Dawkins on Darwin
How can you say that evolution is “true”? Isn’t that just your opinion, of no more value than anybody else’s? Isn’t every view entitled to equal “respect”? Maybe so where the issue is one of, say, musical taste or political judgement. But when it is a matter of scientific fact? Unfortunately, scientists do receive such relativistic protests when they dare to claim that something is factually true in the real world.
…
Scientific “truth” is only one kind (“Western” truth, the anthropologist may call it, or even “patriarchal”). Like tribal truths, yours merely hang together with the world view that you happen to hold, which you call scientific. An extreme version of this viewpoint (I have actually encountered this) goes so far as to say that logic and evidence themselves are nothing more than instruments of masculine oppression over the “intuitive mind”.
Grr… Does not compute!
Scientific “truth” is only one kind (“Western” truth, the anthropologist may call it, or even “patriarchal”). Like tribal truths, yours merely hang together with the world view that you happen to hold, which you call scientific. An extreme version of this viewpoint (I have actually encountered this) goes so far as to say that logic and evidence themselves are nothing more than instruments of masculine oppression over the “intuitive mind”.
Oh well, no more on this for now. This afternoon I’m attending two seminars: one on intelligent design and one on Darwin (both at BiRC, but with speakers from Dept. of Science Studies).
I might have more to say after that.
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50-70=-20
February 19th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
I also note that Dawkins managed to get in an entirely unnecessary attack on Lewontin in there. Note to Dawkins: Lewontin 1) Is a rather more accomplished scientist than you, even though he may be less famous to the general public. 2) The issue of whether adaptionism is the correct way to think about evolution hasn’t been resolved, particularly at the molecular level, and Lewontin pioneered such study.
February 20th, 2009 at 1:13 am
I’m looking forward to your comments on the seminar on intelligent design (which I am coming to think of as “intentional design,” not so intelligent).