Freeman Dyson Interview (page: 2 / 6) Theoretical Physicist and Author	Print Interview

In all these things that you've done and thought about, what gives you the greatest sense of satisfaction and fulfillment?

Freeman Dyson: Now, in the second half of my life, when I'm mostly writing books, I've found that most satisfaction comes just from the response of readers. I still get wonderful letters from people who read my books. I have pen friends all over the world, and it's delightful. In spite of the computers, and the frequent statements that people no longer write letters anymore, lots of us do. So I still get these wonderful letters from people who've read and understood what I was writing about. I think that's the biggest satisfaction in a way, apart from the family. The family of course is best of all. And I've been extremely lucky there too, having six gifted children, and that's a big part of life. I enjoy their success just as much as I enjoy my own.

Your speculation about the universe has also provoked a certain amount of controversy. How do you deal with controversy?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Freeman Dyson: I enjoy controversy. Without controversy life would be very dull, and science especially. The beauty of science is that it's all mystery, so everything, everywhere you look in science, there are mysteries. I mean, it's just the opposite of what the public imagines. The public imagines scientists know everything, but actually we know almost nothing. We have a lot of speculations and we have a lot of mysteries. And if it stops being mysterious, then that will be the end of science. So we thrive on controversy. So all my speculations, in fact, are not going very much beyond what anybody else is thinking. It's maybe I'm a little bolder in putting it into print. But mostly, all of us are groping in the dark. All the really interesting questions in science, we have no idea what the answers may be. And that applies too to the applications, of course. At the moment, the greatest controversies are about applications of science, genetic engineering in particular, which is something I'm much involved with. And of course there are very hot views on both sides, and so I enjoy that. It's only by listening to the opposition that you can ever hope, in fact, to arrive at any kind of peaceful agreement.

You don't worry about friends or colleagues talking behind your back, saying, "Dyson's at it again! Can you believe what he is saying now?"

Freeman Dyson: I would be very happy if anybody says that. I like to be in the minority.

How important do you think it is to look beyond the conventional wisdom about things?

Freeman Dyson: I think it's extremely important. Not that the speculations are right, but simply to give somebody a feeling for alternatives. There are all sorts of possibilities open to us, and let's at least explore and find out what's there. It doesn't mean we have to go that way.

Are these speculations a function of the writer's imagination or of scientific thinking?

Freeman Dyson: Mostly it's the writer's imagination. When I'm writing books I'm really not dealing with science at all. I'm guided a little bit by what I know about science, but basically I'm a writer, and I'm thinking with my fingers as I write. Of course a lot of it turns out to be nonsense, but in literature you have license, you can talk nonsense. It's not held against you, as long as it's written well.

Much of what you've written deals with the future. Looking ahead, into the 21st Century, what do you see as our greatest challenge?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Freeman Dyson: You never know what the big challenges are, of course, challenges are unpredictable. So the idea that you can predict the future of course is absurd. All I can do is just think of things we already know about, and clearly genetic engineering is to me the most exciting because that offers us the chance to change so many things. I mean it's going to change -- first of all -- medicine, as applied to humans, when we know more about the way we function. There are all sorts of possibilities for curing diseases and for giving people healthier lives, which I'm sure we'll take advantage of. Then there is the question of what it means when you start to improve your babies, and give your babies talents that they otherwise wouldn't have had, but it's by inserting the genes. That's a really tough problem, whether that should be allowed, whether it will be too disruptive to be tolerated. What are to be the rules there? That's a huge challenge. What are the limits that you have to impose on parents who want to monkey around with their babies and produce babies according to their own ambitions? Are they allowed to force their own ambitions on their babies by giving them the appropriate genes? That's a problem we're going to have to face in the next 50 years. That will be one of the number one challenges.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Then there's the whole question of applying solar energy creatively to bring wealth to the poor countries, which I think is enormously promising. The poor countries of the world, by and large, are those that have the most sunlight as well as having the most poverty. Those two things could go very well together: that sunlight gives you the chance to produce wealth anywhere in the world where you have sunlight, and notably in the tropics. And while I don't see any reason why this genetic engineering shouldn't be used as a basis for all kinds of new industries -- production of food and fuel and chemicals, and all kinds of recycling of materials -- all these things could be done biologically much cheaper and with less disruption of the environment. So that's a hugely promising field. And that's of course highly unpopular in certain circles. There's very violent opposition to this kind of biotechnology. I think it will win through. One has to listen to the opposition. The opposition has good reasons for being worried about it.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

As usual, when you have tremendous promise, you also have tremendous risks, and so you have to balance them. But I think without taking risks we're not going to solve the problems anyway, so you might as well accept a certain degree of risk. So that's perhaps the most important challenge for the next 50 years. But in the meantime, we may understand how brains work, so from neurology you may have a totally different set of challenges. When you find out how we think and remember, and we may have all sorts of ways of improving our mental functions, or enlarging our mental functions, that will produce huge challenges as well. What's quite clear is that the next century is going to be an exciting time for these young people who are just growing up.

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