Dawkins versus Wilson

June 25th, 2012 by badger

The article is mostly a summary, but then a third party weights in. Go, Georgy Koentges, go!

“There is no such thing as a good or bad gene. It doesn’t work that simply. Genes are used and re-used in different contexts, each of which might have a different overall fitness value for a given organism or a group.”

One thing that bugged me in the article was the writer using “Darwinist.”  “Darwinist” is a pejorative and a shibboleth. Dawkins is not a Darwinist. Creationists tend to use that term, in the naive assertion that Charles Darwin is some cult leader or prophet to a belief in evolution, rather than a scientist who advanced human knowledge.

Besides, Dawkins is a Dawkinsist, if anything.

2 Responses to “Dawkins versus Wilson”

  1. Journalmalist says:

    You can’t really blame the writer for ‘Darwinist,’ as it appears only the headline, which is usually written by an editor.

  2. badger says:

    Good call, but i’m dead certain that Darwinist was originally in the text. It seemed that it was about a third of the way into the piece. I probably just screwed up, but…

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