I am delighted to report that one of the guys I most love to hate, Richard Dawkins, has just fully confirmed all my suspicions about him:
Evolution should be considered "the new classics", Richard Dawkins has claimed, arguing that a university course in the subject would produce the most academically polished students.Confined to biology programs, eh? Free Darwin! This is of course a little like saying that the teaching of quantum mechanics is usually confined to physics programs.[Note for non-Brits: by 'course' the Dawk means what we Yanks would call a 'major'. No doubt among us it would be called 'evolutionary studies'. -- MJS]
... Although no such course exists in Britain, with the subject principally being confined to biology programmes, Prof Dawkins said degrees in evolution were sure to appear in future and their students would achieve "polymathic status". Reading evolution would broaden scholars' horizons by giving them a better understanding of economics, social science, philosophy, engineering, medicine, agriculture, linguistics, physics, cosmology and the history of science, he argued.
... "I think evolution would do a good job of uniting not just biology and geology and the obvious scientific subjects, but also philosophy, history, economics....
Explaining the common ground shared by evolution and behavioural economics in his speech last weekend, he said: "Everything has to be paid for, there is no such thing as a free lunch. You have to pay for whatever you do now in the form of lost opportunities to do other things in the future."
Faithful readers of this blog -- fit audience, though few, as another Brit once wrote -- may recall earlier episodes of Dawkins-bashing on my part. One of the reasons I have always objected to him is that he really thinks he has an answer for everything, and surely any jury would return a verdict of 'guilty as charged' on this count after reading his demented ravings, in the Telegraph piece linked and quoted above, about 'evolution' as Queen of the Sciences.
Perhaps it is superfluous to comment on the 'no free lunch' trope, so beloved of market cultists, who also curiously enough have an answer for everything. In their case it's The Magic Of The Market (tm). There's a deep kinship, I think; Dawkins and the market cultists have essentially the same picture in their overheated heads: a relentless bellum omnium contra omnes.
Comments (22)
I don't see how evolution makes the concept of opportunity costs any easier (was it supposed to be hard) to understand. "There is competition for what you do with your time, just as there is competition in nature"? Impressive!
Dawkins didn't confirm your worst suspicions when he declared Islam the most evil religion?
I think you are right about the kinship. It just seems to be very close to the kind of social Darwinism I'm sure Dawkins would decry as a relic of the 19th century. Dawkins, red in tooth and claw. There's a nice YouTube video of him cackling and dissecting a giraffe.
Posted by Save the Oocytes | June 15, 2012 7:22 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 19:22
One of the interesting things about 'opportunity cost' is that, like 'inclusive fitness', it is a sum over infinity. Who can enumerate the paths not taken?
Posted by MJS | June 15, 2012 7:40 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 19:40
Oddly enough, perhaps, I cut Dawkins a bit of slack on the Islam thing, simply because he's a Brit.
In my experience, even the most intelligent, cultured, enlightened, humane, kindly Brits (of whom Dawkie is not one) are nevertheless nearly always batshit crazy on the subject of Islam.
The topic comes up, the pallid dolichocephalic face turns purple, spittle flecks the prim pursed lips -- they're even more screaming-Mimi on the subject than we are in the States, which is saying a lot.
Posted by MJS | June 15, 2012 7:52 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 19:52
All infected by the Islam hating mem, eh?
Posted by LeonTrollski | June 15, 2012 8:14 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 20:14
meme*
pfah.
Posted by LeonTrollski | June 15, 2012 8:16 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 20:16
The Islam-hating mem-sahib, perhaps. Imperial mem-ories die hard.
Posted by MJS | June 15, 2012 8:24 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 20:24
I lived in Edinburgh for four years, and didn't find that to be the case--I found more concern with US-borne Christianity offshoots, if anything. Then again, I was hanging out with rubes mostly; the case may be otherwise for the well educated.
(I will admit in hindsight, the--at the time refreshing--obsession there with the fate of the Palestinians is probably more to do with fact the Zionists booted Her Majesty from the mandate than concern for human rights.)
Posted by Peter | June 15, 2012 8:58 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 20:58
It might come as a surprise but Hindus and their practices were a bigger cultural bugbear than Muslims and their practices for colonizing Brits of the 19th century. As Mahmood Mamdani wrote:
British and French have had a profitable relationship with political Islam (as did Ruskies in the 19th and Gringos in the 20th century). Part of the reason why Islamists have averaged around 7-8% of vote over the last 2 generations in Muslim majority countries is the distrust they arouse among common folks for being proxies of London or DC (as in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which used to be a client of Lawrence and later the likes of Kermit Roosevelt). English Orientalists even patronized some less than salubrious forms of Islamism when they ruled over India:
Posted by RégisDebray | June 15, 2012 8:59 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 20:59
Oh yeah, they're all great opportunists, well able to turn on a dime. The US and Israel spent a lot of effort back in the day encouraging Muslim 'fundamentalists' -- a coopful of iron-beaked chickens who have since come home to roost rather spectacularly. Next week the enemy du jour might be somebody else, possibly even a this-week's friend, and the face will still predictably empurple. Those damn... those damn fucking Tadzhiks!
Posted by MJS | June 15, 2012 9:46 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 21:46
Dawkins is the penultimate Brit: a yippy little chihuahua, in a hand-knitted paisley sweater, sitting in the handbag of America's long-term agenda.
That sad little inbred island exemplifies what will happen to America whenever the hegemon thing falls through.
Posted by High Arka | June 15, 2012 10:55 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 22:55
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisley_(design)
If they can knit paisley by hand, then 'hats off' to them. They are human history's champion knitters.
Posted by anon ankle biter | June 15, 2012 11:05 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 23:05
Speaking of Paisley, Dawkins is really an Islamophobic variant of the venerable Rev. Paisley who established a nice franchise of communal bigotry in Northern Ireland a while back:
It's just that unlike the bully pulpit inhabiting Padre the likes of Dawkins and genocide fantasizing Sam Harris pass off as scientists (Dawkins, unlike the latter did do solid work, but that was in the era of Disco and bell bottoms) having polysyllabic titles such as Evolutionary Biologist and Neuroscientist thereby getting a free pass and a fanbase among nerdy geek types who with the latest recession have seen a dimunition in their love for 'Liberatarianism'.
Posted by sk | June 15, 2012 11:58 PM
Posted on June 15, 2012 23:58
I kinda admire Paisley for taking on JP II, whom I always loathed. Strangely, I rather like the current Pontifex Maximus, probably because of our shared fondness for eccentric ecclesiastical garb.
Posted by MJS | June 16, 2012 12:22 AM
Posted on June 16, 2012 00:22
"... he expressed his pride at being "the only person to have the courage to denounce the Pope"."
He was forgetting Sinead O' Connor... who did it on Sat. Night Live in 1992. But he probably wouldn't credit that because O' Connor was a Catholic, at least nominally.
Posted by Boink | June 16, 2012 1:14 AM
Posted on June 16, 2012 01:14
I kinda admire Paisley for taking on JP II...
As I recall you also admired the Iranian government at one time even though they named a street after Bobby Sands. Next you'll be telling us of the soft spot you've always had for Margaret Thatcher.
Posted by sk | June 16, 2012 1:48 AM
Posted on June 16, 2012 01:48
MJS, like this?
You can't enumerate all the paths you didn't take, just the obvious ones. And since the sum diverges, you can feel infinite regret.
Posted by Save the Oocytes | June 16, 2012 1:53 AM
Posted on June 16, 2012 01:53
Sainty knits and, like Penelope, awaits the homesick husbands of civilization. The torch tapers. Afghans unravel while plying grief remains.
In a dream Baron Verulam's greedy hands gather ice to cool this strutting fowl.
Dawkins, the flotsam of Hobbes, Parson Malthus, Mad Bentham, and Ricardo, adrift with the fit slant of Darwin's second edition...
Posted by AlcibiadesSlim | June 16, 2012 2:44 AM
Posted on June 16, 2012 02:44
Paisley wasn't challenging the Pope. He was just another 16th Century throwback, being himself. The Pope has had his leg humped by worthier dogs.
Unlike Paisley, when Sinead O'Connor did it, it wasn't a career-enhancing move.
Posted by Sean | June 16, 2012 6:12 AM
Posted on June 16, 2012 06:12
Oh, I'm still a big fan of the Iranians. As for Maggie T., that's Owen's kink, not mine.
Posted by MJS | June 16, 2012 9:59 AM
Posted on June 16, 2012 09:59
"Sainty knits and, like Penelope, awaits the homesick husbands of civilization."
" The torch tapers.
Afghans unravel while plying grief remains."
"In a dream Baron Verulam's greedy hands gather ice to cool this strutting fowl."
"Dawkins, the flotsam of Hobbes, Parson Malthus, Mad Bentham, and Ricardo, adrift with the fit slant of Darwin's second edition..."
Posted by op | June 16, 2012 3:47 PM
Posted on June 16, 2012 15:47
I'm very glad to see somebody take a whack at that vulgar wretch Bacon.
Posted by MJS | June 16, 2012 6:53 PM
Posted on June 16, 2012 18:53
Dawkins jumps the shark and screws the pooch.
reminds me of South Park's, Go God Go.
i'm a devout atheist but i loathe The New Atheists (though i'm no fan of Chris "rebellion without Revolution" Hedges).
condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Posted by MonkeyMuffins | June 17, 2012 4:34 PM
Posted on June 17, 2012 16:34