"The Selfish Gene" elbows its way to 30

A very cool-sounding talk on Richard Dawkins' book and ideas, 30 years on from The Edge and Darwin@London School of Economics with Daniel Dennett, Matt Ridley, Sir John Krebs, Ian McEwan, Richard Dawkins and British TV host Melvyn Bragg.

The intro is quite the read in itself, so I downloaded the Mp3 of the panelists for the car. A snip from their feisty preamble

The Edge:

...In the twentieth century, a period of great scientific advancement, instead of having science and technology at the center of the intellectual world — of having a unity in which scholarship included science and technology along with literature and art — the official culture kicked them out. Traditional humanities scholars looked at science and technology as some sort of technical special product. Elite universities nudged science out of the liberal arts undergraduate curriculum — and out of the minds of many young people, who, as the new academic establishment, so marginalized themselves that they are no longer within shouting distance of the action.

Yet it's the products of this educational system that go straight from their desks at university literary magazines to their offices in the heart of the cultural establishment at our leading newspapers, magazines, and publishers. It's a problem that's systemic and not individual. Unless one is pursuing a career path in science, it is extremely difficult for a non-science major at a top research university to graduate with anything approaching what can be considered an education in science. I recently talked with a noted Italian intellectual, who is as familiar with string theory and as he is with Dante, and writes about both in his philosophical novels. In appraising this situation, he argued for restraint and compassion. "They just don't know," he sighed, "they just don't know." He might well have added, they don't even know that they don't know.

Somebody needs to tell them. Otherwise, we wind up with the center of culture based on a closed system, a process of text in/text out, and no empirical contact with the real world. One can only marvel at, for example, art critics who know nothing about visual perception; "social constructionist" literary critics uninterested in the human universals documented by anthropologists; opponents of genetically modified foods, additives, and pesticide residues who are ignorant of genetics and evolutionary biology.

As examples, one need only read with astonishment, but not surprise, recent essays in The New York Times Book Review coining pejoratives such as "evolutionism" and "scientism" to critique the set of ideas that inform this edition of Edge. These essays appear not to be driven by any apparent scientific knowledge or expertise, but by a need in the writer to confirm deeply felt superstition-based ideas and/or pre-conceived political models. The message: science is not welcome. But apparently what is welcome is that which writers ignorant of science don't know about their subjects...

Yowza. Put on your helmet on and pick your option...

Below you will find:

(a) the complete 1 hour and 22 minute audio, available in two formats. You can listen to it as online streaming audio, or you can download it as an mp3 (75 MB) file and play it on your computer, iPod, etc.

(b) the 12,000-word transcript of the audio which each of the participants has lightly edited.

Stream it. Download it. Listen to it. Print it out. Read it.

Right away, sir.