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Welcome to our website! We hope
you will be led by this website to fresh and radical
perspectives on nature, science, and technology.
In Dialogue with Nature
A course at The Nature Institute with Craig Holdrege and Henrike Holdrege: One Saturday a month for ten months, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., September 2008 to June 2009. Beginning on September 27. For more information, click here. |
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 A New Online Resource Lays Bare the Nontarget Effects of Genetic Manipulation
The Nature Institute has announced the fruits of a project designed to set the public debate about genetic engineering upon a more accessible scientific foundation. Distilling a voluminous technical literature, we have summarized on our website both the intended and unintended consequences of transgenic experiments. The emerging picture tells a dramatic story - one that, to date, has scarcely begun to inform the public conversation about genetic engineering.
Nontarget effects have proven both extensive and wildly unpredictable. The evidence for their occurrence, while mostly buried in the technical literature, is not disputable or even particularly controversial. It's simply not widely known. Once it is known, the frequently heard claim that genetic manipulation of organisms is a "precise science" without dramatic risks will either be voiced no more or will be recognized as dishonest. To view this new web resource, click here - or click on "Nontarget Effects of Genetic Manipulation" in the menu at left. |
 A New Book from Nature Institute Staff
"Craig Holdrege and Steve Talbott's analysis of genetic engineering is the smartest, most original, and most compelling I have seen anywhere, in journalism or academia." (Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma)
The University Press of Kentucky has just released our new book, Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering. The book is in the Press' "Culture of the Land" series, whose editorial advisors include Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben, Wes Jackson, Vandana Shiva, and others. As Sheldon Krimsky (Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University) describes the book, "The authors offer a refreshing style of scientific interpretation and have brought the discussion of the issues to a new level by making excellent use of current scientific findings that disclose how genes operate in vivo and by drawing on bioethical discussions."
To find out more about this book or to order it, click here. |
Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in the Age of Machines.
You can now order Nature Institute senior researcher Steve Talbott's book of that title from our bookstore. Here's what one reviewer wrote about it: "Devices of the Soul is, first, a careful and illuminating examination of technological society by a man conversant with its sources and mechanics; second, a calm, elegant but unrelenting polemic against the particular disorder and infirmity engendered by it; and third, a series of intimations toward the recovery of health. In all three guises, the book is a valuable contribution" (Paul J. Cella III, The New Atlantis). Click here for details.
The Work of Martin Wagenschein: The Nature Institute is translating some of the writings of the German science educator and physicist Martin Wagenschein. To read about Wagenschein and to access the translations we have done so far, click here.
How Shall We Live? The way we experience ourselves in the world - our habits of perception and the relation between our sense of Self and sense of the Other - are decisively important for everything from the achievement of a truly adequate science to the restoration of social health to the establishment of an environmentally responsible ethics. Human progress in all fields depends upon how we engage the phenomena around us. This is why the book Being on Earth: Practice In Tending the Appearances, a full-text, online document, is so important. Written by physicist Georg Maier, the late philosopher Ronald Brady, and the late physicist Stephen Edelglass, it explores what it means for us to be on earth as knowers, as participants in earth's various ecological settings, and in company with one another. The book breaks down the barriers between fact and value, between science and aesthetics.
* (New:) Being on Earth is now available as a 196-page softcover paperback from Logos Verlag in Berlin. The price is 40.5 euros (approximately 63 US dollars). You can order the book over the internet by clicking here.
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A thought-provoking publication
The
Giraffe's Long Neck: From Evolutionary Fable
to Whole Organism
by Craig Holdrege
A fresh look at the giraffe and evolution.
To find out more about this book, click
here. |
Can Biotech Feed the World?
In this article Craig Holdrege describes the broader
ecological, agricultural, and social context of feeding
the hungry. The often heard claim that biotechnology
is needed to feed the world's growing population shows
itself to be rooted more in hype than in reality.
Click
here to access the article.
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