tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19610385.post-1159990739358688352006-10-04T20:38:00.000+01:002007-04-02T03:36:01.030+01:00<span style="font-family:arial;">I've received my copy of Dawkins's 'The God Delusion' and am well into it. rmj has blogged a critique of it, which I'll get to later, but in exploring his/her blog I found </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.inblogs.net/rmadisonj/2006/03/still-reelin-in-years.html">this</a><span style="font-family:arial;"> imbedded in a critique of Daniel Dennett's '</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Breaking the Spell</span><span style="font-family:arial;">'.</span><br /><br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">For some reason I had forgotten Richard Dawkins' connection to "selfish gene" theory, and I also thought that the "selfish gene" idea had found its Wittgenstein, and already been as discredited as thoroughly as Wittgenstein and Godel discredited logical positivism.</blockquote><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">There is so much absurdity here that it's hard to know where to start. Richard Dawkins isn't merely 'connected' to the Selfish Gene concept: in '</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >The Selfish Gene</span><span style="font-family:arial;">', <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction-Author/dp/0199291152/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product/002-9756769-4628061?ie=UTF8">he laid out</a>, for the first time, the entire gene-centred framework that has proven to have such explanatory power. Not to know that is akin to saying 'I had forgotten that Einstein was connected to General Relativity'. We'll leave rmj's premature declaration of victory over logical positivism for another time.<br /><br />For a (wo)man who claims later in this post:</span><br /><br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">My critiques of science come from my study of it, not from my blank ignorance</blockquote><span style="font-family:arial;">rmj is remarkably ignorant. The notion that the selfish gene idea has been discredited is utterly foolish given the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Dawkins-Reflections-Scientists-Philosophers/dp/0199291160/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product/002-9756769-4628061?ie=UTF8">acknowledgement</a> that the concept is receiving in this, the 30th anniversary of its publication. He goes on:</span><br /><br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">I worked out a fairly coherent argument against the "selfish gene" theory when I first heard of it, and seem to remember reading most of my points among criticisms of the idea, which is why, I think, I considered it a dead issue. It is, by and large, premised on a <em>reductio ad absurdum...</em></blockquote><em style="font-family: arial;"></em><span style="font-family:arial;">It is, of course, too much to hope that he/she might actually develop this argument for us, or even say something to show that he/she has the merest inkling of understanding of the selfish gene framework. We shall just have to take his/her word for it, as we would take the word of a fisherman for the size of the fish that escaped.</span>Alechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09226151025010209117noreply@blogger.com