In Context #17

Spring 2007

Feature Article

“Purple Trillium (Trillium erectum)”
By Reinout Amons
A student who attended a recent Nature Institute course shares some of his observations about a local plant.

Notes and Reviews

“Remembering Ourselves”
By Stephen L. Talbott
In his latest book, Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines, Stephen Talbott looks from numerous angles at the processes by which our technologies can lead us away from ourselves. Here is the introduction to his book.

“Putting Genetic Miscalculation on the Record”
By Craig Holdrege
The Nature Institute is now beginning a large-scale project aimed at creating a database and public resource documenting the unintended effects of genetic manipulation. These effects, it turns out, are not exceptions, but the general rule.

“Morphological Effects of Genetic Manipulation”
By Johannes Wirz and Ruth Richter
Experiments investigating the qualitative differences between genetically altered and non-altered plants reveal that overall morphology and growth patterns can change dramatically, even when the genetic manipulation is highly specific and without obvious connection to the overall character of the plants.

“E. coli and a Sick Food System”
By Craig Holdrege
Were organic farming methods responsible for the recent, spinach-related outbreak of illness? In a letter published in Biotechnology, Craig responds to the misdirected claims of an editor of that journal.

“Stepping Out of Old Ruts”
By Craig Holdrege
In Goethe’s Science of Living Form: The Artistic Stages, the Australian scientist Nigel Hoffmann leads the reader through a novel, artistically informed method of scientific investigation. The Nature Institute’s Craig Holdrege wrote the foreword to the book, which we reprint here.