The Stem Cell Debates
Lessons for Science and Politics
The debates over stem cell research during the last decade have been among the most heated controversies in the history of science — touching on fundamental questions concerning the governance of science and the moral status of embryonic human life.
We are pleased to devote the entirety of the Winter 2012 issue of The New Atlantis to a major report on the stem cell debates, a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the scientific facts and the moral, political, and legal stakes. This is the inaugural report of an important new body, the Witherspoon Council on Ethics and the Integrity of Science.
Table of Contents • Main Report • About the Witherspoon Council
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Science, Virtue, and the Future of HumanityWhy We Need a ‘Stuck with Virtue’ ScienceThe Case for Enhancing PeopleLiberation Biology, Lost in the CosmosMachine Morality and Human ResponsibilityThe Problem with ‘Friendly’ Artificial IntelligenceThe Science of Politics and the Conquest of NatureJustice Without FoundationsImage: The Gulf Between (detail). © The Estate of Kelly Freas. All rights reserved. |
Literature and the Meaning of Progress
The New Atlantis has been publishing a series of essays devoted to stories about science, technology, and progress by the great American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. With each essay, we have been publishing an annotated edition of the corresponding Hawthorne story.
- A Far Other Butterfly by Wilfred M. McClay
“The Artist of the Beautiful” - The Last Temptation of Science by Algis Valiunas
“Rappaccini’s Daughter” - From Hearth-Fires to Hell-Fires by Diana Schaub
“Ethan Brand,” “Earth’s Holocaust,” and “Fire Worship” - Artful by Nature by Charles T. Rubin
“The New Adam and Eve” - Wasting the Water of Life by Kevin Laskowski
“Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”
Visit the series homepage here.
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, N.Y.
Place and Placelessness in AmericaGPS and the End of the Roadby Ari N. SchulmanSince the days of Jack Kerouac, the image of personal freedom has been the driver on the open road. What, then, should we make of the navigation revolution found in GPS and “location-awareness”? Do they expand our freedom, as they seem to promise? Ari N. Schulman looks to On the Road and Huckleberry Finn, asking why we aspire to travel, and what we expect to get out of it today. Symposium: What ‘Place’ Means to Us Today |
Psychology’s Magician
by Algis Valiunas
In the era of neuroscience and brain scans, Carl Jung and the Jungian school of psychology have faded from the scene. But no modern thinker pushed further into the darkest depths of the mind than Jung did — he plunged into the very shadows where monsters lurk. Algis Valiunas sketches a portrait of the controversial Jung as scientist and seer. READ MOREFrom our archive...
- Disenchanting Determinism
Caitrin Nicol reviews novels by Richard Powers and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
- AIDS Relief and Moral Myopia
Travis Kavulla on African culture and the public health community
Abraham Maslow and the All-American Self
by Algis Valiunas
Some conservatives have criticized Abraham Maslow — the psychologist known for “self-actualization” and the “hierarchy of needs” — for promoting a cult of the self. This is much too simplistic, argues Algis Valiunas: Maslow, an idealist, had a nobler humanity in mind.
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Christianity and the Future of the Book
by Alan Jacobs
How has the format of the Christian Bible — as a bound book rather than a scroll — shaped Christianity and Western culture more broadly? New Atlantis contributing editor Alan Jacobs writes that we are all “heirs of the decisions that the early Christian Church made about the technology appropriate for bearing the Word of God.” How will the evolving technology of the book now transform Christian theology and practice?READ MORE
The World’s Most Popular Gun
Victor Davis Hanson on the long road to the AK-47 READ MORE
Doctors Go Digital
Jeffrey C. Rowe on how information technology is changing American health care READ MORE
Unleashing the Nuclear Watchdog
Henry Sokolski on reforming the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguarding operations
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by Gilbert Meilaender
Human beings have always longed to transcend the suffering, finitude, and limits of embodied life. For some, this longing is spiritual — pointing, perhaps, to the eternity of the soul. Gilbert Meilaender explores the technological transcendence preferred by the transhumanist movement.
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The Challenge of Regulating Objectively
by Jonathan H. Adler
Yale law professor Douglas A. Kysar argues in a recent book that cost-benefit analysis is inadequate for policymaking. But Kysar’s preferred “precautionary” approach would create a vastly more complex and cumbersome regulatory system. Jonathan H. Adler explains.
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by Alan Jacobs
July marked the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Marshall McLuhan. Alan Jacobs examines whether the media critic and celebrity had anything worthwhile to say, and whether it's still today worth grappling with his often dizzying work.
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Locke, Darwin, and America’s Future
by Peter Augustine Lawler
Are we individuals endowed with the right to pursue happiness? Or are we the products of blind and fickle nature, concerned only with survival? Peter Augustine Lawler explores the tensions between two of our intellectual guiding lights: Charles Darwin and John Locke.
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What Consciousness Is Not
by Raymond Tallis
Philosophers of mind are in thrall of the idea that the mind is a computer, dismissing the role and even the existence of conscious experience. But one philosopher, David Chalmers, has been highly influential in pushing back. Raymond Tallis explores Chalmers’s work and his latest book, and shows why even Chalmers still gives too much credence to the myth of mind as matter.
Related by Raymond Tallis:
The Folly of Internet Freedom
Eric R. Sterner on the mistake of talking about the Internet as a human right READ MORE
Subject to Review
Tevi Troy on the Obama administration’s proposed new regulations for human subjects research READ MORE
Global Warming and Federalism
David A. Murray on state and local governments overreaching in regulating carbon READ MORE
Health Food and the Double Helix
Whitney K. Franz on the promise of nutrigenomics READ MORE
Philosophy Is Here to Stay
by Benjamin Storey
The End of Philosophy — So declared David Brooks in a famous New York Times column: neuroscience and social science now can answer the vexing questions of what is good and right that thousands of years of philosophy have failed to resolve. Benjamin Storey reviews Brooks’s recent book The Social Animal, and asks whether we’re quite ready to put Socrates out to pasture.
The Unmanning of America
by Rita Koganzon
Men are out, man-children are in — or so commentators and social scientists have been proclaiming. Rita Koganzon considers (and challenges) the arguments about “emerging adults” that Kay Hymowitz makes in her new book Manning Up.
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In Remembrance of Jonathan B. Tucker
The New Atlantis notes with great sadness the passing of our contributor Jonathan B. Tucker. An esteemed and prolific expert in nonproliferation policy, he was described as a “humble giant” of his field by a close colleague.
His final essay for The New Atlantis was recently published:
Could Terrorists Exploit Synthetic Biology?
Read more about the life and work of Jonathan B. Tucker here.
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You Can’t Handle the Truth
by Jeremy Kessler
Philosophers say there are limits to what human beings can know, while scientists tell us that material truths like those they discover are all that really exists. Jeremy Kessler reviews Quentin Meillasoux’s new book After Finitude, which claims to offer proof that the universe exists independently of human minds. 
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