What's more, some of the pursuits of these venture philanthropists seem more like self-serving science projects: Never mind feeding the poor, let's wire up schools for Web surfing.

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In 2000, the self-described math and science geek arrived with a scholarship at Worcester, Mass.

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This idea of self-treatment is one of the reasons adult stem-cell science is so fashionable.

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Gilder skeptics--and there remain many--argued that Gilder's self-taught methods produced more fiction than science.

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Science fiction is rife with intelligent, self-aware computers, from the benevolent "Mike" of Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress to the murderous HAL 9000 in Arthur C.

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But while Mr Buchanan explains all this well, he also makes a sweeping claim: that human society too is an example of self-organised criticality, and that it is therefore possible to use science to explain the patterns of history.

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In UK schools, researchers found low levels of self-confidence among disadvantaged pupils, when asked about their approach to a science topic.

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Science writer Jonah Lehrer has questioned the usefulness and validity of self-experiments.

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If some of this sounds like science fiction, so did manned lunar vehicles in 1950, or self-driving cars in 2000.

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They are, with their rational basis in math and science and their clean modernist aesthetic, the perfect antidote to the postmodern, self-referential and celebrity art of the early aughts.

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