THE CONTINUING HUMAN EVOLUTION---DIRECTED AND CONTROLLED BY HUMANITY

By

Karl H. Puechl

November 22, 1992

Originally, I had contemplated that this would be a Friendly Circle program, where I would just simply introduce the subject and then let all of you talk about it. However, when I sat down to give this some thought, I found that I had too much to say. In fact, I probably have enough to say for two full talks; so be prepared, this will get quite long even though the follow-up discussion has been scheduled for next week.

In the past, I have given a number of talks on various aspects of physics, including cosmology; and especially relative to the latter, I left many of you in a quandary because it was impossible for you to visualize how something could arise naturally from nothing. Today I will talk about some things that will be comprehensible to all of us. What I am going to try to do today is to vicariously let you experience things that might become quite routine in the eyes of children that are now being born, our grand-children or great-grand-children.

In preparing for this talk, I came across another talk that I gave about five years ago at the 1987 HUMCON conference, and which I later repeated at two of our Fellowship meetings. My opening words for that talk were: "When invited to give this talk, I was asked to direct my remarks toward the 21st century." That I did in the talk entitled, HORIZONS: TECHNICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIETAL. Although my talk today is concerned with the same time-frame and much the same subject, there is absolutely no duplication in the matter presented; which just illustrates how fast technology is advancing. Five years ago I was aware that certain things were going on in laboratories around the world, but I could not even dream about the probable end-results that I will talk about this morning. And just so that you will know that I am not just dreaming, I'm going to cite the pronouncements of many other people. Also, I found it interesting that in a book published in 1988 (about the same time that I gave my talk to HUMCOM) entitled, THE COMING ERA OF SCIENCE, the author, Holcomb B. Noble, also did not mention the things that I am going to talk about. Yes, science is moving very rapidly!

Since the things that I want to talk about are quite startling (perhaps some of you will even say, unbelievable), I'll approach the topic quite gingerly by first laying a philosophical background.

We've all heard of Charles Darwin and his monumental work, ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVORED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE, which was published in 1859 and his follow-on work entitled, THE DESCENT OF MAN, AND SELECTION IN RELATION TO SEX, published in 1871. Darwin's hypotheses and conclusions, which were based on voluminous observational data, strictly speaking, applied only to living organisms. Basically, Darwin suggested that chance mutations of the genetic make-up plus subsequent interaction with the environment will naturally lead to evolution of species; to a great variety of species dictated by the multitude of local environments, and to species having ever-greater degrees of organization and/or complexity. Ultimately, this biological evolutionary process led to the development of a complex brain and thereby to Homo Sapiens. To elaborate somewhat, we might add a profound observation attributed to a later biologist, R. A. Fisher, "Natural selection plus time is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability".

Almost immediately after publication of the ORIGIN OF SPECIES, philosophers attempted to extend the concept of evolution over a broad spectrum of activities. Change is of the essence, and everything changes with time and evolves naturally to "higher" forms if left to its own devices. The offshoot that immediately comes to mind is what was called "Social Darwinism", which was used to justify the "Robber Barons" or, more generally, the creation of obscene wealth at the expense of the under-privileged. While Social Darwinism was eventually discarded, an extension of biological evolution that appeared to have meaningful validity was "Psychosocial Evolution", using a phrase coined around 1960 by Sir Julian Huxley. In Huxley's words: "Evolution in the psychosocial phase is primarily cultural: it is predominantly manifested by changes in human cultures, not in human bodies or human gene-complexes. But, though it thus differs radically from evolution in the biological phase, the process is still a natural phenomena. But in psychosocial evolution the selective mechanism itself evolves as well as its products. It is a goal-selecting mechanism, and the goals that it selects will change the picture of the world and of human nature provided by man's increasing knowledge. Thus as human comprehension, knowledge and understanding increase, the aims of evolving man can become more clearly defined, and his purpose more conscious and more embracing. Once greater fulfillment is recognized as man's ultimate or dominant aim, we shall need a science of human possibilities to help guide the long course of psychosocial evolution that lies ahead. Man's true destiny emerges in a startling new form; it is to be chief agent for the future of evolution on this planet. Only in and through man can any further major advance be achieved---though equally he may inflict damage or distortion on the process, including his own evolving self." It is from this essay by Huxley that I have taken the title of this talk: "The Continuing Human Evolution---Directed and Controlled by Humanity".

Since we are a Unitarian Universalist group, I'd like to read some more of Huxley even though it delays me somewhat more from my chosen topic. "In this psychosocial stage of evolution, major advance will require radical changes in the dominant idea-systems, demanding that beliefs be organized in new and more comprehensive ways, recognizing full-well the failure of older ideas which attempted to organize beliefs round a core of ignorance. Modern industrial man finds it hard to understand tribal peoples, whose idea-systems are organized round the concept of magic power; and equally difficult to understand medieval Western man, whose idea-system was centered round the concept of a central earth, created and ruled by an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent supernatural Being. We have experienced a fantastic growth of knowledge---about the material universe, about life and mind, about human nature and human societies, about art and history and religion; but large chunks of this new knowledge are lying around unused, not worked up or integrated into fruitful concepts and principles, not brought into relevance to human life and its problems. A new idea-system will necessarily be unitary instead of dualistic, affirming the unity of mind and body; universal instead of particularist, affirming the continuity of man with the rest of life, and of life with the rest of the universe; naturalistic instead of supernaturalist, affirming the unity of the spiritual and the material; and global instead of divisive, affirming the unity of all mankind. It will have nothing to do with Absolutes, including absolute truth, absolute morality, absolute perfection and absolute authority,

but will insist that we can find standards to which our actions and our aims can properly be related. It will affirm that knowledge and understanding can be increased, that conduct and social organization can be improved, and that more desirable directions for individual and social development can be found. As the overriding aim of evolving man, it is driven to reject power, or mere numbers of people, or efficiency, or material exploitation, and to envisage greater fulfillment and fuller achievement as his true goal. Most important of all, it brings together the scattered and largely unutilized resources of our knowledge, and orders them to provide a new vision of human destiny, illuminating its every aspect. In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. Our new organization of thought---belief-system call it what you will---must grow and be developed in the light of our new evolutionary vision. So, in the first place, it must of course itself be evolutionary; that is to say, it must help us to think in terms of an overriding process of change, development, and possible improvement, to have our eyes on the future rather than on the past, to find support in the growing, spreading up-reaching body of our knowledge, instead of in the rigid frame of fixed dogma and ancient authority. Science gives us a foretaste of what can be." I should note that what Huxley has proposed will not be easy to accomplish. Richard Dawkins, a modern biologist, whom I mentioned in a previous talk, suggests that the tendency for cultural change is so constrained that lucid discussion of this warrants the coining of a new word, the "meme", which is the cultural analog of the gene. A meme then is tyrannical; it is a behavioral pattern which replicates itself by cultural transfer from individual to individual. Examples of memes, which by definition are not easily altered, are: religious beliefs, institutions, laws, belief-systems in general, linguistic idioms, and fashions in art and science, and in food and in clothes. Further, Milton Rothman, a physics professor retired from Trenton State College recently wrote: "Unfortunately, real knowledge is resisted by a public that reads more about pseudoscience and the occult than about real science. The thrill of the esoteric is more seductive than the hard labor of knowledge." As a commentary on Huxley's somewhat flowery language, I'd like to cite another sentence from Rothman's book: "If concepts such as spirit and soul were not part of our everyday vocabulary, there would be less confusion over the definition of a living human being." Perhaps, I like Rothman's approach of getting directly to the heart of the problem without mincing words because, I too, was brought up in New Jersey.

This finally gets me to the central theme of my talk; but throughout the following presentation remember what I said about man now being responsible for his further evolution, which you will hear is both genetic and cultural, and that he can now direct and control this process. And while doing this, man must realize that he is solely responsible for the further course of evolution on this planet.

Two recent events triggered this presentation. The first one was the intense interest in Nintendo computer games that our two grandsons exhibited during our visit this summer. The second occurred even more recently at the San Diego zoo where I observed a young woman in her mid-twenties as she looked ecstatically upon an extremely cute little monkey. I could not help but make the comment to myself: "Gee in about 10 years if you want it so, young lady, you'll be able to give birth to a being that is identical to the one which so enthralls you".

First I'll introduce the latter aspect of my topic. Consider the following quotations. "For the first time in all time, a living creature understands its origin and can undertake to design its future." --- Robert Sinsheimer, a micro-biologist, formerly of Caltech and, more recently, Provost of the University of California at Santa Cruz; taken from a 1971 TIME magazine article entitled, "Man into Superman, The Promise and Peril of the New Genetics". And another quote: "If the human species is capable of being in command of its destiny in so many other ways, should it not be capable of engineering its own future in physical and biological terms?" --- Robert MacNeil, on the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, April 7, 1978.

I'm certain that most of you are somewhat aware of what has being going on in the field of genetic engineering without having need for reference to these, almost ancient, quotes. However, I suspect that most of you have not considered this broad aspect of genetic engineering. To refresh your memories, let me just pick out a few titles and sentences from recent newspaper and magazine articles. To save time, I'll just present the quotes without giving the specific references. "The Farmer and the Cell". "Five years after the first test in an open field, genetically-engineered foods are about to appear on grocery-store shelves." "In the past five years, researchers have applied for 342 permits to conduct more than 520 field tests of genetically-engineered organisms in the United States. Three-fourths of the permits already have been approved." "Of all the applications for field testing, 40 are

for the tomato---with the aim of making it sweeter, redder, meatier, sturdier and all-around better." "When people hear you're putting moth genes into crops, their mouths instantly feel a little furry." "You can't just stick a naked moth gene into a potato. First you surround it with bits of DNA that make it look like something that belongs in a plant. In front goes a `promoter,' taken from a potato, that tells the gene when to turn on. At the end goes another section, from a bacterium, that helps the gene to function." "If you don't like moths, how about a flounder gene in your potato, we have done that too?" "In the near future, ag-biotech companies hope to sell potatoes that won't soak up grease when they're turned into potato chips or French fries, and oil-producing plants that can fend off insects by themselves or resist harmful effects of weed-killing chemicals. And to this we can add all the medical-related news about isolating the individual genes that cause genetic malfunctions, detecting them soon after conception, modifying them, and/or extracting them.

So much for these scattered pieces of information. What is important is that pieces of DNA, or genes if you will, can now be transposed from one living thing to another; from plant to plant, from animal to animal, from animal to plant and from plant to animal. The extremely mutant strains can be made to grow and develop through chemical deception as I indicated, or, in higher animals, an engineered-fertilized egg can probably be made to thrive in a uterus by shutting down the mother's immune system so that it does not view the engineered embryo as a foreign object. This latter piece of technology is coming from the field of surgical transplantation where drugs must be used to prevent the body's rejection of a foreign transplant. This brings me to another quotation; this time from a book by N. A. Tiley published in 1983 and entitled, DISCOVERING DNA, MEDITATIONS ON GENETICS AND A HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE. She writes: "Nature has spent thousands of years in an effort to ensure a separation between species. Humankind, in the laboratory, has succeeded in defeating this separation with bacteria, plants and higher life forms, in creating hybrids, crosses, chimeras. The achievements of the new biology referred to as new life forms, really combinations of existing life forms, are chimeras (interesting creatures that we have come across in mythology). The chimera created by Ananda Chakrabarty (bacteria that clean up oil spills) has brought the concept of new life forms forward; to the U. S. Supreme Court. The court ruled that new life forms are patentable. The most exciting nonmedical development of molecular biology is surely this creation of new life forms. The fine line determining whether or not children are patentable is not significant in terms of hoards of parents who would not bother with such silliness; it is significant to determining what exactly is a new life or a new life form. The very idea of new forms of life, natural or artificially created, is earth-shaking in its reality."

Now that we have sufficient background in genetic engineering, let me describe what I visualize as being some practical aspects that will present moral dilemmas.

As most of you know, my background is in nuclear physics and during my career I did a lot of work with highly radioactive materials. Some of these materials were so highly radioactive that we had to have 10 feet of concrete between the material and us. To perform operations on these materials, we used what were then called "master slaves"; mechanical hands, connected to pulleys and wires, eventually connected to levers that we could manipulate on the other side of the wall. While, with a little practice, we could make the mechanical fingers do what we wanted them to do; we often picked up a piece of glassware and shattered it because the fingers grasped it too tightly. Such mishaps were common because we had no feedback; we could not sense how much pressure the mechanical fingers were applying to the object. Nevertheless, these master slaves and the obvious need to improve them led to the formation of the technical field now called robotics. About 20 years ago, many large U. S. companies were engaged either in the development of robots or of using them in their manufacturing processes. With time, almost all of the development effort was terminated with much of the technology being sold to various Japanese companies. The American companies realized that to electromechanically develop the necessary sense perception: three dimensional and depth visualization, hearing, feel, feedback to allow for mis-alignments, etc. was just too costly. Let me illustrate the problem by describing a robot that was almost universally considered at that time; a robot that could perform routine housework. Sure, if every piece of furniture and the articles thereon were always at the exact same location, one could conceivably program a computer to vacuum and dust. However, who wants to live in a physical environment that has to be maintained in exactly the same position day-after-day; how does one program a human being to do this? The technology of robotics has advanced considerably from these early days, and we can conceive of supplying the feedback circuits necessary to build an effective Hausfrau robot, but who will ever be able to afford the cost? Now in the light of the previous presentation on genetics, isn't the answer at hand? For example, why not genetically engineer a chimpanzee that can be readily trained to perform these functions and that enjoys doing it. The cost of producing such an animal would be minuscule; the major cost would be for maintenance; we'd have to keep feeding it. There are many other examples that I could name. For example, our mutual friend, Peter Creelman, is in the business of selling and installing home protection systems. I think that I can perform this function much cheaper with a genetically-engineered dog that can be trained to bark only when a stranger enters the house and whose bark is coded so that it, in effect, immediately dials 911. If we want, we can produce all kinds of animal combinations, useful ones or just for fun. Currently, the eggs would have to be removed from some animal, doctored up and fertilized, and then inserted in some living animal's uterus; but in the near future, I predict that completely mechanical wombs will become available. Now what about modifying people? In mentioning this possibility to a friend of mine (actually, my brother-in-law), he immediately responded with, "Oh boy, I can have a wife that doesn't talk". When we can engineer human characteristics: sex, intelligence, eye color, skin color, etc., and couple these with characteristics from other animals or plants, where do we stop? Where is the line between a "dumb animal" and a "human being"? Will we truly be able to act as if all life is sacred? What might be the consequences if we do or if we don't? Again to support what I am saying, let me quote from a recent book by Michael W. Fox entitled, SUPERPIGS AND WONDERCORN. "Why not 10-foot-tall basketball players --- or docile, hard-working drones? Genetic engineering of heritable traits is already illegal in some countries. But once there are `superpigs' (genetically enhanced to produce more pork and bacon) and `wondercorn' (made disease-resistant by gene insertion), why not manufacture `superjocks' and `wonderkids'?" In the extreme, I can visualize a human being with tree branches growing off its shoulders, made detachable so they don't get in the way when they are not needed, and with detachable spikes on its feet to allow absorption of nutriments from the soil, so that it could sustain itself without the need for an outside food supply. Perhaps in this manner the earth will be capable of supporting 20 billion or so people. David H. Smith of the Indiana University recently wrote: "Two hundred years ago Rousseau raised an issue that biomedicine has forced on us all: whether there are things we should not know". But I ask: Knowing them makes it impossible to prevent their use; how then, do we live with this knowledge? Which brings me to another quote: "Our common concern is the very destiny of the human race. For man has now intervened in the process of evolution. Judgements of value must henceforth direct technological change, for without such values man is divested of his humanity and of his need to collaborate with the very fabric of the universe in order to bestow meaning, purpose, and dignity upon his existence. No time must be lost since the wavelength of change is now shorter than the life-span of man." --- Ruth Nanda Ashen, referred to in a book entitled: ACROSS THE FRONTIERS by Werner Heisenberg.

Now finally, I get to the Nintendo games; or more generally to the topic of "Virtual Reality", a topic which was recently the feature article in an issue of the magazine, Business Week. It is also the title of a recently published book written by a professional writer, Howard Rheingold.

Virtual Reality is an outgrowth of several diverse technologies. One is the flight simulator; another is computer graphics; another is interactive TV; and then there is Computer Assisted Design, or CAD as it is commonly called.

We've all seen pictures on TV of someone in a flight simulator. Such simulators are used to train military pilots to fly high-speed jet aircraft, and to enhance their performance in combat. They simulate an enemy plane coming at them and the trainee-pilot must react to maneuver his plane and to aim and fire; simultaneously, the enemy plane responds to our trainee's actions. Obviously, simulator designers try to achieve something that is as close to reality as possible. The more our trainee is made to feel that he is participating in a real combat situation, the closer his mental and physical reactions will be to those that might be initiated during actual combat. Also, the closer the enemy's reactions are to what might really occur in combat, the better the training exercise. Therefore, visualization must be intricate; certainly giving the illusion of three-dimensionality and depth; and the simulator must be capable of movement so that the trainee feels the forces that might be experienced in a roll or a dive, or these sensations must be capable of being otherwise induced. Computer graphics and sensual feedback are important aspects of simulator design.

Something similar is needed for CAD. Computer-aided design started out rather simply using computer graphics as a way to visualize three-dimensions. Now this technology is also drifting towards virtual reality. Let's consider an architect designing a new building. He draws up plans on his computer; and he uses three-dimensional visualization to do this. When he gets far enough along, he places a computer copy of himself, adjusted to a dimension consistent with his building drawings, onto the computer screen and allows himself to walk vicariously through the building. He can readily see on the screen how things fit around him; but now let's assume that the computer is programmed so that it can in some way describe what a person might feel, both physically and aesthetically, as he walks through the building, and that this information can be relayed back to the architect. Finally, let's blow up the screen, or use special eyeglasses, so that he can really sense that he is inside the building; this shouldn't be too difficult to do since he can see himself on the screen or in the glasses and, via the feedback, can feel the sensations as his replica moves about.

Similar computer techniques, together with miniaturization of surgical tools and TV cameras are now being used in medicine, in the new field called "laparoscopy". Most of you have probably heard of surgery being performed by making only small incisions rather than making massive cuts. One of our neighbors recently had a gall bladder removed using this technique; the minimal apparent trauma to her system was amazing. Since this field is only in its infancy, it is difficult to imagine what surgeons will be able to do when a full complement of virtual reality techniques will be at their disposal.

I can point to other examples where Virtual Reality is being employed: in the playing of war games; in science; and in industry. I should also mention Hollywood and Nintendo. However, it may very well be that the greatest impact of virtual reality will be on human behavior since it can offer humanity another means of "escape" besides such things as alcohol, drugs, TV, movies, or even sex. Yes I said "sex". Today some people get turned on by dialing a 900 number and just talking to a sex object. But consider the possible consequences if, someday, you will be able to dial up a potential sex partner and then have him or her, together with a replica of you, appear on your, as well as your

partner's, computer screen or special eyeglasses, and then have you and your partner go through various antics, with you feeling the sensations that would be caused thereby. Virtual Reality! Sex without commitment! Sex without fear of pregnancy! Sex without fear of disease transmission! Utopia at last! Or is it?

Now I'll get near the end this talk by quoting from the book, VIRTUAL REALITY, by Howard Rheingold.

"The world does not lack for forces that will tend to drive the development of a reality industry in the 1990s. Where VR is likely to drive us, and what kind of creatures we might become as a result, are a complex matter, a case for wide-ranging speculation, because the answers to these questions are likely to lead to questions about the future of our most basic human characteristics, from our sexuality to our sense of identity." "The secondary social effects of technosex are potentially revolutionary. If technology enables you to experience erotic frissons or deep physical, social, emotional communion with another person with no significant consequences, what then of conventional morality, and what of the social rituals and cultural codes that exist solely to enforce that morality? Is disembodiment the ultimate sexual revolution and/or the first step toward abandoning our bodies? Whenever I think of the vision of billions of earthlings of the future, all plugged into their home reality sets, I think of E. M. Forster's dystopia of a future in which people remain prisoners of their cubicles, entranced by their media, not even aware of the possibility of physical escape. And then I think that it is good to beware of looking at the future through the moral lens of the present: in a world of tens of billions of people, perhaps cyberspace is a better place to keep most of the population

relatively happy, most of the time."

" `Is virtual reality going to be electronic LSD?', I keep getting asked. It's a good question. I asked the same question before I experienced cyberspace. But it isn't the only question, and far from the most important one. Sex and drugs are lurid, sure, but there's more to it than that. Sex, drugs, weaponry, industry, science, medicine --- and money. These all offer possibilities for VR. Timothy Leary said: `There are no limits on virtual reality. It's all about access to information. The donning of computer clothing will be as significant in human history as the donning of our clothing was in the Paleolithic.' And John Pfeiffer in THE CREATIVE EXPLOSION wrote: `We are very young, an infant species just beginning to wonder and observe and explore. The process which gathered momentum among the Cro-Magnons continues to accelerate in our times. The same forces which drive us today drove our recent ancestors underground with paints, engraving tools, lamps, and notions about their place in the scheme of things. The underlying theme is continuity. Tomorrow will be a working out, at increasing intensity and on a larger and larger scale, of forces unleashed yesterday during the Upper Paleolithic. Information is still piling up, and faster than ever. The task of processing and analyzing it is still crucial, still formidable, and so is the task of communication--- creating new, more compact symbols, more sophisticated images on television-type screens, more sophisticated chunking methods. Survival still depends on using all our resources, art, and ceremony as well as technology, to build stable societies out of increasing numbers of rugged and unpredictable individuals.` "

And Gerald Feinberg, who until his recent death was Professor of Physics at Columbia University, in his book, SOLID CLUES, sub-titled "Quantum Physics, Molecular Biology, and the Future of Science", writes: "Natural processes have no intrinsic wisdom. The nature we have inherited is the product of innumerable accidents that have taken place over four billion years. We need to understand these processes before we can sensibly alter them, but we should no more worship the existing biological character of our species than we worship the brass idols that our ancestors held holy. We should not turn our backs either on the moral questions biotechnology raises or on the exquisite opportunities it offers."

And now I have one final question: "Have I made you eager to want to be alive 20 years from now, or do you feel that you would never fit into this emerging `crazy' world?"