The Virology of Ideas — An Indispensable Pandemic
On March 9, 2022, Nobel laureate George Smith gave the inaugural Bisan Lecture. He spoke of the “ideosphere,” the teeming culture of ideas interacting and mutating much the way viruses do in the biosphere. He presented scientific discovery as a communal process, in which individuals contribute small mutations to the existing flux of ideas. This generous and democratic perspective was contrasted with the authoritarian restrictions faced by the Palestinian people under occupation. His lecture was followed by an interesting question and answer period. More than a hundred people followed the event on Zoom making this inaugural Bisan lecture a great success.