small is as rich and complex and the one that meets the naked eye. Inspecting the structure of cork through his instrument, he named the units he saw cells, after the rooms of monks. Biologists now know that a human body contains approximately <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-are-372-trillion-cells-in-your-body-4941473/">40 trillion</a> of them. From his microscope work, Hooke also developed a wave theory of light.</p>
<p>Hooke pondered some of the biggest biological questions as well. He hypothesized that the presence of fossilized fish in mountainous areas meant they had once been under water. His study of fossils led him to conclude that the Earth has been inhabited by many extinct species.</p>
<p>Hooke’s experiments with mechanical springs led to the formulation of <a href="https://phys.org/news/2015-02-law.html">Hooke’s Law</a>, which states that the tension or compression of a spring is proportional to the force applied to it. Physicists now know that this law applies not only to springs but also to a variety of solid elastic bodies, such as manometers, which are used to measure pressure.</p>
<p>These same investigations also enabled him to invent the <a href="http://shipseducation.net/modules/phys/hooke/hooke.htm">spring-powered balance watch</a>, which would become a favorite means of keeping time for centuries. Hooke foresaw that with a precise timepiece, oceangoing sailors could find their longitude.</p>
<p><a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1951PA%2E%2E%2E%2E%2E59%2E%2E287A">As an astronomer</a>, Hooke suggested that the planet Jupiter rotates, described the center of gravity of the Earth and Moon, illustrated lunar craters and speculated on their origin, discovered a double star and illustrated the Pleiades star cluster.</p>
<p>At a more theoretical level, Hooke also described gravity as the force that pulls celestial bodies together, relating in a <a href="https://www.newhistorian.com/2016/08/22/robert-hooke-wrath-isaac-newton/">1679 letter to Newton</a> a version of the inverse-square law of gravitational force. When seven years later Newton published his great work “Mathematical Principles,” Hooke concluded incorrectly that Newton – who had already been at work on it at the time of their correspondence – had slighted him.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284523/original/file-20190717-147299-d05gxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284523/original/file-20190717-147299-d05gxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284523/original/file-20190717-147299-d05gxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284523/original/file-20190717-147299-d05gxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284523/original/file-20190717-147299-d05gxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284523/original/file-20190717-147299-d05gxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284523/original/file-20190717-147299-d05gxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284523/original/file-20190717-147299-d05gxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hooke and Wren’s monument to the great fire in 1666 still stands in London today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/monument-great-fire-london-1076149199?studio=1">maziarz/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Contributions to his city</h2>
<p>The great fire of London in 1666 presented another opportunity for Hooke to shine. Unlike many contemporaries, he refused to profit dishonestly in the aftermath of the disaster by taking bribes as people worked to rebuild. As <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.1997.0014">surveyor of the city</a>, he collaborated with the renowned architect Christopher Wren to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2010.0092">create a monument to the fire</a>.</p>
<p>He also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.1948.0006">designed a number of great buildings</a>, including Bethlem Hospital (known as Bedlam), the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the Royal College of Physicians. It was in large part through his architectural work that Hooke made his fortune, though he never veered from the frugal habits he developed early in life. Hooke even proposed recreating London’s streets on a grid pattern. Though unsuccessful, his idea was subsequently incorporated in cities such as Liverpool and Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>Surveying the range and depth of Hooke’s contributions, it’s difficult to believe that one person could have accomplished so much in 67 years. Unfortunately, his sometimes rancorous disputes <a href="http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00175">with the likes of Newton</a> over scientific priority contributed to his comparative neglect by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1293463?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">science historians</a>, and today we lack any contemporary likeness of him. His birthday is a good time to give him his due as one of the world’s all-time great instrument makers, experimentalists and polymaths.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119497/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Born on July 18, 1635, this polymath broke ground in fields ranging from pneumatics, microscopy, mechanics and astronomy to civil engineering and architecture.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1064772018-11-19T10:14:50Z2018-11-19T10:14:50ZWar between science and religion is far from inevitable<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245256/original/file-20181113-194497-x1oprx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tiffany_Education_(center).JPG">Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Yale University</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his 2015 book <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/religion-science-coexist-faith-versus-fact-coyne/396362/">Faith versus Fact</a>, the biologist and polemicist Jerry Coyne launched one of his many attacks on religion in the name of science: science and religion, he wrote, are “incompatible in precisely the same way and in the same sense that rationality is incompatible with irrationality”. These sorts of generalities have been quite common down the years, often reinforced by references to the condemnation of Galileo by the Roman Catholic Church in 1633 or the altercation in Oxford in 1860 between T H Huxley and bishop Samuel Wilberforce over evolution. </p>
<p>These sorts of statement can also have repercussions in public life. On September 16 2008, Professor Michael Reiss, an evolutionary biologist, resigned as director of education for the Royal Society. What brought about his removal were observations he’d made about how science teachers should treat questions about origins in schools. He is reported to have said: “Creationism is best seen by scientists not as a misconception, but as a world view.”</p>
<p>Shortly before Reiss turned in his resignation, the Nobel Prize winner Sir Richard Roberts <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14744-royal-society-fellows-turn-on-director-over-creationism/">had written</a> to the president of the Royal Society, Sir Martin Rees, demanding “that Professor Reiss step down, or be asked to step down, as soon as possible”. “We gather Professor Reiss is a clergyman, which in itself is very worrisome,” the letter went on: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Who on earth thought that he would be an appropriate Director of Education, who could be expected to answer questions about the differences between science and religion in a scientific, reasoned way?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Commenting on the whole episode in the <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14744-royal-society-fellows-turn-on-director-over-creationism/">New Scientist</a>, Sir Harold Kroto, another Nobel laureate, observed: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no way that an ordained minister – for whom unverified dogma must represent a major, if not the major, pillar in their lives – can present free-thinking, doubt-based scientific philosophy honestly or disinterestedly.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Complications</h2>
<p>Enshrined in these assertions is the assumption that science and religion are inescapably at war. And yet we must ask whether this assumption can possibly do justice to the great diversity of ways in which the relations between science and religion have been understood. </p>
<p>There are many sciences, many religions. A scientific innovation problematic for one religious tradition may be irrelevant to another. One science may pose a threat to religious beliefs when other sciences do not. Arguing for an essential conflict between science and religion fails because, as the philosopher John Gray <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/11/seven-types-atheism-john-gray-review-atheist-believer-material-world">has written</a>, terms such as “religion” and “atheism” have no essence. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245258/original/file-20181113-194488-1yb9g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245258/original/file-20181113-194488-1yb9g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245258/original/file-20181113-194488-1yb9g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245258/original/file-20181113-194488-1yb9g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245258/original/file-20181113-194488-1yb9g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245258/original/file-20181113-194488-1yb9g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245258/original/file-20181113-194488-1yb9g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clerks studying astronomy and geometry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Studying_astronomy_and_geometry.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The sciences may sometimes provide answers to questions once asked within the faith traditions – but they also leave space for religious enquiry and commitment. How do we prioritise competing scientific research projects? With limited resources we must ask what is more important for humankind. But these are not scientific questions – as the historian Noah Yuval Harari identifies in his best-seller <a href="https://www.ynharari.com/book/sapiens/">Sapiens</a>, only religions and ideologies seek to answer them: “Scientific research can flourish only in alliance with some religion or ideology.” </p>
<p>Because science and religion can complement one another as well as come into conflict, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/science-and-religion/B2B96094DF7DB360E1C5C08E5B41473A">the story of their interrelations</a> is complex.</p>
<h2>Flash points and trading zones</h2>
<p>Looking back over history, we certainly find many occasions when science and religion have been in conflict. Call these flash points. Among these is the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/sep/23/scienceandnature.richarddawkins">rejection of miracles</a> by those convinced that nature is bound by unbreakable natural laws. Or the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/107/10/4499">denial of human freedom</a> by those who see the human mind as nothing more than the workings of brain chemistry. </p>
<p>In the early 17th century some Catholics found new theories of matter disturbing because of the challenges they posed to their understanding of the Eucharist. For some Jews, the ban on astrology between 200AD and 500AD stifled astronomical inquiry. For biblical literalists, Darwinian evolution routinely provokes an oppositional stance.</p>
<p>On the other hand, we can identify many points of conciliation and enrichment. Think of these as trading zones. Take the biblical idea that all humankind is descended from a single source. This belief inspired the search for the <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Search+for+the+Perfect+Language-p-9780631205104">beginnings of human language</a> and for the routes by which early humans <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/114/4/1034/19131">diffused across the globe</a>. </p>
<p>In the 17th century, scientific instruments such as the telescope and microscope <a href="https://books.google.de/books/about/The_Fall_of_Man_and_the_Foundations_of_S.html?id=KtBrOdr5-p4C&redir_esc=y">were conceived</a> as ways of reversing the effects of Adam’s fall from grace. Scientific methods and instruments were devised as a means for ameliorating the damage to human cognitive powers and sensory apparatus believed to have been brought about by human sinfulness.</p>
<p>Or consider the whole matter of design in the world. This idea <a href="http://fore.yale.edu/">was fundamental</a> to the development of the science of ecology. Key early works of natural history which stressed the intimate connections between organisms and their environments were motivated in good part by a belief that God had fitted animals and plants to the environmental regimes in which they were located.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245257/original/file-20181113-194513-1y5sbti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245257/original/file-20181113-194513-1y5sbti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245257/original/file-20181113-194513-1y5sbti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245257/original/file-20181113-194513-1y5sbti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245257/original/file-20181113-194513-1y5sbti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245257/original/file-20181113-194513-1y5sbti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245257/original/file-20181113-194513-1y5sbti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 40-foot telescope constructed by W Herschel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/djd4857p?query=telescope%20microscope&page=1">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In our own day, there may well be benefits to be derived from a dialogue between theological anthropology and those advocating <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/transhumanism-7700">transhumanism</a>. New technological possibilities are raising profound questions about what it means to be human, a subject on which theologians have had much to say. At the very least, theology might prove to be a useful conversational partner in articulating values by which to adjudicate among the human capacities that might be prioritised for enhancement.</p>
<h2>The survival of religion</h2>
<p>With their different sources of authority, the potential for tension, divergence, even animosity between representatives of scientific and religious communities will always be there. But tension, divergence, animosity – even conflict – are not the same as inevitable warfare. Many religious people have been indifferent to science. Many scientists have experienced alienation from religion. Mutual suspicion is not uncommon. But, again, indifference, alienation and suspicion are not the same as warfare. </p>
<p>The very words “science” and “religion” have undergone profound changes of meaning. Not until the second half of the 19th century did “science” become a convenient umbrella to capture an expanding range of specialised empirical enquiries, supposedly – but not always actually – united by a common “scientific method”. </p>
<p>Can religions survive in technological societies? They already have – and for an important reason. They confer identity and seek to find meaning in events, to interpret the universe, not primarily to explain it. As Terry Eagleton memorably <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300164534/reason-faith-and-revolution">put it</a>: “The blunder of believing that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world … is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106477/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors of this article debated this topic on October 25 as part of Queen University Belfast's Global Challenges Debates Series.</span></em></p>Religion has helped science, as well as hindered it.David N Livingstone, Professor of Geography and Intellectual History, Queen's University BelfastJohn Hedley Brooke, Emeritus Professor of Science and Religion, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/843912017-09-21T11:14:28Z2017-09-21T11:14:28ZSir Humphry Davy used poetry and theatre to bring science to life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186985/original/file-20170921-8179-1xhc04i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">James Gillray's 'Scientific Researches! - New Discoveries in Pneumaticks! - or - an Experimental Lecture on the Powers of Air’ from 1802.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Royal Institution of Great Britain</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/davy_humphrey.shtml">Sir Humphry Davy</a> fascinated rapturous crowds when he delivered his lectures in chemistry to the Royal Institution in London. In the late 1700s and early 1800s and in sumptuous surroundings, Davy would demonstrate – with whizzes and bangs – the latest chemical discoveries. His audiences were not just made up of fellow scientists but also poets and genteel ladies of the fashionable West End. </p>
<p>His experiments with nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, and his invention of the miner’s safety lamp went down in history – but perhaps his greatest legacy is what he did for science communication and breaking down the barriers between the sciences and the arts.</p>
<p>Davy’s lectures were charismatic and explosive (sometimes literally, see the recreation of his exploding volcano demonstration <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxRHQ1xfnWc">here</a>). And they were often poetic. Now, as the first edition of the <a href="http://davy-letters.org.uk/">Collected Letters of Humphry Davy</a> is set to be published, it is perhaps time to take another look at one of Britain’s most renowned scientists.</p>
<p>It has been almost six decades since CP Snow famously argued that there were <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01phhy5">“two cultures”</a> of the arts and sciences. He thought that an unbridgeable chasm divided those who worked in these fields, that they had become so specialised they no longer had the language to talk to each other. Whether you think that this was true then or is true now, Davy – as a poet and a chemist – shows that any such chasm can be bridged. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186987/original/file-20170921-30644-1hjltkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186987/original/file-20170921-30644-1hjltkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186987/original/file-20170921-30644-1hjltkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186987/original/file-20170921-30644-1hjltkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186987/original/file-20170921-30644-1hjltkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186987/original/file-20170921-30644-1hjltkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186987/original/file-20170921-30644-1hjltkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Humphry Davy by H W Pickersgill from 1831.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Royal Institution of Great Britain</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.rigb.org/our-history/humphry-davy">Davy</a> was born in relatively humble circumstances, the son of a wood carver in Penzance. Even as a child, his sister reported that: “At home, he would shut himself up in his room, arrange the chairs and lecture them by the hour.”</p>
<p>Many of his first poems date from this period. Poems about <a href="https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/mounts-bay">Mounts Bay</a> and other Cornish landscapes, as well as a poem in which Davy’s personal ambition was laid bare, entitled Sons of Genius. He drew comparisons between the ordinary man (who finds explanations for natural wonders in superstition) and a scientific genius: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>While superstition rules the vulgar soul,</p>
<p>Forbids the energies of man to rise,</p>
<p>Raised far above her low, her mean control,</p>
<p>Aspiring genius seeks her native skies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Davy was first apprenticed to an apothecary but after he showed precocious talents he was allowed to escape his indentures and instead went to work with the politically radical chemist <a href="http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/63/3/211">Thomas Beddoes</a>, who supported the ideals of the French revolution, at his new Medical Pneumatic Institute in Bristol. He arrived in Bristol before the age of 20. </p>
<p>On this journey, in 1798, Davy witnessed the celebrations for Nelson’s victory at the <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/battle-nile">Battle of the Nile</a>. These were interesting times politically: there were riots and much government repression. At Bristol, Davy joined a vibrant group of literary intellectuals and medical practitioners, such as the poet <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/samuel-taylor-coleridge">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</a> and the author of the thesaurus (and physician) Peter Mark Roget. </p>
<h2>Making science accessible</h2>
<p>It was at Bristol that Davy decided to trial breathing nitrous oxide, a gas thought to be fatal. In what seems a remarkably foolhardy exercise to us today, Davy discovered that not only could nitrous oxide be breathed, it also offered euphoric effects. <a href="https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/southey_letters">Robert Southey</a>, who would become Poet Laureate in 1813, said: “Davy has invented a new pleasure for which language has no name.” Davy also noted that intense physical pain was lessened when breathing the gas and suggested its use in surgical experiments. Sadly, this suggestion was not taken up for many decades after Davy’s recommendation but nitrous oxide did eventually become an important anaesthetic. </p>
<p>In 1801, Davy moved to London to take up a position at the <a href="http://www.rigb.org/">Royal Institution of Great Britain</a> and it was there that he made his name. He isolated more chemical elements than any other individual has before or since using the new science of electro-chemistry. He is credited with the isolation of nine chemical elements, including sodium and potassium. His lectures established the Royal Institution’s reputation for excellent and accessible lectures on science, which continue today in their <a href="http://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures">Christmas Lecture series</a>. </p>
<p>It was also in London that he first received a call from coal mine owners in the northeast of England and he set to work on a miners’ safety lamp. While there were other lamps created at the same time, arguably the “Davy lamp” is the best known. He wrote poems about his lamp just as he wrote <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60157-9/fulltext">poems</a> describing what it felt like to breathe nitrous oxide: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Not in the ideal dreams of wild desire,</p>
<p>Have I beheld a rapture wakening form,</p>
<p>My bosom burns with no unhallowed fire,</p>
<p>Yet is my cheek with rosy blushes warm.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Poetry was for him a way to express emotions, thoughts and feelings which had no place in his scientific writings. That said, the books he published could describe chemical experiments in a distinctly poetic language. Coleridge said that he went to Davy’s lectures to increase the number of metaphors that he could use in his poems. </p>
<p>Davy’s career asks us to rethink the fixed categories we sometimes use when considering science and the arts. The edition of letters that we are publishing reveals the true variety of topics on which Davy wrote and commented. Davy was at the vanguard of science communicators. And with his love of language and poetry he showed that it was possible to understand and be passionate about both science and the arts in equal measure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84391/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharon Ruston is lead educator on an online course: Humphry Davy: Laughing gas, Literature and the Lamp. The course runs from 30 October 2017 and is a collaboration with the Royal Institution: <a href="http://www.futurelearn.com/courses/humphry-davy/1">www.futurelearn.com/courses/humphry-davy/1</a>.
She has received external funding for both the edition and the online course from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the British Society for the History of Science, the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, the Modern Humanities Research Association, and the Wellcome Trust. </span></em></p>Sir Humphry Davy was the Professor Brian Cox of the 1800s.Sharon Ruston, Professor of English and Creative Writing, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/644702016-09-29T13:32:56Z2016-09-29T13:32:56ZA new twist to whodunnit in science’s famous Piltdown Man hoax<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139721/original/image-20160929-27034-7p8chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=52%2C201%2C946%2C839&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Eoanthropus dawsoni, or the Piltdown Man, never really existed.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia/Wellcome Images</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1912 it was announced that some remains of “the earliest Englishman” had been found in a gravel pit. This “hominid”, <em>Eoanthropus dawsoni</em>, became known as the Piltdown Man.</p>
<p>About 50 years later, South African anatomist Joseph Weiner <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/do53pi.html">exposed</a> the Piltdown Man as a hoax. He revealed that a human skull and a modern orangutan jaw, both stained brown, had been deposited together in the gravel pit. </p>
<p>Weiner and his colleagues named Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur archaeologist based in Sussex, as the prime suspect in the forgery. Dawson claimed that his involvement in Piltdown had started when workers digging for gravel found the skull fragments and handed them to him.</p>
<p>It later emerged that Dawson was responsible for <a href="http://www.badarchaeology.com/frauds-and-hoaxes/charles-dawson/">more than 30 forgeries</a>. It is speculated that Dawson committed these in the hope of becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society – a distinction he never achieved.</p>
<p>Dawson’s role in the Piltdown Man hoax appears to have been confirmed in 2016 by palaeo-anthropologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/solving-the-piltdown-man-crime-how-we-worked-out-there-was-only-one-forger-63615">Dr Isabelle de Groote</a> and her colleagues. High-tech forensic analyses led them to conclude that only a single hoaxer, presumably Dawson, was responsible. The case seems closed. But is it? </p>
<p>Research I have conducted recently and <a href="http://sajs.co.za/piltdown-case-further-questions/j-francis-thackeray">published</a> in the South African Journal of Science suggests that Dawson may not necessarily have been the culprit in this particular case. </p>
<p>I suspect someone realised that Dawson was a fraudster and decided to play a joke on him. Archival research in London and Paris leads me to believe that a French Jesuit priest was in on the joke – which went terribly wrong after palaeontological experts mistook Piltdown Man for the real thing. </p>
<p>This is a reminder that palaeontologists should always be extremely vigilant and thorough in ensuring that fossil finds are authentic.</p>
<h2>A religious joker?</h2>
<p>So who was this joker?</p>
<p>Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit based at Ore Place, a theological seminary nears Hastings in Sussex. As a young man he longed to become a professional palaeontologist. The seminary was within 50 kilometres of Piltdown, where Teilhard contributed to excavations in an amateur capacity. </p>
<p>In January 1913 De Chardin <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/deceiver-joker-or-innocent-teilhard-de-chardin-and-piltdown-man/50D15FC19CC74CC2E18E0EFF5AD6E79F">wrote an essay</a> beginning with the words</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There was a time when the study of prehistory deserved to be suspect, and deserved to be the subject of jokes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His essay is about the current understanding of human evolution, but most strangely – and suspiciously – he omits all reference to the Piltdown Man even though its discovery had been officially announced just three weeks earlier. </p>
<p>Almost immediately after the Piltdown announcement, Teilhard <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/deceiver-joker-or-innocent-teilhard-de-chardin-and-piltdown-man/50D15FC19CC74CC2E18E0EFF5AD6E79F">wrote</a> to his Jesuit friend Felix Pelletier, with whom he had collected fossils in Sussex:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We must do nothing. We must wait for the criticisms that will follow. Marcellin Boule [an eminent French prehistorian] will not be taken in, especially because the finds are English. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139722/original/image-20160929-27042-iw16av.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139722/original/image-20160929-27042-iw16av.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139722/original/image-20160929-27042-iw16av.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139722/original/image-20160929-27042-iw16av.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139722/original/image-20160929-27042-iw16av.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139722/original/image-20160929-27042-iw16av.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139722/original/image-20160929-27042-iw16av.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139722/original/image-20160929-27042-iw16av.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia/Archives des jésuites de France</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This convinced me Teilhard knew from the very beginning that Piltdown Man was not genuine. I am not, I should point out, the first to suspect him. </p>
<p>Distinguished scientists like Louis Leakey and Stephen Jay Gould have previously <a href="http://www2.clarku.edu/%7Epiltdown/map_prim_suspects/Teilhard_de_Chardin/Chardin_defend/leakeyandpilt.html">suggested</a> that Teilhard was involved in the Piltdown case. Gould was strongly suspicious about Teilhard because the hinge between the jaw and the skull – known anatomically as the condyle – was broken. In 1920 Teilhard had <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/deceiver-joker-or-innocent-teilhard-de-chardin-and-piltdown-man/50D15FC19CC74CC2E18E0EFF5AD6E79F">stated</a> that the Piltdown mandible might have been deliberately broken (<em>comme par espres</em>, “as if on purpose”). </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139736/original/image-20160929-27017-zliv4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139736/original/image-20160929-27017-zliv4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139736/original/image-20160929-27017-zliv4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139736/original/image-20160929-27017-zliv4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139736/original/image-20160929-27017-zliv4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139736/original/image-20160929-27017-zliv4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139736/original/image-20160929-27017-zliv4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139736/original/image-20160929-27017-zliv4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first lower molar of the Piltdown orangutan. Scratch marks show that the tooth had been artificially filed down to give it the appearance of a human tooth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Isabelle de Groote et al 2016, Royal Society Open Science</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gould thought this was tantamount to Teilhard admitting that he knew of the forgery long before anyone else suspected it. If the condyle had been preserved in the case of the Piltdown jaw, it would have been immediately recognised that it could not possibly have articulated with the human skull. </p>
<p>In 1977 Kenneth Oakley, a palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, told me he was giving Teilhard the benefit of the doubt – because he was a priest. But Oakley also told me that Teilhard appeared to be agitated and very reluctant to talk about Piltdown when he was shown the evidence that led to the exposure of the hoax. </p>
<p>Another famous palaeontologist, Phillip Tobias, said Teilhard was known as a joker. </p>
<p>It is important to emphasise that both Teilhard and Martin Hinton, a palaeontologist at the British Museum, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/deceiver-joker-or-innocent-teilhard-de-chardin-and-piltdown-man/50D15FC19CC74CC2E18E0EFF5AD6E79F">said</a> they <em>knew</em> who the Piltdown perpetrator had been. But neither disclosed this person’s identity – except to say that it was <em>not</em> Dawson. So were Teilhard, Hinton and a third “Person X” complicit in a joke, directed against Dawson?</p>
<h2>A strange cast of characters</h2>
<p>The Piltdown orangutan jaw came from Borneo. It is probable that the jaw <a href="http://sajs.co.za/piltdown-case-further-questions/j-francis-thackeray">originated</a> from an 1878 expedition. Most of the material collected on that trip was deposited in the British Museum of Natural History. But “duplicates” could have been distributed elsewhere, subject to a committee’s decision, as <a href="http://sajs.co.za/piltdown-case-further-questions/j-francis-thackeray">mentioned</a> in a paper by archaeologist Andrew Sherratt. </p>
<p>It would seem that such “duplicates” could have been distributed to donors of the expedition, including members of the Willett family who lived in Sussex. </p>
<p>Edgar Willett was trained at Oxford. He practised as an anaesthetist and served as a curator of a museum with expertise in anatomy. He was also <a href="http://sajs.co.za/system/tdf/publications/pdf/SAJS-112-9-10-Thackeray-NewsViews.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=35300&force=">at Piltdown</a> with Dawson at some point in time.</p>
<p>Willett is a common name in the area of Ore in Sussex, and it was at “Ore Place” where Teilhard de Chardin was based between 1908 and 1912 – the very years in which Piltdown material was initially collected. </p>
<p>Did Teilhard know about a Piltdown joke through Edgar Willett who, as an anatomist, could have had access to an orangutan jaw and other specimens in a private collection or museum? And could Edgar Willett have been in a position to facilitate a joke against Dawson with Teilhard as an adviser? Was Willett “Person X”?</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/deceiver-joker-or-innocent-teilhard-de-chardin-and-piltdown-man/50D15FC19CC74CC2E18E0EFF5AD6E79F">a letter</a> to the palaeontologist Kenneth Oakley dated November 28 1953, Teilhard wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Would it have been impossible for some collector who had in his possession some ape bones, to have discarded specimens into the pit? The idea sounds fantastic. But, in my opinion, no more fantastic than to make Dawson the perpetrator of the hoax. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In another <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/deceiver-joker-or-innocent-teilhard-de-chardin-and-piltdown-man/50D15FC19CC74CC2E18E0EFF5AD6E79F">letter</a> to a famous French prehistorian, the Abbe Henri Breuil, dated December 8 1953, Teilhard wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have difficulty in accepting a hoax on the part of Dawson…and as fantastic as it seems, I admitted rather that someone threw, innocently, from the cottage nearby, some “collection” in the “Pit” of Piltdown"</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In these two separate letters, Teilhard is probably being absolutely honest about a “collection” which included an ape such as an orangutan. But was he joking when he suggested that someone “<em>innocently</em>” threw part of such a collection into the Piltdown pit? </p>
<h2>A joke gone wrong</h2>
<p>To my mind, we need to take another close look at the Piltdown case. Perhaps Dawson was hoist with his own petard: someone realised that he was a habitual forger and sought to beat him at his own game. If this is indeed the case, Dawson may be considered a victim of a joke that went terribly wrong. It won’t repair his blighted reputation, though: he’ll still go down in history as a fraudster who hoped to boost his own career through forgeries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64470/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francis Thackeray receives funding from the National Research Foundation, South Africa</span></em></p>One of paleontology’s most notorious hoaxes has long been blamed on a serial forger named Charles Dawson. But might a Jesuit priest have been in on a joke that went wrong ?Francis Thackeray, Phillip Tobias Chair in Palaeoanthropology, Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/597152016-05-24T11:54:24Z2016-05-24T11:54:24ZRoyal Society president: GM crops feed much of the world today – why not tomorrow’s generations?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123763/original/image-20160524-10984-i0nr0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FEMA_-_2086_-_Photograph_by_Andrea_Booher_taken_on_07-09-1993_in_Missouri.jpg">Andrea Booher/FEMA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>My parents researched malnutrition and under-nutrition in India, especially among children, and found that many diets recommended by Western nutritionists were in fact completely inapplicable to the poor. So they formulated cheap, healthy diets based on indigenous food with which people were familiar. Yet despite their many other efforts, a quarter of people in Indian and nearly one in nine people around the world do not have enough food to live a healthy active life. </p>
<p>The World Bank estimates that we will need to <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/foodsecurity">produce about 50% more food by 2050</a> to feed a population of nine billion people. And the past 50 years have seen agricultural productivity soar – <a href="http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/260638/aib786d_1_.pdf">corn yields in the US have doubled</a>, for example. But this has come with sharp increases in the use of fertilisers, pesticides and water which has brought its own problems. There is also no guarantee that this rate of increase in yields can be maintained.</p>
<p>Just as new agricultural techniques and equipment spurred on food production in the Middle Ages, and scientific crop breeding, fertilisers and pesticides did so for the Green Revolution of the 20th century, so we must rely on the latest technology to boost food production further. Genetic modification, or GM, used appropriately with proper regulation, may be part of the solution. Yet GM remains a highly contentious topic of debate where, unfortunately, the underlying facts are often obscured.</p>
<p>Views on GM differ across the world. Almost <a href="http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/51/default.asp">half of all crops grown in the US are GM</a>, whereas widespread opposition in Europe means virtually no GM crops are grown there. In Canada, regulation is focused on the characteristics of the crop produced, while in the EU <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/gmo/index_en.htm">the focus is on how it has been modified</a>. GM crops do not damage the environment by nature of their modification; GM is merely a technology, and it is the resulting product that we should be concerned about and regulate, just as we would any new product.</p>
<p>There are outstanding plant scientists who work on GM in the UK, but the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments have declared their opposition to GM plants. Why is there such strong opposition in a country with great trust in scientists?</p>
<p>About 15 years ago when GM was just emerging, its main proponents and many of the initial products were from large multinational corporations – even though it was publicly funded scientists who produced much of the initial research. Understandably, many felt GM was a means for these corporations to impose a monopoly on crops and maximise their profits. This <a href="https://theconversation.com/seeds-of-doubt-why-consumers-weigh-up-gm-produce-and-turn-it-down-50106">perception</a> was not helped by some of the practices of these big companies, such as introducing herbicide resistant crops that led to the heavy use of herbicides – often made by the same companies.</p>
<p>The debate became polarised, and any sense that the evidence could be rationally assessed evaporated. There have been claims made about the negative <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-journals/elsevier-announces-article-retraction-from-journal-food-and-chemical-toxicology">health effects</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-does-gm-cotton-lead-to-farmer-suicide-in-india-24045">economic costs</a> of GM crops – claims later shown to be unsubstantiated. Today, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/348830/bis-14-p111-public-attitudes-to-science-2014-main.pdf">half of those in the UK do not feel well informed</a> about GM crops.</p>
<h2>Everyday genetic modification</h2>
<p>GM involves the introduction of very specific genes into plants. In many ways this is much more controlled than the random mutations that are selected for in traditional plant breeding. Most of the commonly grown crops that we consider natural actually bear little resemblance to their wild ancestors, having been selectively modified through cross-breeding over the thousands of years that humans have been farming crops – in a sense, this is <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-our-food-is-genetically-modified-in-some-way-where-do-you-draw-the-line-56256">a form of genetic modification itself</a>.</p>
<p>In any case, we accept genetic modification in many other contexts: insulin used to treat diabetes is now made by GM microbes and has almost completely replaced animal insulin, for example. Many of the top selling drugs are proteins such as <a href="http://www.britannica.com/science/genetically-modified-organism/GMOs-in-medicine-and-research">antibodies made entirely by GM</a>, and now account for a third of all new medicines (and over <a href="http://www.drugs.com/stats/top100/sales">half of the biggest selling ones</a>). These are used to treat a host of diseases, from breast cancer to arthritis and leukaemia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123762/original/image-20160524-12397-eg8skv.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123762/original/image-20160524-12397-eg8skv.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123762/original/image-20160524-12397-eg8skv.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123762/original/image-20160524-12397-eg8skv.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123762/original/image-20160524-12397-eg8skv.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123762/original/image-20160524-12397-eg8skv.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123762/original/image-20160524-12397-eg8skv.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123762/original/image-20160524-12397-eg8skv.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Millions of acres growing GM crops worldwide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gmo_acreage_world_2009.PNG">Fafner/ISSSA</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>GM has been used to create insect-resistance in plants that greatly reduces or even eliminates the need for chemical insecticides, reducing the cost to the farmer and the environment. It also has the potential to make crops more nutritious, for example by adding healthier fats or more nutritious proteins. It’s been used to introduce nutrients such as beta carotene from which the body can make vitamin A – the so-called <a href="https://theconversation.com/golden-rice-naysayers-ignore-the-worlds-need-for-nutrition-19790">golden rice</a> – which prevents night blindness in children. And GM can potentially create crops that are drought resistant – something that as water becomes scarce will become increasingly important.</p>
<p>More than 10% of the world’s arable land is now used to grow GM plants. An <a href="http://nas-sites.org/ge-crops">extensive study</a> conducted by the US National Academies of Sciences recently reported that there has been no evidence of ill effects linked to the consumption of any approved GM crop since the widespread commercialisation of GM products 18 years ago. It also reported that there was no conclusive evidence of environmental problems resulting from GM crops.</p>
<p>GM is a tool, and how we use it is up to us. It certainly does not have to be the monopoly of a few multinational corporations. We can and should have adequate regulations to ensure the safety of any new crop strain (GM or otherwise) to both ourselves and the environment, and it is up to us to decide what traits in any new plant are acceptable. People may be opposed to GM crops for a variety of reasons and ultimately consumers will decide what they want to eat. But the one in nine people in poor countries facing malnutrition or starvation do not enjoy that choice. The availability of cheap, healthy and nutritious food for them is a matter of life and death.</p>
<p>Alongside other improvements in farming practices, genetic modification is an important part of a sustainable solution to global food shortages. However, the motto of the Royal Society is <a href="https://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/"><em>nullius in verba</em></a>; roughly, “take nobody’s word for it”. We need a well-informed debate based on an assessment of the evidence. The Royal Society has published <a href="http://www.royalsociety.org/gm-plants">GM Plants: questions and answers</a> which can play its part in this. People should look at the evidence – not just loudly voiced opinions – for themselves and make up their own minds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59715/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Venki Ramakrishnan is President of the Royal Society.</span></em></p>Science and technology has always helped us feed the world. GM has more to offer, if we let it.Venki Ramakrishnan, Professor and Deputy Director, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/540922016-02-09T09:20:19Z2016-02-09T09:20:19ZAre male and female brains really different?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110600/original/image-20160208-2608-pqbkvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">T. L. Furrer/shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Along with just about every other aspect of real or imagined differences between the sexes, the idea that your biological sex will determine the sex of your brain – and so your behaviour, aptitudes and personality – has a <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674576254">long and controversial history</a>. The idea that a man’s brain is “male” and a woman’s brain “female” is rarely challenged. </p>
<p>The latest neuroscientific techniques employed to measure and map those brain structures and functions which might distinguish the two sexes are discussed in a recent special issue from the Royal Society examining <a href="http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/1688">the differences between male and female brains</a>. But among the papers is one that <a href="http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/1688/20150451">directly questions the very concept upon which the others are broadly based</a>, boldly stating that there is no such thing as a male or a female brain. </p>
<p>One of the authors, Daphna Joel, had previously published a study of structures and connections in over 1,400 brains from men and women aged between 13 and 85, in which no evidence was found of two distinct groups of brains that could be described as either typically male or typically female. Brains were more typically <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468.abstract">unique “mosaics” of different features</a> – something more correctly characterised as a single heterogeneous population.</p>
<p>Such a mosaic of features cannot be explained in purely biological terms; it is a measure of the effect of external factors. This is true even at the most fundamental level. For example, it can be shown that a “characteristically male” density of dendritic spines or branches of a nerve cell can be changed to the “female” form simply by the application of a <a href="http://www.jneurosci.org/content/21/16/6292.full">mild external stress</a>. Biological sex alone cannot explain brain differences; to do so requires an understanding of how, when and to what extent external events affect the structure of the brain. </p>
<h2>Neuroplasticity</h2>
<p>The notion that our brains are plastic or malleable and, crucially, remain so throughout our lives is one of the key breakthroughs of the last 40 years in our understanding of the brain. Different short- and long-term experiences will <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21906988">change the brain’s structure</a>. It has also been shown that social attitudes and <a href="http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/definition.html">expectations such as stereotypes</a> can <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18985116">change how your brain processes information</a>. Supposedly brain-based differences in behavioural characteristics and cognitive skills <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/32/11673.full.pdf">change across time, place and culture</a> due to the different external factors experienced, such as access to education, financial independence, even diet. </p>
<p>The importance of this to the male/female brain debate is that, when comparing brains, it’s necessary to know more than just the sex of their owners. What kind of brain-altering experiences have their owners been through? Even a path as mundane as school, university and a nine-to-five career will meld the brain in different ways to those with different experiences. </p>
<p>Clearly this is important when any kind of brain differences are being measured and discussed, particularly when it is the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25221493">influence of a biological variable</a> (sex) on a social variable (gender) that is being studied. But it’s surprising how infrequently this is incorporated into the design of studies, or acknowledged in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24176517">how results are interpreted</a>. Understanding how much the brains being examined are entangled with the worlds in which they exist must be part of any attempt to try and answer the question of what, if anything, separates male and female brains.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110603/original/image-20160208-2586-kf4c3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110603/original/image-20160208-2586-kf4c3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110603/original/image-20160208-2586-kf4c3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110603/original/image-20160208-2586-kf4c3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110603/original/image-20160208-2586-kf4c3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110603/original/image-20160208-2586-kf4c3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110603/original/image-20160208-2586-kf4c3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There are no ‘blue’ and ‘pink’ brains, each is a rainbow of colours.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lisa Alisa/shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A new approach</h2>
<p>Perhaps the mounting evidence that brains can’t be neatly divided into sex-based groups will <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28582-scans-prove-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-male-or-female-brain/">prompt a game-changing alteration in how we approach this issue.</a>. What is really meant by a “sex difference”? Taken straightforwardly, one would assume a “difference” implies the two groups measured are distinct. That the characteristics true of one are almost always not true of the other, that it’s possible to predict characteristics based on sex or vice versa, or that knowing to which group an individual belonged would allow you to reliably predict their performance, responses, abilities and potential. But we now know that this simply doesn’t reflect reality.</p>
<p>On a wide range of psychological measures, it’s clear that the two sexes are actually more similar than different, despite <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115057">oft-repeated stereotypes or anecdotal assertions</a>. In parallel with the findings that brains are a mosaic of features, repeat analyses of more than 100 different behavioural and personality traits believed to be characteristic of one sex or the other have demonstrated that they don’t fall into two distinct groups, but are best allocated to a single group. The researcher’s conclusion, delivered with a wry smile, can only be that men are not from Mars nor are women from Venus: <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycarticles/2012-28536-001">we are all from Earth</a>. </p>
<p>The whole issue of male/female differences in the brain and the implications for male/female differences in any sphere – normal or abnormal behaviour, ability, aptitude or achievement – is really important to clarify. In the US, the National Institutes of Health recently mandated that, where appropriate, <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/policy-nih-to-balance-sex-in-cell-and-animal-studies-1.15195">sex of the test subjects should be a variable</a> in any research it funds. It’s time to move on from the simplistic dichotomy of looking for what makes male and female brains different, and instead approach the issue through the probably more meaningful and potentially revelatory question: what makes brains different?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54092/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gina Rippon has previously received funding from the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. </span></em></p>Men aren’t from Mars, nor are women from Venus. We’re all from Earth.Gina Rippon, Professor of Cognitive NeuroImaging, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.