A Many-Colored Glass

Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe

Freeman J. Dyson

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780813931432
• Topic: Sciences biologiques
• Subtopic: Dissertations sur la science

Freeman Dyson's latest book does not attempt to bring together all of the celebrated physicist's thoughts on science and technology into a unified theory. The emphasis is, instead, on the myriad ways in which the universe presents itself to us--and how, as observers and participants in its processes, we respond to it. "Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, " wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley, "stains the white radiance of eternity." The author seeks here to explore the variety that gives life its beauty.

Taken from Dyson's recent public lectures--delivered to audiences with no specialized knowledge in hard sciences--the book begins with a consideration of the practical and political questions surrounding biotechnology. As he seeks how best to explain the place of life in the universe, Dyson then moves from the ethical to the purely scientific. The book concludes with an attempt to understand the implications of biology for philosophy and religion.

The pieces in this collection touch on numerous disciplines, from astronomy and ecology to neurology and theology, speaking to the lay reader as well as to the scientist. As always, Dyson's view of human nature and behavior is balanced, and his predictions of a world to come serve primarily as a means for thinking about the world as it is today.

1

The Future of Biotechnology

HEDGEHOGS AND FOXES

Scientists come in two varieties, hedgehogs and foxes. I borrow this terminology from Isaiah Berlin (1953), who borrowed it from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus. Archilochus told us that foxes know many tricks, hedgehogs only one. Foxes are broad, hedgehogs are deep. Foxes are interested in everything and move easily from one problem to another. Hedgehogs are only interested in a few problems that they consider fundamental, and stick with the same problems for years or decades. Most of the great discoveries are made by hedgehogs, most of the little discoveries by foxes. Science needs both hedgehogs and foxes for its healthy growth, hedgehogs to dig deep into the nature of things, foxes to explore the complicated details of our marvelous universe. Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble were hedgehogs. Charley Townes, who invented the laser, and Enrico Fermi, who built the first nuclear reactor in Chicago, were foxes. It often happens that foxes are as creative as hedgehogs. The laser was a big discovery made by a fox. The general public is misled by the media into believing that great scientists are all hedgehogs. Some periods in the history of science are good times for hedgehogs, other periods are good times for foxes. The beginning of the twentieth century was good for hedgehogs. The hedgehogs—Einstein and his followers in Europe, Hubble and his followers in America—dug deep and found new foundations for physics and astronomy. When Fermi and Townes came onto the scene in the middle of the century, the foundations were firm and the universe was wide open for foxes to explore. Most of the progress in physics and astronomy since the 1920s was made by foxes.

Another fox who played an important part in twentieth-century science was John von Neumann. Von Neumann was interested in almost everything and made important contributions to many fields. In the 1920s he found the first axiomatic formulation of set theory that was free of logical contradictions, an achievement that enabled his hedgehog friend Kurt Gödel to prove his famous theorem about the existence of undecidable propositions in arithmetic. Gödel continued to be a hedgehog and von Neumann continued to be a fox. After straightening out set theory, von Neumann invented game theory, found the first mathematically rigorous formulation of quantum mechanics, and studied the logical architecture of automatic machinery and human brains. Fifty years ago in Princeton, I watched him designing and building the first electronic computer that operated with instructions coded into the machine. He did not invent the electronic computer. The computer called ENIAC had been running at the University of Pennsylvania five years earlier. What von Neumann invented was software, the coded instructions that gave the computer agility and flexibility. It was the combination of electronic hardware with punch-card software that allowed a single machine to predict weather, to simulate the evolution of populations of living creatures, and to test the feasibility of hydrogen bombs.

I was lucky to be at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in the 1940s and ’50s when von Neumann’s computer project began. He invited lively young people from all over the world to start new fields of science that the computer would make possible. The biggest group were meteorologists, who started the science of climate modeling. Another group were mathematicians, who started what later became known as computer science. Another group were hydrogen bomb designers, who brought their codes secretly to run on the machine during the midnight shift. And there was Nils Barricelli, a lone biologist who ran codes simulating biological evolution. He started the science of artificial life forty years before it became fashionable. Von Neumann was interested in all these activities, but most of all in meteorology. He had grand ideas about meteorology. I remember him giving a talk about the future of meteorology. He said,

As soon as we are able to simulate the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere on a computer with adequate precision, we will be able to apply simple tests to decide whether the situation is stable or unstable. If the situation is stable, we can predict what will happen next. If the situation is unstable, we can apply a small perturbation to control what will happen next. The necessary perturbations can be applied by high-flying airplanes with smoke generators, warming the atmosphere where the smoke absorbs sunlight, and cooling the atmosphere in the shaded region underneath. So we shall be masters of the weather. Whatever we cannot control, we shall predict, and whatever we cannot predict, we shall control.

He estimated that it would take about ten years to develop a computer that would give us this kind of control over the weather.

Von Neumann, of course, was wrong. He was a great mathematician but a very poor predictor of the future. I have no illusion that I am a better predictor than he was. That is why in this chapter I am writing mostly about the past. The past is much easier to predict. Von Neumann was wrong because he did not know about chaos. He imagined that if a situation in the atmosphere was unstable, he could always apply a small perturbation to move it into a situation that was stable and therefore predictable. In fact this is not true. Most of the time, when the atmosphere is unstable, the motion is chaotic, which means that any small perturbation will only move it into another unstable situation which is equally unpredictable. When the motion is chaotic, it can be neither predicted nor controlled. So von Neumann’s dream was an illusion. But the fact that the equations of meteorology have chaotic solutions was only discovered by the meteorologist Edward Lorenz at MIT in 1961, four years after von Neumann died.

Von Neumann made another prediction that also turned out to be wrong. He predicted, rightly, that his invention of electronic computers with programmable software would change the world. He understood that the descendants of his machine would dominate the operations of science and business and government. But he imagined computers growing larger and more expensive as they grew more powerful. He imagined them as giant centralized facilities serving large research laboratories or large industries. According to legend, somebody in the government once asked him how many computers the United States would need in the future, and he replied, “Eighteen.” I do not know whether this legend has any foundation in fact. But it is certainly true that von Neumann had no inkling of the real future of computers. It never entered his head that computers would grow smaller and cheaper as they became faster and smarter. He never imagined computers becoming small enough and cheap enough to be used by housewives for doing income-tax returns and by children for doing homework. He failed totally to foresee the final domestication of computers as toys for three-year-olds. He failed to foresee the emergence of computer games as a dominant feature of twenty-first-century life. Because of computer games, our grandchildren are now growing up with an indelible addiction to computers. For better or for worse, in sickness or in health, till death do us part, humans and computers are now joined together more durably than husbands and wives.

Besides providing entertainment for our grandchildren, the domestication of computers has also provided the tools that make many small scientific enterprises possible. Cheap small computers have made it possible for small enterprises to make serious contributions to science and to compete successfully with big enterprises. Astronomers at a small observatory can discover an earthlike planet thousands of light-years away by measuring precisely the gravitational focusing by the planet of the light from a more distant star. Chemists working with apparatus on a tabletop can measure precisely the production of natural gas two hundred kilometers down in the mantle of the earth. Von Neumann’s original computer in Princeton had a total memory capacity of four kilobytes. Nowadays, a scientist running a small project can easily afford a database of four gigabytes, a million times larger than von Neumann’s memory and much cheaper. Big projects today have databases containing millions of gigabytes. Million-gigabyte memories are expensive and need staffs of experts to organize them efficiently. A little project that requires only a few gigabytes may have a competitive advantage. Foxes who organize small projects in their spare time can move ahead more rapidly than hedgehogs who devote their whole lives to big projects.

I am not predicting that the twenty-first century will be a golden age of foxes without any need for hedgehogs. I am saying that the history of science shows an alternation between times when hedgehogs are dominant and times when foxes are dominant. Hedgehogs were dominant in the seventeenth century, the age of Kepler and Newton. Foxes were dominant in the eighteenth century, the age of Euler and Franklin. Hedgehogs were dominant in the early twentieth century, the age of Einstein and Dirac. Foxes were dominant in the middle twentieth century, the age of Fermi and Townes. Maybe we are due now for another age of hedgehogs to shake up the foundations of science. Or maybe not. The future is unpredictable. In either case, whether or not hedgehogs return to cause a major scientific revolution, there will always be a need for foxes to carry on the normal business of science. In the coming century, no matter what the hedgehogs may be doing, the domestication of high technology will be giving new opportunities for foxes to achieve great results with limited means.

THE DOMESTICATION OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY

Not only computers but also other scientific instruments of high precision have been domesticated during the last twenty years. The most spectacular case of domesticated high technology is the GPS or Global Positioning System. Twenty years ago, the GPS was a secret military program with location data available to civilians only in degraded form. Now the data with full accuracy are available to everybody, providing accurate location of the receiver in space and time at a price that ordinary hikers and sailors can afford. Likewise, digital cameras providing instant images of high quality are now for sale in every camera shop and are rapidly making film cameras obsolete. Digital cameras have also caused a revolution in astronomy. At first, when digital cameras were still experimental and expensive, they were used only at large professional observatories. But now, since digital cameras have been domesticated, they are used routinely at small observatories and by amateur astronomers. Digital cameras, combined with data processing by personal computers, allow amateurs and students to make precise scientific observations of a kind that could formerly be done only by professional astronomers with large instruments. The domestication of high technology will make small projects more and more cost-effective as time goes on.

It has become part of the accepted wisdom to say that the twentieth century was the century of physics and the twenty-first century will be the century of biology. Two facts about the coming century are agreed on by almost everyone. Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries, and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century. Biology is also more important than physics, as measured by its economic consequences, by its ethical implications, or by its effects on human welfare. These facts raise an interesting question. Will the domestication of high technology, which we have seen marching from triumph to triumph with the advent of personal computers and GPS receivers and digital cameras, soon be extended from physical technology to biotechnology? I believe that the answer to this question is yes. Here I am bold enough to make a definite prediction. I predict that the domestication of biotechnology will dominate our lives during the next fifty years at least as much as the domestication of computers has dominated our lives during the previous fifty years.

I see a close analogy between von Neumann’s blinkered vision of computers as large centralized facilities and the public perception of genetic engineering today as an activity of large pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto. The public distrusts Monsanto because Monsanto likes to put genes for poisonous pesticides into food crops, just as we distrusted von Neumann because von Neumann liked to use his computer for designing hydrogen bombs secretly at midnight. It is likely that genetic engineering will remain unpopular and controversial so long as it remains a centralized activity in the hands of large corporations.

I see a bright future for the biotechnology industry when it follows the path of the computer industry, the path that von Neumann failed to foresee, becoming small and domesticated rather than big and centralized. The first step in this direction was already taken recently, when genetically modified tropical fish with new and brilliant colors appeared in pet stores. For biotechnology to become domesticated, the next step is to become user-friendly. I recently spent a happy day at the Philadelphia Flower Show, the biggest flower show in the world, where flower breeders from all over the world show off the results of their efforts. I have also visited the Reptile Show in San Diego, an equally impressive show displaying the work of another set of breeders. Philadelphia excels in orchids and roses, San Diego excels in lizards and snakes. The main problem for a grandparent visiting the reptile show with a grandchild is to get the grandchild out of the building without actually buying a snake. Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners who will use genetic engineering to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also kits for lovers of pigeons and parrots and lizards and snakes to breed new varieties of pets. Breeders of dogs and cats will have their kits too.

Domesticated biotechnology, once it gets into the hands of housewives and children, will give us an explosion of diversity of new living creatures, rather than the monoculture crops that the big corporations prefer. New lineages will proliferate to replace those that monoculture farming and deforestation have destroyed. Designing genomes will be a personal thing, a new art form as creative as painting or sculpture. Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but all will bring joy to their creators and variety to our fauna and flora. The final step in the domestication of biotechnology will be biotech games, designed like computer games for children down to kindergarten age but played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Playing such games, kids will acquire an intimate feeling for the organisms that they are growing. The winner could be the kid whose seed grows the prickliest cactus, or the kid whose egg hatches the cutest dinosaur. These games will be messy and possibly dangerous. Rules and regulations will be needed to make sure that our kids do not endanger themselves and others. The dangers of biotechnology are real and serious. I will discuss the dangers and possible remedies in the following chapter.

If domestication of biotechnology is the wave of the future, five important questions need to be answered. First, can it be stopped? Second, ought it to be stopped? Third, if stopping it is either impossible or undesirable, what are the appropriate limits that our society must impose on it? Fourth, how should the limits be decided? Fifth, how should the limits be enforced, nationally and internationally? I do not attempt to answer these questions here. I leave it to our children and grandchildren to supply the answers.

The actual shape of domesticated biotechnology is as impossible for us to discern today as the actual shape of a personal computer was impossible for von Neumann to discern in 1950. The best that I can do is to describe the functions of a do-it-yourself biotechnology kit. I cannot guess the shapes of the machines that will carry out the functions. The kit will have five chief functions. First, to grow plants under controlled conditions. This requires a garden or greenhouse with the usual tools and chemical supplies. Second, to grow animals under controlled conditions. This requires a stable for big animals or cages for small animals, with the usual supplies of food and medicaments. Third, simple and user-friendly instruments allowing unskilled people to manipulate seeds or eggs or embryos. Fourth, a tabletop genome sequencer able to sequence single molecules of DNA. DNA is the nucleic acid molecule that carries genetic information, and sequencing of the DNA in any creature means reading its genome. Fifth, a tabletop genome synthesizer able to synthesize substantial quantities of DNA with any desired sequence. The latter two instruments do not now exist, but they are likely to exist within ten or twenty years, since they will have great commercial value for pharmaceutical industries, and great practical value for medicine and scientific research.

What use will scientists make of these domesticated biotechnology kits when they become widespread? A good answer to this question was given by Herbert Kroemer of Santa Barbara, who won a Nobel Prize in the year 2000 for his invention of new kinds of semiconductor materials. He said in his Nobel lecture, “The principal applications of any sufficiently new and innovative technology always have been, and will continue to be, applications created by that technology” (in Cahn 2005). A great example illustrating the truth of this remark is the invention of the laser by Townes. Almost nothing that lasers now do was foreseen before they were invented. The applications of domesticated biotechnology will be at least as novel and diverse as the applications of laser technology. Domesticated biotechnology will begin with gardens and pets but will rapidly spread to infiltrate the operations of mines and factories, laboratories and supermarkets. Domesticated biotechnology will allow many objects of commerce and daily life, such as chairs and tables and houses and roads, to be grown rather than manufactured. When teenagers become as fluent in the language of genomes as they are fluent today in the language of blogs, they will be designing and growing all kinds of useful and useless works of art for fun and profit.

I do not venture to predict what new scientific revolutions will emerge from a mastery of biotechnology. One of the nightmares that I can imagine is that medical researchers will find a cure for death. After that, aged immortals will accumulate on this planet and there will be no room for the young. The normal replacement of each generation by the next will come to an end, and progress in science will stop. This is one way in which technology might put an end to science. A more hopeful outcome of biotechnology is the design and breeding of radically new microbes and plants and animals adapted to living wild in cold places such as Mars and the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. New ecologies adapted to low levels of sunlight could bring these alien worlds to life. Plants that grow their own greenhouses could generate breathable air and keep the surfaces of these worlds warm, so that they would become hospitable to human settlement. In this way, new generations of young scientists could keep science alive in remote places while preserving planet Earth as a retirement home for aged immortals.

OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE

Fortunately, young scientists are still flourishing here on planet Earth. I met a number of them recently at a meeting in Portland, Oregon. This informal and enjoyable meeting was called OSCON, short for Open Source Convention. It was a meeting organized by a group of people who call themselves the Geek Culture. Many of them are people who dropped out of college and started software companies. There were about a thousand geeks at the meeting, mostly young and adventurous and interested in other things besides getting rich. One of the people I got to know at the meeting was Brewster Kahle, the founder of an enterprise called Internet Archive. His aim is to put the literature of the world in all languages into digital memory and make it accessible to everybody. He has made a good start with three databases, one in San Francisco, one in Amsterdam, and one in Alexandria on the site of the ancient library. He intends to have two more databases in India and China. Each of his databases will hold a copy of the entire archive, so that the heritage of world literature will survive even if four of the five databases are poorly maintained or destroyed. The archive will be a hundred million books, or a few million gigabytes of data. With modern memory storage, the archive can be housed in a room of modest size and costs far less than a big conventional library.

Kahle and the OSCON crowd share a belief in open-source software. That means that their companies are based on software programs that are out in the open like UNIX and LINUX, free for anyone to copy and improve. They share an intense dislike for companies like Microsoft that keep their source code secret. They observe that Bill Gates’s proprietary software is full of bugs. Their open-source software has fewer bugs because all users are allowed and encouraged to debug it. The philosophy of Open Source is based on sharing. The way to achieve bug-free and user-friendly software is to share intelle...