Oolon Colluphid

Probably not. I would expect he’d see phenotypically macro-mutations caused by early-cascade genes as too big a jump in ‘animal space’ to produce a working organism -- let alone an improvement of any sort. IOW, such a change, though small in the actual genes, would fuck up the organism too badly. He’d probably say it might be relevant occasionally -- may even have been crucial, once in a billion years or so -- but overall that’s not how evolution works.

My guess, of course. He’s good at replying to people, so we could always ask him (his email is on the Oxford website IIRC).

The thing I keep on discovering is just how sensible Dawkins is. I’m just starting out on reading the brand new (pretty damned good so far) collection of his writings A Devil’s Chaplain, which includes a number of book reviews he’s done on Gould (Hens’ Teeth, Full House, Wonderful Life, possibly others ). They get more or less rave reviews. Again and again, what emerges is that he mostly agreed with Gould: his caveats were far from fundamental, and Gouldian objections were often based on misunderstandings of his (Dawkins’s) position.

The best bit so far is a joint letter -- sadly never completed -- Dawkins was writing with Gould contra creationists (to something like the NYT Review (?)), stating why they always refuse engage in public debate with these people. Not fear of losing (laughable, of course), but because to do so suggests to the average Joe that there is even a debate to be had. The letter arose out of Dawkins seeing (I think it is) the page Wells Hits a Home Run at Harvard (read it and weep). Which suggests some sort of success on Wells’s part in the debate, when it was nothing of the sort. As Dawkins wryly notes, the ‘home run’ was hit the moment the invitation from Harvard landed on Wells’s doormat.

I should note that even so, Dawkins is sensible enough to prime the ground troops for the E/C debate . When I wrote to him back in 2000 for help with my own pet cretinist -- I only really had his books and Gould’s at the time, and hadn’t discovered the Web or even Futuyma’s Science on Trial -- he replied swiftly. He noted as above why he doesn’t get involved directly with them, but suggested I try Talk Origins, and a few other sites for specific bits I’d asked. (He also noted that unlike my creationist, I knew what I was talking about . My wife has grown rather sick of me pointing out in any argument that the Oxford Professor of the Public Understanding of Science says I know what I’m talking about . )

A Devil’s Chaplain is, needless to say, panning out to be very stimulating reading. Recommended.

Cheers, DT

gcameron

Exactly. And this is the meta-debate that, in the U.S. at least, the Creationists have practically won.

It doesn't matter how absurd your position is; if you restate it enough, and loudly enough, eventually the media (in its quest for "objectivity") will begin to present it as one of two equal sides of a debate.

Secular Pinoy

I also remember Dawkins dismissing the idea the blueprint analogy, and replacing it with the recipe analogy which is more accurate, and yes it's in TBW. I'm intrigued with Dawkins' new book. Bede posted a link of his(?) review of The Devil's Chaplain in the S&S forum, which is the first time I've heard of it. When did it come out? I hope they make it available in the US (cheaper to buy from Amazon.com than Amazon.co.uk) soon. Then I could buy that in tandem with CMI.

Is Dawkins a good essayist? I've never been all that enthused with his essays in Free Inquiry, or with his essays available on the web. He's better writing books, IMO. Gould is still the best evolution essayist, probably best science essayist in the late twentieth century (though Carl Sagan and John Gribbin could arguably take that title).

So, when can we expect this debate on gene centrism, DD and pz?

gcameron

I think Dawkins is a good essayist. I also think he is the best prose stylist of the popular science writers I have read. Sagan is my favorite of them, but Dawkins' prose style is wonderful in its precision and clarity. He is superb at finding ways to describe difficult concepts. He also has moments of real poetry. His description of watching an ant colony pass by (at the end of Chapter 4 of the Blind Watchmaker) is my favorite passage in any science book. The opening paragraph of the next chapter, in which he describes how it is "raining algorithms," is excellent as well.

KC

I do enjoy Dawkins's prose style, but love his more outrageous comments, like his notorious observation that people who do not accept evolution are ignorant, stupid, wicked, or insane, followed by a ruthlessly logical defense of the statement. I've seen creationst/Iders literally froth at the mouth over him.

KC

Doubting Didymus

He does make points such as these in his discussions of embryology, recall? PROBABLY the blind watchmaker again. (I read all of Dawkins in one go, so I have difficulty remembering what was where).

Also remember that this is pz we're talking about. No doubt he would argue that the evolution of positional information is not strongly tied to genes, as you, I, and Dawkins would suspect. This is an interesting concept that I confess to not yet understanding. (where is the heredity?).

Doubting Didymus

Literally?

I mean, really literally literal?

KC

Ack. It certainly looked like it. It could have been airy drooling, I suppose

KC

gcameron

Perhaps the "heredity" is in an endless cascade, going back 3.5 billion years, of contingent molecular/cellular positioning (i.e. this molecule/cell/organelle is next to that one which therefore causes the other one to do such and such, etc.). Nothing coded in the genome per se, just "the way it is" at one point influencing "the way it is" at another. (Of course, that's all a genome really is, innit?)

Or perhaps I just have no idea what I'm yammering about.

zwi

pz nicely corrected me when I said

Thanks for the correction, which is precisely half correct

I cant format his reply

Perhaps he can explain it

Zwi