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Rob Harle
Leonardo, Volume 37, Number 4, August 2004, pp. 347-348 (Article)
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tragic genetic flaw—cannot see dirt
until there is enough of it to support
agriculture” [2]. These extracts, from
both private and public media, taken
more or less seriously, can be seen to
implicate what Lancaster is most criti-
cal of—the idea of heteronormality as
the dominant sociocultural (and as-
sumed ancestral) environment.
Before getting Lancaster’s book in my
hands, I read an extensive approach to
human evolutionary psychology [3], in
which I was amazed to find research
questions such as “Why do women live
after menopause?” So, I agree with
Lancaster’s notion that evolutionary
psychology seems to reduce some of the
socio-cultural complexity into simplici-
ties. Women are genetically oriented to
social communication, household and
children, while men are for fighting,
football and other goal-directed aggres-
sions. All other social gender diversities
are recognized only in relation to these
evolutionary necessities.
Lancaster’s criticism is aware that the
ossified sexual identities embodied in
reproductive goals, combined with the
idea of unchanging human nature
drawing from imaginary ancestral life’s
form, are not the “trouble” of natural
reductionism only, but also appear as a
pitfall for lesbian, gay and bisexual
studies, queer theory and related forms
of critical culture studies. He reminds
us that if the alternative views are estab-
lished on the domain regulated by
these preconceptual premises, there
will be no real possibility for the flux of
radical changes.
According to Lancaster, the “natu-
ral” or “necessary,” or the point where
biology and culture meet, cannot be
determined by genetic algorithms
adapting to the environmental survival
game. Instead it confirms the biologi-
cal consequences of actual social
arrangement—the cultural plasticity
relating to sexuality, gender and the
family. From my point of view this is
not in direct conflict with the evolu-
tionary psychological view, which sug-
gests phenotypic plasticity. The
complexity of human behavior, based
on an organism’s ability to learn from
experience, derives from a wide range
of demographic, ecological and social
environments. Maybe all the “trouble”
is reflecting the need for a dialogue
concerning the emergence of novel
cross-disciplinary perspectives; such
dialogue may be even more necessary
if this “trouble” is about learning to be,
in Lancaster’s words, “as radical as
reality.”
References
1.
The citation refers to research by L.C. Klein et al.,
“Female Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not
Fight or Flight,”
Psychological Review
107,
No. 3,
411–429 (2000).
2.
D. Barry, “True Fact: Guys’ Brains Really Are Dif-
ferent,”
International Herald Tribune,
No. 37545, p. 22
(22–23 November 2003). Barry refers to the book by
M. Gurian,
What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man’s
Mind Really Works
(New York: St. Martin’s Press,
2003).
3.
L. Barrett, R. Dunbar and J. Lycett,
Human Evo-
lutionary Psychology
(New York: Palgrave Publishers
Ltd., 2002).
U
NDEAD
S
CIENCE
: S
CIENCE
S
TUDIES AND THE
A
FTERLIFE
OF
C
OLD
F
USION
by Bart Simon. Rutgers Univ. Press,
New Brunswick, NJ, 2002. 254 pp.
Paper. ISBN: 0-8135-3154-3.
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher,
Saginaw Valley State University, University
Center, MI 48710, U.S.A. E-mail:
<mosher@svsu.edu>.
Fusion energy production is promis-
ing—in 2003 the United States joined
the International Thermonuclear Ex-
perimental Reactor (ITER) project—
but has shown few tangible or
commercial results after decades of
research. I remember a family dinner
nearly 40 years ago, when our guest was
the rotund (nearly 400-lb) scientist
Keeve M. Siegel. Siegel announced to
his colleague, my late father, that he
was leaving the University of Michigan
engineering faculty to start a fusion
energy research company called KMS
Fusion. A decade later I read that
Siegel died in Washington, D.C., while
giving testimony on the importance of
fusion research to the U.S. Congress.
Siegel does not appear in
Undead
Science,
for the book flies over the de-
cades of “hot” fusion research around
the world to begin with the 1989 an-
nouncement by the University of
Utah’s Stanley B. Pons and Martin
Fleischmann of successful experiments
producing nuclear energy by “cold”
fusion. The results that the two collabo-
rators announced promised energy
obtained more easily and at lower tem-
peratures than required by previous
reactor processes. This book moves
beyond the individual case into a medi-
tation on the public reception of sci-
ence. Author Bart Simon explores how
a promising field can quickly be
branded by the scientific mainstream as
pseudoscience when irreproducible
(hence erroneous) results are
announced in public, which was Pons
and Fleischmann’s crime. Experiments
in other labs showed evidence of some
sort of energy production, though not
of the magnitude that the two Utah
researchers claimed. Yet the premature
media hooplah surrounding their
announcement had already discredited
the entire field.
Simon builds a context for Pons and
Fleischmann’s 15 minutes of fame. He
cites Thomas Kuhn’s
The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions
and discusses the
mid-19th-century Devonian controversy
about the age of certain fossils. His text
is informed by his own period of re-
search in a fusion lab, as well as com-
munication with a variety of scientists,
whom he quotes both by name and
anonymously. My father would have
enjoyed this book for its update of
international fusion research and publi-
cations through the 1990s, including
subsequent work by Pons and Fleisch-
mann. He would have shelved it
beside Eugene Mallove’s more enthu-
siastic and optimistic
Fire from Ice:
Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold
Fusion Furor.
As this is a book about science in
society and political positioning among
practicing scientists, there is one politi-
cal aspect of fusion research regrettably
omitted from
Undead Science.
Publica-
tions by the U.S. Labor Party and its
central figure Lyndon Larouche were
often distributed a decade ago in down-
town Mountain View, California, the
heart of Silicon Valley (boasting first
Fairchild Semiconductor, then Silicon
Graphics and Netscape, now Google
and a Nokia lab). A quirky politicial mix
of right and left, the party had some
electoral success in local races despite
the stiff prison sentence given Larouche
for financial infractions. Its significance
here is that it saw and trumpeted fusion
as the answer to America’s energy
needs, publishing reports and maga-
zines on the topic for several years.
Larouchites are a footnote in American
political history, but a deserving foot-
note in any cultural history of fusion
energy. Since Bart Simon is based in
Montréal, Canada, he may be unaware
of this tiny party in the U.S. with a
fusion-friendly technology policy.
T
HE
P
OSTHUMAN
C
ONDITION
: C
ONSCIOUSNESS
BEYOND THE
B
RAIN
by Robert Pepperell. Intellect Books,
Bristol, U.K., 2003. 203 pp., illus. ISBN:
1-84150-048-8.
Leonardo Reviews
347
Reviewed by Rob Harle (Australia). E-mail:
<recluse@lis.net.au>.
This is a highly readable and thought-
provoking book. Pepperell’s research is
extensive and covers many quite dis-
parate disciplines such as art, technol-
ogy, culture, history and religious
politics. All these are relevant to the
posthuman condition.
Just what is meant by posthuman?
Briefly, three rather different notions
apply to posthumanism. Firstly, it
means the end or demise of “human-
ism.” Secondly, it embraces a new way
of understanding that which constitutes
being human. Thirdly, it “refers to the
general convergence of biology and
technology to the point where they are
becoming indistinguishable” (p. iv).
The book expands and carefully investi-
gates these definitions. The questions
asked are profound, and the answers
provided, in some cases speculative,
delve into the deepest and most sacred
beliefs of the waning humanist epoch.
The Posthuman Condition: Conscious-
ness beyond the Brain
is challenging, and
for stalwart, recalcitrant humanists I
think it will be most confronting. Pep-
perell is not a fanatic, nor is he a table-
thumping techno-evangelist. In fact, his
approach is gentle, perhaps somewhat
understated. I was delighted in reading
this book not to have to endure the
over-enthusiastic, overly sensationalized
techno-hype that is evident in quite a
few books dealing with cyborgs, trans-
humanism and Extropianism. The lack
of techno-hype and pseudo-scientific
jargon tends to belie the extreme im-
portance and relevance of Pepperell’s
work.
This is not a manual for building
intelligent robots nor a primer for
creating a conscious (of self) artificial
intelligent entity. I believe, however,
that anyone who does not embrace the
fundamental concepts outlined in this
book will never create such entities. AI
researchers generally have grossly un-
derestimated the complexity, essential
embodiment and interconnectedness
with the environment of complex dy-
namical systems (ants, humans, plants).
Hence the failure to produce anything
except apparently smart machines.
There are exceptions to this ignorance
(and arrogance), such as the work of
Brooks et al. at M.I.T. [1], whose work I
have also drawn on and cited exten-
sively in my own research [2].
The Moody Blues created an album
in 1969 entitled
On the Threshold of a
Dream;
Pepperell’s book is about emerg-
ing from such a threshold into the
reality of a new epoch—the posthu-
man. Elements of this dream are an
understanding of existence without the
fear and prejudice perpetrated by
religious dogma, a holistic intercon-
nectedness of all living things (includ-
ing this planet), and the possibility of
subsuming the life-destroying humanist
worldview (humans as the measure and
pinnacle of all things) that has brought
us towards the brink of extinction. This
book advocates nothing less than a
major paradigmatic shift in our under-
standing of existence.
The book has an extensive bibliogra-
phy and eight chapters; Appendix II
contains “The Posthuman Manifesto.”
The chapter titles give the prospective
reader a good idea of the scope of
Pepperell’s investigation: 1. Conscious-
ness, Humans and Complexity; 2. Sci-
ence, Knowledge and Energy; 3. Order
and Disorder, Continuity and Dis-
continuity; 4. Being, Language and
Thought; 5. Art, Aesthetics and
Creativity; 6. Automating Creativity;
7. Synthetic Beings; 8. What Is
Posthumanism?
Chapter 5, especially the section
discussing good and bad art, seems
somewhat ineffectual compared with
the rest of the book. I found
Pepperell’s notion of “aesthetically
stimulating” and “aesthetically neutral”
art unconvincing (pp. 103–106). This
section could perhaps have been re-
placed with an overview of Eastern
philosophies that have had much of
importance to say about consciousness
and the nature of “the self,” which is
now being acknowledged within the
fields of quantum mechanics and cul-
tural studies (deconstruction). This is a
minor criticism, though—maybe some-
thing to look forward to in a future
edition.
Possibly the greatest contribution this
book makes to our future is the exten-
sive attempt to clarify the relationship
between us (male and female humans)
and the rest of the “stuff” of the uni-
verse, from rocks to plants to
our
tech-
nology. Computers and mobile (cell)
phones are not devices foisted upon us
by some alien visitors; they are created
and utilized by us as extensions of
ourselves. That is, from the beginning
of our existence we have attempted to
“extend our physical abilities with
tools”; this is the “extensionist” view of
human nature (p. 152).
As Pepperell eloquently puts it,
“where humanists saw themselves as
distinct beings in an antagonistic rela-
tionship with their surroundings,
posthumans regard their own being as
embodied in an extended technologi-
cal world.”
References
1.
R.A. Brooks et al.,
Alternative Essences of Intelligence.
COG Project, <http://www.ai.mit.edu/COG/
project>.
2.
R.F. Harle,
Artificial Intelligence: Is It Possible?,
<http://www.lis.net.au/~recluse/harle>;
and R.F.
Harle, “Cyborgs, Uploading and Immortality—Some
Serious Concerns,”
Sophia
41,
No. 2, 73–85 (October
2002).
A
UDIO
C
OMPACT
D
ISCS
A
BSURD
S
UMMER
by Koji Asano. Solstice, Barcelona,
Spain, 2003.
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen,
Hogeschool Gent, Jan Delvinlaan 115,
9000 Gent, Belgium. E-mail: <stefaan.
vanryssen@pandora.be>.
Japanese composer Koji Asano (cur-
rently based in Barcelona) has docu-
mented his musical journeys in a series
of over 30 self-produced recordings.
Absurd Summer
is a suite of 11 care-
fully arranged parts, each in its own
mood and character but sharing fil-
tered and distorted piano figures drift-
ing in and out of a background of
almost white noise. Sometimes an ab-
stract melody peeks out from under the
cover, hiding again as soon as it takes
form and shape. Sometimes there are
bells or metal plates. Sometimes the
wind seems to be moving loose parts of
some long-forgotten metalworks, play-
ing a rhythm of its own. It is summer,
after all, and it is, as the title suggests,
absurdly hot or threatening or lan-
guishing. Then again, in the
background, a melody is played, in the
right hand, gravely accompanied by a
repeated note in the left hand.
At the level of composition, there is
no unifying mood or overarching struc-
ture apart from the sheer consecutive-
ness of the different sounds. Only the
second and the very last parts show a
resemblance in texture and melody. So,
Asano is exploring the different shades
of the distorted piano, sent through
seriously mangled speakers and aug-
mented with a choice of electronically
generated hisses, scratches, screeches
and unnameable sounds. The overall
348
Leonardo Reviews

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