We are losing our minds to Google. After 20 years, Google’s products have become integrated into our everyday lives, altering the very structure of our cognitive architecture, and our minds have expanded out into cyberspace as a consequence. This is not science fiction, but an implication of what’s known as the “extended mind thesis”, a widely accepted view in philosophy, psychology and neuroscience.

Make no mistake about it, this is a seismic shift in human psychology, probably the biggest we have ever had to cope with, and one that is occurring with breathtaking rapidity – Google, after all, is just 20 years old, this month. But although this shift has some good consequences, there are some deeply troubling issues we urgently need to address.

Much of my research spans issues to do with personal identity, mind, neuroscience, and ethics. And in my view, as we gobble up Google’s AI driven “personalised” features, we cede ever more of our personal cognitive space to Google, and so both mental privacy and the ability to think freely are eroded. What’s more, evidence is starting to emerge that there may be a link between technology use and mental health problems. In other words, it is not clear that our minds can take the strain of the virtual stretch. Perhaps we are even close to the snapping point.

Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?

This was the question posed in 1998 (coincidentally the same year Google was launched) by two philosophers and cognitive scientists, Andy Clark and David Chalmers, in a now famous journal article, The Extended Mind. Before their work, the standard answer among scientists was to say that the mind stopped at the boundaries of skin and skull (roughly, the boundaries of the brain and nervous system).

But Clark and Chalmers proposed a more radical answer. They argued that when we integrate things from the external environment into our thinking processes, those external things play the same cognitive role as our brains do. As a result, they are just as much a part of our minds as neurons and synapses. Clark and Chalmers’ argument produced debate, but many other experts on the mind have since agreed.

Our minds are linked with Google

Clark and Chalmers were writing before the advent of smartphones and 4G internet, and their illustrative examples were somewhat fanciful. They involved, for instance, a man who integrated a notebook into his everyday life that served as an external memory. But as recent work has made clear, the extended mind thesis bears directly on our obsession with smartphones and other devices connected to the web.

Growing numbers of us are now locked into our smartphones from morning until night. Using Google’s services (search engine, calendar, maps, documents, photo assistant and so on) has become second nature. Our cognitive integration with Google is a reality. Our minds literally lie partly on Google’s servers.

But does this matter? It does, for two major reasons.

First, Google is not a mere passive cognitive tool. Google’s latest upgrades, powered by AI and machine learning, are all about suggestions. Google Maps not only tells us how to get where we want to go (on foot, by car or by public transport), but now gives us personalised location suggestions that it thinks will interest us.

Google Assistant, always just two words away (“Hey Google”), now not only provides us with quick information, but can even book appointments for us and make restaurant reservations.

Gmail now makes suggestions about what we want to type. And Google News now pushes stories that it thinks are relevant to us, personally. But all of this removes the very need to think and make decisions for ourselves. Google – again I stress, literally – fills gaps in our cognitive processes, and so fills gaps in our minds. And so mental privacy and the ability to think freely are both eroded.

Addiction or integration?

Second, it doesn’t seem to be good for our minds to be spread across the internet. A growing cause for concern is so-called “smartphone addiction”, no longer an uncommon problem. According to recent reports, the average UK smartphone user checks his phone every 12 minutes. There are a whole host of bad psychological effects this could have that we are only just beginning to appreciate, depression and anxiety being the two most prominent.

But the word “addiction” here, in my view, is just another word for the integration I mentioned above. The reason why so many of us find it so hard to put our smartphones down, it seems to me, is that we have integrated their use into our everyday cognitive processes. We literally think by using them, and so it is no wonder it is hard to stop using them. To have one’s smartphone suddenly taken away is akin to having a lobotomy. Instead, to break the addiction/integration and regain our mental health, we must learn to think differently, and to reclaim our minds.

Benjamin Curtis, Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics, Nottingham Trent University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

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Ask young children what they want to be when they grow up and the chances are that scientific jobs such as astronaut and doctor will appear high on the list. But ask them to draw a scientist and they are more than twice as likely to draw a man than a woman. Children can form these kinds of biases from many sources. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised to see such an absence of women scientists in children’s drawings when the illustrations we show them are often just as bad.

Our study of imagery in children’s science books reveals that women are significantly underrepresented. In the physical sciences in particular, the pictures frequently fail to communicate women’s technical skills or knowledge. The imagery in these books gives the impression that science is a subject for men, and that careers in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) are unrewarding for women.

Developmental theories explain that children learn gender expectations to help them to respond appropriately within their social environment. This influences their understanding of who they are and encourages them to behave in a way that is conventional for their gender.

Pictures of men and women in children’s science books contribute to these expectations by teaching them “rules” about the occupations suited to each gender. This encourages them to conform to prevailing gender career stereotypes. To counter this, female role models need to be visible in books to help develop girls’ interest in science as they get older, and overcome negative perceptions of female scientists

Where are all the women?

Our research analysed the children’s science picture books in two public libraries in England. First we counted the frequency of images of men, women, boys and girls within the 160 available books. Then we did a detailed visual analysis of two scientific professions: astronauts and doctors. In this subset of 26 books, we examined what the male and female astronauts and doctors were doing, wearing and holding in the pictures.

We found that, overall, children’s science books pictured males three times more often than females, reinforcing the stereotype that science is a man’s pursuit. The under-representation of females only worsened as the target age of the book increased. The women were generally depicted as passive, lower status and unskilled – or their presence was not acknowledged at all.

For example, one children’s book about space exploration shows what’s involved in a spacewalk. Along with pictures of astronauts in their white padded spacesuits, we are told: “Without a spacesuit an astronaut’s blood would boil and his body would blow apart.” The use of male pronouns suggests the person inside the spacesuits is male.

There is no mention of the 11 courageous women who have performed spacewalks, including astronaut Sunita Williams whose image is used in the montage. As Williams’s face is covered by her helmet and the text only mentions men, it would be easy for children to think that women don’t do spacewalks.

On the pages of another book, we do see a female astronaut, pictured floating inside a space station and smiling at the camera. The qualifications and experience required to get astronauts to this point are extensive. Places on NASA’s Astronaut training programme are highly competitive with thousands of applications each year. But in the book, the woman’s training, expertise and knowledge are not mentioned.

Instead, the picture caption reads: “In zero G, every day is a bad hair day.” Comments like this that focus on women’s looks fail to take their contributions seriously. What’s more, research shows that emphasising appearance in science role models can reduce school girls’ self-rated ability or make scientific jobs seem unobtainable to them.

Our study also found important differences between subject disciplines. In physics books, 87% of images were of men or boys, and in the few pictures where female astronauts were pictured, they were never shown driving shuttles, doing experiments or spacewalking. Books about biology, in contrast, did have an even balance of images of men and women – and female doctors are shown carrying out the same activities and having the same status as male doctors.

Why this matters

You might think that imagery isn’t important, that the messages in pictures or illustrations are trivial. A multi-billion pound advertising industry disagrees with you. Advertising rarely provides detailed arguments for products or services but this doesn’t make its messages less powerful. Instead, adverts rely on persuasion through peripheral cues, such as by exemplifying appealing lifestyles and using imagery depicting the rewards of status or respect.

In the same way, children’s books advertise career choices, and their imagery communicates what it means for men and women to be associated with these occupations. Women need to be present in children’s science books to demonstrate that all science subjects are fulfilling for girls.

Research shows that, even before children go to school, they have the idea that men are better at male-dominated professions. Given that girls as young as eight are often put off maths and science by teachers and parents, it is perhaps no surprise that only 20% of A-level students taking physics are female. Interviews with successful female scientists have shown that girls do seek out role models in science, but are often unable to find them.

As such, it’s vital that imagery in children’s books is given greater consideration. Book editors and illustrators need to make significant efforts to represent women as qualified, skillful and technically able. They need to be pictured actively engaging in scientific activities and using appropriate tools or equipment, not merely present as assistants or observers. Women also need to be represented in greater numbers so that girls can see female role models in STEM professions and see these careers as potentially rewarding.

Parents, teachers and librarians – along with authors, illustrators and publishers – should review their books for gendered messages. Question what the images are teaching children and ask what career aspirations the books might be igniting or quashing.

Dr Susan Wilbraham, Senior Lecturer in Applied Psychology, University of Cumbria and Elizabeth Caldwell, Academic Skills Tutor, School of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Huddersfield

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

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Mosquitoes are some of the most deadly creatures on the planet. They carry viruses, bacteria and parasites, which they transmit through bites, infecting some 700 million people and killing more than 1 million each year.

With international travel, migration and climate change, these infections are no longer confined to tropical and subtropical developing countries. Pathogens such as West Nile virus and Zika virus have caused significant outbreaks in the United States and its territories that are likely to continue, with new invasive pathogens being discovered all the time. Currently, control of these diseases is mostly limited to broad-spectrum insecticide sprays, which can harm both humans and non-target animals and insects. What if there was a way to control these devastating diseases without the environmental problems of widespread insecticide use?

Genetically modifying mosquitoes to prevent disease may sound like science fiction, but the technology has advanced in recent years to the point where this is no longer a scenario relegated to late-night movies. In fact, it’s not even a new idea; scientists were talking about modifying insect populations to control diseases as early as the 1940s. Today, genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes, developed during the past several decades of research in university laboratories, are being used to combat mosquito-borne pathogens – including viruses such as dengue and Zika – in many locations around the globe, including the United States. Progress is also being made to use GM mosquitoes to combat malaria, the most devastating mosquito-borne disease, although field releases for malaria control have not yet taken place.

I have been working on GM mosquitoes, both as a lab tool and to combat disease, for over 20 years. During that time, I have personally witnessed the technology go from theoretical, to seeing it used in the field. I’ve seen older techniques that were inefficient, random and slow pave the way for new methods like CRISPR, which enables efficient, rapid and precise editing of mosquito genomes, and ReMOT Control which eliminates the requirement for injecting materials into mosquito embryos. These new technologies make GM mosquitoes for disease control not a question of “if,” but rather a question of “where” and “when.”

Don’t worry, these genetic changes only affect the mosquitoes – they are not transmitted to people when the mosquito bites them.

Ways to use genetically modified mosquitoes

There are two alternative methods currently used to control mosquito-borne diseases using GM mosquitoes. The first is “population replacement” in which a mosquito population biologically able to transmit pathogens is “replaced” by one that is unable to transmit pathogens. This approach generally relies on a concept known as “gene drive” to spread the anti-pathogen genes. In gene drive, a genetic trait – a gene or group of genes – relies on a quirk on inheritance to spread to more than half of a mosquito’s offspring, boosting the frequency of the trait in the population.

The second approach is called “population suppression.” This strategy reduces mosquito populations so that there are fewer mosquitoes to pass on the pathogen.

While the concept of gene drive in mosquitoes is many decades old, the gene-editing technique CRISPR has finally made it possible to easily engineer it in the laboratory. However, CRISPR-based gene drives have not yet been deployed in nature, mostly because they are still a new technology that lacks a firm international regulatory framework, but also due to problems related to the evolution of resistance in mosquito populations that will stop the gene from spreading.

It may not be immediately obvious, but the gene in “gene drive” need not be a gene at all – it can be a microbe. All organisms exist not just with their own genomes, but also with the genomes of all their associated microbes – the “hologenome.” Spread of a microbial genome through a population by inheritance can also be thought of as gene drive. By this definition, the first gene drive that has been deployed in mosquito populations for disease control is a bacterial symbiont known as Wolbachia. Wolbachia is a bacterium that infects up to 70 percent of all known insect species, where it hijacks the insect reproduction to spread itself through the population.

Thus, the Wolbachia itself (with its genome of approximately 1,500 genes) acts as the genetic trait that is driven into the population. When Wolbachia is transferred into a previously uninfected mosquito, it often makes the mosquito more resistant to infection with pathogen that can cause disease in humans, such as multiple viruses (including dengue and Zika viruses) and malaria parasites.

A bacterium that fights disease

In the last eight years, researchers have taken Wolbachia present in fruit flies and transferred that bacteria into mosquitoes that transmit dengue virus. Those modified insects were then released in a dozen countries to control the disease. Although marketed as a “non-GM strategy,” artificially infecting mosquitoes with Wolbachia clearly falls under the GM umbrella, as over 1,500 genes (the entire bacterial genome) have been transferred from the original fruit fly host into the mosquitoes.

Preliminary dengue control results from these releases in Australia have been promising. However, control of the disease in other release areas with higher disease risk, such as South America and Asia, still needs to be determined, particularly as some studies have demonstrated that Wolbachia can sometimes increase pathogen infection in mosquitoes rather than suppress it.

GM mosquitoes that eliminate mosquitoes

The best current example of population suppression is the release of genetically modified sterile mosquitoes. This is a modern spin on the decades-old Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), where sterile male insects are released into natural populations to mate with the wild females, reducing the mosquito population. But, rather than crudely sterilizing mosquitoes with radiation or chemicals, clever genetic engineering is now used to sterilize them instead. The company Oxitec has engineered mosquitoes with a gene that is lethal to females but not to males, which do not bite or transmit disease. Thousands of these transgenic males are released into nature, where they mate with the wild females in the population. The genetic modification is inherited by the offspring of these matings; female offspring die, while male offspring, which carry the gene, survive and continue passing the trait to further generations. With fewer and fewer females the mosquito population is drastically suppressed. Oxitec has conducted releases in the Grand Caymans, Malaysia, Brazil, and Florida.

There has been some opposition to these sterile mosquito releases, particularly in Florida. For example, in 2016, an Oxitec trial in the Florida Keys was met with some local resistance. However, unlike gene drive strategies, release of sterile mosquitoes (genetically modified or not) has about the smallest environmental footprint and highest safety of any disease control strategy; certainly safer than broad-spectrum insecticide sprays. It is highly targeted, and thus if it works, will only result in elimination of the target mosquito species, which in this case (Aedes aegypti) is a highly invasive and non-native mosquito in Florida.

In addition to gene drive, Wolbachia bacteria have also been used for population suppression. Males infected with the bacteria are released into a mosquito population that is either not infected, or infected with a different Wolbachia strain, which leads to “incompatible” or sterile matings. This strategy again has a long history, and was first used to suppress mosquito populations in the 1960s before people even knew that Wolbachia was causing certain populations of mosquitoes to be sterile when mated with one another. In current times, Wolbachia-sterilized males have been released in multiple countries including Australia and the U.S., in California and Florida, to control dengue virus.

In an increasingly interconnected world, and with the added problems of global climate change, pathogens are not likely to stay confined to the developing world, but will be an increasing issue for the U.S. as well. With the evolution of insecticide resistance in mosquitoes a certainty, GM technology has the potential to reduce the burden of mosquito-borne diseases across the globe, without the environmental and health risks associated with harmful pesticide use.

Don’t be afraid if it sounds like science fiction; it may just save your life.

Jason Rasgon, Professor of Entomology and Disease Epidemiology, Pennsylvania State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

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‘पृथ्वी दिवस’ के अवसर पर 22 अप्रैल को पूरी दुनिया में पर्यावरण को बचाने की चिंता प्रकट करते हुए कार्यक्रम हुए। 1970 में इसकी शुरुआत अमेरिका से हुई और यह बात अनायास नहीं लगती कि इसके लिए 22 अप्रैल का दिन चुना गया जो लेनिन का जन्मदिन है।

लेनिन के बहाने क्रांति पर बातें हों, इससे बेहतर तो यही होगा कि पर्यावरण के विनाश पर अकर्मक चिंतायें प्रकट की जाएँ और लोगों को ही कोसा जाये कि अगर वे अपनी आदतें नहीं बदलेंगे, और पर्यावरण की चिंता नहीं करेंगे, तो वह दिन दूर नहीं जब धरती पर क़यामत आ जायेगी। यानी सामाजिक बदलाव के बारे में नहीं, महाविनाश के दिन के बारे में सोचो। हॉलीवुड वाले इस महाविनाश की थीम पर सालाना कई फ़िल्में बनाते हैं।

पृथ्वी दिवस पर विभिन्न बुर्जुआ सरकारें, साम्राज्यवादी देशों की जुबां बोलने वाली अंतरराष्ट्रीय एजेंसियाँ और देशी-विदेशी पूँजीपतियों की फंडिंग से चलने वाले एन.जी.ओ. सबसे अधिक प्रोग्राम करते हैं। इनमें लोगों को पेड़ लगाने, फिजूलखर्ची की उपभोक्ता संस्कृति से बचने, नदियों को साफ़ करने, तालाबों और जंगलों को बचाने, प्लास्टिक का इस्तेमाल न करने आदि-आदि की राय दी जाती है।

ऐसा लगता है मानो जनता और जनता की बुरी आदतें, या मशीनीकरण, या आधुनिकता ही पर्यावरण-विनाश के लिए दोषी हैं। इस तरह, असली अपराधी को परदे के पीछे छुपा दिया जाता है और सारी ज़िम्मेदारी लोगों पर डाल दी जाती है।

पृथ्वी के पर्यावरण और पारिस्थितिक-तंत्र के विनाश के लिए लोग और उनकी बुरी आदतें नहीं, बल्कि मुनाफ़े की अन्धी हवस और गलाकाटू होड़ ज़िम्मेदार है। ये पूँजीपति हैं जो कारखानों की गन्दगी से नदियों, समन्दर, आकाश और हवा को दूषित करते हैं और अवशिष्ट-शोधन की तकनीक मौजूद होते हुए भी सारी गन्दगी वातावरण में प्रवाहित करके अपना पैसा बचाते हैं।

ये पूँजीपति हैं जो मुनाफ़े के लिए जेनेटिक बीजों, कीटनाशकों और रसायनों से खेती की पूरी ज़मीन को पाट देते हैं। ये पूँजीपति हैं जो स्वच्छ और पुनर्नवीकरणीय ऊर्जा-स्रोतों की मौजूदगी के बावजूद, और तकनीक की मौजूदगी के बावजूद जीवाश्म ईंधन का इस्तेमाल करके ध्रुवों की आइस कैप्स के पिघलने, ग्लेशियरों के सिकुड़ने, ओज़ोन परत में छेद कर देने और ग्लोबल वार्मिग जैसी ख़तरनाक पर्यावरणीय समस्याओं के लिए ज़िम्मेदार हैं।

ये पूँजीपति हैं जो वन-संपदा के लिए और खनिजों के लिए अंधाधुंध जंगलों का विनाश कर रहे हैं। ये पूँजीपति हैं जो बाज़ारों के बँटवारे और मुनाफ़े की होड़ के लिए विनाशकारी युद्ध लड़ते हैं और सर्वाधिक प्रदूषण पैदा करने वाले दुनिया के विशालतम उद्योग – हथियारों के उद्योग को खड़ा करते हैं।

अराजकता पूँजीवादी उत्पादन-प्रणाली का अनिवार्य अन्तर्निहित तत्व होती है। मुनाफ़े के लिए गलाकाटू होड़ करते पूँजीपति सिर्फ़ अपने मुनाफ़े के बारे में सोचते हैं, वे मनुष्यता के या स्वयं अपने भी दूरगामी भविष्य के बारे में नहीं सोच सकते। पूँजीवादी व्यवस्था के दूरगामी भविष्य के बारे में सोचने का काम पूँजीपतियों की मैनेजिंग कमेटी, यानी सरकार का होता है। किन्तु वह भी पूँजीपतियों के दूरगामी हित के बारे में इतनी दूर तक नहीं सोच सकती कि पृथ्वी और पर्यावरण को बचाने के लिए कारगर कदम उठा सके।

पूँजीवादी व्यवस्था की प्रकृति ही ऐसी होती है कि उसमें धुम्रपान-निषेध और मद्य-निषेध का प्रचार भी होता है और बीडी-सिगरेट-शराब का भी प्रचार होता है और बिक्री होती है। पूँजीवादी व्यवस्था में हर समस्या का समाधान अपने-आप में स्वयं समस्या बन जाता है। कीटनाशकों-रसायनों के दुष्प्रभाव से बचने के लिए ‘ऑर्गनिक फ़ूड’ का प्रचार होता है और देखते ही देखते उसकी एक विराट इन्डस्ट्री खड़ी हो जाती है, मुनाफ़ा कूटने का एक नया क्षेत्र विकसित हो जाता है।

‘क्लीन एनर्जी’ का शोर मचता है और सौर ऊर्जा, पवन ऊर्जा उत्पादन के सेक्टर में दैत्याकार देशी-विदेशी इजारेदार घराने पैदा हो जाते हैं। पुरानी समस्या भी मौजूद रहती है और उसे दूर करने के नाम पर मुनाफ़ा कूटने का नया सेक्टर और नयी समस्याएँ पैदा हो जाती हैं। सौर ऊर्जा और पवन ऊर्जा के उपकरण बनाने वाली कम्पनियाँ भी खनिजों के लिए प्रकृति का अंधाधुंध विनाश करती हैं और जमकर हवा-पानी को प्रदूषित करती हैं।

कुछ ‘सादा जीवन उच्च विचार’ टाइप लोग “प्रकृति की ओर वापसी” का, मितव्ययी होने का नारा देकर समस्या का हल ढूँढ लेना चाहते हैं। वे आधुनिकता, टेक्नोलॉजी और उपभोक्ता-संस्कृति से छुटकारा पाने का सुझाव देते हैं। पहली बात यह कि दोष आधुनिकता या तकनोलोजी का नहीं है। विज्ञान और टेक्नोलॉजी का इस्तेमाल यदि मुनाफ़े को केंद्र में न रखकर सामाजिक हित को केंद्र में रखकर होगा तो वह लगातार मानव जीवन को उन्नत बनाने का काम करती रहेगी।

दूसरी बात, जब तक समाज का पूँजीवादी ढाँचा बना रहेगा तब तक हम एक-एक नागरिक को उपभोक्ता संस्कृति से दूर करने का आध्यात्मिक टाइप चाहे जितना आन्दोलन चला लें, इससे कुछ नहीं होगा। हमारी चेतना और संस्कृति सामाजिक परिवेश से निर्धारित होती है और लोभ-लाभ के सामाजिक ढाँचे को बदले बिना उपभोक्ता संस्कृति के प्रभाव को समाप्त नहीं किया जा सकता।

तीसरी बात, आम लोगों की “बुरी आदतों” से पर्यावरण को 1-2 प्रतिशत ही नुकसान होता है (और वे बुरी आदतें भी अपना सामान बेंचकर मुनाफ़ा कमाने के लिए पूँजीपति ही पैदा करते हैं)! पर्यावरण को 98-99 प्रतिशत नुकसान पूँजीवादी उत्पादन, खनिजों के अनियंत्रित दोहन, जीवाश्म ईंधन के इस्तेमाल, मुनाफ़े की होड़ से जन्मे विनाशकारी युद्धों और युद्ध-सामग्री के उत्पादन के विशालतम वैश्विक उद्योगों आदि से होता है।

पूँजीवाद जब पर्यावरण-विनाश को रोकने के लिए और इसके प्रभाव से लोगों को बचाने के लिए कुछ करता है तो उसे भी मुनाफ़ा कूटने का साधन बना देता है। देखते-देखते हवा और पानी शुद्ध करने वाली मशीनों से बाज़ार पट जाता है, नदियों को साफ़ करने वाली बड़ी-बड़ी मशीनों का उत्पादन होने लगता है, नए जंगल लगाने के नाम पर ठेकेदार और सरकारी अमले-चाकर चांदी काटने लगते हैं।

तब कुछ नासमझ, भोले-भले लोगों की मूर्खता पूँजीवादी व्यवस्था के काम आती है। ये संत-महात्मा टाइप लोग आम जनता को मोबिलाइज करके नदियों-तालाबों की सफाई में लग जाते हैं। वे जितना साफ़ करते हैं, पूँजीवादी उत्पादन उससे कई गुना अधिक गंदा करता है। इस तरह जनता से मुफ्त वे पूँजीवाद की गंद साफ़ कराते हैं और जनता को या प्रकृति को इसका कोई लाभ भी नहीं मिलता।

ये नेकनीयत कूपमंडूक इस बात को नहीं समझ पाते कि पूरी व्यवस्था ही यदि प्रदूषण के लिए ज़िम्मेदार है तो इस व्यवस्था के भीतर जनशक्ति को जागृत और लामबन्द करके थोडा प्रदूषण अगर वे दूर भी कर लेंगे तो इससे कुछ नहीं होगा, उलटे उनका यह सद्प्रयास शासक वर्ग और इस व्यवस्था के लिए एक स्पीड-ब्रेकर का, एक सेफ्टी-वाल्व का और एक विभ्रम पैदा करने वाले परदे का ही काम करेगा।

इतनी शक्ति यदि वे यह प्रचार करने में लगाते कि पर्यावरण-विनाश का मुख्या कारण मुनाफ़े पर टिकी उत्पादन की व्यवस्था है, अतः यदि धरती को बचाना है तो पूँजीवाद को एक गहरी क़ब्र में दफन करना होगा; तो उनका श्रम कुछ सार्थक भी होता।

पर्यावरण विनाश पर पूँजीवाद-साम्राज्यवाद के कुकर्म कटघरे में न आयें, इसके लिए देशी-विदेशी पूँजीपतियों की एजेंंसियों और ट्रस्टों से वित्त-पोषित एन.जी.ओ. पृथ्वी दिवस खूब ज़ोर-शोर से मनाते हैं। वे पर्यावरण विनाश के लिए जंगलों के कटने, प्रकृति के अनियंत्रित दोहन, रसायनों पर निर्भर खेती, जीवाश्म ईंधन के इस्तेमाल और फिजूलखर्च उपभोक्ता-संस्कृति आदि की खूब बातें करते हैं, पर यह कत्तई नहीं बताते कि इसके लिए पूँजीपतियों की मुनाफ़ाखोरी और पूँजीवादी व्यवस्था ज़िम्मेदार है।

पूँजीपतियों की “दानशीलता” के भरोसे चलने वाले कुलीन भिखमंगों की ये संस्थाएँ भला ऐसा कर भी कैसे सकती हैं? “पर्यावरण-सुधारवाद” का खोमचा सजाये ये लोग दरअसल पूँजीवादी विभ्रम को ही माल के रूप में बेचते हैं। ये पूँजीवादी व्यवस्था की सुरक्षा-पंक्ति, धोखे की टट्टी और स्पीड-ब्रेकर का काम करते हैं। यह एन.जी.ओ. ब्रांड प्रगतिशीलता बिना मेहनताना दिये पूँजीवाद की गन्दगी जनता से साफ करवाती है।

पर्यावरण का सवाल सामाजिक-आर्थिक व्यवस्था से जुड़ा हुआ है। पूँजीवादी मुनाफ़े की अंधी हवस और होड़ उत्पादक मनुष्य के साथ ही प्रकृति को भी निचोड़ रही है। धरती के पर्यावरण को बचाना है तो पूँजीवाद को दफनाना होगा। पूँजीवादी समाज में जनता को यदि व्यवस्था-सजग बनाए बिना “पर्यावरण-सजग” बनाया जाएगा तो होगा यह कि पूँजीवाद द्वारा चारो ओर भर दी गयी गन्दगी को जनता पर्यावरण बचने की चिंता से सराबोर होकर थोड़ा-बहुत साफ़ करती रहेगी, ताकि पूँजीवाद उसे फिर गंदा कर सके। यानि “पर्यावरण-सुधारवाद” से प्रेरित लोग पूँजीवाद को थोडा और ‘ब्रीडिंग स्पेस’ और ‘ब्रीदिंग स्पेस’ मुहैया कराने से अधिक कुछ भी नहीं करते। इसीलिये साम्राज्यवादियों और देशी पूँजीपतियों द्वारा वित्त-पोषित एन.जी.ओ. नेटवर्क पर्यावरण को लेकर ‘पृथ्वी दिवस’ पर इतना चिंतित हो जाता है।

साभार: मज़दूर बिगुल

The post पूँजीवाद को तबाह नहीं किया तो पूँजीवाद पृथ्वी को तबाह कर देगा ! appeared first on Awaam India.

The world is obsessed with fad diets and weight loss, yet few of us know how a kilogram of fat actually vanishes off the scales.

Even the 150 doctors, dietitians and personal trainers we surveyed shared this surprising gap in their health literacy. The most common misconception by far, was that fat is converted to energy. The problem with this theory is that it violates the law of conservation of matter, which all chemical reactions obey.

Some respondents thought fat turns into muscle, which is impossible, and others assumed it escapes via the colon. Only three of our respondents gave the right answer, which means 98% of the health professionals in our survey could not explain how weight loss works.

So if not energy, muscles or the loo, where does fat go?

Read more:
Food v exercise: What makes the biggest difference in weight loss?

The enlightening facts about fat metabolism

The correct answer is that fat is converted to carbon dioxide and water. You exhale the carbon dioxide and the water mixes into your circulation until it’s lost as urine or sweat.

If you lose 10kg of fat, precisely 8.4kg comes out through your lungs and the remaining 1.6kg turns into water. In other words, nearly all the weight we lose is exhaled.

This surprises just about everyone, but actually, almost everything we eat comes back out via the lungs. Every carbohydrate you digest and nearly all the fats are converted to carbon dioxide and water. The same goes for alcohol.

Protein shares the same fate, except for the small part that turns into urea and other solids, which you excrete as urine.

The only thing in food that makes it to your colon undigested and intact is dietary fibre (think corn). Everything else you swallow is absorbed into your bloodstream and organs and, after that, it’s not going anywhere until you’ve vaporised it.

Kilograms in versus kilograms out

We all learn that “energy in equals energy out” in high school. But energy is a notoriously confusing concept, even among health professionals and scientists who study obesity.

The reason we gain or lose weight is much less mysterious if we keep track of all the kilograms, too, not just those enigmatic kilojoules or calories.

According to the latest government figures, Australians consume 3.5kg of food and beverages every day. Of that, 415 grams is solid macronutrients, 23 grams is fibre and the remaining 3kg is water.

What’s not reported is that we inhale more than 600 grams worth of oxygen, too, and this figure is equally important for your waistline.

Read more:
Why we regain weight after drastic dieting

If you put 3.5kg of food and water into your body, plus 600 grams of oxygen, then 4.1kg of stuff needs to come back out, or you’ll gain weight. If you’re hoping to shed some weight, more than 4.1kg will have to go. So how do you make this happen?

The 415 grams of carbohydrates, fats, protein and alcohol most Australians eat every day will produce exactly 740 grams of carbon dioxide plus 280 grams of water (about one cup) and about 35 grams of urea and other solids excreted as urine.

An average 75kg person’s resting metabolic rate (the rate at which the body uses energy when the person isn’t moving) produces about 590 grams of carbon dioxide per day. No pill or potion you can buy will increase that figure, despite the bold claims you might have heard.

Read more:
Five supplements that claim to speed up weight loss – and what the science says

The good news is that you exhale 200 grams of carbon dioxide while you’re fast asleep every night, so you’ve already breathed out a quarter of your daily target before you even step out of bed.

Eat less, exhale more

So if fat turns into carbon dioxide, could simply breathing more make you lose weight? Unfortunately not. Huffing and puffing more than you need to is called hyperventilation and will only make you dizzy, or possibly faint. The only way you can consciously increase the amount of carbon dioxide your body is producing is by moving your muscles.

But here’s some more good news. Simply standing up and getting dressed more than doubles your metabolic rate. In other words, if you simply tried on all your outfits for 24 hours, you’d exhale more than 1,200 grams of carbon dioxide.

More realistically, going for a walk triples your metabolic rate, and so will cooking, vacuuming and sweeping.

Metabolising 100 grams of fat consumes 290 grams of oxygen and produces 280 grams of carbon dioxide plus 110 grams of water. The food you eat can’t change these figures.

Therefore, to lose 100 grams of fat, you have to exhale 280 grams of carbon dioxide on top of what you’ll produce by vaporising all your food, no matter what it is.

Any diet that supplies less “fuel” than you burn will do the trick, but with so many misconceptions about how weight loss works, few of us know why.

Ruben Meerman, Assistant scientist, UNSW and Andrew Brown, Professor and Head, School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, UNSW

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post When we lose weight, where does it go? appeared first on Awaam India.

This is an article from I’ve Always Wondered, a series where readers send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. Send your question to [email protected]

I’ve always wondered why our veins are blue, when blood is red? – Alexandra, 28, Melbourne

Blood is red, and a surgeon will tell you our veins too are red, they only look blue when we see them through our skin. But why?

The answer depends on a number of things, including how your eyes perceive colour, how light behaves when it contacts your body, and the special properties of blood.

Light travels in peaks and troughs. And the distance between each trough is called a wavelength. Different colours of light have waves of different lengths. Red light has a long wavelength (about 700 nanometres), violet light has a short wavelength (about 400 nanometres), and the rest of the spectrum is spread out in between.

via GIPHY

We see something as a particular colour when light of that colour hits our eyes –either directly from a light source or reflected from a surface.

To understand what colour our veins appear, we need to think about what happens to different wavelengths of light when they hit our skin, how far they can travel through our skin, and what happens when they get to our veins.

Read more:
Curious Kids: Why are rainbows round?

The light that hits our skin during the day is basically white, which is a mixture of all the visible wavelengths. But to explain why our veins look blue, we will look at just the red and blue ends of the spectrum.

Red light has a long wavelength – and this means it is less likely to be deflected by materials and can more easily travel through. Red light can travel pretty well through the skin and body tissues, reaching up to 5-10mm below the skin, which is where many veins are.

When it gets to the veins, the red light is absorbed by the haemoglobin (the protein that makes our blood red). You can demonstrate this to yourself. If you shine a red light on your arm, you will see some red light reflected back, and dark lines where the veins are, as the red light is absorbed by the haemoglobin.

Read more:
Explainer: what’s actually in our blood?

Red light makes our veins appear as dark lines.

This phenomenon is actually used to help medical personnel find veins to take blood – by shining red, and sometimes infrared (which is an even longer wavelength) light on the arm.

Blue light has a short wavelength (about 475 nanometres), and is scattered or deflected much more easily than red light. Because it’s easily scattered it doesn’t penetrate so far into the skin (only a fraction of a millimetre). When blue light hits the skin, it’s mostly deflected back.

If you shine a blue light on your skin, what you see is basically blue skin, and veins are hard to find. You may have seen blue light used in spaces such as public bathrooms to discourage intravenous drug use.

So, now imagine the red light and the blue light shining on your skin at once, as happens when you are under white light. You will have a mixture of red, blue and other colours reflected back where there are no veins. Where there are veins, you will see relatively less red, and relatively more blue compared to the surrounding skin.

This means your veins will appear blue compared to the rest of your skin.

Interestingly, the effect varies depending on how deep the vein is, and also on how thick the vein is. Very narrow veins close to the surface, such as the capillary bed, will not appear blue.

Blue veins appear more prominent in very pale skinned people, and this may have given rise to the expression “blue blood” for European nobility in the 19th century. These people were untanned from manual labour, and so their veins appeared blue under the skin.

With thanks to Science Writer at the Australian Red Cross Blood Service Alison Gould.

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David Irving, is Adjunct Professor at University of Technology Sydney

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

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Mountains. Whales. The distant stars. All these things exist in space, and so do we. Our bodies take up a certain amount of space. When we walk to work, we are moving through space. But what is space? Is it even an actual, physical entity? In 1717, a battle was waged over this question. Exactly 300 years later, it continues.

You might think physicists have “solved” the problem of space. The likes of mathematician Hermann Minkowski and physicist Albert Einstein taught us to conceive space and time as a unified continuum, helping us to understand how very large and very little things such as individual atoms move. Nonetheless, we haven’t solved the question of what space is. If you sucked all the matter out of the universe, would space be left behind?

Twenty-first century physics is arguably compatible with two very different accounts of space: “relationism” and “absolutism”. Both these views owe their popularity to Caroline of Ansbach (1683-1737), a German-born Queen of Great Britain, who stuck her oar into the philosophical currents swirling around her.

Caroline was a keen philosopher, and in the early 18th century she schemed to pit the leading philosophies of her period against each other. On the continent, philosophers were stuck in “rationalism”, spinning world theories from armchairs. Meanwhile, British philosophers were developing science-inspired “empiricism” – theories built on observations. They were worshipping scientists such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton.

Caroline asked two philosophers to exchange letters. One was the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, rationalist par excellence. The other was the English philosopher Samuel Clarke, a close friend of Newton. The two men agreed, and their exchange was published in 1717 as A Collection of Papers. The dull title doesn’t sound like much, but these papers were revolutionary. And one of their central issues was the nature of space.

Everything or nothing?

Is there space between the stars? The relationist Leibniz argued that space is the spatial relations between things. Australia is “south of” Singapore. The tree is “three meters left of” the bush. Sean Spicer is “behind” the bush. That means space would not exist independently of the things it connects. For Leibniz, if nothing existed, there couldn’t be any spatial relations. If our universe were destroyed, space would not exist.

In contrast, the absolutist Clarke argued that space is a sort of substance that is everywhere. Space is a giant container, containing all the things in the universe: stars, planets, us. Space allows us to make sense of how things move from one place to another, of how our entire material universe could move through space. What’s more, Clarke argued that space is divine: space is God’s presence in the world. In a way, space is God. For Clarke, if our universe were destroyed, space would be left behind. Just as you can’t delete God, you can’t delete space.

The Leibniz-Clarke letters exploded early 18th century thought. Thinkers like Newton, who were already involved in the debate, were dragged deeper in. Newton argued that space was more than the relations between material objects. He argued it was an absolute entity, that everything moves in relation to it. This led to the distinction between “relative” and “absolute” motion. The Earth moves relative to other material things, such as the sun, but it also moves absolutely – with regard to space.

Others joined the party later, like Immanuel Kant. He believed space is just a concept humans use to make sense of the world, rather than a real entity. It wasn’t just philosophers and physicists who had views on space either. All sorts of people had their say, from stocking makers to tenant farmers. One especially unlikely discussion of space turns up in Thomas Amory’s 1755 Memoirs: Containing the Lives of Several Ladies of Great Britain.

The problem with God

People were especially edgy about Clarke’s view that space is God. Does that mean we’re moving through God all the time? God doesn’t just see everything, he is everywhere? They also became worried about Big Things. As a whale takes up more space than a holy man, is a whale holier? As mountains are so large, are they like God?

The 20th century philosopher Bertrand Russell once argued we shouldn’t worship mere size. “Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less than the larger beast,” he wrote. Some 18th century thinkers would have disagreed – they were worried they should be worshipping a hippopotamus over Newton.

Today, the concept of God is disappearing from the debate. Yet some contemporary philosophers, such as Tim Maudlin and Graham Nerlich think that current theories in physics do support Clarke’s view (minus the religious parts). Spacetime is one big container, and all of us move around in it.

Other philosophers, such as Kenneth Manders and Julian Barbour, think our best physics is compatible with both views, and there are other reasons to believe Leibniz’s theory was right. If the physics really is compatible with absolutism or relationism, then perhaps we should prefer relationism as the simpler theory? After all, why posit a giant entity that acts like a container if we don’t have to?

As a historian of space and time, I’m fascinated by how the debate has evolved, how something that started 300 years ago has unfurled and grown. Clearly, though the Leibniz-Clarke papers are not well known outside of philosophy, the debate they started continues. Caroline of Ansbach has a lot to answer for.

Emily Thomas, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Durham University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Despite some of the strictest tobacco control policies in the world, recent data shows the decline in smoking in Australia has stalled.

“First-line” quitting strategies available in Australia such as nicotine patches offer around a 7% success rate (or 93% failure rate, depending on how you look at it). This will not achieve our 9% smoking target by 2020, given that we are at about 14% now.

With current approaches and policies adopted in Australia having arguably lost their edge, and with more controversial approaches such as e-cigarettes caught up in political quicksand, let’s invest in the strategies that do work.

One evidence-based approach that has not received much attention in Australia is using financial incentives. Incentives programs reward quitters for not smoking by giving them a monetary voucher. The quitter’s abstinence is verified using biochemical tests of either their saliva, urine or breath.

What’s the evidence for financial incentives?

Financial incentive programs are one of the most effective and cost effective strategies for getting people to quit. They are considered the most effective strategy for pregnant smokers. They are also cost effective, with the calculated net benefit (after taking into account of the incentives used) being around A$4,300 per smoker, per attempt to quit. There have been a number of studies showing their benefits.

Using a multinational company as a test site, a team of US researchers found people who were offered US$750 (A$938) to quit smoking were three times more successful than those who were not given any incentives. Even six months after the vouchers had stopped, previously incentivised quitters were 2.6 (21.9% vs 11.8%) times more likely to still be smoke-free compared to non-incentivised quitters.

A team of UK researchers randomised over 300 pregnant women to receive up to £400 (A$661) worth of shopping vouchers if they quit during the pregnancy. Again, women in the incentives group were 2.6 (22.5% vs 8.6%) times more likely to have stopped smoking at the end of pregnancy, compared to the women who had received counselling and nicotine replacement therapy.

A Swiss program, offering low-income smokers up to US$1,650 (A$2,063) worth of quit-contingent vouchers staggered over six months, found smokers were 1.6 (18.2% vs 11.4%) times more likely to be smoke-free at 18 months compared to non-incentivised smokers.

In Australia, there are approximately 2.6 million adult daily smokers, who have been estimated to cost the government A$31.5 billion in social, health and economic costs each year. That’s about A$12,000 per smoker, which is much more than incentive programs offer.

Why does it work?

Quitting is hard – ask any smoker. Not only are the benefits, like other health behaviour changes, not immediate, but quitting smoking requires the smoker to go through a nasty period of withdrawal, while knowing the withdrawal symptoms could be immediately relieved by smoking.

Unlike other quit smoking programs using one or a combination of strategies (counselling, nicotine replacement therapy), incentives-based programs give the quitter the autonomy to choose the quit strategy that best suits them, and simply rewards them for their success. Importantly, incentives programs provide instant positive rewards for quitting.

This phenomenon is described by behavioural economics as “temporal discounting”; a process explaining how humans have a preferential bias towards immediate reinforcement over delayed reinforcement, even if the delayed rewards are more valuable. Incentives therefore motivate quitters to stay on track in those difficult first few weeks of quitting smoking.

So why don’t we do it?

A common criticism of this type of intervention is that the targeted behaviour change is only maintained while the incentive is in place. Not only have incentives programs demonstrated long-term (one to two years) effectiveness superior to other treatment options, but even short-term behaviour change has important health implications.

Others are concerned people will “game” the program (say they’ve stopped smoking when they haven’t, or abstain from smoking just before verification). But research suggests this occurs in less than 5% of cases. After all, the majority of smokers actually want to quit.

Coersion and the ethical conundrum of free choice has been raised as an issue, with the concern that people will feel forced to sign up as they’ll be financially better off. But with a packet of cigarettes costing on average A$25 in Australia, the financial advantage of quitting seems to far outweigh the token financial incentive offered by such programs.

Finally, people have voiced their disapproval of a program that seemingly “rewards people for their bad behaviour”. Given the government subsidises medication to treat lifestyle-causing chronic conditions; it could be argued that this is much the same thing.

Tobacco control should not be about blaming and shaming people for a decision they made years ago that’s resulted in a life-threatening habit. It’s about reducing the devastating health and economic impact of tobacco smoking by adopting strategies that are proven to be safe and effective.

Mai Frandsen is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Tasmania Australia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Mark Anthony in Shakespeare’s Cleopatra may have referred to “the tears that live in the onion”. But why do onions actually make us cry? And why do only some onions make us blub in this way when others, including related “allium” plants such as garlic, barely ever draw a tear when chopped?

When any vegetable is damaged, its cells are ripped open. The plant often then tries to defend itself by releasing bitter-tasting chemicals called polyphenols that can be off-putting to hungry animals trying to eat it. But an onion’s defence mechanism goes further, producing an even more irritating chemical, propanthial s-oxide, meant to stop the plant being consumed by pests.

This volatile chemical is what’s known as a lachrymatory factor. Its volatility means that, once it’s released, it quickly evaporates and finds its way into our eyes. There it dissolves in the water covering the surface of our eyes to form sulphenic acid. This irritates the lacrimal gland also known as the tear gland, hence the rather grand name of lachrymatory factor. Because the amount of acid produced is so small, its effect is only irritating and not harmful.

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The release of propanthial s-oxide was originally thought to be down to one enzyme in the onion known as allicinase, a biological catalyst that speeds up the production of the eye-irritating compound. But some research has suggested two enzymes could be needed to produces these eye-watering effects.

This more complex explanation starts with the sulphur the onion absorbs from the ground and holds in a compound called PRENCSO 1 (1-propenyl-L-cysteine sulphoxide). When the onion is damaged it releases the allicinase, which reacts with the PRENCSO to produce ammonia and another chemical called 1-propenylsulphenic acid. The second enzyme, known as a lachrymatory-factor synthase, then turns this into the troublesome propanthial s-oxide.

So why do some onions have more of an eye-stinging effect than others? There is lots of debate about this. One plausible explanation is that it’s related to the amount of sulphur the onion has absorbed from the ground, which can depend on the soil and the growing conditions. Higher levels of sulphur in the soil help boost both the yield and pungency of onions.

Certainly sweeter onions tend to have less of the sulphur-containing compounds that eventually produce the propanthial s-oxide. But it’s also possible that no two onions from the same bag will have the same effect, so cutting into the vegetable may be the only way to know if it will make you cry.

However, we have a better idea why onion’s cousin garlic doesn’t have the same effect. It contains a slightly different compound called alliin or PRENCSO 2, which doesn’t breakdown further into eye-stinging chemicals. Instead it produces allicin, which has been linked to many of garlic’s health benefits.

Stop the tears

One solution to the crying problem may be to re-engineer the humble onion by selective breeding or genetic modification to suppress the lachrymatory-factor synthase enzyme. This might also have the added benefit of improving how onions taste as less propanthial S-oxide would mean more thiosulphinate, the compound associated with the flavour of fresh onions.

There are also a number of lower-tech solutions that have been suggested to solve the onion-chopping problem. As the reaction involves enzymes, the rate of reaction and amount of irritating chemicals produced can be cut by either damaging the enzymes or slowing them down.

In theory, blanching the onions (scalding them with boiling water then plunging them into freezing cold water) will denature the enzymes involved and so prevent the reaction from happening. This method is used when freezing many vegetables but it may not be practical to boil your onions before chopping them.

Slowing the reaction can be achieved by by putting your onions in the fridge or freezer before chopping. But it’s best not to store onions in a fridge in the long term as they become soggy and soft and lose their flavour, as well as making an unpleasant smell. It is best to keep your onions in a cool dark place with air flow that is not as humid as the fridge.

Other approaches involve drawing the volatile chemicals away from you as you are chopping the onion. This could be done by using a cooker hood or running water, stopping the compounds making their way to your eyes. You can even buy goggles to stop the irritant reaching your eyes. But the ability of evaporated propanthial s-oxide to reach our eyes regardless means that even then you should be prepared to weep as you slice.

Duane Mellor, Senior Lecturer, Coventry University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Not only has secularism failed to continue its steady global march but countries as varied as Iran, India, Israel, Algeria and Turkey have either had their secular governments replaced by religious ones, or have seen the rise of influential religious nationalist movements. Secularisation, as predicted by the social sciences, has failed.

To be sure, this failure is not unqualified. Many Western countries continue to witness decline in religious belief and practice. The most recent census data released in Australia, for example, shows that 30 per cent of the population identify as having ‘no religion’, and that this percentage is increasing. International surveys confirm comparatively low levels of religious commitment in western Europe and Australasia. Even the United States, a long-time source of embarrassment for the secularisation thesis, has seen a rise in unbelief. The percentage of atheists in the US now sits at an all-time high (if ‘high’ is the right word) of around 3 per cent. Yet, for all that, globally, the total number of people who consider themselves to be religious remains high, and demographic trends suggest that the overall pattern for the immediate future will be one of religious growth. But this isn’t the only failure of the secularisation thesis.

Scientists, intellectuals and social scientists expected that the spread of modern science would drive secularisation – that science would be a secularising force. But that simply hasn’t been the case. If we look at those societies where religion remains vibrant, their key common features are less to do with science, and more to do with feelings of existential security and protection from some of the basic uncertainties of life in the form of public goods. A social safety net might be correlated with scientific advances but only loosely, and again the case of the US is instructive. The US is arguably the most scientifically and technologically advanced society in the world, and yet at the same time the most religious of Western societies. As the British sociologist David Martin concluded in The Future of Christianity (2011): ‘There is no consistent relation between the degree of scientific advance and a reduced profile of religious influence, belief and practice.’

The story of science and secularisation becomes even more intriguing when we consider those societies that have witnessed significant reactions against secularist agendas. India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru championed secular and scientific ideals, and enlisted scientific education in the project of modernisation. Nehru was confident that Hindu visions of a Vedic past and Muslim dreams of an Islamic theocracy would both succumb to the inexorable historical march of secularisation. ‘There is only one-way traffic in Time,’ he declared. But as the subsequent rise of Hindu and Islamic fundamentalism adequately attests, Nehru was wrong. Moreover, the association of science with a secularising agenda has backfired, with science becoming a collateral casualty of resistance to secularism.

Turkey provides an even more revealing case. Like most pioneering nationalists, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish republic, was a committed secularist. Atatürk believed that science was destined to displace religion. In order to make sure that Turkey was on the right side of history, he gave science, in particular evolutionary biology, a central place in the state education system of the fledgling Turkish republic. As a result, evolution came to be associated with Atatürk’s entire political programme, including secularism. Islamist parties in Turkey, seeking to counter the secularist ideals of the nation’s founders, have also attacked the teaching of evolution. For them, evolution is associated with secular materialism. This sentiment culminated in the decision this June to remove the teaching of evolution from the high-school classroom. Again, science has become a victim of guilt by association.

The US represents a different cultural context, where it might seem that the key issue is a conflict between literal readings of Genesis and key features of evolutionary history. But in fact, much of the creationist discourse centres on moral values. In the US case too, we see anti-evolutionism motivated at least in part by the assumption that evolutionary theory is a stalking horse for secular materialism and its attendant moral commitments. As in India and Turkey, secularism is actually hurting science.

In brief, global secularisation is not inevitable and, when it does happen, it is not caused by science. Further, when the attempt is made to use science to advance secularism, the results can damage science. The thesis that ‘science causes secularisation’ simply fails the empirical test, and enlisting science as an instrument of secularisation turns out to be poor strategy. The science and secularism pairing is so awkward that it raises the question: why did anyone think otherwise?

Historically, two related sources advanced the idea that science would displace religion. First, 19th-century progressivist conceptions of history, particularly associated with the French philosopher Auguste Comte, held to a theory of history in which societies pass through three stages – religious, metaphysical and scientific (or ‘positive’). Comte coined the term ‘sociology’ and he wanted to diminish the social influence of religion and replace it with a new science of society. Comte’s influence extended to the ‘young Turks’ and Atatürk.

The 19th century also witnessed the inception of the ‘conflict model’ of science and religion. This was the view that history can be understood in terms of a ‘conflict between two epochs in the evolution of human thought – the theological and the scientific’. This description comes from Andrew Dickson White’s influential A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), the title of which nicely encapsulates its author’s general theory. White’s work, as well as John William Draper’s earlier History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874), firmly established the conflict thesis as the default way of thinking about the historical relations between science and religion. Both works were translated into multiple languages. Draper’s History went through more than 50 printings in the US alone, was translated into 20 languages and, notably, became a bestseller in the late Ottoman empire, where it informed Atatürk’s understanding that progress meant science superseding religion.

Today, people are less confident that history moves through a series of set stages toward a single destination. Nor, despite its popular persistence, do most historians of science support the idea of an enduring conflict between science and religion. Renowned collisions, such as the Galileo affair, turned on politics and personalities, not just science and religion. Darwin had significant religious supporters and scientific detractors, as well as vice versa. Many other alleged instances of science-religion conflict have now been exposed as pure inventions. In fact, contrary to conflict, the historical norm has more often been one of mutual support between science and religion. In its formative years in the 17th century, modern science relied on religious legitimation. During the 18th and 19th centuries, natural theology helped to popularise science.

The conflict model of science and religion offered a mistaken view of the past and, when combined with expectations of secularisation, led to a flawed vision of the future. Secularisation theory failed at both description and prediction. The real question is why we continue to encounter proponents of science-religion conflict. Many are prominent scientists. It would be superfluous to rehearse Richard Dawkins’s musings on this topic, but he is by no means a solitary voice. Stephen Hawking thinks that ‘science will win because it works’; Sam Harris has declared that ‘science must destroy religion’; Stephen Weinberg thinks that science has weakened religious certitude; Colin Blakemore predicts that science will eventually make religion unnecessary. Historical evidence simply does not support such contentions. Indeed, it suggests that they are misguided.

So why do they persist? The answers are political. Leaving aside any lingering fondness for quaint 19th-century understandings of history, we must look to the fear of Islamic fundamentalism, exasperation with creationism, an aversion to alliances between the religious Right and climate-change denial, and worries about the erosion of scientific authority. While we might be sympathetic to these concerns, there is no disguising the fact that they arise out of an unhelpful intrusion of normative commitments into the discussion. Wishful thinking – hoping that science will vanquish religion – is no substitute for a sober assessment of present realities. Continuing with this advocacy is likely to have an effect opposite to that intended.

Religion is not going away any time soon, and science will not destroy it. If anything, it is science that is subject to increasing threats to its authority and social legitimacy. Given this, science needs all the friends it can get. Its advocates would be well advised to stop fabricating an enemy out of religion, or insisting that the only path to a secure future lies in a marriage of science and secularism.

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

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