New angle on Pythagorian origins of science

THISWEEK New Scientist 14 July 1990 Government rethinks stand over altered organisms HE BRITISH government has bowed to pressure over its “green” bill and will now consider giving the public access to information on proposed releases of genetically modified organisms into the environment. This U-turn came as the Environment Protection Bill completed its committee stages in the House of Lords last week. Legislation over genetically modified organisms has proved to be one of the most contentious areas of the bill. An anomaly in the legislation means that the treatment of products of genetic engineering is misaligned with proposals for handling other potential threats to the environment, such as toxic waste and other pollutants. While the legislation requires information on these to be made public, this does not apply to genetically altered organisms. Environmentalists argue that this omission is a serious flaw in the bill, and they have been campaigning for the legislation to state exactly the information to be made public. This, the environmentalists argue, would increase public confidence in the safety of releases of genetically modified organisms outside. It is too important, they say, to be left to the regulations that flesh out the bill after it gains royal assent. The Lords who argued for an amendment on this issue insisted that the public has a Dutch go greener T HE DUTCH government last week allocated an additional billion Dutch guilders (about £310 million) a year to a new “improved” version of the country's ambitious 20-year National Environment Plan (NEP), first prepared in 1988. The revised there is a great danger that the whole project of genetic engineering on a commercial scale may be frustrated by public opposition motivated by fear of the unknown. If one has such a reaction from the public, the whoie industry will come to a stop,” said Lord Nathan. The government has also agreed to consider an amendment which would recognise the formation of an advisory committee to monitor any proposed releases—the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE). This, too, had been left to the regulations, and environmentalists feared that the environment minister might choose not to make public the advice of the committee, or perhaps might change its status, without having to seek parliamentary “We wish to see a committee which will have an existence that is secure; which will have a right to be consulted on each case... . and minimum safeguards to secure public disclosure of information,” said Lord Clinton-Davies in moving an amendment to the bill last week. ‘We know that as a matter of practice the government have been somewhat cavalier about consultation. Why should we take them on trust in the future?” dem- LL. Greeks have i but an accelerated implementation of the credit for being the first }-. measures so that the long-term objectives modern scientists. Plato 4 the Environment Ministry in The Hague. been great theorists, but founding ocracy and theatre, the ancient are achieved earlier,” said Eduard Groen of and the rest may have whose costs will rise by 16 per cent and 50 per cent respectively. Householders’ costs - A teen they have failed to impress as experimenters. Now, argues Andrew Dimarogonas + à È ; © Originally planned to exact high penalties for their practical work. | ® 1994. Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers had Greeks do deserve credit | from motorists, raising their uaa By up to 50 He concludes a pers E 4. per cent to reduce the number of cars on the soon to be published Hin” _gF - The revised plan focuses on energy 7 = 7 conservation, and earmarks an additional 650 million guilders a year for such measures as better insulation of residential and industrial buildings, improved energy efficiency of appliances and the gradual switch to renewable resources of energy such as wind, solar and biomass. The plan aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions by more than 40 per cent by 2000 as part of the government’s strategy to reduce emissions of the gas—the main pollutant accelerating global warming. O Vibration that the Greeks were scientists. The picture above shows AA 2 LÉ $4 i 3 > 3 2 Y T 0) 0 0 road by more than 2 million. Instead, motor- the Journal of Sound and # î i the | § in a dì f 5 |© PI è = Y ington Z S ists get off lightly under the NEP-Plus. ° 3 will remain steady at 30 guilders a monthin \) A = ay pete: We: | of Wash- University, - ï À 3 +x in Britain. They will also give the joint committee more independence. D {fe change of strategy from the original NEP, popularly been denied | 7 A ogy. These new measures will strengthen the role of the joint nature conservation committee, which will coordinate the council’s activities once it has been split up as planned into three separate agencies, one for each country New angle on Pythagorian origins of science mathematics, The extra burden of financing the NEP- Conservancy Council—the government's advisory body on conservation—in line with proposals advocated by the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technol- Supporting the amendment, Lord Addington said: ‘*When it comes to these Dutch describe it as Europe’s most com- Plus falls mainly on industry and government House of Lords. It will then return to the House of Commons for final scrutiny before becoming law this autumn. Last week, the government tabled a series of changes to plans for structuring the Nature approval. ESPITE “The new plan does not represent a cannot be public enough. Too many decisions tend to be taken behind closed doors. There is always a danger of people looking for what they want to see from scientific advice, rather than seeing what is actually there." Julie Hill from the Green Alliance is a member of the ACRE, which held its first meeting last week. The committee agreed to examine the issue of public access to information on genetically modified organisms as a priority. “The government had rejected the provisions we wanted in the bill as unnecessary,” says Hill. “Now they have recognised our arguments and, we hope, will provide the guarantees we want over public access to information.” Further government amendments to the bill could emerge later this month when the legislation reaches its report stage in the right to know what is going on, and that it would also be in the best interests of the biotechnology industry. “If there is not the information and not the public confidence, plan, the NEP-Plus, will absorb up to 16 billion Dutch guilders annually by 1994. The prehensive environmental initiative. important issues, the government cannot have too much advice, and the debate Susan Watts and Roger Milne 23 E La . . “I | } > (Fr = A | Pythagoras (right) tests the pitch of blacksmiths’ hammers Pythagoras hammer their anvils and decides to investiweighing blacksmiths’ hammers as part of an experiment to investigate the nature of musigate. His first guess, that the pitch depends cal notes. The image comes from a Sth- So he begins to experiment. Having built the century text, written a thousand years after Pythagoras’s death, attributed to the Roman scholar Boethius. It is evidence, says Dimarogonas, that Pythagoras was the first modern scientist. Boethius tells a story about Pythagoras passing a blacksmiths. He notices the diffirst laboratory instrument, a monochord to calibrate pitch, he concludes that the note depends on the intrinsic properties of an instrument. (The left-hand part of the picture shows Boethius with a monochord.) Dimarogonas says: “Pythagoras, with his observations in the metal workers’ shop, introduced the experimental method.” ferent notes being produced as blacksmiths on the strength of the blacksmith, is wrong.