麻豆传媒

HOLDEN: I have a deep fear of reductionism and the idea that we can improve on nature with technical fixes without knowing the consequences. We are part of nature, and with that relationship should go respect, humility, and above all responsibility. In the past we鈥檝e waited for evidence of harm before we鈥檝e acted. That is no longer good enough, and the BSE experience should teach us that. In making decisions we need to take into account the role of intuition, emotional influences, even spiritual influences鈥攖hings we might not yet understand.

MANNING: I鈥檝e ended up with an absolutist position that everything is natural. In the opening sequence of his film 2001, Stanley Kubrick shows an ape-man using a club, and then in the next scene cuts to a space shuttle landing on an Earth orbiter on its way to the Moon. Kubrick is saying that once you have the tools, the rest is inevitable. Human beings are one end point in the process of natural selection. An AK47 rifle, a Pentium processor, a Mozart piano concerto鈥攖hese are all natural. I don鈥檛 think you can draw the line. Of course, when it comes to interacting with and managing an environment, once you start you generally have to keep on doing it, otherwise you find it runs into trouble. But it would be good for us to unmanage if we can. I鈥檇 like us to withdraw from large areas of the world. The best thing that could happen to our species is if our numbers declined to a fifth of what they are now.

DAWKINS: Popular views of nature often regard it as benign and self-preserving until man comes along with his unnatural greed and ruins it. But this disagreeable quality of ours is not new, is not peculiar to us, and is very natural. This doesn鈥檛 make it good. On the contrary, it鈥檚 something to be fought against. All animals look after their short-term interests. Homo sapiens is the only species that can rebel against the otherwise universally selfish Darwinian impulse. We are Earth鈥檚 last best hope. Our brains follow their own rules, which can rise above the rules of natural selection. I am a passionate Darwinian in that it is the main ingredient in our understanding of life. Yet I am a passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to human social and political affairs.

LEAVER: I believe that GM technology has a place in addressing some of our major challenges. Since 1960 the world鈥檚 population has gone from 3 billion to 6 billion. In the next 60 years it will increase to 9 billion. We鈥檙e going to have to double our food productivity on the same amount of land. Plant breeding has been incredibly successful. What right have we to deny people the opportunity to evaluate a technology that could make a difference. Reverting back to a mythical rural idyll is not the answer.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Why is biodiversity important?

LEAVER: Partly because nature is a beautiful place that we all enjoy living in. But I believe biotechnology will increase biodiversity, because instead of breeding down to one completely monogenous genome, you can introduce new genes.

HOLDEN: From the organic perspective, biodiversity is the key to making things work. Chris is saying we can splice genes and create biodiversity that way, but for me that isn鈥檛 going to work. We need to rethink how varieties are related to place, and that means learning from nature.

DAWKINS: I value biodiversity at the very least on aesthetic grounds. I love living in a world that is the result of a very long period of co-evolution of different species. Humans have done some very wrong things in dispersing species before realising how important it is to respect biogeographic boundaries. When the Duke of Bedford introduced grey squirrels to Britain he didn鈥檛 realise what the consequences would be. There could be an analogy with biotechnology here. When we introduce genes from one phylum into another鈥攁 fish gene into a tomato, for example鈥攚e might be doing something rather similar. I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 a reason for not doing it, but I think it鈥檚 a reason for being very cautious.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Richard鈥檚 suggestion that our brain allows us to somehow rise above the rest of nature seems just another way of reinventing the soul. It sets us apart from nature and makes us able to exploit it. Yet Aubrey, who believes everything is a part of nature, was nodding in agreement with him. Are we a part of nature or aren鈥檛 we?

DAWKINS: It鈥檚 not an absolute distinction. There is a quantitative continuum, but out of this come qualitative distinctions. We have language, for example. I wouldn鈥檛 deny the possibility that there might be other species that could rise above nature, but I don鈥檛 think that even the great majority of humans rise above it. I didn鈥檛 say that humans did rise above it, I said that humans are our last best hope of doing so.

MANNING: The tragedy of the present imbalance between human numbers and the demand for resources is that so often human beings are put in direct conflict with the rest of the natural world. Unless we can achieve a balance again, we鈥檙e not going to get anywhere. We are unique in the sense that we have that ability to be responsible. That doesn鈥檛 make us unnatural.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Patrick Holden and Aubrey Manning seem to be saying that any human intervention is bound to be destructive. What鈥檚 happened to the positive view of humanity?

MANNING: I like human beings. I hope we have a future. An organisation I belong to has as its slogan, 鈥淢ore humanity with less humans鈥�. The increase in human numbers has made it more difficult for us to lead a rich and varied existence. I see a conflict between quantity and quality. I don鈥檛 see it denigrating to suggest people should limit the number of children they have. That鈥檚 not anti-human, it鈥檚 pro-human.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Surely what is important is not the debate over what is natural, but over what in nature is good and sustainable and what is bad?

HOLDEN: This reminds me of E. F. Schumacher, who said that people speak of abattle with nature but that if we win that battle we will end up being on the losing side. I think of nature as a teacher. The agriculturalist Sir Albert Howard said we should come to regard pests, parasites and diseases as nature鈥檚 professors because they reveal to us the consequences of bad management.