And just a note on Jim's correction of my chronological failings -- I got the info from the author's brief bio jacket blurb, so it has been promoted as having been written to advance public understanding. The point was that he is seen as a go-to person on explaining science clearly, but his assumptions are ones that I would examine with some care, especially with regard to the counter-assumption that because he's basing his statements on what's scientifically proven, it must be right.
I'm watching Adam Curtis' "The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom", which has the odd interview clip with Dawkins in tracing the development of the view of the individual underlying the free market state. I like Curtis -- "The Power of Nightmares" and "The Century of the Self".
________________________________ Andy on Mon, March 29, 2010 8:23:10 AMwrote:
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 7:11 PM, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
> Dawkins, of course, wrote "The Selfish Gene," back in the
> mid-1970s, decades before he became Professor of
> the Public Understanding of Science. I doubt that at
> that time he had any inkling that the book would
> become a bestseller, so I am skeptical that he
> should be held responsible for the misconceptions
> of people who were too lazy to read the book.
I remember an interview with him where he says (to paraphrase) that it's to humans' credit that we've developed morality and empathy to the point that we can overcome evolutionary pressures and not be slaves of selfish genes. Whether you agree with that point or not, it has a whiff of solidarity.
Calling him a rightist sounds like a new way of expressing being upset with what he says.
-- Andy
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