Biography:

Dr McConnell, Professor of Genetics, at Trinity College Dublin was educated at Trinity (BA, 1966) and the California Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1971); he has been a member of the faculty of Trinity since 1970 from where he introduced the science and technology behind genetic engineering to Ireland. In the course of this work he carried out research with many companies including Guinness Ireland, NovoNordisk, BP, Schering Plough and ICI. He advised the Industrial Development Authority of Ireland on the potential impact of Biotechnology on the Irish economy.

He also advised the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and other organisations on biotechnology policy in many countries. He held an Eleanor Roosevelt Fellowship of the IUAC at Harvard University (1976-77). He is a member of the Executive Board of the European Federation of Biotechnology and Co-Vice-Chairman of European Action on Global Life Sciences (EAGLES). He co-ordinated two projects of the European Commission on meeting the challenges for the life sciences in the developing and emerging countries. He was a member of the Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, and participated in the Technology Foresight exercise, developing arguments that laid the basis for the establishment of Science Foundation Ireland. He is Chairman of The Irish Times Trust, a not-for-profit company which owns The Irish Times. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the European Molecular Biology Organisation.

Abstract:

The greatest dissolvent in contemporary thought - the Origin of Species (John Dewey 1910)

Charles Darwin proposed that evolution occurred by a process combining natural selection with replication and modification, what Dennett called the single best idea that anybody ever had. His idea posed great challenges both to scientists and to the general public, especially in Europe and the United States. The Origin became what Dewey called the greatest dissolvent in contemporary thought. It will be argued that the implications of his work remain hugely powerful even though most of what flows from The Origin is not well known outside biology, his ideas are profoundly disturbing in the public sphere and they have not been well established in science. Darwin was aware that his theory posed three great challenges: he understood natural selection but how did replication and modification occur; how could man have acquired each mental power and capacity by gradation; how could life have emerged in an inorganic milieu, as Darwin said in some warm little pond? To these we can add a fourth: has life emerged elsewhere in the observable universe? It will be argued that the last three of these challenges, though understood in general terms, remain unresolved and retain as much capacity to excite scientists as to discomfort the general public if the public knows about them at all.