Intelligent Person’s Guide Series
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Genetics
Adrian Woolfson
Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
November 2004
224 pp.
Adrian Woolfson explores the ethical minefield of genetics in the latest book in the popular Intelligent Person’s Guide series.
In a laboratory in America, a scientist Craig Ventor having successfully constructed a man-made virus, is now in the process of building the world’s first artificial creature. His work is part of a revolutionary new type of ’synthetic’ biology, which aims not just to understand how living things work, but to build them from scratch. Elsewhere molecular biologists have tapped into the DNA record to show that dodos were in fact a rare type of pigeon and the extinct quagga, a type of zebra.
New research has also told us that although a distinct type of human, Neanderthal man was not our ancestor. Like eyewitness accounts of Victorian chimney sweeps, the DNA record is an imperfect time machine that can help reconstruct our past. It will also shape our future, as although designed ’naturally’ by thousands of millions of years of evolution, mankind will soon be able to redesign itself. But how will such work be guided? What is needed is a manifesto for life, which acclaimed author Adrian Woolfson delivers in his examination of life and its future possibilities.
Adrian Woolfson is the author of Life Without Genes, described as ‘gloriously playful, enticing, eye-opening and heartening’ by the Scotsman. He currently teaches medicine at Clare College, Cambridge and was previously a Charles and Katherine Darwin Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge and a Welcome Trust Clinical Fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books.
The Guardian Tim Radford
’For ’intelligent’ read literate. Do not confuse this book with DNA for Dummies’. Science made clear, not simple... Hugely enjoyable’
The Lancet
’Charming...as informative as it is readable. [Woolson] has an ear for catchy descriptions that make science understandable and memorable.’
The Lancet
’Reading this book feels rather like having a conversation over dinner with a cultured, witty, and well-informed companion.’
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Ethics
Mary Warnock
Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
November 2004
192 pp.
Mary Warnock debates the difficult moral issues of today such as abortion and euthanasia and explores the nature of ethics and how we make moral decisions. Even before its publication, opinions expressed in this highly controversial book about ethics have caused uproar among thinkers and campaigners of different persuasions such as Mary Whitehouse, Ann Widdecombe MP and Dominic Lawson, editor of The Sunday Telegraph. In no uncertain terms the highly respected philosopher and public figure Lady Warnock explains in this book how to distinguish right from wrong in areas ranging from euthanasia to abortion, Down’s Syndrome, education and genetic engineering. Drawing on remarkably lucid examples from her personal and political life, Lady Warnock illustrates difficult cases to make her point succinctly and persuasively. She clarifies where she stands in relation to the philosophers of ethics in a concise and thought-provoking way.
“This admirable book fully lives up to its title... This is a wise, earnest, moving book, rather Victorian in its way, which shows that goodness is not just for prigs. No wonder the blurb calls it ‘controversial’. It must certainly raise eyebrows among the enlightened”. – Robert Grant, The Times
“This book will serve as an excellent introduction to ethical study.” – Alain de Botton
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Religion
John Haldane
Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
224 pp.
This polemical book argues that philosophy’s silencing of religion as irrational thinking is wrong and that only religion can offer cogent answers when it comes to understanding life.
* Topical addition to a successful and widely publicized series.
* Written in a clear, lively style that will appeal to both the academic and general reader.
* John Haldane is an international expert; here he provides an authoritative and provocative defense of religion.
What use is religion in the modern world? Since the Enlightenment philosophers have stripped faith of its claim to being part of human knowledge. But since the dismantling of religion, the ancient and enduring questions about the meaning of our existence – questions that haunt all of us at some point during our life – have never been adequately answered. Drawing on many aspects of human culture, John Haldane offers a defense of religion as not only credible but also necessary. He explores the place of religion in relation to science, in making sense of evil, in understanding history and in explaining value. He also looks at religion’s impact on art and its complex relationship with death. An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Religion makes a compelling argument for the necessity of faith in modern society.
About the Author
John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy, Head of the School of Philosophical and Anthropological Studies at the University of St Andrews, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is one of the editors of the International Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Routledge) and reviews frequently for the Times.