I rely on my UK readers to alert me to anything interesting in London, because I don't subscribe to the Times of London. Readers Pyers and Adrian both said that the article was a superb piece.
I've been following your posts on E O Wilson and the Scientific American article about him.
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Danny Finkelstein is a regular contributor to the paper. He is a member of a very liberal strand of Conservativeism, and wouldn't have much in common with the current party. I like his writing, but I consider myself centre left. He makes me think and question my biases. He is one of my go-tos for getting a sensible conservative view on the world, so I think he is doing the same thing as Andrew Sullivan does on US issues.
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His take on the cancellation of E O Wilson is a good one. He is trying to build a consensus around the idea that truth is not a left or right wing political issue.
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I feel bamboozled by life at the moment. The majority of the people I consider to be on my team, the centre left, are not interested in standing up against revisionism. I think I agree with some people I would have considered bedfellows on the right. Maybe I am just getting old, or maybe it is the polarised times we live in. I don't know between these options.
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If centre left and centre right find common ground, that is a good thing, because the extreme pathologies on the left and right of politics need to be opposed.
If you click on the screen shot, you will get a few paragraphs, but the text is available via inquiry. You will get to see the whole thing if you have a Times subscription. I will give some quotes to show its character. Adrian told us about Daniel Finkelstein.
It is a well written and thoughtful piece, which defends Wilson against that idiotic attack in Scientific American, and also defends a left-winger whose recent book argues that the Left cannot ignore the fact of genetic differences among people.
I can quote the author himself on a few topics, I chose the quotes and grouped them.
The ideological opposition to sociobiology is called evolutionary psychology.
EO Wilson, one of the world's leading scientists, died last week. The professor studied fire ants and his knowledge of them was peerless. He had begun to consider human beings as he aged. Our social organisation, our behavior, our hierarchies, our urges will be the product of our biology, after all, we are animals too.
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This is the foundation stone of sociobiology and it provoked a remarkable reaction. The Marxists and radicals in American universities saw it as a political attack. Their argument was that human behavior was the product of society. Humans were a blank slate, one very much like another. This idea was wrong if Wilson was correct. societies were going to be harder to change if Wilson was correct. People might not come out equal even with all the social engineering in the world. Wilson couldn't be right.
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The accusation of racism was the weapon of choice in the battle to take down sociobiology.
The Scientific American argument.
One of the most useful results of studying the genetics and evolution of human behavior is that the Nazis and other racists are wrong. Wilson was clear about that. The accusation that Wilson was a racist was made by other people. It was made by other academics to protect their ideas. It is being made. Scientific American published an article by a University of California associate professor, reviving the charge of racist ideas after Wilson's death.
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It was an article that was so confusing that it was hard to grasp hold of it. It was more of a political and intellectual appearance.
Indeed!
I gave a mixed review to Harden's book. The first part of the book shows the differences between individual humans and how they affect our performance and chance of success. Harden talked about social engineering to make people more equal, but she offered no credible solutions. Solutions are very difficult.
Many of our abilities are heritable.
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We are making social policy very difficult if we ignore this. In her book, The Genetic Lottery, the geneticist argues that genetics matter for our lives. They cause differences in what we care about. Building a house on sand is a commitment to equality.
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We don't have to live with genetic disadvantages. It would be like saying that I shouldn't be allowed glasses. We need to recognise genetic differences, or we will end up denying glasses because we need to nationalise the water industry first.
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It is puzzling that right-wingers think that discovering natural difference in capacity is somehow right-wing. The truth is just the truth. It is not just that. Genetic inheritance is similar to economic inheritance. Left-wingers observe randomness and argue that we should help the poor. The randomness of genetic inheritance is something that people on the left don't want to acknowledge. It is perverse.
There are three reasons to rebut the challenge to evolutionary psychology.
There are three reasons to reject this challenge. It is our duty to Wilson, a great scientist. His contribution to the understanding of animal behavior has been profound and it would be a shame to allow his reputation to be attacked when he is no longer here to defend himself.
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Wilson was obviously right in the second reason. How likely is it that human beings are not influenced by biology? How can it be that ours does not have an evolutionary explanation?
He refers to the fact that there are genetic differences between humans as a result of Harden's criticism.
. Which is the second reason for defending Wilson. Scientific methods and the search for truth matter. Genetics must be Nazi if the accusation is that sociobiology is racist. It is similar to attacking Linda McCartney's soya-based sausages because Hitler was a vegetarian.
Finkelstein came to a conclusion.
We are going to learn more about ourselves as we develop our genes. We must be allowed to talk about the things we discover, even if they are unsettle. Good science must be defended against bad politics.
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The great scientist will have rendered us one final service if the controversy over EO Wilson teaches us.
This may be enough to satisfy you. You know what to do if not.
