Dawkins’ new book

Richard Dawkins’ latest book is due out next September. The title – Childhood, Boyhood, Truth: From an African Youth to The Selfish Gene

It’s yet a new genre for Dawkins – autobiography. Mind you he has reached the age where people do tend to write memoirs and autobiographies.

Richard says  this book covers his life up to the  writing of The Selfish Gene.  There will be a second volume, published in 2015, covering the second half of his life.

I have enjoyed his other books and am looking forward to this one – especially as I have a special interest in scientific biography.

These two volumes will be a good read – he is an excellent writer and has had an interesting life, scientifically.

I wonder if it will get the same sort of emotional attacks his earlier books received?

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Richard Dawkins – wrong again!

And once again, he admits his mistake and apologises! Have a look at  ‘An Apology’ by Richard Dawkins.

I admire people who can acknowledge their mistakes. People who won’t, but will go through all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify a mistake, are really behaving like children. Their egos are overriding their logic.

This time Richard is apologising for the way he and his team handled the reorganisation going on at the RichardDawkins.net website. The changes being made to the forum on this site have upset some participants, some rather emotional and outrageous statements were made and staff reacted defensively. Richard himself responded to these attacks in what he himself describes as “insensitive ‘Outrage‘ post, which was written in the heat of the moment.” He is apologising for the tone of his post, as well as mistakes made in handling the changes. He has also introduced some changes to the reorganisation of the forums to accommodate some of the concerns expressed.

Dealing with Dawkins

Over the Solstice/New Year holiday, and while blogging activity is low, I am reposting some of my previous articles. Comments are still welcome.

I used to be very critical of Richard Dawkins. This was because of his book The Selfish Gene. I had never read it, of course, but there were all those magazine articles using the book to justify selfishness in people and to provide an ethical basis for a selfish society, for capitalism. These ideas, to me, were reactionary, anti-human. My mind was made up. Despite my interest in science I was not going to waste time reading a “reactionary” book which I knew I wouldn’t agree with.

That changed a year ago when I read The God Delusion. Mind you, because of my anti-Dawkins prejudice I almost didn’t, thinking it would be a waste of time. I am grateful I made the effort because I then found out my prejudice was baseless. The Selfish Gene was about genes, not about individual humans, other animals or society. Writers and others had taken the title of the book to justify their own political and economic agendas.