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Optimists suggest that modern biology and the challenges it presents are a match for the explosion of ideas of the Renaissance or Europe’s enlightenment. So, the organisers of a symposium on the life sciences, have staged an ideas fest to show off the intellectual riches in life sciences. Here are scientists, playwrights and essayists on progress, the curse of reductionism, ethics and democracy’s dilemma. Modern Biology & Visions of Humanity (Multi-Science, £20).