LONDON 1 Jan 2010 Britain's Royal Society begins 350th anniversary year

The 350th anniversary events of the Royal Society, recognized as the world's oldest scientific academy, begin in January. Royal Society fellows include Charles Darwin and DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick. Two United States scientists recently attracted Royal Society notice for showing that ants can accomplish a task more rationally than humans. On Jan 12-15, the society will host the inaugural event of the United Nations Year of Biodiversity, an IAP (InterAcademy Panel) conference.

The society also plans to create "a major exhibition for 2010 that will highlight the role of science in modern life," and to open up "the Society's library and archives to a wider audience through new media technology."

In a study released in July in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, researcher Stephen Pratt at Arizona State University and researcher Susan Edwards at Princeton University note that humans and animals often make irrational choices when faced with very challenging decisions. Most individual ants, on the other hand, "know of only a single option, and the colony's collective choice self-organizes from interactions among many poorly-informed ants."

Natural philosophers began meeting in the 1640s to discuss the ideas of Francis Bacon, a natural philosopher who argued that deductive reasoning should be replaced by inductive (scientific) reasoning. The official start of the organization was 28 Nov 1660, when 12 of them met at Gresham College in London after a lecture by astronomer and architect Christopher Wren and decided to found "A College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning." This group included Wren himself, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, Sir Robert Moray, and William, Viscount Brouncker. The Society decided to meet weekly to witness experiments and discuss scientific topics.

The IAP Conference and General Assembly 2010 at the Royal Society is described by the organizers as the inaugural event for the Year of Biodiversity, "providing a unique forum for science academies and biodiversity policy and science experts to discuss the various issues associated with the 2010," with the proceedings contributing to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) negotiations later in 2010.

IAP is a global network of the world's science academies, launched in 1993. Its primary goal is to help member academies work together to advise citizens and public officials on the scientific aspects of critical global issues. Jul/09

RELATED READING:

Royal Society
http://royalsociety.org/

IAP Conference on Biodiversity 2010
http://www.interacademies.net/?id=9159

Ants more rational than humans? (Science Daily 22 Jul 2009)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090724144524.htm