The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Science: Finding the Thread

The following are bios stolen from the festival guide.

Brian Fagan.  Is an internationally known archaeology writer and a former Guggenheim Fellow.  His many books include "The Little Ice Age," "The Great Warming" and "Cro-Magnon." His most recent book is "Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind."

Timothy Ferris. A former newspaper reporter, is the author of a dozen books, among them "Seeing in the Dark," "The Whole Sheband" and Coming of Age in the Milky Way." "The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature" is his latest book.

Holly Tucker. Is an associate professor at Vanderbilt University.  She is the author of "Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution," a 2011 finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.  Tucker lives in Nashville, Tenn.

The following is my interpretation of what was said at the panel and therefore not necessarily accurate.

Tucker:  Tensions between science and society came up in the story about the first blood transfusion.  The first attempt was due to a race between England and France in the 17th century.  Each wanted to prove you could use animals to transfuse blood to humans.  In France, a crazy fellow was kidnapped.  The guy survived the first two transfusions, but died after the third.  It became a court case and transfusion was banned.

When did scientific inquiry begin?  When did we move from alchemy to chemistry, astrology to astronomy.  Something happened in the 17th century.  There was critical thinking of the past.  For example, there was a belief in blood letting so why would you consider transfusions?  This was questioned.  There were other beliefs such as tying off a testicle in order to have a boy baby.

Publicly funded scientific research actually puts control over ethics.  Public debates about government funding and how far you allow science to go are arguments that have happened in the past.

Fagan.  His book looks at humans and water management.  How do you decide who gets water?  Historically, was done at the community level.  Now people feel entitled to water, which can lead to bad management of water.

Water was given reverence.    Romans and Mayans had water rituals.  At the time power was more important than science.  But when the steam engine was invented, science became more important.

We don't know the impact of the Three Gorges Dam yet.  The dam is preventing silt from flowing down river.  Shanghai is sinking.

Ferris:  60% of college age Americans are enrolled in college.  It is a growth industry.  Excluding South Saharan Africa, 90% of young people are in high school.  Liberal democracy and science are dependent on each other.  Half of humans live in a democracy.  In the past, one might only argue the Dutch Republic was a democracy.

We have a tendency to look back and study the great thinkers of the past.  The formation of academics allowed people to focus on a topic.  Do we really need to study the great writers of the past when we have current contemporaries?

Science is important to government.

We're committed to learn new things.  Curtailing scientific research is not the answer.  There is nothing in science that we should not know.

We can't make reliable predictions about what will happen ten years from now.  It is silly to fear or be optimistic about the future.  In the past, maybe you could be because things didn't change rapidly, but now change is so rapid we can't determine what will happen in the future.