The great space folly
Sir : Our scientific propagandists have a serious case to put. It is more likely to carry conviction if they avoid the sophisms and sciolisms of Mr de Bono (29 November).
'There is a very specific test,' he says, 'which one can carry out in order to discover whether or not a person is a dogmatic humanist.' Ask him whether 'the mind can be explained (now or ever) in terms of the physical behaviour of the brain.' What sort of a test is this? Must those who answer no be ignorant or heedless of technological commonplaces? If ignorant or arrogant, must they be dogmatic? Dogmatic even if they give book-length reasons for their opi- nion? Is the contrary opinion never held dogmatically, and never by humanists? Where is Mr de Bono's logic and where his history./ Christopher Kirwan Exeter College, Oxford Sir: With reference to Edward de Bono's article (29 November), it is always a great weakness to despise any form of mental activity. Nor is it wise to expect from any given branch of knowledge any answer to a set of questions which its particular laws have excluded from the start. We cannot exclude, and then, miraculously, find in the conclusion. No technology can have a built- in capacity to take our moral options instead of us.
A man who was one of the founders of modern science as well as of humanism, Francois Rabelais, wrote in the sixteenth century: science without conscience is but ruin of the soul: a terse sentence on which it is hard indeed to improve.
Francois Villaneau 79 La Creche, France Sir: Oh dear, in his fury Mr Carr (Letters 6 December) has fallen smack into a trap which I never set. He has jumped to the con- clusion that my reference (29 November) to sex and history as a 'downward and back- ward orientation' was a value judgment. In fact the phrase was used as an innocent indi- cation of direction. History is behind us so we look backward at it. And I am sure that Mr Carr does not need me as a doctor to 'tell him the anatomical location of the main sex organs.
Words like 'shameful' were never used by me but added by Mr Carr's indignation. I find both sex and history quite delightful.
Edward de Bono 41 North Road, Whittlesford, Cambridge
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