Leading Edge - 15/10/2009

Geoff Watts meets Richard Holmes, winner of the 2009 Royal Society Science Book Prize; he hears how history and biography can reveal the workings of science and discusses science literature with former Guardian science and literary editor Tim Radford. Also, does technology evolve? According to W Brian Arthur, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and author of The Nature of Technology, machines develop in some ways akin to biological organisms. Instead of natural selection, humans and markets force the changes. Instead of genes, sub-systems and new materials come together from diverse sources. And sometimes there are innovations rather than incremental developments - jet engines did not result from gradual changes to propeller engines. But overall, the argument is that technologies do indeed evolve. And how much can computers tell us about the way the human brain processes information? Two cognative neuroscientists, Padraic Monaghan from Lancaster University and James Keidel from Manchester University, discuss their research.