Thursday, March 6, 2008 | Science : Evolution and Biology | print version

In Defence of Selfish Genes

by Richard Dawkins

Click here to read this article as a PDF:
http://media.richarddawkins.net/documents/2008/Reply_to_Midgley.pdf

Philosophy, Vol. 56, No. 218. (Oct., 1981), pp. 556-573

I have been taken aback by the inexplicable hostility of Mary Midgley's assault.1 Some colleagues have advised me that such transparent spite is best ignored, but others warn that the venomous tone of her article may conceal the errors in its content. Indeed, we are in danger of assuming that nobody would dare to be so rude without taking the elementary precaution of being right in what she said. We may even bend over backwards to concede some of her points, simply in order to appear fair-minded when we deplore the way she made them. I deplore bad manners as strongly as anyone, but more importantly I shall show that Midgley has no good point to make. She seems not to understand biology or the way biologists use language. No doubt my ignorance would be just as obvious if I rushed headlong into her field of expertise, but I would then adopt a more diffident tone. As it is we are both in my corner, and it is hard for me not to regard the gloves as off. I will try to make my reply constructive, in the hope that it may interest those who have not read Midgley's article, as well as those who have. Unattributed quotations with page numbers will all be taken from her article. Since it was my book, The SelJish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), which stimulated her attack, it will also be necessary for me to quote from it. I shall divide my reply into eight sections.

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http://media.richarddawkins.net/documents/2008/Reply_to_Midgley.pdf

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1. Comment #139854 by freiversuch on March 6, 2008 at 3:10 pm

As it is we are both in my corner, and it is hard for me not to regard the gloves as off

And off they are indeed. The professor seems to have a case of righteous anger. ;)

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2. Comment #139887 by mandrellian on March 6, 2008 at 3:57 pm

This puts one in mind of Samuel L Jackson reading Ezekiel 25:17 to his hapless victim in Pulp Fiction ...

Bravo Professor. Even when your gloves are off you still maintain your dignity and respect for intelligent discourse.

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3. Comment #139893 by godma on March 6, 2008 at 4:13 pm

That was beautiful. I'm enriched for having read it. Even though there was little if anything there that I hadn't read before in Richard's books and elsewhere, and I had no interest at all in Midgley, it's still a joy just to follow along with such a clean and humorous rebuttal.

This particularly made me smile:

"The imagination reels at what a mind labouring under Midgley's definitional misconception must make of almost any of the modern literature on animal behaviour."

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4. Comment #139900 by BigJohn on March 6, 2008 at 4:38 pm

Why, may I ask, is this being discussed here and now? This altercation occurred between 1979 and 1981.

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5. Comment #139901 by Chris Bell on March 6, 2008 at 4:43 pm

Simply because it's a classic? This is one of the first pieces I ever read by Dr. Dawkins, and the admiration was immediate.

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6. Comment #139967 by aquilacane on March 6, 2008 at 8:49 pm

Richard,
I know little about selfish gene theory; however, as a professional in the Advertising business, I know you should never misspell the title of your book.

Each time is a marketing opportunity.

Sam

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7. Comment #140358 by Richard Feldmann on March 7, 2008 at 7:41 am

Richard,
I know little about selfish gene theory; however, as a professional in the Advertising business, I know you should never misspell the title of your book.

Each time is a marketing opportunity.

Sam

You're joking, right? What exactly did he misspell?

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8. Comment #140372 by AshtonBlack on March 7, 2008 at 8:06 am

The SelJish Gene

That. But to be honest, this is in a pre-amble to the PDF, so I wouldn't make too much of it. :)

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9. Comment #140430 by Your_Noodly_Master on March 7, 2008 at 9:48 am

The articles are all available here:

Midgley's original: http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/article.php?id=14
Dawkin's response: http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/article.php?id=5
Midgley's rebuttal: http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/article.php?id=15
If there is a response to this, I would like to know where it is.

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10. Comment #140439 by Verylee on March 7, 2008 at 10:45 am

"The Selfish Gene" was one of the best books I have ever read and I certainly did not misunderstand the title of the book, or its contents. Even as a layman I got it (Eureka moment!). RD is one of the best science writers/popularisers around today. All I can think is this was an attack motivated by ______________ (insert phrase/word of choice)

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11. Comment #140480 by Spinoza on March 7, 2008 at 2:01 pm

Professor Dawkins (if you read this),

It is interesting, to me, as a philosopher, to see your work published in the journal "Philosophy". (it actually saddens me that this is even necessary!.. which it certainly appears to be... though I realize this is a 27 year old document...)

I find it amusing and painfully frustrating that Midgley is incapable of understanding what an analogy is.

That is an ELEMENTARY thinking skill. Three year olds understand that an analogy compares RELATIONS (often quite abstract ones), not the CONTENTS of the example used.

As I say, it is just painful to acknowledge that someone who proclaims themselves a member of my field of expertise is as stupid as Mary Midgley. (I mean not to insult her, but to accurately describe the status of a failure to understand a SIMPLE analogy).

*** Oh, at #7, there is a TYPO, not a misspelling, in the main post. "Since it was my book, The SelJish Gene".

But it is petty and stupid to call a typo a "misspelling", and then to claim that it this is somehow detrimental to "marketing" (why on EARTH would Dawkins care about marketing this BEST-SELLING book, 30 years after publishing it?)

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12. Comment #140508 by catalinmerfu on March 7, 2008 at 3:23 pm

Mary Midgley read TSG expecting to find information related to her interests and she understood something related to her expectations which she didn't like.

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13. Comment #140519 by sauronlord on March 7, 2008 at 4:10 pm

@Spinoza:
That is an ELEMENTARY thinking skill. Three year olds understand that an analogy compares RELATIONS (often quite abstract ones), not the CONTENTS of the example used.

When have you seen a RELATION without CONTENTS?
What about CONTENTS without RELATION?

It's like differentiating between FORM and MATTER... yet neither exist on their own.

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14. Comment #140544 by Spinoza on March 7, 2008 at 7:23 pm

Sauronlord, when was the last time you saw a NUMBER (and not a symbol for a number)?

... It's that kind of simplistic thinking that is the problem... it seems that some people are unable to distinguish the mundane from the abstract.

Which is not to say that some kind of modal realism is true, or that the platonic realm is real...

But just that cognition doesn't operate in such a dumb way. We can consider hypotheticals with ease, we can ask "What would be the case IF...?" or "What would have happened had we done...?"

Analogies are meant to convey relations, not equivalencies.

I think the SATs and (I know) the GREs test this sort of ability to understand analogy, in those questions that go like this:

Choose the best equivalent relation:

(where the form is "X is to Y as...")

Glove : Hand

A) Gold : Jewellery
B) Hat : Head
C) Glasses : Eyes
D) Pants : Dry Cleaners

... elementary... That's all Dawkins' "Chicago Gangsters" analogy was doing... comparing the relation between gangsters and their success to genes and their success (both in competitive environments).

As in the above "SAT" example, it doesn't matter if the gloves are leather or cotton, or who wears them... that's not what the analogy is concerned with. Likewise, it doesn't matter WHAT Gangsters are... or what city they're from... what matters is that the relation between successful gangsters and their environment is THE SAME SORT OF THING as the relation between genes and success in their environment...

It's that simple, and it's SCARY that Mary Midgley couldn't/can't/won't understand that.

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15. Comment #140615 by pajen on March 8, 2008 at 2:29 am

Regarding "The SelJish Gene"

Someone ran the PDF - which is a scanned, bitmapped image, through OCR software to recreate the original text for the preamble post.
The italic letter "f" looks similar to a capital "J". This is a classic OCR software mistake. Similar to "rn" <-> "m", "k" <-> "lc" etc etc.
So this is a computer error. Bad spell checking though.

/paj

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16. Comment #147430 by Lionel A on March 20, 2008 at 11:45 am

It has been asked here why is an exchange from the early 1980s being discussed here and now.

That is a good question and one answer could be because the same errors are being repeated notwithstanding the responses and rebuttals that Richard has taken care in including in later editions of The Selfish Gene.

I have here a copy of a book, given as a Christmas present, dating from as recently as 2001 which has as its mission, it seems, the demolition of both Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, amongst others.

In 'Alas Poor Darwin' edited by Hilary and Steven Rose in the chapter 'Why Memes' Midgley slates Dennett for his idea of Evolutionary Theory being a 'Universal Acid' as described in Dennett's 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea' and recently republished in 'The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing', having taken a swipe or two at Dawkins along the way. Midgley also signposts the reader to, and I quote, 'Stephen Jay Gould's chapter for a detailed critique of Dennett.'

For the real Dawkins acid in this book then the chapter by Gabriel Dover, 'Anti-Dawkins' is a study which demonstrates that the Selfish Gene is still misunderstood by many.

Need I say more.

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17. Comment #147663 by Lionel A on March 21, 2008 at 5:05 am

The article Gene-juggling is cited in the Bibliography of the 30th Anniversary Edition of The Selfish Gene published in 2006 on page 340 of the paperback edition.

There is also an applicable endnote to page 55 in Chapter 4 on page 278 of the same edition. I have no way of immediately checking in which edition this article was first cited as all my earlier editions of TSG have been passed on to others (I am going to have to get yet another copy of The God Delusion as both my original hardback and the subsequent paperback are away with others, with no sign of a return any time soon).

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18. Comment #148514 by hello_goodbye on March 23, 2008 at 8:36 am

I actually quite liked Midgley's book Beast and Man when I first picked it up a few years back, finding it quite fascinating and intelligent pure modern philosophy- a point I am sure Richard (Dawkins) and others would disagree with me on. I must re-read some time and see if my views have changed since reading Dawkins and others...Im sure it has.

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19. Comment #148537 by Peacebeuponme on March 23, 2008 at 9:12 am

hello_goodbye

I actually quite liked Midgley's book Beast and Man

I've read Evolution as Religion and Science As Salvation. Actually I think she makes some good points and gave me some things to think about when looking at the role of science and human progress. Of course the selfish gene affair is hugely dissappointing for her.

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20. Comment #148623 by hello_goodbye on March 23, 2008 at 12:28 pm

Peacebeuponme

Yes, it bemuses me how someone who appears to be as intelligent as she comers across in her written book (referring to only beast and man) takes a disliking not just too Dawkins's theories (which is fair enough), but too Dawkins himself with such potent dislike, as if he has offended her personally

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