There are social concerns here, but they are largely couched in terms of individuals and biological; have we evolved to be prejudiced, or murderous, or capable of only some sorts of intellectual endeavour?It should not be surprising that 100 intellectuals discoursing on a website end up a little detached from the real world. But that detachment underscores what some of the questioners were asking themselves: how do we get science to do good? As yet, we do not know. Science, at this sort of level, is still very much an intellectual and personal set of questions, not a social one. We are quite good at getting science-based technology to make money, but we are a long way from understanding how to make it responsive to people’s desires, needs and goals.The question posed by Steven Rose, professor of biology at the Open University, is: “How to ensure that we develop sciences and technologies that serve the people, are open to democratic scrutiny and which assist rather than hinder humans to live harmoniously with the rest of nature”. It is a specialist’s way of asking one of the best questions of all: how can I make things better, not just for myself, but for everything and everyone? If that is not the question you are asking yourself for the new year, what is?. No one asks how to cure cancer, or how many Brits are going to die of mad cow disease. No questions bear directly on the development of the Third World, or on gender equality, or on poverty.

While there are no questions about God and some negativity about organised religion – David Gelernter, computer scientist, cultural critic and Unabomber victim asks “When will the nation’s leading intellectuals come clean and admit that Biblical doctrine (on women, nature, homosexuality, the absolute nature of moral truth and lots of other topics) makes them cringe and they are henceforth not Jews and not Christians, and the hell with old time religion?” – there is quite a lot about the need for new spiritual values.Some of these questions are more overtly religious than others, but the plaintive requests for a more long term approach to the world and its resources, like Stewart Brand’s “How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare?” seem much of a piece with the more overtly spiritual, if rather instrumentalist, question posed by Colin Tudge, one of Britain’s best science writers: “Can we devise a religion for the 21st century and beyond that is plausible and yet avoids banality – one that people see the need for? What would it be like?” And the cosmologists often sound religious anyway; John Barrow, professor of astronomy at the University of Sussex, asks: “Is the Universe a great mechanism, a great computation, a great symmetry, a great accident, or a great thought?”But while they acknowledge the spiritual, these seekers after truth ignore many more earthly and more pressing problems. But it is clear that the questions about how to better the world were asked from an intriguing set of perspectives.Anyone who thinks that scientists and their fellow travellers are uninterested in religion will be in for a surprise. Some of them ask questions about science; others ask about its implications, and more generally about how to better the world Very few found a question that covered both. It is not clear whether those posing the pure science questions actually value those questions more than they do political and social questions, or whether they just, rather realistically, accept that while their view on what matters in science is interesting their wider views might be less so. If we can understand how brains produce thinking, the increase in possibilities might be just as large, and far more personal. Asking us to think about how we use those new possibilities asks us about our moral and social worlds as well as our physical and intellectual areas of interest.In bridging this gap between intellect and right action, Calvin achieves something that most of the Edgies do not.

We use designer proteins for many medical purposes – and will soon use them for a vast range of technological and agricultural ends. You can treat the question as being about psychoactive drugs, or computer enhancements, or new teaching techniques, or whatever you like. But it is equally impressive in its scope.Consider an analogue from history. Before we understood how cells make proteins, we could not make any of them ourselves, and had to make do with those nature provided Now we do understand. “How will minds expand, once we understand how the brain makes mind?” Part of this question’s strength is in its breadth.