I submitted an essay to Free Inquiry magazine, rebutting a turgid, pretentious and tendentious pile of crap by Richard Dawkins that they chose to publish as a cover article. Since I'm hoping they will publish it, I can't share it here just yet. However, I can tell you that Dawkins's basic problem, the underlying basis of his crankery, is that his only intellectual tool is biology, and you know what happens when your only tool is a hammer.
As humans have come to understand the world more and more, we began to perceive an overall structure of knowledge. It is an edifice, built in stories, each level depending on those below to hold it up, but each existing as a substructure in its own right.
At foundation is physics, which has now been found to actually constitute two levels. (Maybe we'll find more some day.) At the very base is the quantum reality which operates at very small scales, the world of sub-atomic particles and their interaction with forces. At the macro-level, so-called classical physics emerges. I say so-called because classical physics doesn't just refer to Galileo and Newton, it includes the 20th Century theories of special and general relativity. This is the world in which our bodies and our senses reside, although they are ultimately built from quantum phenomena. At the macro level, however, quantum effects largely disappear. The world we live in has so-called "emergent" properties, which may in principle be predictable from the underlying quantum world but in practice are best studied at their own, macro level.
Hence the perfectly valid assertions that force=mass X acceleration, and the force of gravity = G X (mass 1 x mass 2)/the distance between them squared. These relations were established by observations in the macro world, without regard to quantum theory.
From physics emerges chemistry. Chemistry might be predictable from quantum theory, and scientists have established that it is to some extent by reverse engineering, but it is best studied and best understood at its own level. From chemistry and physics emerges biology, which must conform to the laws of physics and chemistry but, again, has emergent properties which are best studied at the level of biology, although biologists nowadays put a lot of focus on chemistry. From biology emerges psychology -- the brain creates the mind. Again, there is neurobiology, but it cannot predict all of psychology, which once again is best studied and understood at its own level. Finally, from psychology emerges society, the study of which is called sociology, and I don't think I need to repeat myself.
Dawkins thinks that by invoking the evolution and biology of sex, he has somehow eliminated any legitimate consideration of the psychology and sociology of gender. He is incapable, it seems, of perceiving that there is such a thing as gender which is not identical to sex. He actually makes a number of false assertions about the universality of the relationship between biological sex and animal behavior, because if he allowed for the reality he would have to concede that there is biological sex -- i.e. does an organism produce large or small gametes -- and overall bodily form and behavior. He might then be forced to observe that gender roles differ enormously among human societies and social groupings, and gender is not close to being congruent with sex.
That a well-educated and presumably more than usually intelligent adult, in 2025, can utterly fail to see this is, frankly, rather bizarre. But there you are. Knowing too much about one subject can make you an idiot.
2 comments:
Without actually pretending to understand the nature of Dawkins's book or the minutiae of today's blog, it sounds to me like perhaps he's one of many "experts" (including people in all fields, whether it's medicine, law, or the technician who works on your HVAC system) staring at a tree or a group of trees, so to speak, unaware that they're in the middle of a forest. Expertise has to be combined with solid critical thinking skills.
But today's blog also reminds me of the saying, "Academics are people who study more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing." That's not always the case. But PhD candidates have to write dissertations, and sometimes, candidates' supervisors force them to narrow the focus of their dissertations to the point where the entire premise becomes repetitive and muddled. In other words, holistic and critical thinking skills are squashed as part of a misguided tradition of narrow-minded academics trying to perpetuate their own narrow focus. In this way, impoverished thinking, in addition to important knowledge, can also be handed down.
Yet people come through this process who can take a broad, inclusive, yet analytical and rational view of the landscape of existence. To name a random few: Steven Pinker, Noam Chomsky, Jared Diamond, Daniel Dennett, and, yes, Dr. Cervantes.
It seems to me that getting there takes a variety of ranges, from picayune to very broad. I assume that a dissertation develops the ability to go very deep into a subject in order to reduce the domain of the whole thing to a manageable size. Even when dealing with a broad subject it may be necessary to occasionally drill down to bedrock to resolve some sort of sticking point.
Since the information/knowledge/understanding landscape feels infinite, the person on this path needs to almost randomly pick spots to become acquainted with, ideally through a restless curiosity. They also need to have a very general overview of the whole ball of wax.
The rational, analytical part is most efficiently handled by philosophy. It seems that there are no boundaries on where arguments or critiques can come from, so philosophers learn to be alert to ambushes that come from really unexpected places.
I'm saying this through the lens of my own experience. Without meaning to, I've developed a lot of strong opinions which I feel I'm able to defend. I can't pretend to be anywhere close to the folks mentioned above, but it seems likely that they traveled a path resembling this outline. It wasn't intentional in my case; I just had an uncontrolled curiosity and got quickly bored with anything that wasn't satisfying it. Now it amazes me how often a useless piece of information I picked up along the way applies to an apparently unrelated issue. I either picked up some awesome karma during a previous incarnation, or this is the way things typically work. I'm not terribly religious so I lean towards option two.
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