Dawkins writes, "Science is the zenith of human achievement, the jewel in humanity’s crown."
We might be careful to make a distinction between the scientific method and our relationship with science. The method is rational, the relationship is not.
The scientific method works very well in accomplishing it's intended purpose, the development of new knowledge. This does not automatically make it "the jewel in humanity’s crown". That would depend on the degree to which humanity can successfully manage the obtained knowledge. If we can not successfully manage the obtained knowledge, the jewel in humanity's crown can quickly become the noose around humanity's neck.
EVIDENCE: Thousands of massive hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throats, an ever present existential threat that we typically find too boring to bother discussing, even in presidential campaigns when we are selecting a single human being to have sole authority over the use of these weapons.
This is the species to which science is giving ever more, ever larger powers, at an ever faster pace. If this species was a single individual bored by the gun in their mouth, we would declare them insane.
Does the scientific method work? Yes, proven beyond doubt.
Is our "more is better" relationship with science rational? No, it is not. It's not rational to seek to provide a limited species with unlimited power. It's not rational to try to turn the scientific method in to yet another "one true way" religion.
The problem is not so much with science as with human immaturity as a species. As a scientist I have long recognized the failure of humans to use the gifts of science rationally, and now everyone can see where it is taking us. But rather than examining our belief structures ("god created the world for us to dominate"; "go forth and multiply"; "greed is good"; "he who dies with the most toys wins"; "keep up with the jonses", etc., etc.) we continue our pattern of bad behavior with the expectation that some geoengineering scheme or the other will save us.
If by "science" you mean the scientific method, we agree, a tool that works as intended is not the problem. If by "science" you're referring to the philosophy that more knowledge delivered as quickly as possible is an appropriate goal, then that's a different conversation.
My argument has long been that to the degree the science community clings to a "more is better" relationship with knowledge left over from the 19th century, they are part of the "human immaturity" problem you correctly point to.
If it's true that we suffer from human immaturity at every level of society, then it would seem to follow that "more is better" may not be a rational relationship with knowledge, and the power that often flows from it.
This blog seems to have the potential for some great conversations, so thanks to Dr. Dawkins for joining us here on Substack.
You guys seem to make the assumption that humans don't use the gift of science rationally or ethically correct, but in my opinion the gift of science IS mainly used rationally. Of course, it is also used additionally in a harmful and unsustainable way by many, but I still agree with Dawkins that al this advanced knowledge is a jewel in humanity's crown. The world we live in today proves it in many ways, even with the big challenges there still are to be solved. The 'good' use of science and the deep knowledge humans have gathered uptil now are too impressive to let it overshadow by the bad behaviour that exists next to it.
I would counter that we aren't really at the level of "advanced knowledge" yet. To me, that would involve the ability to evolve beyond a simplistic "more is better" relationship with knowledge left over from the past to a more mature and sophisticated relationship where we are in control of the knowledge explosion instead of it being in control of us.
As example, eating as much food as possible is generally not considered an "advanced" relationship with food.
Thanks for the clarification. But I still think that our todays knowledge can honestly be called very impressive. It will always be relative of course. No matter how much more advanced we get, there will always be an even more advanced scenario to want to reach. And I know that humanity is in many cases not dealing very well with it as a group, and that we still have a long way to go. But even then, like Dawkins I am already full of wonder about the today's level of science and the many good and interesting things people do with it (think about medicine, growing sustainability and efficiency in many techniques, etc.). I also see a very much nuanced reality, not a 'bad' or 'good' one. I think that we are continuously on our way to evolve beyond a simplistic "more is better" relationship with knowledge, not at the very start and certainly not at the end goal either.
Phil. I've found your comments on this thread quite insightful. I generally agree with the overall point that you're trying to make. Something about this particular comment struck a negative chord with me, however.
I understand your point about humans evolving beyond the point of the "more is better" relationship. However, at this point in my own evolution, I can't imagine a manner to evolve beyond that point that doesn't involve some subset of people defining for the whole what is "enough" knowledge for the moment and, more to the point, which knowledge is "appropriate" for this stage in our evolution. I struggle to even envision how a limitation on the rate at which knowledge is acquired could be anything other than an arbitrary limit placed on advancement imposed by some subset of society. Modern cultural challenges today around the suppression of even the discussion of "problematic knowledge" suggests to me that limitations on the rate at which knowledge would be acquired could only lead to an authoritarian "scientific community". That smacks of Church vs Galileo to me.
I struggle to properly articulate the concern that this line of thinking presents. To be clear, I don't believe that this is where you are attempting to go with your line of thinking. Perhaps this is just my typically American sense of individualism and freedom speaking, but I simply can't envision some utopia where humans have evolved to somehow collectively intuit the appropriate pace at which to gain scientific knowledge without extreme risk to the method itself.
Well, I agree, evolving past "more is better" is a huge challenge, equivalent perhaps to what happened during the Enlightenment, when centuries of clerical authority were gradually undermined and overturned.
We do have a "secret weapon" in our time. The knowledge explosion has generated powers of vast scale which have the potential to radically edit the status quo quite quickly. As one example, imagine the war in Ukraine going nuclear. Such an event would blast many people out of their belief in the status quo, and new thinking might emerge.
Or, maybe we will fail to update our "more is better" relationship with knowledge, crash the civilization, endure a period of darkness, from which something better might emerge, much as happened with the Roman Empire.
I obviously don't know what will happen. All I know is that the current "more is better" course will inevitably lead to calamity in some form sooner or later, by some method or another.
I appreciate the acknowledgment that you don't know what that evolution might look like, that certainly gives me a bit of hope surrounding the points you've made.
One point you made in your reply to me really struck home. You mentioned that the "secret weapon: of our time was the knowledge explosion of the modern era. That certainly highlights an interesting paradox. The very knowledge explosion that concerned you and precipitated this conversation is also our potential salvation. I DO understand the distinction you were making about our "more is better" mindset being the primary problem and not the knowledge itself. However, it was that mindset that allowed us to reach this level of "knowledge explosion", as you describe it. Even as I type that last sentence I see the irony of using that term to describe the thing that might save us for the actual explosion that could theoretically occur as a result of unfettered scientific knowledge expansion.
Well, the knowledge explosion may save us in the sense of almost killing us so that we wake up to the limits of our ability.
My views about the knowledge explosion can read pretty doomerish, but I'm actually quite optimistic about the big picture we inhabit (death etc) and the long term future for humanity. It would probably take an astronomical event to make humanity extinct, so if true, we'll keep doing stuff and making mistakes, and learning etc, perhaps for thousands of years to come, or longer.
Every human civilization ever created has eventually collapsed, so this one probably will too. But who knows when? Not me.
MAD worked, with 32,000 hydrogen bombs in each arsenal, no major power was willing to go to war with another major power. 75 years without a major war. Most major wars were 20 -30 years apart. That mutually assured destruction doesn't exist anymore, our arsenal has been reduced to 4,000, and we assume the other powers have done likewise.
As for turning science into a religion, it's already been done. We even have a name for it, "scientism" every time you hear or read "I believe in science" that is part of the cult. We have forgotten one of the major parts of the method, Verification. We have to remember that peer review does not verify the research. All peer review does is determine, in the opinion of the reviewer, that a research paper is worth publishing.
Science progresses mainly by incremental research. In my field (astronomy), for example, the process of obtaining and analysing new and better data on a target or homogeneous category of targets invariably acts - in a side effect - as a verification of previously published research, which we would as a matter of good scientific practice have read and cited.
So if previous authors had got something wrong that they shouldn't have, and that something had slipped through the peer-review process undetected, the next iteration of authors would detect it (and gleefully point it out in their paper!).
in other words, the rules which are set and need to be followed in order to keep planet earth existing in a balanced manner prove to work for life to sustain itself. Its just those rules cannot be trusted to be followed be a species such as us, we have proven that already.
Should you want more along the same lines, the following article highlights The Logic Failure At The Heart Of The Modern World, which most prominently includes the scientific community.
Thank you Richard. Wonderfully provocative thoughts as always.
One I'd like to have seen, however, would have gone like this...
"Humans can learn to swim before they walk. We're born fatter than other primates consequently we float better too. The hairiest part of the body, the scalp, tends to be above the surface whilst swimming. Fine voluntary breath control there perfectly preadapts for speech. Whilst we can swim the channel the Congo’s been an ape barrier for millions of years.
And yet three generations of students have been taught to ignore or even sneer at the idea of a more aquatic past in human evolution. Discuss."
My first publish on my own Substack was “Science as Poetry” which made seeing Dr. Dawkins publishing here a serendipitous moment! I read The Selfish Gene in college which is the only work I have studied of his, as the nature of my knowledge pursuit usually pulls me towards the dead people who’s reputation I has been established. I like the philosophy of Discussion here, presented quite subtlety, which I found to be at odds with the assumptions of Truth he brought forward for us to discuss. Truth, I think, lies somewhere between the subjective and objective — it is the ideas that emerge when human minds *discuss* which I think is the subtle point he is making. When we drop our notion that what we believe is “right” and somebody else is “wrong,“ then we have truly begun our honest pursuit of knowledge. The real world around is shared, we are one, but our individuality is an undeniable aspect of this world. When we share our ideas, we share our experience, and we build knowledge in the same way we build our civilizations: together. I hope that the community he fosters here becomes one of discussion, as he intends, because as a young man of 24 I crave community where ideas are shared without hostility, where we can manifest that last few ounces of love our modern word has left us in order to learn from what others have to say.
And, I’m kind of scratching my head about the “Poetry “ thing. If this is poetry, we are doomed. But, I like your thinking and will keep reading, until you make it impossible to do so.
What Dawkins (and even Pinker in his latest books) do, is they try to give some deeper life meaning, or the appearance of it, to people who aren't strong enough -- after they have told them hard cold truths about the biological reality of humans in books like "the Selfish Gene" and "The Blank Slate". In a few words they want to prevent rampant cynicism and pessimism that those ideas inevitably would generate, if people really understood their meaning.
Those 2 books are the only real good books. All their other books are useless to me, because they are not descriptive books, but prescriptive.
There is honesty but truth has been co-opted by every other philosophical movement. Science is honest observation where one scientist says "look at what I found" and the other scientists say "yes, we did what you did and found the same".
All really worthy and great questions that could keep an open minded group going for hours.
This one has a striking parallel to the talk by the Buddha to the Kalamas.
“Truth is not obtained by tradition, authority, holy books, faith or revelation. Truth is obtained by evidence and only evidence.”
This reminds me of a hard won truth for me, that things of the mind, which Buddhism is about and Christianity is supposed to be about, do not always necessitate belief and the removal of rational thought.
Welcome to Substack Dr. Dawkins, glad to have you here.
Dawkins states, "There is a real world out there, and the only way to learn about it is objective evidence gathered by the scientific method."
If the claim was that the only way to learn about the world was by reading the Bible, you might ask us to prove it. So let's apply the same standard to your claim. If you can't prove your claim, it would seem to be one interesting theory among others.
The history of science reveals that the real world has a rather consistent habit of turning out to be far stranger than we could have previously imagined. Thus any sweeping statement such as "the only way" should be viewed with considerable skepticism.
Science seeks to model the behavior of, and make predictions concerning, the universe, by positing falsifiable theories, which gain acceptance to the degree that independently conducted (repeatable) experiments confirm the theoretical predictions. That an experiment yields results in general agreement with the theory but with small, unaccountable anomolies tells us that the theory is not "final", which has nothing whatsoever to do with its being true. If you were to drop a lead weight from a second story window and time its fall with a stopwatch you would find a result in precise agreement with the predictions of Newtonian gravity, even though we know that Newtonian gravity is but an approximation to the General Theory of Relativity, which itself is overdue for refinement.
I tend to agree. But wanted to add something to this last sentence: "We can absorb scientific advancements, but shy away from advancements that force us out of our cultural comfort zones.".
Well, John N. Gray argues (Straw Dogs, and his other books) that humans have made scientific-technological progress, but that there is no sing of moral progress and never has been moral progress. He stops right on this point/assessment, but I like to argue that there will never be moral progress, because I consider morality a byproduct of evolutionary forces, and as long as evolutionary forces are focused on reproduction, or replication of "selfish genes", all morality will be to serve this objective. Hence, all scientific advancement is also in function of reproduction. No wonder that humans today have the same core problems that ancient Greeks had, but under other veils.
Those are great observations. Morality is certainly subjective or, as you put it, "selfish".
It is a constant struggle to be truly objective, without injecting what's in it for me. A pure scientific inquiry is not possible unless objectivity is attained by an individual and a group.
I look forward to following your discussions about women and hoping my daughters, granddaughters and the men who love us will join the discussion too. I think we’ll start with “what is a woman” and maybe we’ll learn more about “what is a man” and our human relationships.
Dawkins states, "We humans are the only animals capable of knowing why we exist, where we exist..."
Apologies, but we don't know either the why or the where. We have theories about such things. We don't even know we are the only species with such knowledge. We are currently unaware of any other species with such knowledge. Not too long ago we were unaware of microbes.
Do we know for sure animals can't think? Sometimes you see them stand and stare as if they are trying to come to a decision. We probably will never be able to know for sure.
If the definition is "adult human female" then why trans women feel the need to be called women even though they are male?
If what they mean is that they are more feminine than most men and that their feelings and behavior is closer to most women then does that mean that they need to change their "identity",name or even undergo surgical procedures because of that?
Is the best solution to gender dysphoria the transtition?Isn't that putting on a mask just to be accepted?Isn't it better people understand that not all men are the same and not all women are the same and that noone has to "change" their sex in order to be understood?
We are being told that gender differences don't exist and at the same time that genders are so different that you need to undergo surgery.Is it only me or can someone else see the hypocrisy here?
The problem with the what is a woman question is that you have to specify whether you mean legally or biologically.
Biologically a woman is an adult female human exactly like a mare is an adult female horse.
But if Matt Walsh were to ask me this question, I would say the above, but then follow with "In the state in which I live, being a woman in the legal sense is a matter either of being born female and reaching the age of majority, or of being born male, reaching the age of majority, and then filling out a form stating you're a woman". Because that is actually the truth of the matter.
We can argue about whether that is a useful way of defining sex in the law (seems to be causing some problems!) but legally speaking, that is the case currently. Which is why some people hem and haw when asked this question. It's not because they are dumb (well, mostly), it is because the biological definition that literally everyone understands is currently not in line with the legal definition, for a variety of complicated reasons. And of course various states have various ways of implementing the gender/sex transition.
We should understand that there are men with more feminine traits and women with masculine traits,thats what the lgbt community is supposed to represent,not having to undergo surgery to conform with the society standards.
If we define woman or let's say female as either someone who has XX chromosomes either someone who has XY and has filled out a certain form then we would have to change all the "woman" or "female" titles we have put on many areas like sports to "people with XX chromosones" because that is literally what we meant before.We would also need to create new words for people with XX or XY chromosomes which is completely pointless because we could just keep the words as they are and invent new words for the new definitions.I think the whole problem is that people don't really think what the words actually mean and think of them by the way some people use them.For example they think of women as graceful,gentle,empathetic,
humble,sensitive and men as courageous,leaders,independent or things created by the society they live in.
While I agree with you, we live in a pluralistic society and some people do appear to have a sincerely held belief that they were really truly meant to be the other sex. Sometime in the early to mid 20th century in America, doctors began telling these people (almost all men) that they could have surgery and “live as women”. That is, socially and legally become women. This has been going on for a long time so I am sympathetic to those trans individuals who see it even as something as a birthright to be able to legally change sex.
I do think you need to write law carefully in order to distinguish about when biological sex is important and when legal sex is important. I don’t believe those docs in the 20th century would have told their patients that they should be going in naked and pre surgery to female-only spas; or they their penises were female; or competing in women’s sports; or that trans women should be joining rape survivors groups or giving vaginal exams to women who request female providers.
But in terms of their day to day lives having a gender marker in line with their transitioned sex is I think extremely important to trans people. It means for example not being harassed every time they pull out their ID. And I think a small number of people will choose to transition for the foreseeable future, even if we work hard on trying to change gender norms.
I think there are a couple of things to consider here. First, in order to discuss we need to agree on terminology. It seems that you are stating that man=male and woman=female. If you are using the terms interchangeably then be sure that the person to whom you are speaking agrees to that interpretation. There is an interpretation that man=traditionally masculine role in society, which changes the discussion somewhat. Is this a discussion of biology or sociology? Even biologically there is some fringe area around sex and chromosomes. Are XXY individuals male or female?
XXY individuals (Klinefelter syndrome) have male primary sex organs, so they are clearly biological males.
The whole public debate in the media about transsexual people wouldn’t be so hypocritical if they wouldn’t mix up biological sexes and sociological genders all the time.
To V.P.’s point... I totally agree, if you phrase it like: “It’s very hypocritical to insist that there’s no clear boundary between biological males and females but at the same time undergo surgery to try to change the original biological sex.”
I also agree that instead it would be much better to try to push society towards accepting individuals that do not conform to traditional gender roles, so that no one feels coerced by psychological pressure to change the body. I think this is most important and mostly applicable for the youth. Probably the vast majority of all teenagers that think they would need to undergo sex change would think very different if they would feel accepted by society just as they are. If an adult still wants to have the body fitting better to the “gender of the mind”, of course they should be able to do so. But IMO, different biological sexes always need to be treated differently and you will always die with the same biological sex that you were born with.
Exactly.They say that gender is a social constract and then they encourage the change of private parts which are no social constract at all.They confuse the two and thats what causes problems and misunderstanding.Also XXY individuals are not biological males.Male in biology is someone who has XY chromosomes meaning one X and one Y chromosome.
Indeed, the biggest problem of the public discourse is the abundant inability to differentiate between sex and gender.
Chromosomes are only one of at least four main attributes that define biological sex, with the other three being gonads, genitalia and hormones.
So, having an XY chromosome set is far from being the sufficient definition of a biological male.
Anyway, more important than the whole Y chromosome is the sex determining gene TDF (SRY) on the Y chromosome. But if you consider all factors and possibilities that contribute to the development of either a male or a female human, it turns out that a strict separation of either fully male or fully female development does not always take place. Actually, there are hybrid forms that have some male and some female features, they are just very rare.
Incidentally, imagine, for a moment, how it would be if human sex determination would work like it does for birds, where the females are able to control the sex of their offspring... would be a quite different discussion for sure!
I understand, but I have noticed that limiting people to socially approved gender roles causes harm. Surgery is not an option for a minor, and other medical decisions are up to the family with the advice of medical professionals.
You’re right and my point was that it would be better to change these traditional, antiquated socially approved gender roles, rather than an individual change the body to fit into these outdated roles.
I think that many people wouldn’t feel a need to change their physique if they would feel accepted just the way they are. But of course this is much harder to accomplish and takes much more time, still I think it is possible and worth pushing into this direction.
Why can mean "how come?, that is, how did we come into being (we are the product of our parents' mating, and their parents before them and so on.) Why can also mean "what for?" and that, of course, we don't know. Maybe that's where poetry comes in.
We dont know so far but that doesnt mean we should slap a false explanation like god for the sake of consolation of "knowing". Other intelligent life like aliens might have more evidence and/or a more intelligent comprehension to understand if there is such a thing as a better comprehension.
The scientific method is indeed the best method we have but unfortunately, being operated by humans, it is full of corruption. Unfortunately, (i) well funded interests (think pharmaceutical companies, cigarette manufacturers, cosmetics suppliers etc) are able to buy scientific results through publishing the only 1 of the many studies that happened to show favorable results for their product, (ii) entire disciplines (think economics) can produce baseless results for decades without any empirical grounding, (iii) research can be falsified by pressured academics (think psychology) when little replication is undertaken, (iv) poor research methodology and statistical knowledge amongst researchers and their reviewers can lead to non-detection of erroneous interpretation of results for decades. Science, admittedly better than just introspection or imagination, needs a systemic overhaul to re-establish its trustworthiness.
The American Statistical Association began a discussion a couple of years ago in an effort to wean the (mostly life sciences) community off the 2-sigma test, because it allows for too high a proportion of false positives and -negatives. Industry, and through the efforts of their lobbyists, government regulatory agencies, have almost entirely ignored these entreaties (because change costs money), and the public at large, with its vast ignorance of probability and statistics, remains cluelessly silent. In particle physics, declaration of discovery requires validation at the 5-sigma level. So the rot is not universal.
Dawkins writes, "Science is the zenith of human achievement, the jewel in humanity’s crown."
We might be careful to make a distinction between the scientific method and our relationship with science. The method is rational, the relationship is not.
The scientific method works very well in accomplishing it's intended purpose, the development of new knowledge. This does not automatically make it "the jewel in humanity’s crown". That would depend on the degree to which humanity can successfully manage the obtained knowledge. If we can not successfully manage the obtained knowledge, the jewel in humanity's crown can quickly become the noose around humanity's neck.
EVIDENCE: Thousands of massive hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throats, an ever present existential threat that we typically find too boring to bother discussing, even in presidential campaigns when we are selecting a single human being to have sole authority over the use of these weapons.
This is the species to which science is giving ever more, ever larger powers, at an ever faster pace. If this species was a single individual bored by the gun in their mouth, we would declare them insane.
Does the scientific method work? Yes, proven beyond doubt.
Is our "more is better" relationship with science rational? No, it is not. It's not rational to seek to provide a limited species with unlimited power. It's not rational to try to turn the scientific method in to yet another "one true way" religion.
The problem is not so much with science as with human immaturity as a species. As a scientist I have long recognized the failure of humans to use the gifts of science rationally, and now everyone can see where it is taking us. But rather than examining our belief structures ("god created the world for us to dominate"; "go forth and multiply"; "greed is good"; "he who dies with the most toys wins"; "keep up with the jonses", etc., etc.) we continue our pattern of bad behavior with the expectation that some geoengineering scheme or the other will save us.
Thanks much for your reply Stephen, appreciated.
If by "science" you mean the scientific method, we agree, a tool that works as intended is not the problem. If by "science" you're referring to the philosophy that more knowledge delivered as quickly as possible is an appropriate goal, then that's a different conversation.
My argument has long been that to the degree the science community clings to a "more is better" relationship with knowledge left over from the 19th century, they are part of the "human immaturity" problem you correctly point to.
https://www.tannytalk.com/p/our-relationship-with-knowledge
If it's true that we suffer from human immaturity at every level of society, then it would seem to follow that "more is better" may not be a rational relationship with knowledge, and the power that often flows from it.
This blog seems to have the potential for some great conversations, so thanks to Dr. Dawkins for joining us here on Substack.
EVOLUTION IS HETEROSEXUAL.
You guys seem to make the assumption that humans don't use the gift of science rationally or ethically correct, but in my opinion the gift of science IS mainly used rationally. Of course, it is also used additionally in a harmful and unsustainable way by many, but I still agree with Dawkins that al this advanced knowledge is a jewel in humanity's crown. The world we live in today proves it in many ways, even with the big challenges there still are to be solved. The 'good' use of science and the deep knowledge humans have gathered uptil now are too impressive to let it overshadow by the bad behaviour that exists next to it.
Hi Pieter, thanks for joining in.
I would counter that we aren't really at the level of "advanced knowledge" yet. To me, that would involve the ability to evolve beyond a simplistic "more is better" relationship with knowledge left over from the past to a more mature and sophisticated relationship where we are in control of the knowledge explosion instead of it being in control of us.
As example, eating as much food as possible is generally not considered an "advanced" relationship with food.
Thanks for the clarification. But I still think that our todays knowledge can honestly be called very impressive. It will always be relative of course. No matter how much more advanced we get, there will always be an even more advanced scenario to want to reach. And I know that humanity is in many cases not dealing very well with it as a group, and that we still have a long way to go. But even then, like Dawkins I am already full of wonder about the today's level of science and the many good and interesting things people do with it (think about medicine, growing sustainability and efficiency in many techniques, etc.). I also see a very much nuanced reality, not a 'bad' or 'good' one. I think that we are continuously on our way to evolve beyond a simplistic "more is better" relationship with knowledge, not at the very start and certainly not at the end goal either.
Phil. I've found your comments on this thread quite insightful. I generally agree with the overall point that you're trying to make. Something about this particular comment struck a negative chord with me, however.
I understand your point about humans evolving beyond the point of the "more is better" relationship. However, at this point in my own evolution, I can't imagine a manner to evolve beyond that point that doesn't involve some subset of people defining for the whole what is "enough" knowledge for the moment and, more to the point, which knowledge is "appropriate" for this stage in our evolution. I struggle to even envision how a limitation on the rate at which knowledge is acquired could be anything other than an arbitrary limit placed on advancement imposed by some subset of society. Modern cultural challenges today around the suppression of even the discussion of "problematic knowledge" suggests to me that limitations on the rate at which knowledge would be acquired could only lead to an authoritarian "scientific community". That smacks of Church vs Galileo to me.
I struggle to properly articulate the concern that this line of thinking presents. To be clear, I don't believe that this is where you are attempting to go with your line of thinking. Perhaps this is just my typically American sense of individualism and freedom speaking, but I simply can't envision some utopia where humans have evolved to somehow collectively intuit the appropriate pace at which to gain scientific knowledge without extreme risk to the method itself.
Hi Steve, thanks much for your input.
Well, I agree, evolving past "more is better" is a huge challenge, equivalent perhaps to what happened during the Enlightenment, when centuries of clerical authority were gradually undermined and overturned.
We do have a "secret weapon" in our time. The knowledge explosion has generated powers of vast scale which have the potential to radically edit the status quo quite quickly. As one example, imagine the war in Ukraine going nuclear. Such an event would blast many people out of their belief in the status quo, and new thinking might emerge.
Or, maybe we will fail to update our "more is better" relationship with knowledge, crash the civilization, endure a period of darkness, from which something better might emerge, much as happened with the Roman Empire.
I obviously don't know what will happen. All I know is that the current "more is better" course will inevitably lead to calamity in some form sooner or later, by some method or another.
Hi Phil,
I appreciate the acknowledgment that you don't know what that evolution might look like, that certainly gives me a bit of hope surrounding the points you've made.
One point you made in your reply to me really struck home. You mentioned that the "secret weapon: of our time was the knowledge explosion of the modern era. That certainly highlights an interesting paradox. The very knowledge explosion that concerned you and precipitated this conversation is also our potential salvation. I DO understand the distinction you were making about our "more is better" mindset being the primary problem and not the knowledge itself. However, it was that mindset that allowed us to reach this level of "knowledge explosion", as you describe it. Even as I type that last sentence I see the irony of using that term to describe the thing that might save us for the actual explosion that could theoretically occur as a result of unfettered scientific knowledge expansion.
Hi again Steve,
Well, the knowledge explosion may save us in the sense of almost killing us so that we wake up to the limits of our ability.
My views about the knowledge explosion can read pretty doomerish, but I'm actually quite optimistic about the big picture we inhabit (death etc) and the long term future for humanity. It would probably take an astronomical event to make humanity extinct, so if true, we'll keep doing stuff and making mistakes, and learning etc, perhaps for thousands of years to come, or longer.
Every human civilization ever created has eventually collapsed, so this one probably will too. But who knows when? Not me.
MAD worked, with 32,000 hydrogen bombs in each arsenal, no major power was willing to go to war with another major power. 75 years without a major war. Most major wars were 20 -30 years apart. That mutually assured destruction doesn't exist anymore, our arsenal has been reduced to 4,000, and we assume the other powers have done likewise.
As for turning science into a religion, it's already been done. We even have a name for it, "scientism" every time you hear or read "I believe in science" that is part of the cult. We have forgotten one of the major parts of the method, Verification. We have to remember that peer review does not verify the research. All peer review does is determine, in the opinion of the reviewer, that a research paper is worth publishing.
Science progresses mainly by incremental research. In my field (astronomy), for example, the process of obtaining and analysing new and better data on a target or homogeneous category of targets invariably acts - in a side effect - as a verification of previously published research, which we would as a matter of good scientific practice have read and cited.
So if previous authors had got something wrong that they shouldn't have, and that something had slipped through the peer-review process undetected, the next iteration of authors would detect it (and gleefully point it out in their paper!).
in other words, the rules which are set and need to be followed in order to keep planet earth existing in a balanced manner prove to work for life to sustain itself. Its just those rules cannot be trusted to be followed be a species such as us, we have proven that already.
Thanks for the likes guys.
Should you want more along the same lines, the following article highlights The Logic Failure At The Heart Of The Modern World, which most prominently includes the scientific community.
https://www.tannytalk.com/p/the-logic-failure-at-the-heart-of
Ha, ha! I'm glad to know that science is not a religion. That could never happen, right? :-)
..... no
You will be an interesting addition to the SubStack universe. Thanks for joining.
Thank you Richard. Wonderfully provocative thoughts as always.
One I'd like to have seen, however, would have gone like this...
"Humans can learn to swim before they walk. We're born fatter than other primates consequently we float better too. The hairiest part of the body, the scalp, tends to be above the surface whilst swimming. Fine voluntary breath control there perfectly preadapts for speech. Whilst we can swim the channel the Congo’s been an ape barrier for millions of years.
And yet three generations of students have been taught to ignore or even sneer at the idea of a more aquatic past in human evolution. Discuss."
My first publish on my own Substack was “Science as Poetry” which made seeing Dr. Dawkins publishing here a serendipitous moment! I read The Selfish Gene in college which is the only work I have studied of his, as the nature of my knowledge pursuit usually pulls me towards the dead people who’s reputation I has been established. I like the philosophy of Discussion here, presented quite subtlety, which I found to be at odds with the assumptions of Truth he brought forward for us to discuss. Truth, I think, lies somewhere between the subjective and objective — it is the ideas that emerge when human minds *discuss* which I think is the subtle point he is making. When we drop our notion that what we believe is “right” and somebody else is “wrong,“ then we have truly begun our honest pursuit of knowledge. The real world around is shared, we are one, but our individuality is an undeniable aspect of this world. When we share our ideas, we share our experience, and we build knowledge in the same way we build our civilizations: together. I hope that the community he fosters here becomes one of discussion, as he intends, because as a young man of 24 I crave community where ideas are shared without hostility, where we can manifest that last few ounces of love our modern word has left us in order to learn from what others have to say.
There is no “the truth”, only the search for truth. You are part of that search, but not “the answer “.
And, I’m kind of scratching my head about the “Poetry “ thing. If this is poetry, we are doomed. But, I like your thinking and will keep reading, until you make it impossible to do so.
What Dawkins (and even Pinker in his latest books) do, is they try to give some deeper life meaning, or the appearance of it, to people who aren't strong enough -- after they have told them hard cold truths about the biological reality of humans in books like "the Selfish Gene" and "The Blank Slate". In a few words they want to prevent rampant cynicism and pessimism that those ideas inevitably would generate, if people really understood their meaning.
Those 2 books are the only real good books. All their other books are useless to me, because they are not descriptive books, but prescriptive.
There is honesty but truth has been co-opted by every other philosophical movement. Science is honest observation where one scientist says "look at what I found" and the other scientists say "yes, we did what you did and found the same".
All really worthy and great questions that could keep an open minded group going for hours.
This one has a striking parallel to the talk by the Buddha to the Kalamas.
“Truth is not obtained by tradition, authority, holy books, faith or revelation. Truth is obtained by evidence and only evidence.”
This reminds me of a hard won truth for me, that things of the mind, which Buddhism is about and Christianity is supposed to be about, do not always necessitate belief and the removal of rational thought.
Welcome to Substack Dr. Dawkins, glad to have you here.
Dawkins states, "There is a real world out there, and the only way to learn about it is objective evidence gathered by the scientific method."
If the claim was that the only way to learn about the world was by reading the Bible, you might ask us to prove it. So let's apply the same standard to your claim. If you can't prove your claim, it would seem to be one interesting theory among others.
The history of science reveals that the real world has a rather consistent habit of turning out to be far stranger than we could have previously imagined. Thus any sweeping statement such as "the only way" should be viewed with considerable skepticism.
Science seeks to model the behavior of, and make predictions concerning, the universe, by positing falsifiable theories, which gain acceptance to the degree that independently conducted (repeatable) experiments confirm the theoretical predictions. That an experiment yields results in general agreement with the theory but with small, unaccountable anomolies tells us that the theory is not "final", which has nothing whatsoever to do with its being true. If you were to drop a lead weight from a second story window and time its fall with a stopwatch you would find a result in precise agreement with the predictions of Newtonian gravity, even though we know that Newtonian gravity is but an approximation to the General Theory of Relativity, which itself is overdue for refinement.
Maybe not the only way, but demonstrably the best way devised so far.
Which may or may not be a good thing.
"Man's Presumptuous Brain" is the foundation for, yet simultaneously bends all truths. Scientific rigor attempts to prevent and correct that dilemma.
This explains Darwin's findings being delayed.
We can absorb scientific advancements, but shy away from advancements that force us out of our cultural comfort zones.
I tend to agree. But wanted to add something to this last sentence: "We can absorb scientific advancements, but shy away from advancements that force us out of our cultural comfort zones.".
Well, John N. Gray argues (Straw Dogs, and his other books) that humans have made scientific-technological progress, but that there is no sing of moral progress and never has been moral progress. He stops right on this point/assessment, but I like to argue that there will never be moral progress, because I consider morality a byproduct of evolutionary forces, and as long as evolutionary forces are focused on reproduction, or replication of "selfish genes", all morality will be to serve this objective. Hence, all scientific advancement is also in function of reproduction. No wonder that humans today have the same core problems that ancient Greeks had, but under other veils.
Those are great observations. Morality is certainly subjective or, as you put it, "selfish".
It is a constant struggle to be truly objective, without injecting what's in it for me. A pure scientific inquiry is not possible unless objectivity is attained by an individual and a group.
It is a goal unto itself.
I look forward to following your discussions about women and hoping my daughters, granddaughters and the men who love us will join the discussion too. I think we’ll start with “what is a woman” and maybe we’ll learn more about “what is a man” and our human relationships.
Dawkins states, "We humans are the only animals capable of knowing why we exist, where we exist..."
Apologies, but we don't know either the why or the where. We have theories about such things. We don't even know we are the only species with such knowledge. We are currently unaware of any other species with such knowledge. Not too long ago we were unaware of microbes.
Isn't it odd that atheists will so often declare their loyalty to reason, and then make HUGE claims that they have no possible way to prove?
Like what?
It's religion that does that, they dont follow the evidence. Not atheism or atheists.
Do we know for sure animals can't think? Sometimes you see them stand and stare as if they are trying to come to a decision. We probably will never be able to know for sure.
You need to learn causal inference
A fair reply, but it could have been said more tactfully. We are all learning.
Nah, Zen (or any valid mystic branch) is. Studying science is like studying a dream: fun, but 🤷♂️.
The ultimate reality is an eternal, incomparable, impersonal One Mind of infinite possibilities dreaming this.
There’s your poem.
"What is a woman?"
If the definition is "adult human female" then why trans women feel the need to be called women even though they are male?
If what they mean is that they are more feminine than most men and that their feelings and behavior is closer to most women then does that mean that they need to change their "identity",name or even undergo surgical procedures because of that?
Is the best solution to gender dysphoria the transtition?Isn't that putting on a mask just to be accepted?Isn't it better people understand that not all men are the same and not all women are the same and that noone has to "change" their sex in order to be understood?
We are being told that gender differences don't exist and at the same time that genders are so different that you need to undergo surgery.Is it only me or can someone else see the hypocrisy here?
The problem with the what is a woman question is that you have to specify whether you mean legally or biologically.
Biologically a woman is an adult female human exactly like a mare is an adult female horse.
But if Matt Walsh were to ask me this question, I would say the above, but then follow with "In the state in which I live, being a woman in the legal sense is a matter either of being born female and reaching the age of majority, or of being born male, reaching the age of majority, and then filling out a form stating you're a woman". Because that is actually the truth of the matter.
We can argue about whether that is a useful way of defining sex in the law (seems to be causing some problems!) but legally speaking, that is the case currently. Which is why some people hem and haw when asked this question. It's not because they are dumb (well, mostly), it is because the biological definition that literally everyone understands is currently not in line with the legal definition, for a variety of complicated reasons. And of course various states have various ways of implementing the gender/sex transition.
We should understand that there are men with more feminine traits and women with masculine traits,thats what the lgbt community is supposed to represent,not having to undergo surgery to conform with the society standards.
If we define woman or let's say female as either someone who has XX chromosomes either someone who has XY and has filled out a certain form then we would have to change all the "woman" or "female" titles we have put on many areas like sports to "people with XX chromosones" because that is literally what we meant before.We would also need to create new words for people with XX or XY chromosomes which is completely pointless because we could just keep the words as they are and invent new words for the new definitions.I think the whole problem is that people don't really think what the words actually mean and think of them by the way some people use them.For example they think of women as graceful,gentle,empathetic,
humble,sensitive and men as courageous,leaders,independent or things created by the society they live in.
While I agree with you, we live in a pluralistic society and some people do appear to have a sincerely held belief that they were really truly meant to be the other sex. Sometime in the early to mid 20th century in America, doctors began telling these people (almost all men) that they could have surgery and “live as women”. That is, socially and legally become women. This has been going on for a long time so I am sympathetic to those trans individuals who see it even as something as a birthright to be able to legally change sex.
I do think you need to write law carefully in order to distinguish about when biological sex is important and when legal sex is important. I don’t believe those docs in the 20th century would have told their patients that they should be going in naked and pre surgery to female-only spas; or they their penises were female; or competing in women’s sports; or that trans women should be joining rape survivors groups or giving vaginal exams to women who request female providers.
But in terms of their day to day lives having a gender marker in line with their transitioned sex is I think extremely important to trans people. It means for example not being harassed every time they pull out their ID. And I think a small number of people will choose to transition for the foreseeable future, even if we work hard on trying to change gender norms.
I think there are a couple of things to consider here. First, in order to discuss we need to agree on terminology. It seems that you are stating that man=male and woman=female. If you are using the terms interchangeably then be sure that the person to whom you are speaking agrees to that interpretation. There is an interpretation that man=traditionally masculine role in society, which changes the discussion somewhat. Is this a discussion of biology or sociology? Even biologically there is some fringe area around sex and chromosomes. Are XXY individuals male or female?
XXY individuals (Klinefelter syndrome) have male primary sex organs, so they are clearly biological males.
The whole public debate in the media about transsexual people wouldn’t be so hypocritical if they wouldn’t mix up biological sexes and sociological genders all the time.
To V.P.’s point... I totally agree, if you phrase it like: “It’s very hypocritical to insist that there’s no clear boundary between biological males and females but at the same time undergo surgery to try to change the original biological sex.”
I also agree that instead it would be much better to try to push society towards accepting individuals that do not conform to traditional gender roles, so that no one feels coerced by psychological pressure to change the body. I think this is most important and mostly applicable for the youth. Probably the vast majority of all teenagers that think they would need to undergo sex change would think very different if they would feel accepted by society just as they are. If an adult still wants to have the body fitting better to the “gender of the mind”, of course they should be able to do so. But IMO, different biological sexes always need to be treated differently and you will always die with the same biological sex that you were born with.
Exactly.They say that gender is a social constract and then they encourage the change of private parts which are no social constract at all.They confuse the two and thats what causes problems and misunderstanding.Also XXY individuals are not biological males.Male in biology is someone who has XY chromosomes meaning one X and one Y chromosome.
Indeed, the biggest problem of the public discourse is the abundant inability to differentiate between sex and gender.
Chromosomes are only one of at least four main attributes that define biological sex, with the other three being gonads, genitalia and hormones.
So, having an XY chromosome set is far from being the sufficient definition of a biological male.
Anyway, more important than the whole Y chromosome is the sex determining gene TDF (SRY) on the Y chromosome. But if you consider all factors and possibilities that contribute to the development of either a male or a female human, it turns out that a strict separation of either fully male or fully female development does not always take place. Actually, there are hybrid forms that have some male and some female features, they are just very rare.
Incidentally, imagine, for a moment, how it would be if human sex determination would work like it does for birds, where the females are able to control the sex of their offspring... would be a quite different discussion for sure!
I think that gender as a social construct is in reference to gender roles.
I understand, but I have noticed that limiting people to socially approved gender roles causes harm. Surgery is not an option for a minor, and other medical decisions are up to the family with the advice of medical professionals.
You’re right and my point was that it would be better to change these traditional, antiquated socially approved gender roles, rather than an individual change the body to fit into these outdated roles.
I think that many people wouldn’t feel a need to change their physique if they would feel accepted just the way they are. But of course this is much harder to accomplish and takes much more time, still I think it is possible and worth pushing into this direction.
Why we exist? There is no reason why we exist -- we just do. The Universe offers us no reason as to Why?
Why can mean "how come?, that is, how did we come into being (we are the product of our parents' mating, and their parents before them and so on.) Why can also mean "what for?" and that, of course, we don't know. Maybe that's where poetry comes in.
Do . . .or do not. There is no why.
We dont know so far but that doesnt mean we should slap a false explanation like god for the sake of consolation of "knowing". Other intelligent life like aliens might have more evidence and/or a more intelligent comprehension to understand if there is such a thing as a better comprehension.
The scientific method is indeed the best method we have but unfortunately, being operated by humans, it is full of corruption. Unfortunately, (i) well funded interests (think pharmaceutical companies, cigarette manufacturers, cosmetics suppliers etc) are able to buy scientific results through publishing the only 1 of the many studies that happened to show favorable results for their product, (ii) entire disciplines (think economics) can produce baseless results for decades without any empirical grounding, (iii) research can be falsified by pressured academics (think psychology) when little replication is undertaken, (iv) poor research methodology and statistical knowledge amongst researchers and their reviewers can lead to non-detection of erroneous interpretation of results for decades. Science, admittedly better than just introspection or imagination, needs a systemic overhaul to re-establish its trustworthiness.
The American Statistical Association began a discussion a couple of years ago in an effort to wean the (mostly life sciences) community off the 2-sigma test, because it allows for too high a proportion of false positives and -negatives. Industry, and through the efforts of their lobbyists, government regulatory agencies, have almost entirely ignored these entreaties (because change costs money), and the public at large, with its vast ignorance of probability and statistics, remains cluelessly silent. In particle physics, declaration of discovery requires validation at the 5-sigma level. So the rot is not universal.