Richard Dawkins From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This is a good article. Click here for more information. Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins Cooper Union Shankbone.jpg Dawkins at Cooper Union, New York City (2010) Born Clinton Richard Dawkins 26 March 1941 (age 72) Nairobi, Kenya Alma mater Balliol College, Oxford Thesis Selective pecking in the domestic chick (1967) Doctoral advisor Nikolaas Tinbergen Doctoral students Alan Grafen, Mark Ridley Known for Gene-centred view of evolution, concept of the meme, advocacy of atheism and science Influences Charles Darwin, Ronald Fisher, George C. Williams, W. D. Hamilton, Daniel Dennett, Bertrand Russell, Nikolaas Tinbergen, John Maynard Smith, Robert Trivers Notable awards ZSL Silver Medal (1989) Faraday Award (1990) Michael Faraday Prize (2001) Spouse Marian Stamp (1967–1984) Eve Barham (1984–?) Lalla Ward (1992–present) Children Juliet Emma Website Official website Clinton Richard Dawkins, Sc. D., FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941) is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist,[1] and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford,[2] and was the University of Oxfords Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.[3] Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he introduced into evolutionary biology the influential concept that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organisms body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms; this concept is presented in his book The Extended Phenotype.[4] Dawkins is an atheist, a vice president of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement.[5] He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argues against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—a fixed false belief.[6] As of January 2010, the English-language version had sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages.[7] Contents [hide] 1 Background 1.1 Personal life 2 Work 2.1 Evolutionary biology 2.2 Meme 2.3 Criticism of creationism 2.4 Advocacy of atheism 2.5 Foundation 2.6 Other fields 3 Awards and recognition 4 Media 4.1 Selected publications 4.2 Documentary films 4.3 Other appearances 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links Background[edit] Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya.[8] He is the son of Jean Mary Vyvyan (née Ladner) and Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010), who was an agricultural civil servant in the British colonial service in Nyasaland (now Malawi).[9][10] Dawkins has a younger sister.[11] His father was called up into the Kings African Rifles during World War II;[12][13] he returned to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. His father had inherited a country estate, Over Norton Park, which he turned into a commercial farm.[9] Both his parents were interested in natural sciences; they answered Dawkinss questions in scientific terms.[14] Dawkins describes his childhood as a normal Anglican upbringing.[15] He was a Christian until halfway through his teenage years, at which point he concluded that the theory of evolution was a better explanation for lifes complexity, and ceased believing in a god.[11] Dawkins states: the main residual reason why I was religious was from being so impressed with the complexity of life and feeling that it had to have a designer, and I think it was when I realised that Darwinism was a far superior explanation that pulled the rug out from under the argument of design. And that left me with nothing.[11] He attended Oundle School, an English public school with a distinct Church of England flavour,[11] from 1954 to 1959, where he was in Laundimer house.[16] He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1962; while there, he was tutored by Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen. He continued as a research student under Tinbergens supervision, receiving his M.A. and D.Phil. degrees by 1966, and remained a research assistant for another year.[8] Tinbergen was a pioneer in the study of animal behaviour, particularly in the areas of instinct, learning and choice;[17] Dawkinss research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making.[18] From 1967 to 1969, he was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became heavily involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities.[19] He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970, taking a position as a lecturer. In 1990, he became a reader in zoology. In 1995, he was appointed Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field,[20] and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.[21] Since 1970, he has been a fellow of New College, Oxford.[22] He has delivered a number of inaugural and other lectures, including the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), the first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), the Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), the T. H. Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), the Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), the Sheldon Doyle Lecture (1999), the Tinbergen Lecture (2004) and the Tanner Lectures (2003).[8] In 1991, he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children on Growing Up in the Universe. He has also served as editor of a number of journals, and has acted as editorial advisor to the Encarta Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Evolution. He is a senior editor of the Council for Secular Humanisms Free Inquiry magazine, for which he also writes a column. He has been a member of the editorial board of Skeptic magazine since its foundation.[23] He has sat on judging panels for awards as diverse as the Royal Societys Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards,[24] and has been president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2004, Balliol College, Oxford instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities.[25] In September 2008, he retired from his professorship, announcing plans to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in anti-scientific fairytales.[26] Personal life[edit] Dawkins has been married three times, and has one daughter. On 19 August 1967, Dawkins married fellow ethologist Marian Stamp in Annestown, County Waterford, Ireland;[27] they divorced in 1984. Later that same year, on 1 June, he married Eve Barham (19 August 1951[28]–28 February 1999) in Oxford. They had a daughter, Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984, Oxford).[28] Dawkins and Barham also divorced.[29] In 1992, he married actress Lalla Ward[29] in Kensington and Chelsea, London.[28] Dawkins met her through their mutual friend Douglas Adams,[30] who had worked with her on the BBCs Doctor Who. Work[edit] Evolutionary biology[edit] Dawkins at the University of Texas at Austin, March 2008 Further information: Gene-centred view of evolution In his scientific works, Dawkins is best known for his popularisation of the gene as the principal unit of selection in evolution; this view is most clearly set out in his books:[31] The Selfish Gene (1976), in which he notes that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. The Extended Phenotype (1982), in which he describes natural selection as the process whereby replicators out-propagate each other. Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as spandrels, described by Gould and Lewontin)[32] and about selection at levels above that of the gene.[33] He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as a basis for understanding altruism.[34] This behaviour appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases ones own fitness. Previously, many had interpreted this as an aspect of group selection: Individuals are doing what is best for the survival of the population or species as a whole. British evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton had used the gene-centred view to explain altruism in terms of inclusive fitness and kin selection—that individuals behave altruistically toward their close relatives, who share many of their own genes.[35][a] Similarly, Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation.[36] Dawkins popularised these ideas in The Selfish Gene, and developed them in his own work.[37] He has also been strongly critical of the Gaia hypothesis of the independent scientist James Lovelock.[38][39][40] In June 2012 Dawkins was highly critical of fellow biologist E.O. Wilsons 2012 book The Social Conquest of Earth.[41] Critics of Dawkinss approach suggest that taking the gene as the unit of selection (a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce) is misleading; the gene could be better described, they say, as a unit of evolution (the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population).[42] In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williamss definition of the gene as that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency.[43] Another common objection is that a gene cannot survive alone, but must cooperate with other genes to build an individual, and therefore a gene cannot be an independent unit.[44] In The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins suggests that from an individual genes viewpoint, all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted. Advocates for higher levels of selection (such as Richard Lewontin, David Sloan Wilson, and Elliott Sober) suggest that there are many phenomena (including altruism) that gene-based selection cannot satisfactorily explain. The philosopher Mary Midgley, with whom Dawkins clashed in print concerning The Selfish Gene,[45][46] has criticised gene selection, memetics, and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist;[47] she has suggested that the popularity of Dawkinss work is due to factors in the Zeitgeist such as the increased individualism of the Thatcher/Reagan decades.[48] In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (what has been called The Darwin Wars),[49][50] one faction is often named after Dawkins, while the other faction is named after the American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of the pertinent ideas.[51][52] In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, with Dawkins generally approving and Gould generally being critical.[53] A typical example of Dawkinss position is his scathing review of Not in Our Genes by Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin, and Richard C. Lewontin.[54] Two other thinkers who are often considered to be allied with Dawkins on the subject are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology.[55] Despite their academic disagreements, Dawkins and Gould did not have a hostile personal relationship, and Dawkins dedicated a large portion of his 2003 book A Devils Chaplain posthumously to Gould, who had died the previous year. Dawkinss book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution expounds the evidence for biological evolution,[56] and coincided with Darwins bicentennial year.[57] Meme[edit] Main article: Meme Dawkins coined the word meme (the behavioural equivalent of a gene) as a way to encourage readers to think about how Darwinian principles might be extended beyond the realm of genes.[58] Indeed, it was intended as an extension of his replicators argument, but it took on a life of its own in the hands of other authors such as Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. These popularisations then led to the emergence of memetics, a field from which Dawkins has distanced himself.[59] Dawkinss meme refers to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or complex of ideas. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Because memes are not always copied perfectly, they might become refined, combined, or otherwise modified with other ideas; this results in new memes, which may themselves prove more or less efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution based on memes, a notion that is analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes.[60] Although Dawkins invented the specific term meme independently, he has not claimed that the idea itself was entirely novel,[61] and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, John Laurent has suggested that the term may have derived from the work of the little-known German biologist Richard Semon.[62] In 1904, Semon published Die Mneme (which appeared in English in 1924 as The Mneme). This book discusses the cultural transmission of experiences, with insights parallel to those of Dawkins. Laurent also found the term mneme used in Maurice Maeterlincks The Life of the White Ant (1926), and has highlighted the similarities to Dawkinss concept.[62] Author James Gleick describes Dawkinss concept of the meme as his most famous memorable invention, far more influential than his selfish genes or his later proselytizing against religiosity.[63] Criticism of creationism[edit] Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism (the religious belief that humanity, life, and the universe were created by a deity[64] without recourse to evolution[65]). He has described the Young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood,[66] and his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, contains a sustained critique of the argument from design, an important creationist argument. In the book, Dawkins argues against the watchmaker analogy made famous by the 18th-century English theologian William Paley via his book Natural Theology, in which Paley argues that just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence merely by accident, so too must all living things—with their far greater complexity—be purposefully designed. Dawkins shares the view generally held by scientists that natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent functionality and non-random complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an automatic, nonintelligent, blind watchmaker.[67] Dawkins at the 34th annual conference of American Atheists, 2008 In 1986, Dawkins and biologist John Maynard Smith participated in an Oxford Union debate against A. E. Wilder-Smith (a Young Earth creationist) and Edgar Andrews (president of the Biblical Creation Society).[b] In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because what they seek is the oxygen of respectability, and doing so would give them this oxygen by the mere act of engaging with them at all. He suggests that creationists dont mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public.[68] In a December 2004 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers, Dawkins said that among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know. When Moyers questioned him on the use of the word theory, Dawkins stated that evolution has been observed. Its just that it hasnt been observed while its happening. He added that it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasnt actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English.[69] Dawkins has ardently opposed the inclusion of intelligent design in science education, describing it as not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one.[70] He has been referred to in the media as Darwins Rottweiler,[71] a reference to English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as Darwins Bulldog for his advocacy of Charles Darwins evolutionary ideas. He has been a strong critic of the British organisation Truth in Science, which promotes the teaching of creationism in state schools, and he plans through the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science to subsidise schools with the delivery of books, DVDs, and pamphlets that counteract their (Truth in Sciences) work, which Dawkins has described as an educational scandal.[72]
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