Interviews with scientific leaders focus on the challenges, promises, and perils of science and technology.
Based on interviews with eighteen prominent scientists and public policymakers from around the globe, A Parliament of Science provides a rich overview of the challenges, promises, and perils of science and technology in the twenty-first century. What can we hope for? What must we fear? How can scientists, civil society, and politicians work together to harness science and technology into a power for the good of all humanity?
Those interviewed speak candidly of their passions, hopes, and concerns as they explore the scientific and policy implications of the major issues of our time, including sustainability, politics, cloning, ethics, global climate change, the digital divide, and mass extinction of biological species. This welcome introduction to the debate on mankind's needs for a true "science for the twenty-first century" also serves as a sobering reappraisal of where we have been, what our ingenuity has wrought for better or for worse, and where we and the whole planet seem to be headed.
Michael Tobias is the author of twenty-five books and writer, director, and producer of nearly one hundred films, mostly concerned with global environmental and ethical issues. He is the coeditor (with J. Patrick Fitzgerald and David Rothenberg) of A Parliament of Minds: Philosophy for a New Millennium, also published by SUNY Press. At Global Vision Network, a privately funded think tank in England established in 1996, Teun Timmers is Senior Programme Developer and Gill Wright is Chief Executive.
Acknowledgments
Michael Tobias
Introduction
I. Biosphere, Ecology, and Sustainability
Crispin Tickell
The Scandal of Unsustainability
Robert May
The Sixth Wave of Extinction
Anthony C. Janetos
Protecting the Biosphere
Robert Watson
Where Science and Policy Meet: The Search for a Common Language
Madhav Gadgil
Ecology: Modern Science and Traditional Wisdom
II. Science, Policy, and the Public
Federico Mayor
The Eyes of the Universe
John Durant
Hope, Anxiety, and Doubt: The Public View of Science
Rita R. Colwell
The Role of the Citizen
Leon M. Lederman
Particles and Poverty
Julia Marton-Lefèvre
Only People Give Me Hope
III. Science and Peace
Frans B. M. de Waal
The Biology of Making Peace
Joseph Rotblat
A Life Devoted to Peace
Yechiel Becker
Science for Peace
IV. Science for the Twenty-first Century
Ismail Serageldin
The Cry of the Eight Hundred Million
M. S. Swaminathan
The Soul of Sustainability
Bruce Alberts
Sharing Knowledge for Development
Mohamed H. A. Hassan
Let Our Children Bridge the Gap
Margaret Somerville
Doing Science in Ethics Time
Bibliography
About the Editors
Index