Updated Summary of Research

 

As part of a forthcoming departmental media activity, I have had to put together some concise ideas about my research.  I went through a few different edits to shorten my comments, but thought I would detail the “longer version” here on my blog.

There are many topics I have published on in the past 20 years, including ideal theory, population aging, cancer, COVID-19, virtue epistemology, Marx and patriarchy, toleration, genetics, reproductive freedom, play, positive biology, well-ordered science, equality, framing aging, gene patents, deliberative democracy, etc.  Despite what might appear as quite disparate topics and interests, there actually is a unifying concern behind most of these projects.

Below I try to summarize (in less than 500 words) the central concern of my intellectual life, in response to three questions: 

What are you researching?

We are living in the midst of a fascinating, and rapidly progressing, “genetic revolution”.  My research examines the ethical and social implications of this revolution.  This revolution has both an epistemic and a technological dimension.  The epistemic dimension is the new knowledge we are leaning about the role genes and heredity play in health, cognition, happiness and behaviour.  These new findings  compel social scientists to revisit the so-called “nature/nurture” debate, and address it from an empirically informed perspective vs the armchair theorizing perspective we have tended to function within. 

And there is also a technological dimension to the genetic revolution.  For the first time in human history we are developing the capacity to purposefully and directly alter our biology via gene therapy and genome editing, to improve upon what evolution by natural selection has given us.  Should the goal biomedical research be limited to treating specific diseases?  Or should we also aspire to “enhance” our biology so that we can enjoy more health in late life, improve cognition and our potential for happiness, and maybe alter human nature itself?  These are the central questions that preoccupy my attention.

What do you hope your research will achieve?

The goal of my research is to redress a concern raised over half a century ago by the British novelist and scientist CP Snow in his famous lecture “The Two Cultures”.  Snow argued that there was a gulf between science and the humanities, and this gulf still persists today.  To ensure we implement “well-ordered” science in the 21^st century I believe interdisciplinary dialogue and debate is needed so that we have rational and cogent deliberations about the regulation of these scientific innovations.  In my research I try to integrate empirical findings from demography, biogerontology and evolutionary biology with normative insights from bioethics and political theory.  By doing so I hope to help harrow the divide between the natural sciences and the humanities/social sciences.

What excites you must about your research?

The fast pace of scientific discovery, and uncertainty about where the science might go in the future, really excites my intellectual curiosity.  What was considered science fiction only 10-20 years ago is now a reality.  We need to develop the “intellectual flexibility” necessary to refine and modify our normative theories and public policy decision-making to take seriously the changing moral landscape of the 21^st century and population aging.  I find such a project both challenging and fascinating.

Cheers, 

Colin