Wednesday, August 23, 2006

The future of biology   posted by JP @ 8/23/2006 04:14:00 PM
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I just saw a re-run of a Charlie Rose roundtable discussion with EO Wilson and James Watson from last year. The free video is here; check out the bit starting around 44.30 for their comments on recent human evolution, natural human variation, and where biology (especially genetics) is headed. According to them, this is the future:

Wilson: "We've somehow got to bring biology and the social sciences and psychology together. The psychologists--most of the practicing psychologists, theoretical psychologists--and the vast majority of social scientists, who really determine a lot of the intellect that goes into our policies, our philosophies--legal philosophies--attempt no connection at all to the nature of humanity, or what human nature is on a biological level. This is a huge gap."

Watson: "The past century was the coming together of chemistry and biology, and this century will be the coming together of psychology and biology"