John G. Messerly's Blog, page 145

Implanting Moral Chips

In a recent post I argued that humans need to become more intelligent and moral if they are to survive and flourish. In other words, they must evolve.

A few perceptive readers raised objections about the nature of morality and the techniques to be used to maximize moral behavior. As for the nature of morality, I claimed that “the essence of morality lies in … the benefits of mutual cooperation and the destructiveness of ethical egoism.” I think this is right and a careful analysis of many ethical systems including religious ones points to such a conclusion. (I admitted previously that this view is controversial, and I cannot adumbrate a theory of ethics in this limited space.) Still the idea that human morality is an extension of biologically advantageous behaviors like kin selection and reciprocal altruism is the putative view among most scientists and many philosophers. Morality can in large part be understood as arising from the evolution of cooperation.1

As for actually getting people to be moral I argued that “we need to utilize technology … including education, genetic engineering, biotechnology, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI). This would include controversial techniques like implanting moral chips within our brains.” The moral chip was not necessarily meant to be taken literally since the problems with such an approach are apparent. Who implants the chip? What does it do? Can you refuse it? Rather it was meant to convey the idea that humans must make serious choices in order to survive and flourish. An ape-like brain prescribing ape-like behaviors to creatures armed with nuclear weapons is a prescription for disaster.

Low-tech means of making people moral–coercion, education, religion–have not entirely achieved their purpose. They might if given enough time, and Steven Pinker2 has recently argued that we are becoming less violent. But whether our moral evolution will keep pace with our power to destroy ourselves is questionable. Ideally, as stated previously, “As we became more intelligent, we would recognize the rationality of morality.” However there are no guarantees that our intelligence will evolve quickly enough or that rationality will ground morality. At some point, if we are to survive, we will probably be forced to use every technology at our disposal to change our natures.

But if we engineer ourselves to be more moral are we still free? This questions deserves a book-length response, but remember, none of us are very free now. We are genomes in environments, with no more than a sliver of free will. Perhaps we can design free will into our cognitive systems–although I admit this is a strange and counter-intuitive idea. Or perhaps this so-called freedom–if it even exists–isn’t worth the havoc it causes. Better to be wired and get along than free and at each other’s throats.

At any rate, I still agree with the basic idea of my previous post–to survive and flourish we must evolve, ultimately by transcending our current nature.

1.  The Evolution of Cooperation: Revised Edition

2. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

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Anti-Aging and Overpopulation

>I have been engaged in a dialogue with a scientist who is doing anti-aging research. He worries that anti-aging technologies, including the possibility of physical immortality, may lead to overpopulation and ecological destruction. (A concern often invoked by my former students.) In other words while it may be best for individuals to live forever, it might be collectively disastrous, since communities need a “stable, predictable death rate to avoid overpopulation and subsequent population crashes.” Readers may recognize this situation as an instance of the “tragedy of the commons.” Acting in their apparent self-interest, individuals destroy a common good. For instance, it may be convenient for individuals to pollute the air, earth, and water, but in long run this is catastrophic for all.

His research suggests “that aging is controlled by biochemical signals. If we wish to be younger, we don’t have to repair everything that goes wrong with the body, one by one, with a bio-engineering approach.  All we have to do is to tamper with the body’s signaling chemistry … But the message also contains a warning: the increase in human life span from ~40 years 200 years ago to ~80 in advanced countries today has been accompanied by a devastating global overpopulation … The rate of extinctions is far higher than during the great extinction events of the past, 65 and 250 million years ago. Never before has a single species adapted to every climate and habitat.  Never before has a single species systematically mined the biosphere as if it were a disposable trifle.”

While I am unqualified to assess the worthiness of these scientific conclusions, I can comment on whether concerns about overpopulation and its attendant problems should give a researcher in this area pause. I do not believe they do.  Here are some brief replies to the “don’t overcome death or there will be overpopulation and environmental destruction” argument.

Consider that if we have conquered death we may live as transhumanists, perhaps after a technological singularity. Beings in these worlds–perhaps immoral cyber beings–may not even want to propagate, since achieving a kind of immortality is a major motivation for having children. Such beings may be relatively independent of the physical environment too–they may not even have bodies at some point. Thus these concerns may turn out to be irrelevant. I am not saying that they will be irrelevant, I’m saying that the tragedy of 100,000 people dying each and every day from age-related causes is a huge price to pay for speculative hypotheses about the future.

Of course I don’t know how the future will unfold, but preserving the educated consciousness that now exists may be a better survival strategy than allowing it to die and educating newer ones. After all, in the future we will probably need all available mind power. Given this unknown future I’d argue that we should try to eliminate death, the problem in front of us, and cross the next bridge–if we even have to cross it–when we come to it. (Remember predictions are for global population to start declining around 2050.) My suggestions may be considered reckless but remember there is no risk-free way to proceed. If we cease developing technology we will not be able to prevent the inevitable asteroid strike that will decimate our planet; if we continue to die young we may not develop the intelligence necessary to design further technology. Given all these considerations, I wouldn’t let hypotheticals about the future deter my research into defeating death.

Note too that this objection to life-extending research could have been leveled at work on a germ theory of disease–don’t cure diseases because it will lead to overpopulation! I think most of us are glad we have a germ theory of disease, and that life expectancy has almost more than doubled as one of the results. Or consider a pediatrician. Should she refuse to cure a child because that child might have too many children in the future? No. Our responsibility is to help people live long, healthy lives. Note also that you can critique any technology in this way. What will happen when we have airplanes, computers, antibiotics, and heart transplants? Such concerns are valid, but they don’t imply rejecting technology–most of us are glad to have technology. 

Most importantly I believe it is immoral for us to turn our back on anti-aging research and the technologies it may produce, thereby forcing future generations to die against their will. We are certainly glad that our ancestors didn’t decide a twenty-five year life span was good enough for us. After anti-aging technologies are developed the living should be free to choose to live longer, live forever, have no children, or whatever else they decide. As I argued previously, death is like a bomb strapped to our chest waiting to go off. We should not let hypothetical concerns about imagined worlds and potential beings deter our removing these explosives from actual existing persons.

(For a more detailed discussion about these issues and a plethora of arguments for life-extending therapies see “Superlongevity Without Overpopulation.”)

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A Terrible Game of Golf

I played golf today–my occasional escape from the heaviness of writing about the meaning of life. My normal partner, a pleasant seventy year old gentlemen and I were paired with two brothers. While one of the brothers was friendly the other began mouthing expletives from the first shot onward. He quickly explained the reason for his terrible play was that he had already downed two glasses of whiskey for breakfast!

He spent the first few holes loudly cursing at the players in front of us, yelling that there weren’t fast enough–fortunately they didn’t hear him. Actually they were fast and excellent player, and within a few holes his incredibly poor play left us well behind them–the marshal had to tell our group to speed up. My drunk playing partner responded by spending an inordinate time in the woods on the next hole looking for a ball that was not going to be found, while the rest of us just kept walking and the group behind us waited on the tee–probably murmuring their own expletives.

The drunk also spent a large part of his time verbally abusing his brother who tried his best to stay sane. By the end of the round the younger brother was carrying his clubs because evidently his drunk brother had taken to throwing his brother’s clubs out the golf cart–one of his clubs had been broken in half.

Of playing with his drunk brother the younger brother told me, “well you get use to it.” My older friend said he wouldn’t play with that fellow unless he had surgery–to have his mouth wired shut–and that the drunk must really hate himself. I did hope that throughout the round he might sober up, but the supply of fresh beer made sure that didn’t happen. But it was obvious that the alcohol was a symptom of a deeper problem–this man was a horrific human being. I wanted to quit and in retrospect should have, but I hated to leave my friend in this company alone.

It was the single worst experience I have ever had on a golf course. By the time I picked up my wife from work I needed a drink, and drank a rare glass of wine with dinner. And I’m still suffering late tonight from imbibing all that toxic psychological waste. The lesson. We have to tolerate each other in life, but if we have a choice we shouldn’t choose to be abused.

 

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Life is Fleeting

“Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.” ~ Marcus Aurelius

I recently scribbled this quote on my youngest daughter’s birthday card. Just her luck, her father is a philosopher! Seriously though the fleeting, ephemeral nature of life is a basic tenet of Stoicism and Buddhism, a basic motif of Proust and Shakespeare. What is it about the passing of time that is so compelling yet disturbing, and what can we learn from it?

An 80 year life span is a 960 months or about 29,000 days long. Think of that, an entire life. If you are middle-aged and will live another 40 years that’s only 480 months or about 15,000 days. And for someone my age with a life expectancy of maybe 20 years, that’s 240 months or about 7,000 days. This all seems shockingly brief.

Part of what is so compelling about this briefness is that this stream we are floating down, slowly, inexorably, and without our control or consent is … life. We are thrown into the world, imagine endless possibilities if we are lucky and then, suddenly, time has passed. We can’t stop it, rewind it, or fast forward it even when we want to. What of our destination? Looking back on almost 60 years of living I feel a kinship with Yeats:

When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had … my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.

Perhaps this is what’s so disturbing about time. It refers to a now unreal past, a vanishingly short present, all while leading to a future that never arrives. Perhaps something is just amiss in life, and part of that something manifests itself in time’s flow. Personal immortality has been proposed to ameliorate our worries. But I reject the comfort of charlatans, of purveyors of salves. As Diderot put it:  “Lost in an immense forest during the night I have only a small light to guide me. An unknown man appears and says to me: ‘My friend blow out your candle so you can better find your way.’ This unknown man is a theologian.” Today we have an endless variety of cults and cultists from which to choose.

But I will keep my candle, my little light of reason, even though I am lost in time. No longer in the Dark Ages, I will not be guided by the blind.

 

 

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Intelligence Augmentation

Yesterday’s post argued for the moral and intellectual augmentation of human beings. I’d like to add to my thoughts on intellectual augmentation, saving the more controversial moral issues for later.

I have always argued for the urgency of increasing human intelligence. What has made the issue even more obvious are my recent experiences as a full-time researcher untethered from the demands of a large teaching load. As I’ve encounter new thoughts and thinkers, I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge and information in the world. It isn’t possible for a single brain to assimilate it all, or to accommodate to the little that one assimilates. If you desire a comprehensive view of reality, this is depressing. Not only can’t I read all that is–I believe Milton was the last person with that goal–I can’t read everything of interest to me, or all of philosophy or a subset of philosophy. And this is to say nothing of all the fields that directly impact my work, especially the sciences. But if relevant information is out there remaining hidden or undiscovered, then one’s conclusions are incomplete.

Still more knowledge leads to better conclusions, so the more we have the better. This is probably the best we can do until we have implanted chips in our brains to increase our memory and computing capacities, our imaginative and creative capabilities, or until we experience some form of a global brain with access to all existing, and progressively evolving, knowledge, or until education itself becomes exponentially more effective. Or perhaps something as yet unimaginable will expedite our intellectual development.

For now without certain knowledge, we live not being sure. Yet the imperative to increase our knowledge is as strong as ever. As Aristotle noted more than 2,000 years ago, knowledge is an unlimited good. It is not sufficient for human flourishing, but it is necessary. After all it is truth that sets us free.

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We Must Evolve

To make a better reality, humans need to be more intelligent and moral. They must evolve.

In the intellectual realm we need to utilize technology to augment our intelligence (IA) by any means possible–including education, genetic engineering, biotechnology, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The same goes for the moral realm. This would include controversial techniques like implanting moral chips within our brains. But what does making ourselves more moral entail? After reading, teaching, and writing about ethics for almost 30 years we agree that the answer to this question is controversial. But I think the essence of morality lies in understanding the benefits of mutual cooperation and the destructiveness of ethical egoism. We need to be cognizant of the nature of the “prisoner’s dilemma (PD),” that we would all do better and none of us would do worse if we all cooperate. Such knowledge would also show the resolution to the multi-person PD that is the “tragedy of the commons.” The effects of situations with the structure of a PD resonates throughout the world in problems as diverse as insufficient public financing, to the threat of environmental disaster and nuclear annihilation.

But of course knowing that we all do better if we all cooperate is undermined by the fact that each does better individually if they do not cooperate while others do. That is the essence of the PD. Hobbes’ classic solution was coercive governmental power that ensured individuals complied with their agreements. Other solutions include disablement strategies where the non-cooperative move is eliminated. Ulysses having himself tied to the mast of his ship so as not to be seduced by the sirens is an example. It may be necessary to wire our brains or utilize other technologies so that we can’t not cooperate.

Ideally increasing intelligence and morality would cross-fertilize. As we became more intelligent, we would recognize the rationality of morality.1  We would see that the benefits of mutual cooperation outweigh the benefits of non-cooperation. (This was Hobbes insight, we all do best to avoid the state of nature.) As we became more moral, we would understand the need for more intelligence to assure our flourishing and survival. We would accept that greater intelligence is indispensable to a good future. Eventually we would reach the higher states of being and consciousness so desired by transhumanists.

But then again we may destroy ourselves.

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1. Assuming morality is rational. If it isn’t we’d need another approach such as engineering people to be more sympathetic. Or we could conclude that morality is for suckers and try to kill or enslave everyone else, following the lead of psychopaths like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Tom Delay, and Dick Cheney.

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A Letter From A Former Student

The Letter

A former student of my nearly 30 year college teaching career found my blog and sent me email updating me about her life over the last fifteen years or so. In it she said:

I am so grateful that you and a small handful of other people I have encountered in my life had such an influence on me, in teaching me how to think for myself and how to not be a sheep, to not settle for accepting the world at face value, and the value in asking questions. I am sure you had a similar impact on other students … Thank you a million times over!

Students & Teachers

l begin with a disclaimer. I am not publishing this so anyone thinks I was a great teacher. I’m sure for every nice letter one receives from a former student there is another student who longs to write its antithesis.  And as anyone who has ever read class evaluations of their teaching knows, the “this guy changed my life and should win the Nobel Peace Prize” evaluation is followed by the “this guy is the worst human being who ever lived” one.

My graduate school department chair gave the best advice I ever heard about class evaluations. In a typical sample of about 30-40 he said, take the 2 best and the 2 worst, throw them out, and focus on the remainder. I think he was right. What I found was that no matter what you do some students really like you and some really don’t. So it is the majority in the middle that provide the best feedback. Still the entire process of teaching evaluations done by students is suspect anyway. Although I always did pretty well on them, I’ve often thought that they were bad for education.

Why I Published The Excerpt

I think the excerpt from the letter above captures the essence of teaching and learning, especially its emphasis on thinking for oneself, asking questions, and not merely being a follower. Thinking is about wondering, questioning, fantasizing, and imagining, as another of my recent posts suggested.

But to be reminded by one of those nearly 10,000 students of your influence is strangely rewarding. That you made a bit of difference to someone’s  life makes your life seem, for a brief moment, meaningful. No it doesn’t mean that your life or cosmic life is fully meaningful, but it does bestow some value to one’s efforts.

And those brief, fleeting, ephemeral moments when you are reminded that everything you have done was not completely in vain is one of the best things life has to offer. Even when the reminder comes from strangers in the past.

 

 

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Contaminated Mind Time

Recently the notion of “contaminated time” has begun to enter the lexicon. It refers to leisure activities that are combined with something else, frequent housework or child care. So far the focus has been on how women’s so-called leisure time is “contaminated” by constant thinking about kids, house, work, errands, etc. While woman may bear the brunt of this contamination, obviously men’s time could be similarly contaminated. Anyone’s leisure time can be contaminated–not thoroughly enjoyed or appreciated–if their attention is directed elsewhere.

Extending the concept further, contaminated time might refer to any time not enjoyed or appreciated independent of the activity one is engaged in–work may also involve contaminated time. So contaminated time really refers to intrusive thoughts that prevent being in the moment or flow or whatever you want to call it. When I am focused on writing and thinking my time is usually not contaminated, and I’d guess that a good meditator focused deeply on their breathing feels this even more so.

Extended in this way contaminated time is really contaminated mind. For most of us this involves distractions to our peace arising from ignorance, anger, envy, greed, and other impurities that obsessively and involuntarily occupy our minds. There has been more written about how to control our minds through meditation, exercise, keeping busy and the like than I can cover in this blog post. But I’d suggest that we would probably do best by minimizing our peace-disturbing mental compulsions as best we can.

Perhaps all of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to have inner mental peace.

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Review of Stewart-Williams’, Darwin,God and the Meaning of Life

Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew

Steve Stewart-Williams is a lecturer in evolutionary psychology at Swansea University in Wales. His book, Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew (2010), applies evolutionary insights directly to questions of ethics, religion, and meaning.

Stewart-Williams argues that evolution bears significantly on the issue of the meaning of life. Humans have a perennial interest in the question of life’s meaning, advancing religious and secular answers to the question but, as Stewart-Williams notes, there are difficulties with all the proposed solutions even before we take evolutionary theory into account. This causes him to look more closely at the implications of evolution for the question of the meaning of life.

Why are we here? We are here because we evolved. But the purpose of our existence is not to survive, reproduce, or propagate genes; the fact that we evolved to do these things does not tell us what our purpose is. In this sense evolution is not relevant to questions of meaning, but it is relevant to questions of meaning in another way. To see how we must understand that evolutionary theory offers historical explanations, not teleological ones. Teleological explanations explain apparent design, like the giraffe’s long neck, in terms of purposes—they have long necks to feed on tall trees. (Aristotle’s explanation of water running downhill to reach its natural resting place is another example of a teleological explanation.) Modern biology tells us instead that giraffes have long necks because in the past the genes that caused long necks helped them survive, reproduce and transmit their genes. In modern biology adaptations have historical, not teleological explanations.

But explanations for why we’re here—get to heaven, be happy, help others, reproduce—are all teleological explanations. In evolutionary theory these are the wrong kinds of answers because in biology, there are no teleological answers only historical ones. From evolutionary theory it follows that we are here because we evolved, we aren’t here for a purpose. Note that this does not preclude us choosing goals and purposes for ourselves from which we derive emotional or psychological meaning. “However, if we’re interested in the question of whether life is ultimately meaningful, as opposed to whether it’s potentially emotionally meaningful, well, after Darwin, there is no reason to suppose that it is.”[i]

Yet Stewart-Williams doesn’t find this conclusion gloomy. Just because life has no ultimate purpose, it doesn’t follow that life isn’t worth living—life can be good even if it is ultimately meaningless. (Many subjectivists make the same point.) Like the existentialists we might even find this idea liberating, inasmuch as it allows us the freedom to give life our own meaning, rather than having it imposed on us externally. For some, subjective meaning may not be enough, but for Stewart-Williams we can appreciate beauty, kindness, love and the other good things in life even if they don’t have an ultimate purpose.

Surprisingly though, Stewart-Williams is not saying that we have purposes but the universe does not.  For the minds from which purposes emerge are a part of the universe, and this means that if you have purposes then part of the universe does too. The universe does not have a single purpose, but the many purposes of the beings that are part of it:

… it is false to say that the universe is purposeless. It was purposeless before the first life forms with purposes and drives evolved, and it will be devoid of purpose once more when the last life form takes its final gasp of breath. However, as long as we’re here to contemplate such matters, to struggle and strive, the universe is not without purpose.[ii]

Moreover, that our minds are part of the universe has an interesting implication—the universe is partly conscious. When we contemplate the universe, part the universe is conscious; when we know something of the universe, part of the universe is self-conscious. From an evolutionary perspective this means that after eons of unconsciousness, the universe is gradually becoming self-aware. And yet, regarding the destiny of consciousness, Stewart-Williams is not optimistic. Given the shadow cast over us by universal death he expects the universe will lapse back into unconsciousness.

I would summarize Stewart-Williams argument in its briefest form as follows: 1)evolution reveals that the universe has no teleological purpose; 2) we are part of the universe and we have purposes; 3) the universe has as many purposes as we give it.; and 4) he is not optimistic that the universe will remain conscious. Let us discuss each of these briefly in turn.

The first  agree follows from the non-teleological nature of modern biology. Darwin did for biology what Newton did for physics. There is the weaker notion of teleonomy, which is the idea that while there is no end state that is external to the process which guides or steers evolution, we can say that the process has goal-directedness as part of its program or algorithm. Needless to say this is a difficult topic about which philosophers of biology disagree. The second claim is self-evidently true and the third claim follows from the first, with the caveat that we can move from purposes of the part to purposes of the whole. The fourth claim is reasonable, although reasonable persons could disagree with it.

I have written extensively about evolution and purposes, especially in my work on Jean Piaget’s evolutionary theory and in my recent book and on this blog where I’ve discussed E.O. Wilson, Jacques Monod, Teilhard de Chardin. But in the end I just don’t know where cosmic evolution is heading. The most likely scenario is cosmic death yet I always hold out hope that Kurzweil was right–our post-human, intelligence-augmented ancestors will decide its fate. But in the end I just don’t know. And I can live like that.

[i] Steve Stewart-Williams, Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 194.

[ii] Stewart-Williams, Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew, 197.

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Truth and Evolution

 

“As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.” ~ William James

I rarely reply to a comment of a previous post. One reason is that, as 30 years of being a professor has demonstrated, you rarely change people’s minds. And I am just too old to enter into a polemic. But I may have been misunderstood. So to clarify the position of my previous post, I’ll reply to this comment.

“In view of the fact that you mention the germ theory of disease, its interesting to note that Ernst Boris Chain the co winner of the Nobel prize for his work in refining and perfecting penicillin ,which has probably saved over 200 million lives , believed in God and thought Darwinism was no more than a fairy tale.“

The reader is correct that there are theistic scientists, a self-evident claim that no rational person would deny. In fact this blog and my recent book document that 7% of the members of the national academy of science members are theists. Of course they also meticulously show that religious belief declines with educational attainment, among other factors. Of course this doesn’t mean that religious belief is false. but it does suggest that religion is not best defended by appealing to frequency of religious belief among scientists, for religious belief among that cohort is considerably less than in virtually any other group. Other arguments are perhaps better suited to a defense of religion.

As for the fact that an individual scientist rejects the near unanimous opinion of other scientists, this is hardly surprising. There are hundreds of thousands of scientists in USA–more than ten million if you count all those employed with science and engineering degrees–so it is easy to find outliers. You can find a few scientists who believe in big foot or alien abductions too. That doesn’t change the fact that evolution has the same scientific status as the theory of gravity or the atom, a claim easily verified at the National Academy of Science website or any of hundreds of legitimate scientific websites listed below. Anyone who tells you they don’t believe in evolution is either lying or scientifically illiterate. Remember too that when you get a new flu shot each year or finish your antibiotics, your implicitly accepting evolution–viruses evolve quickly!

Still it is possible that the outliers are correct. Maybe what goes up doesn’t come back down, the earth is flat, or things don’t change over time–perhaps the gods deceive us about all this to test our faith–but I wouldn’t bet on it. To trust the outliers is simple confirmation bias, finding cases to confirm what one already believes.

Yet I have no illusions that anything I say will change people’s mind. As the post states “people don’t want to know, they want to believe.” Interestingly, credulity itself has evolutionary origins. We are wired to believe what our parents tell us–it helped us survive–hence we often believe in adulthood what we were told when we were young.

For those interested in the truth about the fact of evolution you can visit any of these  websites.

Alabama Academy of Science
American Anthropological Association (1980)
American Anthropological Association (2000)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1923)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1972)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1982)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (2002)
American Association for the Advancement of Science Commission on Science Education
American Association of Physical Anthropologists
American Astronomical Society
American Astronomical Society (2000)
American Astronomical Society (2005)
American Chemical Society (1981)
American Chemical Society (2005)
American Geological Institute
American Geophysical Union (1981)
American Geophysical Union (2003)
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Physical Society
American Psychological Association (1982)
American Psychological Association (2007)
American Society for Microbiology (2006)
American Society of Biological Chemists
American Society of Parasitologists
American Sociological Association
Association for Women Geoscientists
Association of Southeastern Biologists
Australian Academy of Science
Biophysical Society
Botanical Society of America
California Academy of Sciences
Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing
Ecological Society of America
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Genetics Society of America
Geological Society of America (1983)
Geological Society of America (2001)
Geological Society of Australia
Georgia Academy of Science (1980)
Georgia Academy of Science (1982)
Georgia Academy of Science (2003)
History of Science Society
Idaho Scientists for Quality Science Education
InterAcademy Panel
Iowa Academy of Science (1981)
Iowa Academy of Science (1986)
Iowa Academy of Science (2000)
Kansas Academy of Science
Kentucky Academy of Science
Kentucky Paleontological Society
Louisiana Academy of Sciences (1982)
Louisiana Academy of Sciences (2006)
National Academy of Sciences (1972)
National Academy of Sciences (1984)
National Academy of Sciences (2007)
New Mexico Academy of Science
New Orleans Geological Society
New York Academy of Sciences
North American Benthological Society
North Carolina Academy of Science (1982)
North Carolina Academy of Science (1997)
Ohio Academy of Science
Ohio Math and Science Coalition
Pennsylvania Academy of Science
Pennsylvania Council of Professional Geologists
Philosophy of Science Association
Research!America
Royal Astronomical Society of Canada — Ottawa Centre
Royal Society
Royal Society of Canada
Royal Society of Canada, Academy of Science
Sigma Xi, Louisiana State University Chapter
Society for Amateur Scientists
Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
Society for Neuroscience
Society for Organic Petrology
Society for the Study of Evolution
Society of Physics Students
Society of Systematic Biologists
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (1986)
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (1994)
Southern Anthropological Society
Tallahassee Scientific Society
Tennessee Darwin Coalition
The Paleontological Society
Virginia Academy of Science
West Virginia Academy of Science

 

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