This collection of essays covers a variety of topics involving science and technology, and includes some diversity of viewpoints. But the emphasis is on risks and problems, on reasons for caution and regulation. Editors Alan Lightman, Daniel Sarewitz and Christina Desser write in the introduction of a 'widening gap' between the physical world and 'the experience of being human.' 'Left in the wake of the headlong advance of science and technology,' they contend, 'is an indivisible, elemental core of humanness.'

Such dichotomies, however, should be treated with suspicion. Surely, any 'elemental core of humanness' includes such inclinations as to learn, understand, create, build, tinker, and try to improve oneself and the world. Sitting in front of a campfire may have many merits, but it is not necessarily more 'human' than sitting in front of a computer.