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The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution
The God Delusion
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The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing
by Richard Dawkins
The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker
by Richard Dawkins
The Ancestor's Tale
by Richard Dawkins
Unweaving the Rainbow
by Richard Dawkins
Climbing Mount Improbable
by Richard Dawkins
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A New Flea: The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy by Fern Elsdon-Baker
by Times Online
Thanks to Gregory for the link.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6668427.ece
The Sunday Times review by Philip Ball
One of the hazards of being a public intellectual is that sooner or later someone will write a book disputing everything you’ve said. And Richard Dawkins is not just any public intellectual but the cream of the crop, voted in 2004 the foremost of that disparate ilk by readers of Prospect magazine. A prime target, then, for the wet-sponge treatment.
That, in a polite and measured way, is what Fern Elsdon-Baker, a specialist in the history and philosophy of evolutionary theory, delivers in The Selfish Genius. She takes issue with just about every aspect of “Dawkinsism” — on Darwin, religion and the nature of scientific understanding — arguing that in both style and content it may be harming the image of science.
This is not the first such attempt to knock Dawkins from the pedestal. Husband-and-wife team Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, respectively a biophysicist turned theologian and psychologist turned deacon, had a shot in 2007 with The Dawkins Delusion, a response to Dawkins’s bestseller The God Delusion. But while critics of Dawkins’s views on religion abound, nobody has previously dared a direct challenge to his science. He famously fell out with the equally eminent American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould over the question of how evolution happens — gradually, in Dawkins’s view, in spurts according to Gould. But that always looked like an academic spat, and Dawkins’s scientific reputation, built on the gene-centred view of Darwinian evolution, seemed secure.
Elsdon-Baker admits that her title, an allusion to Dawkins’s epochal The Selfish Gene (1976), is nothing more than a little wordy mischief. She doesn’t suggest that he is any more selfish than the next person, and, in fact, she agrees with much of what he says about evolution, not least that it is driven mostly by Darwinian natural selection. An attack on Dawkins, she insists, is not an attack on Darwin.
Indeed, that is her main point. She accuses Dawkins of appropriating and, in the process, distorting Darwin’s message. The selfish-gene hypothesis, which makes the gene the autonomous agent of evolution that seeks implacably to replicate itself, has little to do with Darwin, she says, and not just because Darwin knew nothing of genes. The common view is that, once the work of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel pointed to inheritable character-defining factors that became known as genes, the Achilles heel of Darwinism — lack of a fundamental mechanism — was healed. Genes that confer good survival prospects in the organism get passed on preferentially.
In the 1960s, the British biologists William Hamilton and John Maynard Smith showed how natural selection at the level of the gene could account for many behavioural and breeding habits of populations. It is this theory that The Selfish Gene popularised with wonderful clarity (and with clear acknowledgment of its intellectual debts). Here Dawkins memorably argued that we and all other organisms are just the “survival machines” of genes.
But Elsdon-Baker says that this so-called neo-Darwinian model diverges from what Darwin himself thought, stemming ultimately from the views of Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, and the German biologist August Weismann. Darwin’s friend George John Romanes called their perspective neo- Darwinism not because it was a version of Darwin’s theory but because it was different.
That might in itself seem like a historical quibble. But Elsdon-Baker argues that research in genetics over the past decade has revealed evolution to be a far more complex matter than the selfish-gene model can accommodate, sometimes in ways that look closer to Darwin’s thoughts than to neo-Darwinism. For example, genes can be passed “horizontally” between species, rather than just being inherited by offspring, thanks to the genomic cut-and-paste antics of viruses. And characteristics acquired during an organism’s lifetime can be inherited, in a process called epigenetics that seems (superficially) to echo the much-derided views of Darwin’s precursor Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. In fact, there is no longer even a consensus about what a “gene” is.
All this implies that Dawkins’s selfish-gene view of evolution is incomplete and outmoded. But while he himself has been mostly silent about these newly revealed complexities in the workings of the genome — perhaps because he is disenchanted with the mess they have made of his neat picture — they have been explained in plenty of pop-science forums and are widely acknowledged by evolutionary biologists. As Elsdon-Baker says, some of these biologists see Dawkins “as part of the old guard, ready to be replaced by new models and ways of understanding evolutionary processes”.
As a science historian, the author is also troubled by the rewriting and editing of what Darwin actually said because it exemplifies the way scientists routinely traduce history. At the start of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins appears to invite us to approve of the comment by the zoologist George Gaylord Simpson that all attempts to answer the question “What is man?” before The Origin of Species “are worthless and we will be better off if we ignore them completely”. Not only does this remark imply (wrongly) that Darwin somehow escaped the limitations of his context to voice a pure and timeless truth, but it squashes curiosity about the history of ideas and asks us to see science only in terms of those ideas deemed correct today. This Whiggish view still prevails among the old wave of science popularisers, some of whom view with horror attempts to contextualise the evolution of scientific thought, and Elsdon-Baker is right to call time on it.
All the same, I’m left in the curious position of agreeing with nearly everything she says while finding the sum rather unconvincing. By focusing on Dawkins she must let him call the tune, so that we must hop around his own fixations rather than get a coherent theme. Each of these topics demands more depth than an ad hominem approach permits. The criticisms of Dawkins’s comments on religion — that they are alarmist, dogmatic, polarising, alienating, philosophically suspect, indiscriminate and unrepresentative of scientists generally — are not unjustified, but they have all been made elsewhere. Elsdon-Baker rightly laments the way Dawkins has been allowed to dictate the tenor of the debate between science and religion, but her format makes it hard to avoid letting the same thing happen here.
Science communicators today owe a huge debt to Dawkins for bringing the discipline back into popular discourse. Many will also agree that in both style and content he is starting to look out of date now. But Elsdon-Baker’s complaints are perhaps occasioned more by a lazy media that refuses to see how times have changed and continues to position Dawkins as the public voice of science. His accounts of evolution provide a beautifully drawn base that it must now be the job of others to modify and update.
The Selfish Genius by Fern Elsdon-Baker
Icon £8.99 pp288
Also see: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-selfish-genius/ (thanks to Layla)
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6668427.ece
The Sunday Times review by Philip Ball
One of the hazards of being a public intellectual is that sooner or later someone will write a book disputing everything you’ve said. And Richard Dawkins is not just any public intellectual but the cream of the crop, voted in 2004 the foremost of that disparate ilk by readers of Prospect magazine. A prime target, then, for the wet-sponge treatment.
That, in a polite and measured way, is what Fern Elsdon-Baker, a specialist in the history and philosophy of evolutionary theory, delivers in The Selfish Genius. She takes issue with just about every aspect of “Dawkinsism” — on Darwin, religion and the nature of scientific understanding — arguing that in both style and content it may be harming the image of science.
This is not the first such attempt to knock Dawkins from the pedestal. Husband-and-wife team Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, respectively a biophysicist turned theologian and psychologist turned deacon, had a shot in 2007 with The Dawkins Delusion, a response to Dawkins’s bestseller The God Delusion. But while critics of Dawkins’s views on religion abound, nobody has previously dared a direct challenge to his science. He famously fell out with the equally eminent American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould over the question of how evolution happens — gradually, in Dawkins’s view, in spurts according to Gould. But that always looked like an academic spat, and Dawkins’s scientific reputation, built on the gene-centred view of Darwinian evolution, seemed secure.
Elsdon-Baker admits that her title, an allusion to Dawkins’s epochal The Selfish Gene (1976), is nothing more than a little wordy mischief. She doesn’t suggest that he is any more selfish than the next person, and, in fact, she agrees with much of what he says about evolution, not least that it is driven mostly by Darwinian natural selection. An attack on Dawkins, she insists, is not an attack on Darwin.
Indeed, that is her main point. She accuses Dawkins of appropriating and, in the process, distorting Darwin’s message. The selfish-gene hypothesis, which makes the gene the autonomous agent of evolution that seeks implacably to replicate itself, has little to do with Darwin, she says, and not just because Darwin knew nothing of genes. The common view is that, once the work of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel pointed to inheritable character-defining factors that became known as genes, the Achilles heel of Darwinism — lack of a fundamental mechanism — was healed. Genes that confer good survival prospects in the organism get passed on preferentially.
In the 1960s, the British biologists William Hamilton and John Maynard Smith showed how natural selection at the level of the gene could account for many behavioural and breeding habits of populations. It is this theory that The Selfish Gene popularised with wonderful clarity (and with clear acknowledgment of its intellectual debts). Here Dawkins memorably argued that we and all other organisms are just the “survival machines” of genes.
But Elsdon-Baker says that this so-called neo-Darwinian model diverges from what Darwin himself thought, stemming ultimately from the views of Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, and the German biologist August Weismann. Darwin’s friend George John Romanes called their perspective neo- Darwinism not because it was a version of Darwin’s theory but because it was different.
That might in itself seem like a historical quibble. But Elsdon-Baker argues that research in genetics over the past decade has revealed evolution to be a far more complex matter than the selfish-gene model can accommodate, sometimes in ways that look closer to Darwin’s thoughts than to neo-Darwinism. For example, genes can be passed “horizontally” between species, rather than just being inherited by offspring, thanks to the genomic cut-and-paste antics of viruses. And characteristics acquired during an organism’s lifetime can be inherited, in a process called epigenetics that seems (superficially) to echo the much-derided views of Darwin’s precursor Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. In fact, there is no longer even a consensus about what a “gene” is.
All this implies that Dawkins’s selfish-gene view of evolution is incomplete and outmoded. But while he himself has been mostly silent about these newly revealed complexities in the workings of the genome — perhaps because he is disenchanted with the mess they have made of his neat picture — they have been explained in plenty of pop-science forums and are widely acknowledged by evolutionary biologists. As Elsdon-Baker says, some of these biologists see Dawkins “as part of the old guard, ready to be replaced by new models and ways of understanding evolutionary processes”.
As a science historian, the author is also troubled by the rewriting and editing of what Darwin actually said because it exemplifies the way scientists routinely traduce history. At the start of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins appears to invite us to approve of the comment by the zoologist George Gaylord Simpson that all attempts to answer the question “What is man?” before The Origin of Species “are worthless and we will be better off if we ignore them completely”. Not only does this remark imply (wrongly) that Darwin somehow escaped the limitations of his context to voice a pure and timeless truth, but it squashes curiosity about the history of ideas and asks us to see science only in terms of those ideas deemed correct today. This Whiggish view still prevails among the old wave of science popularisers, some of whom view with horror attempts to contextualise the evolution of scientific thought, and Elsdon-Baker is right to call time on it.
All the same, I’m left in the curious position of agreeing with nearly everything she says while finding the sum rather unconvincing. By focusing on Dawkins she must let him call the tune, so that we must hop around his own fixations rather than get a coherent theme. Each of these topics demands more depth than an ad hominem approach permits. The criticisms of Dawkins’s comments on religion — that they are alarmist, dogmatic, polarising, alienating, philosophically suspect, indiscriminate and unrepresentative of scientists generally — are not unjustified, but they have all been made elsewhere. Elsdon-Baker rightly laments the way Dawkins has been allowed to dictate the tenor of the debate between science and religion, but her format makes it hard to avoid letting the same thing happen here.
Science communicators today owe a huge debt to Dawkins for bringing the discipline back into popular discourse. Many will also agree that in both style and content he is starting to look out of date now. But Elsdon-Baker’s complaints are perhaps occasioned more by a lazy media that refuses to see how times have changed and continues to position Dawkins as the public voice of science. His accounts of evolution provide a beautifully drawn base that it must now be the job of others to modify and update.
The Selfish Genius by Fern Elsdon-Baker
Icon £8.99 pp288
Also see: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-selfish-genius/ (thanks to Layla)
Comments 1 - 50 of 74 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #395560 by Michigatheist2 on July 12, 2009 at 12:04 pm
The whole article is bizarre. The author seems to be under the impression that "Origin of species" is the Holy book of biology and that Darwin is the infallible prophet, so no criticism is allowed.Perhaps I misread Dawkins, but I didn't think his dispute with Gould was over the speed of evolution, or even the value of punctuated equilibrium. Not am I sure how horizontal gene transfer is supposed to argue against the Selfish gene. If anything, I would have thought it strengthens the concept. The epigenetics reference also seems to be overstating the point
Other Comments by Michigatheist2
3. Comment #395563 by Jos Gibbons on July 12, 2009 at 12:09 pm
So much rubbish, so little time.Horizontal gene transfer does not change the fact that the selfish gene extended phenotype model is the correct one to predict what phenotypes are seen in the world.
While epigenetic mutations do permit offspring to be slightly better suited to the environment into which they are born than might be otherwise, these mutations are strictly short term updates with on/off switches, rather than anything that yields trends over evolutionary timescales, be they Darwinian, Lamarckian or whatever.
There never was a consenus on what a gene is; indeed there cannot be because, as RD points out, the exact length of DNA that qualifies has grey blurs at both ends. The fact that cistrons are neither the biggest nor smallest self-replicators doesn't discredit anything RD has said, any more now than it did when he started.
Whether it is Ball or Elsdon-Baker who has conflated saying everyone before Darwin was wrong with saying he was right about everything, it's clear that these are different statements. As for the charge that RD gets the history wrong to make it look like science got things right faster, I have never noticed him doing that. Indeed, he stresses the proven-wrong element of science quite a bit.
Finally, something Ball said: "The criticisms of Dawkins’s comments on religion — that they are alarmist, dogmatic, polarising, alienating, philosophically suspect, indiscriminate and unrepresentative of scientists generally — are not unjustified, but they have all been made elsewhere." Not unjustified? I'll leave the rest of you to have fun with that one, since that's going off into religion again rather than science stuff.
Other Comments by Jos Gibbons
4. Comment #395566 by Danish on July 12, 2009 at 12:19 pm
So the author chooses to launch an attack on Dawkins instead of simply writing a book on evolution and presenting his own views. That's just plain pointless. I doubt anybody with a genuine interest in science will want to read this book.If he really wants to contribute something helpful to science, he should write a book on modern evolution. If it's a good, scientific treatise of evolution supported by evidence, then it might be worth reading.
Other Comments by Danish
5. Comment #395567 by Cartomancer on July 12, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Not only does this remark imply (wrongly) that Darwin somehow escaped the limitations of his context to voice a pure and timeless truth, but it squashes curiosity about the history of ideas and asks us to see science only in terms of those ideas deemed correct today. This Whiggish view still prevails among the old wave of science popularisers, some of whom view with horror attempts to contextualise the evolution of scientific thought, and Elsdon-Baker is right to call time on it.But Richard is not an historian of ideas. He is a scientist, rationalist and populariser of science. Being interested in what is actually true about the world and being interested in what people thought was true in the past are two different things. Interest in one does not preclude interest in the other, but the distinction is important.
I am an historian of ideas. I am finishing off my DPhil thesis on thought about the soul in England in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Does this mean I am not interested in what is actually true about human origins, human psychology and human behaviour? No. Does this mean I have any respect for the ideas I study qua their objective truth value? Of course not. If you were to ask me when thought on the areas I study started getting things right in any real way I would have to say the mid twentieth century.
It is a common gripe among contemporary historians of ideas that historians of science exhibit a Whiggish tendency to assume that what matters is how close people were to the Right Answer. It is bad history to use that as your fundamental focus, because it distorts the evidence into an inevitable narrative arc and obscures the complex reality of what was going on. I repeat again, however, that Richard is NOT an historian of science, and he writes science rather than history. What this Fern Eldson-Baker seems to be doing is lazily slapping a criticism that is frequently made about proponents of her own academic discipline onto someone whose discipline is rather different and does not admit of criticism on such grounds.
Other Comments by Cartomancer
6. Comment #395568 by Jos Gibbons on July 12, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Comment #395566 by DanishI agree with you, except that "he" is a she. Fern is a very slippery name. I only knew for certain FE-B is female because Ball says so. (Well, he'd better be right!)
Other Comments by Jos Gibbons
7. Comment #395572 by oliverbeatson on July 12, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Einstein's ideas of physics were totally non-Newtonian, and violate Newton's eternal laws that work on absolutely every level! Even though Newton was unaware of many vital parts of the puzzle about which he hypothesised. Amongst screams of 'heresy' and 'reductionism', I'm somewhat confident that Darwin would accept the gene-centric view in light of the birth and development of genetics. Although Newton, on the other hand, was a tricky bugger.Other Comments by oliverbeatson
8. Comment #395573 by Shane McKee on July 12, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Horizontal gene transfer and epigenetics pose no threat whatsoever to a gene-centred view of evolution, so one has to wonder what this author is on about, and whether she really understands the issues (assuming we can judge this from the review).I am very frequently disappointed by the intellectual ablities, scientific understanding and integrity of some so-called "philosophers and historians of science". All too often they show a startling lack of insight into what they think they are studying. John Lennox (who wrote the dismal "God's Undertaker") is another such. Yet these are often the folks who are called upon to comment on scientific advances. Best leave that to the scientists themselves, dearies. Before you try communicating ideas to the public, it helps if you actually *understand* them.
Other Comments by Shane McKee
9. Comment #395574 by Szymanowski on July 12, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I really don't see how horizontal gene transfer invalidates the "selfish gene" model. I think that criticism of Dawkins has been made before. As has "Whiggish": it usually goes hand-in-hand with "patriarchal", "19th-century", and "arrogant"...The reviewer seems to be a good science writer so it'd be nice if he showed something specific: a piece of Dawkins's science writing which he deems to be objectively wrong with an accompanying criticism.
Other Comments by Szymanowski
10. Comment #395577 by robotaholic on July 12, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Dawkins is a genius, but I havn't noticed him being overly selfish. I would consider this book an unintentional compliment to Richard by a publically self-incriminating fool. lol Other Comments by robotaholic
11. Comment #395579 by ComradePorkie on July 12, 2009 at 12:42 pm
So her main criticism is that he diverged from what Darwin thought? Surely that's how science works; you modify the theories of others to take into account new evidence. And if the selfish gene model is incompatible with new evidence like horizontal gene transfer (I can't see how it is, personally) then the model needs to be modified to take into account the new evidence. Theories are modified all the time as new evidence emerges. I strongly doubt that Richard (or any other decent scientist for that matter) would ignore new evidence "because he is disenchanted with the mess they have made of his neat picture". I have to say though, I did find the title somewhat amusing.
Other Comments by ComradePorkie
12. Comment #395587 by Layla Nasreddin on July 12, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Here's another review of the book which is considerably more negative (and which even mentions the 'flea' comparison, even though it goes on to dismiss): http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-selfish-genius/
An interesting -- and perhaps very telling -- paragraph from it:
Like many of Dawkins’s critics, Elsdon-Baker has a strong focus on the tone, rather than the content, of his arguments: ‘I am not too concerned about the quality and validity of Dawkins’ ideas… What does worry me is the style of presentation.’ She criticises Dawkins’s ‘highly charged, political style of political advocacy’ which ’seeks to polarise’ and ‘can be very divisive and ultimately counter-productive.’ The way forward is ‘respectful communication’ - or perhaps, like Lafayette Proulx, we should just make endearing noises.
Also:
When Elsdon-Baker gets to the substance of Dawkins’s views on religion, she struggles. In a chapter headed, predictably, ‘The Church of Dawkins,’ she argues that Dawkins ‘reduce[s] the intense geopolitical situation to a clash of cultures - us versus them, the modern rational West versus medieval Islam’ and supports this by referencing an article Dawkins wrote on 9/11 that, as you can see, contains no trace of this Huntingdonian narrative and instead attacks religion as a whole. The difficulty with painting Dawkins as a kind of twenty-first century rational imperialist is that he strongly opposed the war on Iraq: his critics tend to work around it, and most do a better job than Elsdon-Baker does here.
Other Comments by Layla Nasreddin
13. Comment #395589 by AfraidToDie on July 12, 2009 at 1:17 pm
…a biophysicist turned theologian and psychologist turned deacon
Talk about going backwards!!!
Other Comments by AfraidToDie
14. Comment #395594 by RightWingAtheist on July 12, 2009 at 1:30 pm
If the review is accurate (taking a leap here), this book is mainly a copy of that nasty issue of New Scientist, in which they declared that "Darwin was wrong" because of horizontal gene transfer. That's mere hyperbole, even if it is misleading. But to say that horizontal gene transfer resembles Lamarck's theory is pure stupidity. It could not be more obvious that Lamarck thought acquired characteristics to be acquired via behavior and environmental effects related to their needs, NOT by random insertion from viruses or by bacteria picking up loose DNA from deceased fellow bacteria.
Gene survival via horizontal transfer is one of the most blatant demonstrations of genes (not populations, not organisms, and not even whole genomes) being the star of evolution.
Dawkins talks more about "Darwinian natural selection", and his add-on "selfish" genetics, than anything else, and horizontal transfer does not replace either of those. Horizontal transfer is a replacement for mutation, or maybe even just a form of mutation if one is to be strict about normal replication being the only non-mutant process.
If Dawkins could be accused of "remaining silent" on this to any degree (and I don't know that he can), it is only a failure to argue in support of his own arguments, not a failure to confess anything. Personally, I see most criticism of Dawkins right here on his own website, including this (the second such abuse of horizontal transfer which I can recall).
Other Comments by RightWingAtheist
15. Comment #395595 by Squigit on July 12, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Okay...maybe you guys can help me, I'm an archaeologist, not a biologist, so my understanding of evolution at the cellular/genetic level is a bit...umm...well, it's been a while, but:What else would natural selection act on but the gene? I mean, correct me if my understanding is wrong, but it doesn't act on facial structure, it acts on the genes that determine facial structure and the resulting jawline (or whatever) is the result of the modification of the genes, right?
Other Comments by Squigit
16. Comment #395596 by Lucas on July 12, 2009 at 1:32 pm
No matter what this book actually says, simply by having such a parasitic title, like the many other fleas, it shows that its contents alone are not enough for people to buy it. It can only be marketed as an anti-Dawkins book, and its safe to assume that the author was far more interested in making money than making a good argument. No big surprise, just another pseudo-intellectual sucking at the teat of genius. Other Comments by Lucas
17. Comment #395597 by digibud on July 12, 2009 at 1:34 pm
No single book on evolution that is geared toward popular consumption can provide all the viewpoints and hypothesis of current evolutionary thought. Of course there are probably some evolutionary processes that Dawkins misses. Some he may get wrong. Of course his book is incomplete. But so would any such book by any of the other researchers be. Our understanding is incomplete. I'm sure RD would agree.Other Comments by digibud
18. Comment #395598 by kaiserkriss on July 12, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Afraid:
Think Mo in this clip from the Simpsons..jcw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faRlFsYmkeY
Other Comments by kaiserkriss
19. Comment #395604 by Duff on July 12, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Would someone, anyone, please, please tell me how, and in what way, Professor Dawkin's ideas on religion are "philosophically suspect"! Some specifics, please.Other Comments by Duff
20. Comment #395610 by Follow Peter Egan on July 12, 2009 at 2:19 pm
This review ruined my breakfast when I opened the times this morning. I blasted off a stiff comment online but they have not posted it. No matter what this book actually says, simply by having such a parasitic title, like the many other fleas, it shows that its contents alone are not enough for people to buy it. It can only be marketed as an anti-Dawkins book, and its safe to assume that the author was far more interested in making money than making a good argument. No big surprise, just another pseudo-intellectual sucking at the teat of genius.
That's essentially the point my comment had made.
Elsdon-Baker admits that her title, an allusion to Dawkins’s epochal The Selfish Gene (1976), is nothing more than a little wordy mischief. She doesn’t suggest that he is any more selfish than the next person
which rather undermines the credibility of the whole book. It suggests (any may well be) nothing but an ad hominem attack. How vulgar.
But while he himself has been mostly silent about these newly revealed complexities in the workings of the genome — perhaps because he is disenchanted with the mess they have made of his neat picture
They've clearly not seen the third edition of the Selfish Gene then, with copious footnotes?
Would someone, anyone, please, please tell me how, and in what way, Professor Dawkin's ideas on religion are "philosophically suspect"! Some specifics, please.
And that's more or less word for word what I shouted at my newspaper this morning.
Other Comments by Follow Peter Egan
21. Comment #395611 by louis14 on July 12, 2009 at 2:21 pm
What else would natural selection act on but the gene? I mean, correct me if my understanding is wrong, but it doesn't act on facial structure, it acts on the genes that determine facial structure and the resulting jawline (or whatever) is the result of the modification of the genes, right?
Yup - you got it.
Other Comments by louis14
22. Comment #395613 by RightWingAtheist on July 12, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Comment #395595 by Squigit:"What else would natural selection
act on but the gene?"
I know how you feel. It almost seems silly to suggest otherwise. But I learned about evolution long after Dawkins' book, so I couldn't be sure that it would seem so obvious to me if I had not been studying books written after his influence, though none of the school texts ever mentioned him by name.
Other Comments by RightWingAtheist
23. Comment #395614 by Dragon Slayer on July 12, 2009 at 2:30 pm
does anyone know if Dawkins has made any reply to or comment on this book? i had a quick read through it whilst in waterstones the other day.In response to Duff I am quite puzzled on how people can call Dawkins' attacks on religion as philosophically suspect. Having read some articles on Dawkins by philosophers I get the impression that they don't like fact that he doesn't go into too much detail when discussing the arguments for the existence of God. With the 'five ways' for example you could talk about them in great length and praise them as a major contribution the the philosophy of religion but still easily refute them. Dawkins, as he should, treats them in a scientific manner and doesn't bore the reader with unneeded detail.
In short Dawkins attacks are not philosophically unsound, its just that some professional philosophers don't want the final nail in the coffin on these arguments.
Other Comments by Dragon Slayer
24. Comment #395616 by louis14 on July 12, 2009 at 2:33 pm
She accuses Dawkins of appropriating and, in the process, distorting Darwin’s message.
Darwin's message? Once again the implication is that Darwin is looked apon as some kind of deity, whose utterances are sacrosanct. They are not, nor are Dawkins'. There's been 150 years of science done since 'On the Origin of Species', and 30 since 'The Selfish Gene'. The science will continue to be updated.
Other Comments by louis14
25. Comment #395617 by mmurray on July 12, 2009 at 2:44 pm
She accuses Dawkins of appropriating and, in the process, distorting Darwin’s message
What about
She accuses Einstein of appropriating and, in the process, distorting Newton’s message
weird isn't it.
Michael
Other Comments by mmurray
26. Comment #395619 by Aza on July 12, 2009 at 2:57 pm
One of the hazards of being a public intellectual is that sooner or later someone will write a book disputing everything you’ve said.
It's the "my gun is faster than yours" Syndrome
Other Comments by Aza
27. Comment #395621 by phil rimmer on July 12, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Worthless flea book from what we can discern. She should be drummed out of the phylum Pteridophyta and reclassified as Siphonaptera.Next to worthless review too.
Other Comments by phil rimmer
28. Comment #395627 by jpgj on July 12, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Havn't read her book so mabe this is unfair.It seems that for every bible thumper looking for a gap in the fossil record there is a metaphysically inclined philosopher looking for a Concept to criticise.
The whole of science just isn't upset when an interesting but banal discovery like gut bugs trading plasmids for drug resistance cannot be deduced from the concept of vertical gene transmission.
Could someone tell her that modern scientists like RD aren't 18th century German philosophical System builders ?
Other Comments by jpgj
29. Comment #395628 by j.mills on July 12, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Ya can't on the one hand complain that Dawkins is 'distorting Darwin's message', and on the other hand complain that Dawkins doesn't take into account horizontal transfer and epigenetics, which conflict with Darwin's message! They don't conflict with Darwin ulimately, of course, but whatsherface seems to think they do.The reviewer says FEB upbraids RD for discarding wrong ideas (pre-Darwin), and upbraids him again for retaining wrong ideas (a model without HGT and epi) - which of course he doesn't.
But it would seem that her main contention is that RD adopts the wrong tone, on religion and other matters. If she's qualified to speak on the matter, a better response from her would be to speak on religion and evolution herself in whatever she perceives to be the right tone. There's room for many voices, from gentle-Dennett to crusty-Hitch. Instead - flea.
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30. Comment #395629 by ukantic on July 12, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Perhaps Fern Elsdon-Baker would like to attempt to explain a peacock's tail using horizontal gene transfer as the basis for an explanation. Of course you cannot and the best explanation remains the one propounded by Richard Dawkins.Of course discoveries such as HGT may add a further level of complication to the overall picture, but they don't undermine Richard Dawkins' views in any way; if anything they simply compliment them. Therefore, to jump to the conclusion that his views are, “outmoded” seems absurd. It is a bit like claiming that the theory that the earth is round is undermined by the discovery of Everest.
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31. Comment #395631 by j.mills on July 12, 2009 at 3:54 pm
ukantic said:It is a bit like claiming that the theory that the earth is round is undermined by the discovery of Everest.Very good! I'm nicking that for future use. :)
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32. Comment #395646 by Michael Gray on July 12, 2009 at 5:41 pm
As far as I can determine, horizontal gene transfer actually supports the gene-centred view of evolution!I should like to read a clear account by Fern of why she thinks it does the reverse.
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33. Comment #395654 by King of NH on July 12, 2009 at 6:15 pm
With all due respect, who give a flying ^$%#& about 'Darwin's message?' I know I don't. Darwin would probably have a nice pleasant chat with Dawkins, but Darwin would be the student when it came to evolution. Darwin was not a messiah bearing a truth that degraded. His idea, separate from his self once shared, is the idea that has progressed. We can all share a big "&$^#% Darwin and the Beagle he rode in on" and still get on with evolutionary biology very well.
Besides, Darwin's message would probably be something way off the wall like "Behold the power of the WORM!"
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34. Comment #395662 by Steve Zara on July 12, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Comment #395621 by phil rimmerActually, Phil, I am not sure this is entirely worthless. It is flea-ish, but I'm not yet prepared to agree that it is wrong in every way.
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35. Comment #395667 by mmurray on July 12, 2009 at 7:08 pm
It is easy to find the author on the internet. Maybe admin could invite her over to contribute.Michael
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36. Comment #395668 by Paine on July 12, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Silly polemic masquerading as science. Is Dawkins 'wrong'? Dawkins is wrong in the same way Einstein is 'wrong'. Namely that he has been superseded by subsequent research. That doesn't invalidate his theory that all the details don't fit a simplistic view of the selfish gene model.Just curious, but what percentage of organisms demonstrate lateral gene-transfer? What percentage have inherited acquired characteristics? Compare that with the organisms that don't and let's see which is more prevalent.
Lastly even if the above 2 are true I don't see how they invalidate the selfish gene hypothesis. Any biologists care to explain?
Regards,
Paine
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37. Comment #395675 by Squigit on July 12, 2009 at 7:59 pm
22. Comment #395613 by RightWingAtheistI, too, learned about evolution long after The Selfish Gene. Within the last 5 years, in fact. But if you think about it, it does seem a bit obvious.
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38. Comment #395679 by Kingasaurus on July 12, 2009 at 9:13 pm
He famously fell out with the equally eminent American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould over the question of how evolution happens — gradually, in Dawkins’s view, in spurts according to Gould. But that always looked like an academic spat, and Dawkins’s scientific reputation, built on the gene-centred view of Darwinian evolution, seemed secure.
This quote isn't really accurate. Someone can correct me, but I'm pretty sure Richard's complaint about Gould in this specific area was that Gould overstated how revolutionary punctuated equilibrium really was, and that even if P.E. did happen exactly as Gould and Eldridge described, it would still be pretty darned gradual.
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39. Comment #395682 by MaxD on July 12, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Kingasaurus,
That is pretty correct. Gould also was off on his total dismissal of adaptionist explanation in biology, not to mention what I think was deeply crappy treatment by he and Lewontin of E.O. Wilson. I don't know if that is what caused the friction between he and Gould, but man it is what has annoyed me about Gould over the years.
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40. Comment #395695 by Roland_F on July 12, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Most things I thought when reading the article were already posted here.1) A flea title to increase sales, maybe get some religiots disliking R. Dawkins to buy it, if it’s not a best seller under Biologists.
2) A critique of a book from 1976 written in 2009 – well the authors target is high profile like a pop star, so let’s get some more book sales by using his name.
3) Inconsistent: first attack that RD is ‘deviating’ from a 150 year old idea, well not by denying it but by adding to it based on new evidence ! And this from a philosopher of science ?!?
4) Claiming RD the biggest and most outspoken fan of C. Darwin is suddenly Darwin’s enemy.
5) Attacking a book written 34 years ago and blame it for not containing the latest knowledge of horizontal Gene transfer . However how much effect of this can gene swapping can be attributed to the development of higher species ?
6) And religiots attack permanently the science curriculum with their Bronze age fairy tales of Genesis Creationism, so what is the best strategy than standing the scientific ground and attack back ? Maybe some constructive criticism and counter proposals about the best strategy would be helpful.
I short: a flea book of someone who has nothing constructive to contribute herself for the advance of science.
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41. Comment #395701 by Dr Doctor on July 12, 2009 at 11:22 pm
At least the priggish review of the priggish text was posted in the entertainment section. Other Comments by Dr Doctor
42. Comment #395749 by ukantic on July 13, 2009 at 2:49 am
j.mills said:Very good! I'm nicking that for future use. :)
Thanks – and help yourself. To be quite honest I was half expecting a lecture on Oblate spheroids, but I guess the duty forum pedant must be on holiday.
Other Comments by ukantic
43. Comment #395756 by SurfDude on July 13, 2009 at 3:22 am
Thanks kaiser, I had not seen that Simpsons clip before. Truly excellent!On topic, it strikes me that this Fern Elsdon-Baker person might want to consider postulating her own ideas clearly, succinctly and in an engaging manner that can be understood by both expert and layman alike BEFORE cashing in on someone else's success.
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44. Comment #395778 by John Desclin on July 13, 2009 at 4:59 am
If F E-B had looked up Wikipedia for epigenetics, she might have found out the meaning of epigenetics, which is not relevant to Lamarckian ideas.Other Comments by John Desclin
45. Comment #395812 by MAJORPAIN on July 13, 2009 at 6:44 am
She called you selfish and genius in one sentence. Richard, Ayn Rand would be so proud! Keep up the good work, sir!Other Comments by MAJORPAIN
46. Comment #395821 by CaptainMandate on July 13, 2009 at 7:02 am
all a bit sad but then if my main criteria was to get publicity and sell units, I might go in for some trendy Dawkins-bashing too.
I'm not a good enough scientist though. maybe I'll think of something else, such as the fact that while I can't actually demonstrate that his conclusuions are in any way incorrect, I can point out two important factors:
1. since the publication of the Selfish Gene, some more scientific research has been carried out and discoveries made which were not included in the book
2. While I am unable to actually find fault with The God Delusion and there can be no reason for defending religion or the views of religious groups whatsoever, I feel the wearing of a hawaiian shirt when speaking in public is fashionably suspect and unrepresentative of scientists generally.
few hundred pages of padding and I'll see who's up for publishing...
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47. Comment #395824 by PERSON on July 13, 2009 at 7:03 am
Dawkins hasn't spoken much about horizontal gene transfer, but IIRC I've seen him discuss it with Venter and raise questions on it at the origins symposium. Epigenetic effects are surely significant, but they don't invalidate the selfish gene concept. They are at the over-hyped phase. Significant, but misunderstood and over-applied. Focussing on them says nothing really new, just emphasises that DNA is a runtime-- both a computer and a program, capable of self-modifying; a venerable(*) computing concept-- rather than a sequence of bits on a piece of paper. A simulation of the atoms (of some kind) is necessary to understand the properties in full. This is obvious. At least it was to me, immediately after reading "The Blind Watchmaker" in the mid 90s and discussing what the "digital nature" of DNA meant with a PhD chemist. That some of those properties are the storage of further information and self modification is not that surprising if you've done a bit of programming."it squashes curiosity about the history of ideas and asks us to see science only in terms of those ideas deemed correct today."
She is confusing the practice of science and the explanation of that with the history of science and accounts of that. If she is so easily confused she doesn't seem very able to deal with the subject. Carto put it much better, as always.
"[criticisms] that they are alarmist, dogmatic, polarising, alienating, philosophically suspect, indiscriminate and unrepresentative of scientists generally — are not unjustified, but they have all been made elsewhere."
Maybe. Badly in every case I've seen, though.
"Many will also agree that in both style and content he is starting to look out of date now. But Elsdon-Baker’s complaints are perhaps occasioned more by a lazy media that refuses to see how times have changed and continues to position Dawkins as the public voice of science."
Argument ad trendiness. It might just work.
"His accounts of evolution provide a beautifully drawn base that it must now be the job of others to modify and update."
I'm not sure it'd be this reviewer or author who'd be the best choice to do so, however.
(*) And notorious: it's an example of something you should not do if you want to be sure of understanding what your program does. Not a concern for mindless natural selection, of course.
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48. Comment #395828 by vleeb on July 13, 2009 at 7:11 am
Interesting that such a huge discussion is going on about a book which hasn't actually been published yet... I ordered it out of curiousity, also to be honest because the funny title caught my eye (I'm easy like that!), and especially given the stink it looked like it'd kick up. Thus far I've only been able to pre-order it... wouldn't it make more sense to appraise/criticise/discuss Elsdon-Baker's work once we've read it? Reading reviews does not = understanding a whole book, who knows if this review has misrepresented the argument or not yet. I'm looking forward to getting mine and *then* discussing what I think of it!Other Comments by vleeb
49. Comment #395890 by jeremynel on July 13, 2009 at 9:30 am
Thank you, Jos Gibbons (Comment #3), for more or less saying what I wanted to say. It's rather pathetic that Philip Ball, a former editor of Nature, hasn't thought very hard about evolution. He lets through a real pack of howlers in his review. I would expect better.Other Comments by jeremynel
50. Comment #395899 by Hektor on July 13, 2009 at 9:49 am
Having not been trained in the sciences, perhaps someone here could tell me what exactly is the "Philosophy of Evolutionary Theory"?Wouldn't this be akin to Philosophy of calculus; Philosophy of geography; perhaps Philosophy of gravity?
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1. Comment #395548 by ods15 on July 12, 2009 at 11:43 am
Kudos for a rather funny book title, I must say. :)Other Comments by ods15