February 12, 2016
HOW DARWINISTS LEARNED TO LOVE DESIGN:
IN DEFENCE OF THE SELFISH GENE : Richard Dawkins' book is more than a Thatcherite manifesto. (Patrick West, 12 FEBRUARY 2016, Spiked review of books)
As The Selfish Gene's repute spread, its perceived 'biological reductionism' or 'determinism' came to be regarded as an affront to notions of the soul, to free will and human agency. Christians mistrusted it as much as the secular left. If the 1960s was the decade in which everything seemed possible, The Selfish Gene seemed to epitomise the 1970s spirit of defeatism and fatalism.That decade also saw the re-emergence of the right in Britain under Margaret Thatcher, and it was unfortunate that a book with 'selfish' in its title should appear concurrently with the rise of the woman famed for proclaiming there to be 'no such thing as society', even if she was misquoted. Dawkins argued that 'a dominant quality of our genes is ruthless selfishness, which will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour... We are born selfish.' Dawkins was thus deemed the biological godfather for the tooth-and-claw capitalism of the 1980s, and the c[*****] capitalism of the 2000s.
Just as Darwinism was originally accepted because it jibed with Adam Smith's economics and justified Victorian England's domination of less fit species (races), so too was Dawkins' theory acceptable because it suited the time, which saw the abandonment of socialism in favor of a return to capitalism in Britain. But, by ditching biology in favor of intelligent motivation, it put the final nail in Darwin's coffin. With Darwin's foremost defender repudiating him, there's nothing left of the poor bugger.
Posted by Orrin Judd at February 12, 2016 9:26 AM