Perhaps the Frenchwoman quoted at length actually cloned a child. Or perhaps she is merely a publicity hound with a new gimmick.

But the fact is, it proved possible to clone a sheep. Therefore, it is possible to clone any other mammal. Therefore, it is possible to clone a human. Therefore, humans shall in fact be cloned.

How many times do we have to experience these cycles before we understand that nothing can stop the advance of science? Not the ancient threats of inquisitors. Not the pleadings of popes and priests. Not the table-thumping of politicians. Not the whinings of moralists. Nothing but the will of the scientists and physicians carrying out the whatever experiments they choose, where ever they can get laboratory space and volunteer patients. There, they are subject solely to the laws of physics, chemistry, biology and any other sciences related to their experiment.

Scientists envisioned the possibility of nuclear chain reactions. Inevitably, this moved to the level of laboratory experiments. Then the first large scale experiment in this field resulted in a nuclear chain reaction in Chicago in 1942. This resulted in the construction of a testable nuclear weapon at White Sands, New Mexico, and its detonation on July 15, 1945. This led directly to the detonation of two more nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki three weeks later.

So adapt yourselves to the coming fact -- which may already have arrived -- that a woman shall be able to give birth to her own sister or brother, if she so chooses.

All of this is the way things shall be. Forever.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Rose:

Do you want to know what I thought when I heard this news? I thought of my kids, specifically my youngest, my daughter. She will grow up in a world so totally different than the one I grew up in. What's more is that she'll quickly grow accustomed to stuff like cloned babies and jet planes crashing into skyscrapers.

It'll just be...the world she lives in.

After thinking about that, I thought about the cloned baby herself.

Brrrr!

You know, of course, that Cloneaid and the Raelians have this bizarre idea that once they perfect cloning they want to "download" the parent's memory into the clone over and over again and then live forever.

The image that comes to mind is a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy....etc

Yeah, I know, it's all been done before in an Arnold movie.

Well Ara, perhaps you are one of the first disciples to draw meaning from the Gospel According to St Arnold.

(Schwarzenegger, of course.)

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Ara:

Will you please, for Christ's sake (oops, sorry about that, heh) STOP playing the fool!?

Ok. Someone clones a human. So what? Do you know what an identical twin is? A natural clone. That's it. End of story. They share the same genetic code, just like they share the same eye color.

Why do people get so Frankensteinian about this? Doesn't anyone remember all the fuss about "test tube" babies? The ones that are old enough to vote, now? Does anyone think they are freaks?

All that crap about "downloading memories" and so on is just that; crap. It's at the same level as old people that don't understand physics who worry about electricity leaking out of light sockets.

Um, Arnold: while the march of science may be inevitable, it isn't necessarily quick. The problem right now is producing a viable birth - something that has been rare in any test mammal up to now, especially primates. So don't go waving your "Brave New World" banner just yet.

As for Rosemary's original thread: I don't trust any cheese-munching surrender monkey, especially a so-called scientist. The last decent one in France was Curie, and she was really Polish.

Casey,

1) My banner reads "Cowardly New World", because most of the grandstand cannot face up to the unfamiliar. Actually, neither can I. I was still using DOS about six years or more after Windows become something you activated with a mouse rather than a mechanism you cranked open to get rid of stale air.

2) The French must agree with you. They went to the trouble of guillotining Lavoissier, because, as someone on the Committee of Public Safety purportedly remarked, "the Revolution needs no savants".

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

To all: An excellent article on this thread from Reason Magazine, by Ronald Bailey:

http://www.reason.com/hod/rb122702.shtml

Arnold, I always remember the saying to the effect that you shouldn't be the first to try something new, nor the last to lay aside the old. :)

I also remember how long it took Windows to become useful. For a long time I stuck with DesQview and MS-DOS 5.0. I would say that Win95 was the first truly reliable Windows, and it has gotten better with each iteration (Win Me and XP Home excluded, Heh). Maybe Dean can start a thread on "I remember when..." for Olde Farte computer users like us... Heh.

On a more serious note, the Bailey article (I think) covers the main points well. Recommended.

On a lighter note: perhaps that nasty old baggage in "A Tale of Two Cites" said something like: "Savants? We don' need no stinkin' savants!"

And until five years ago, my old computer ran under MS-DOS 3.3. In fact to this day, running under Windows 98, I still do probably half my work from the DOS command line. My word processing program is still Microsoft Word 5.0 for DOS. Which is not Y2K compliant-- to keep it from crashing I wrote a little utility which fools it into thinking it's 20 years ago.

Heck, I still use a slide rule (Keuffel & Esser Log Log Duplex Decitrig, model 4081-3, celluloid over mahogany, circa 1940) in preference to a calculator! From which you may conclude that I am something of a selective Luddite. I love science and technology, only I aim, insofar as I can, to control their role in my life. Not to let them control me. And in particular not to let our cultural interpretations of science and technology control me.

The greater part of the damage done to us by science and technology in modern Western culture is done to us, less by science and technology as such, and more by the mindset and the attitudes which arise from our culture's various interpretations of science and technology. If we could handle the same techniques with a thoroughly different (dare I say "purified" or "transformed" or even "penitent"?) set of intentions, I wouldn't be nearly as worried.

That, Casey, is why I'm not consoled by the fact (and you're quite correct) that a clone is biologically no different from an identical twin. I mean, biologically, you're right. But we bring a totally different frame of mind to human clones than we do to identical twins, and that frame of mind is the greater part of the problem. I mean, look, this group (whether their claim proves true or bogus) is like something straight out of Art Bell!

No doubt over the long run human cloning will be the province of relatively more level-headed scientists. And no doubt in the long run our attitudes toward human cloning will change and develop. We will "adjust." But I would be very, very surprised if there will not still be, in our attitudes toward human cloning, a large measure of vanity and hubris. And you know what happens with hubris, it leads by and by to a run-in with nemesis.

And that, Arnold, is why I'm not fatalistically resigned to the fact (and you're quite correct) that moral or ethical considerations usually have little impact on the "advance" of science. Yeah, you're right, when it's time to railroad, people are going to railroad. If we can do it, sooner or later somebody will do it.

Only with what mindset, what attitudes, what set of intentions?

What I'm saying is, our toys and our "magic tricks" keep getting bigger and more powerful all the time. And we're no wiser or more ethical than we've ever been. You think we shouldn't even ask whether that's a recipe for disaster? I beg to differ.

Paul, I am with you 100 percent that some scientific advances are in fact recipes for disaster. But we cannot know what good can come out of a particular "magic trick" until it is put in place and tried.

Nuclear energy right from the get-go had the twin potential as an unlimited source of usefulness for the betterment of mankind, but it also increased the capability of irresponsible or panic striken leaders to destroy civilization within a few hours. Can it not be argued that the thermonuclear proliferation, with its intercontinental ballistic missiles, terrorized the United States and the Soviet Union into keeping the peace throughout the long cold war? Does nuclear power not serve a vital purpose in desalinating sea water for irrigation and other human needs? Will nuclear energy in some advanced form not serve a penultimate purpose in powering the space exploration vessels that will be needed to carry significant numbers of humans to the outer reaches of our solar system and beyond?

Perhaps related socially useful purposes will be found for cloning human children. Should a woman with an infertile husband not have the right to bring to life a child with at least her own genes? Or what about a husband and wife who have lost a child, but may have an opportunity to bring to life a new child with the identical genes of the one who was lost?

In a religious vein, perhaps the question is not whether we are playing God, but more usefully, perhaps expanding the outreach of humankind by improving our understanding of the universe and of the natural sciences and putting these sciences to useful work as our forefathers have done throughout history.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

I'm not sure if anyone here is aware of this but my expertise is in biology and chemistry. I studied and trained as a scientist.

With that in mind I want to address a couple of points.

Should a woman with an infertile husband not have the right to bring to life a child with at least her own genes?

The simple answer is no. If she wanted kids so bad she should have found a man whose gene pool is following Darwin's Law.

Or what about a husband and wife who have lost a child, but may have an opportunity to bring to life a new child with the identical genes of the one who was lost?

Oh, that would be soooo healthy for the poor kid. Very, very selfish. Demeaning to the life that was lost and the new replacement part. Ethically it is wrong. Yes, scientists have ethics. Of course, I have no doubt misguided parents could find a few Mengele types out there.

How many times do we have to experience these cycles before we understand that nothing can stop the advance of science?

How many scientists continued to study in Jozef Mengele's footsteps? There is definitely a way to stop scientists...

Not the ancient threats of inquisitors. Not the pleadings of popes and priests. Not the table-thumping of politicians. Not the whinings of moralists.

Table thumping politicians and whining moralists can produce laws, regulations, bans and take away possible funding. No money = no advancent.

Nothing but the will of the scientists and physicians carrying out the whatever experiments they choose, where ever they can get laboratory space and volunteer patients.

LAWS forbidding it WILL stop them...

There, they are subject solely to the laws of physics, chemistry, biology and any other sciences related to their experiment.

There they are subject to a code of professional ethics. They are taught in school. Ethics is a very important component in science and they do have morality weaved in there. Right and wrong is very important to the science world.

Paul, I am with you 100 percent that some scientific advances are in fact recipes for disaster.

Well yes, Arnold, some scientific advances are recipes for disaster. But to my mind the real recipe for disaster is that our scientific and technological abilities keep growing, while our wisdom stays the same.

In a religious vein, perhaps the question is not whether we are playing God.

No, I think when it comes to human cloning, the question is precisely whether we are playing God.

Or to use the terminology I used before-- derived from the ancient Greeks-- the question is whether our overweening hubris is leading us to a run-in with nemesis. Icarus flies too close to the sun; the sun melts the wax in his wings, and he suffers a fatal meteoric plunge.

That's the course we're on whenever we think we can reinvent human nature. Whether by ideology and social engineering (cf. Marxism-Leninism) or whether by biological means (cf. eugenics, human cloning, genetic engineering, etc.).

What did the 20th century teach us, if not that attempts to reinvent human nature lead inevitably to disaster and to megadeaths?

There [scientists] are subject to a code of professional ethics. They are taught in school. Ethics is a very important component in science and they do have morality weaved in there. Right and wrong is very important to the science world.

Rosemary, I hope and pray you're right. Though I'm of a pessimistic turn of mind on these matters.

Rosemary and Paul,

I can empathize with the viewpoints that both of you have expressed in your posts. Cloning of any animal -- and most especially of humans -- no doubt represents a sea change in the course of science from which there may be no going back. You are both saddened. When the first tested and scientifically verified cloning in fact takes place, there shall be a sort of numbness that will beset and dominate the minds and consciousness of scores of millions of thinking persons in ours and other societies who previously thought this type of medical accomplishment either too brazen to attempt or impossibile to achieve.

But there is no worldwide agreement on the ethics of cloning. Nor do most scientists any longer think it is impossible to achieve. And most importantly, the writ of the United States has utterly no power over such matters in the Bahama Islands or in Italy, where extensive human cloning research is now underway. Therefore, laws cannot and shall not stop it, because all the societies on the face of this planet recognize no single universal laws concerning almost any facet of human behavior.

When these children are born, will they be treated as freaks or monsters, or will they receive the same love, childhood care and attention as any other youngster requires? Yes, they will be different in a most fractional but absolutely fundamental way. But they will nonetheless have the power to laugh and cry, feel love and rejection, fall in love themselves, and in all cases, wish nothing other than a normal life.

But that is up to the rest of us. Once created, a child cannot be undone, except by murder. For those who oppose abortion, is that not the core of the argument? For those who support abortion but define the time of creation as birth rather than that of conception, few would condone the destruction of a viable infant in the middle of childbirth. That is why there is a greater degree of unanimity over the banning of partial-birth abortion.

But will those of you who are fearful and frightened by the implications of cloning therefore turn the fear and fright upon the children born of this process? Will that not in fact be the most terrible abortion of all? One that consigns the child to a living death because you disagree with the method by which that child was conceived?

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Q: Does the dog have a buddha-nature?
A: Bow wow!

--------------------------------

Q: Does the clone have a buddha-nature?
A: [ominous tones of Star Wars "imperial bad guy" theme] dah-dah-dah, dah-dee-DAH dah-dee-DAHHH... dah-dah-dah, dah-dee-DAH dah-dee-DAHHH...

--------------------------------

Umm, on a more serious note, Arnold, I would hope that everyone would love and accept a child who resulted from cloning, just the same as they would any child. Of course, the world being what it is, some people would stigmatize a child who was a clone. Sad to say.

But to say that a child should be loved and accepted, no matter how it came to be born, is not to say that the way it was produced should be condoned or encouraged.

And most importantly, the writ of the United States has utterly no power over such matters in the Bahama Islands or in Italy, where extensive human cloning research is now underway.

Yeah, you're right. And that's why I think human cloning will unfortunately become a reality soon enough, if it isn't a reality already. My original background was in the field of mathematics, and from my experiences there, I'd say that most people I knew in math, engineering, and the physical sciences were pretty decent folks. But all it takes is a handful of unscrupulous researchers, working in a country that will put up with their research...

I repeat: if we learned nothing else from the bloody history of the 20th century, we should have learned that attempts to reinvent human nature lead inevitably to disaster.

But will those of you who are fearful and frightened by the implications of cloning therefore turn the fear and fright upon the children born of this process? Will that not in fact be the most terrible abortion of all? One that consigns the child to a living death because you disagree with the method by which that child was conceived?

One of the implications that I'm frightened of is exactly what will become of the children. Not just the ones that actually survive fully intact but all of them.

That is what I fear.
Will there be little deformed toddler experiments in labs being tested? And not receiving what a child needs - love, affection, reassurance. That is my fear.

My fear also extends to the fact that if this kind of treatment becomes acceptable because as you said it is inevitable.

If the method is perfected - I will not fear a child produced this way. It's the prospect of how many children will SUFFER until perfection is achieved. It took scientists more than 270 attempts to produce Dolly, the sheep. Let me tell you, those unsuccessful attemps were born abominations missing heads, major organs and limbs. The poor things suffered before being euthanized. I DO NOT want human children to go through that. I abhor abortion. The idea that many of these "mistakes" would be aborted after the fact sickens me to my core.

That is what I fear.

I saw the news on CNN while dressing in my hotel room. The wife and I were packing for our return trip from Indy->Memphis.

I remarked to my wife that school was difficult when all the other children decided you had "the cooties." Secondary school was tough enoguh for me, an intelligent, well-mannered, generic white boy. I can't imagine the dis-information and fear that will fuel the children picking on a human clone. I'll take comfort in the fact that the rumored parents apparently have the means for private schools.

On the issue of "it can happen" therefore "it will happen". The real issue (vis Feynman) is whether "It is happening." Hopefully several, objective scientific observers will be able to tell the world.

Until then, I guess I can rest assured that I'm neither French or a clone. :-)

Paul, Arnold, or anyone else:
I've seen several remarks about scientific advances being receipes for disaster.

Name three.

Potential disasters don't count. Humanity has - for example - managed to "destroy civilization" several times without resorting to nuclear warfare. And, oddly enough, nuclear weapons were responsible for most of the restraint seen during the Protracted Conflict between the US and the USSR.

Frankly, this is starting to sound like one of of those "if man were meant to fly, he'd have wings" threads.

Casey, let me reiterate the more fully nuanced version of my statement: the real recipe for disaster is that our scientific and technological abilities keep growing, while our wisdom remains the same. Our "toys" keep getting bigger and more powerful, while we are no wiser than we've ever been.

And (as I've also already stated above) the worst part of the problem often lies, not on the scientific or technological level, but on the level of our cultural interpretations of science and technology.

Please don't get me wrong, I love science and technology. Overall they've been a tremendous force for good. But when our technical abilities outstrip our wisdom, we may find ourselves in the role of the sorcerer's apprentice.

Three scientific/technological/cultural disasters:

The technology of modern conventional warfare  I think back during the First World War, people had it straight about the horrors which modern technology adds to the already horrible business of war. If in the generations since then we've become somewhat inured to this added level of horror, I think that's our loss and our blindness. Bad enough for the soldiers in the trenches, though war has always been hell for the soldier, and a sword in the gut will kill you just as dead as a bomb dropped from an airplane. But for civilians cowering in a basement during a fire bombing from the sky? Yeah, war's always been bad for civilians, too; but I think it's an arguable position that for civilians modern warfare has been worse.

There are some hopeful signs here, though. Smart bombs and whatnot may make war much less inhumane than it was in the 20th century (which, by the way, ended in 1989).

The cultural outlook of scientism  Modern physical science, with its theoretical roots in Newton and company, and its philosophical underpinnings in Descartes, has brought us many benefits. But there has also been a pervasive cultural undertow of scientism: the idea that science and science alone "has the answers," and that any human concern which falls outside the purview of science is somehow bogus and contemptible. The irony is, there is nothing in science as such which necessitates the adoption of scientism. Scientism (unlike science) is nothing but a cultural perspective-- a perspective which, however, seems to be heavily entangled with the root assumptions of modern Western culture.

Certain media of communication  I think there's a lot to Marshall McLuhan's idea that each medium of mass communication has, structured into it, a certain cultural potential. A cultural potential which often becomes clear only after the medium has been up and running for a while. Of course it's always a mixed bag, but I think some media have a more benign cultural potential than others. I think the cultural impact of radio and the computer has, on the whole, been positive. I honestly think we would be better off if television and the telephone had been strangled in the cradle. The telephone is bad enough, even without telemarketers and cell phones. As for television, you convince me that television isn't heavily implicated in the shorter attention span, the lower reading scores, and the general "dumbing down" of today's school kids.

And if the Nazis hadn't given eugenics such a bad name, I'd probably be putting eugenics at the top of my list.

"if man were meant to fly, he'd have wings"... On a lighter note, actually I have given some (science-fantasy) thought to the question of what if some human beings did have wings. As you might guess, I take a fairly dark view of the cultural ramifications.

By the way, I agree with you about nuclear weapons. Overall they've been a force for stability, at least so far. So that chapter in the history of science and technology hasn't turned out so badly after all.

Rose:

Honestly? I fear for the clone-children as well. And not for the reasons that Steve Gunn is fearful.

The thought of 270 deformed babies is a chilling one.

As you know, I'm pro-choice. So I've been doing a lot of thinking on this subject. I've also been asking everyone I know about this, including clergy.

My take is different than yours (surprise!). If you're interested, email me off-line and I'll be glad to share it with you.

Otherwise I'm afraid this thread will ignite into a discussion about abortion.

If the threat ignites into a pure debate about abortion, I'll simply start deleting messages. Abortion debates tend to destroy whatever thread they're a part of--if we want to debate abortion, we'll start a thread for it. (That's my warning for all and sundry.)

Having said that, it's virtually impossible to discuss cloning without abortion coming into the argument to a certain extent. For example, I firmly believe that as reproductive technology advances further and further, the hard-line, radical pro-life and pro-choice positions will almost certainly evaporate, and few sane, civilized human beings will be able to maintain either the extremism of what Roe v. Wade mandated for the nation, nor the extremism of the "life begins and conception" forces. Something in between is where civilization is probably headed--and I think that's for the best, myself.

Anyway, as to cloning: I'm in broad agreement with Paul Burgess on most of that--the number of new technologies that unleashed horrors in the 20th century are numberless, including biological weapons, chemical weapons, high-altitude bombing, and a host of other unimaginably destructive weapons. Although they eventually evolved into astonishingly humane weapons compared to what came before, lakesful of blood were shed before those "smart" weapons came about.

Without question, the 20th Century was the most bloody in human history, and technology was a large part of that. Especially if you include pop psychology, ala Marxism and Nazism, as a "science" -- which those espousing those philosophies surely believed they were.

And we absolutely should not forget eugenics, because it only underwent a period of a few decades in disrepute. It's slowly popping its head back up--as it inevitably would once reproductive technology became more advanced.

Having said all that, I simply do not fear cloning. I think such children will be accepted as children. And I don't believe we'll have 270 deformed clone babies before we get a viable human baby, because in each case you have to talk a woman into giving birth to such a creature. (Of course, don't get me started on what happens if the Chinese decide they want to be the first to successfully clone a human. I have no doubt there that it will be ugly indeed--and far beyond our ability to control.)

Having said that, I also think Arnold is wrong: cloning is going to cost a lot of money and require some volunteers, and it will be hard to find funding for that if most of the West bans the procedure. Outlawing the procedure probably cannot stop it, but it strikes me as naive to assume that laws cannot impede researchers. They bloody well can.

I believe what's most likely to happen is that animal cloning will eventually be perfected, until finally it seems safe to try it on a human. Probably at that point, volunteers will be easy to come by. And at that point, I simply am no longer frightened. A clone is just a twin, and I seriously doubt that anyone in the West will stigmatize such children.

What I find far more frightening--and I'm rather surprised no one has mentioned this--is that the rise of human cloning will inevitably lead to designer babies. Indeed, anything learned in successful cloning of children is going to wind up used in efforts to bring to life children whose genetic structure has been modified.

That's the point where society will face a real long-term threat. And it will be a threat, without question.

There's nothing to fear short-term, of course. It's probably a conflict my son's generation will have to face in their middle age. But that's what's coming, and what we should really fear, because if it's not handled wrong, the conflict and suffering could be great indeed.

And I don't believe we'll have 270 deformed clone babies before we get a viable human baby, because in each case you have to talk a woman into giving birth to such a creature.

They may not find 270 women to give birth to such a creature? Why are you needing it spelled out? No scientist will be able to tell if his little egg would become such a creature. They have no way of knowing until the egg is thriving within the womb if it is deformed. 20 weeks gestation minimum on lots of the really nasty deformities. Obviously except a missing head that would be picked up by 10-12 weeks.

Shit Dean, if they could tell before it needed to be implanted - they could just throw it out - problem solved. That is not the case, unfortunately.

FYI, there are more than 270, desperate to have a baby in any manner, type women in this country alone. Rest assured finding willing gals won't be the problem.

Paul, perhaps you can convince me that we are not growing more wise. Then I'll take a shot at convincing you that television is not an abomination.

Owen, you've got your work cut out for you. I never owned a color TV in my life until I was 43. And now that The X-Files has ended, it's a miracle if I turn my TV on more than about twice a month. Usually to catch some breaking news item.

Actually I'm not worried about what television can do to you and to me, who already have our adult neurological wiring in place. I don't even think the content of the TV programs is the big problem, though I won't say it ain't a problem. (I grew up in the days of Gilligan's Island, Green Acres, and The Beverly Hillbillies, which sure warn't no highbrow fare.) It's more the endlessly repeated visual cliches, the Pavlovian canned laughter, the fixed 30- or 60-minute dramatic pace, the driving five-images-a-second visual rhythm, and what thousands upon thousands of hours of entrainment with such sensory input may do to a young brain which is still wiring and routing itself.

Believe me, I'd be just as concerned if our kids were staring into a randomly flashing stroboscopic kaleidoscope for five hours every day.

As for wisdom, I would consider human nature a function of wisdom. As in, "f(x) is a function of x." Note, not "wisdom is a function of human nature," but "human nature is a function of wisdom." See my remarks about human nature further up in the thread. If I don't think human nature is about to change, then a fortiori I don't think wisdom is gonna change, either.

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.
--T.S. Eliot

I'd say the evolving triumph of democratic liberalism over authoritarianism demonstrates the growing wisdom of Mankind, but that's just my opinion.

And I'm not at all convinced that there is a problem with "the younger generation" - all generations think the following one is the worst ever, but somehow we still managed to get from Socrates to the moon (smile).

Owen: The moon, yeah, that was something else. "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." :-)

Today's younger generation, "the worst ever"? Oh, heck, no! In fact I find most young people nowadays more tolerant, more "live and let live," and open to a far more colorful range of interests than most of my peers were at that age. But at the same time, over the past 20 years or so, young peoples' attention span and ability to focus have waned-- an observation that's hardly original with me! It's probably due to a number of factors, though I honestly do think post-MTV television by the kilohour (less the content and more the structure and format) is one ingredient in the mix.

As for wisdom, I suspect you and I mean two very different things by the term. I'm using the term in very nearly a cosmic sense: maybe I should write it "Wisdom," with a capital W. But even if I draw an extra distinction by adding wisdom (lower case) as "Wisdom as refracted through human nature (which is itself a function of Wisdom)," I think you and I are still talking apples and oranges. Perhaps in your sense of the term-- progress of liberal democratic values, and all-- humanity has been growing in wisdom. But as I use the term... well, I think I'll stick with those lines from Eliot.