Heretical thoughts about science and society: Frederick S. Pardee distinguished lecture, November 1, 2005
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Abstract
Freeman Dyson illuminates the importance of having heretics to challenge assumptions, and gives six heretical predictions of his own. The first is that American hegemony will not last until the next century. The second is that global warming is not the enormous problem that people make it out to be, primarily because increasing topsoil can counteract the excess of carbon dioxide and also, our knowledge is still too limited to diagnose the situation. His third heresy is that the increase in carbon dioxide may take us back to that wettest and warmest point in the interglacial period when the Sahara Desert was wet, and that this may be a better climate overall, driving at the critical juncture between naturalists and humanists. The fourth heresy makes an analogy between the transition that computers made to become small and ubiquitous, and the direction that biotechnology perhaps ought to go. Number five elaborates on communal sharing of genes and a completely new path for biology and evolution, and his sixth is that rural poverty should be solved by increasing the productivity of rural activities using “green technology,” (based on biology) such that people are not forced to migrate to urban centers.
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A version of this essay was delivered in November 1, 2005 as the Frederick S. Pardee Distinguished Lecture at Boston University.
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Copyright 2006 by Trustees of Boston University. All rights reserved.