Surely not?
He doesn't know any recent science. His doctorate must be nearly forty years old, and that constitutes the sum total of his specifically scientific efforts. In the meantime, he has just churned out the same book and set of articles over and over again. They are not about science, and they are incompetent in their field.
A friend of mine who was lectured by Dawkins at Oxford a decade ago says that, even then, undergraduates with nothing but A-levels could tell how dated and out of touch what he was saying was. And took him with corresponding seriousness.
As should we all.
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Vernon's article is nonsense - he completely misinterprets the significance of "convergent" evolution. It doesn't remotely suggest that there is "purpose" to evolution - just that where there are similar environments, there will be similar engineering solutions to the challenges of living in that environment. Vernon's citing of the Intelligent Design cheerleader Michael Ruse should be an enormous warning sign that he shouldn't be taken seriously.
ReplyDeleteHave you read The Blind Watchmaker or The Selfish Gene?
Why on earth would anyone go to Oxford and study "the Public Understanding of Science" - except for laugh, of course?
ReplyDeleteMy friend went there to read Biology. Or it might have been Biochemistry. Either way, he was not impressed by Dawkins, and nor was anybody else.
ReplyDelete"Have you read The Blind Watchmaker or The Selfish Gene?"
Oh yes. Bad philosophy without a word of science in them. Apparently, anyone with good enough science A-levels to get into Oxford agrees with me.
"Apparently, anyone with good enough science A-levels to get into Oxford agrees with me."
ReplyDeleteReally? All of them?
All of them who have heard him in the flesh during the last generation, it seems.
ReplyDeleteDawkins appeals to people who either did well in science a long time ago at school but then stopped, or feel (as I do) that they should know more about it, but (unlike me) not the extent of seriously trying to find out.
So they just read Dawkins instead. He is accessible to people with a few good arts GCSEs, possibly even a couple of arts A-levels. But he stands no chance of taking in anybody else.
Why don't more scientists criticise Dawkins, then? Why is he allowed by them to be one of the key public faces of science? After all, the media loves to cover a good controversy.
ReplyDeleteOnly if they can at least begin to understand it. And anyway, Dawkins would have to publish something on science for scientists, as such, to criticise him. He never does.
ReplyDeleteDawkins's media appeal is his general appeal: you don't have to know the first thing about science to agree with him. Indeed, it positively helps if you don't.