05.12.: Vesalianum - Nebengebäude, Grosser Hörsaal (EO.16)
Jon Turney
Living in New Atlantis: how do we talk about the Baconian project as it moves toward transhumanism?
This talk reflects on recent decades of public debate about biological enhancement, and asks: Has the discussion moved on since the recombinant DNA debate in the 1970s? Since the publication of Frankenstein 200 years ago? Since Francis Bacon's first sketch of transhumanism 200 years before that? Or are we condemned to repeat ourselves as the project of re-engineering the human condition moves from speculation to something rooted in real research.
Jon Turney is a science writer based in Bristol UK. He has been a journalist, for the Times Higher Education Supplement, an academic, serving as head of the Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL, and a publisher, commissioning popular science books for Allen Lane/Penguin Press. His books include Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture (Yale, 1998), which won the British Medical Association Prize for popular medical book of the year; The Rough Guide to the Future ( 2010), shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize; I, Superorganism: Learning to Love Your Inner Ecosystem (Icon Books, 2015), shortlisted for the Royal Society of Biology book prize, and Cracking Neuroscience (Octopus, 2018).