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Dawkins is the holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.Professor Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS (born March 26, 1941), better known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist and popular science writer. He is best known for popularising the Williams Revolution in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene and being an outspoken atheist and humanist.
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Biography
Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya, where his father was a farmer and wartime soldier, called up from the colonial service in Nyasaland (now Malawi). His parents were both interested in the natural sciences, and answered the young Dawkins' questions in scientific, not mythic, terms.1 Dawkins' parents come from an upper-middle class family, described in Burke's Landed Gentry as "Dawkins of Over Norton". His father, Clinton John Dawkins, was a descendant of the Clinton family which held the Earldom of Lincoln. His mother was Jean Mary Vyvyan Dawkins (née Ladner).
Dawkins moved to England when he was eight with his parents, and was educated at Oundle School. He received a second class BA degree in zoology from Balliol College, Oxford in 1962, where he studied under Nobel Prize winning Dutch ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen. This was followed by MA and DPhil degrees in 1966.
He married Marian Stamp on August 19, 1967, but they divorced in 1984. On June 1 the same year, Dawkins married Eve Barham, by whom he had a daughter, Juliet, but they, too, divorced; she subsequently died. He married his third wife, actress Lalla Ward, in 1992, after having been introduced to her by Douglas Adams (who was a colleague of hers on the production team of Doctor Who; Dawkins and Adams had quickly become friends after he'd written a fan letter to Adams).
Dawkins was an assistant professor of zoology at University of California, Berkeley, between 1967 and 1969. He was lecturer in zoology at Oxford University, and fellow of New College, from 1970 to 1990, and later a reader in zoology, until 1995, when he became the first Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001. He won the International Cosmos Prize (Japan) for 1997, and the Kistler Prize (USA) for 2001. He has honorary doctorates in literature as well as science.
Work
He is probably best known for his popularisation of the concept of the selfish gene (see "Williams Revolution"), described in his book The Selfish Gene. As an ethologist, interested in animal behaviour and its relation to natural selection, he popularised the idea that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution. This gene point of view also provides a basis for understanding kin selection which was formulated by his friend Bill Hamilton.
Dawkins has been one of the major proponents of sociobiological theory and coined the term meme, which spawned the theory of memetics. This has been criticised as being overly-reductionist, for example by the philosopher Mary Midgley with whom Dawkins has debated since the early 1980s.
He topped Prospect Magazine's 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, as decided by the readers, receiving twice as many votes as the runner-up.
He writes a column for Free Inquiry magazine, and since May 2005, has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.
Debates: theory of evolution, sociobiology, and religion
In the controversy over interpretations of the theory of evolution (the so-called Darwin Wars), one faction is often named for Dawkins and its rival for Stephen Jay Gould. This reflects the pre-eminence of each as popularisers of the contesting viewpoints, rather than because either is the more substantial or extreme champion of these positions. A typical example of Dawkins' position is his scathing review (published in January 1985) of Not in Our Genes by Rose, Kamin and Lewontin. Two others often considered to be in the same camp as Dawkins are Pinker and Dennett.
In a December 2004 interview with Bill Moyers ("Battle over evolution", Now, PBS network: transcript), Dawkins stated, ‘But, among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know'. When Moyers later asked, ‘Is evolution a theory, not a fact?’, Dawkins replied,‘Evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening'.
He is an ardent and outspoken atheist, an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and vice-president of the British Humanist Association. He also writes for the Council for Secular Humanism's magazine Free Inquiry and serves as a Senior or. In his essay "Viruses of the Mind", he uses memetics theory to explain the phenomenon of religious belief and the various characteristics of organised religions, such as the common belief in punishments awaiting non-believers. The Atheist Alliance instituted the Richard Dawkins Award in 2003 in his honour.
Dawkins continues to be a prominent figure in contemporary public debate on issues related to science and religion. In opposing what he considers religious dogma, Dawkins sees education and consciousness-raising as primary tools, including fight against certain stereotypes. Just like feminists, he says, succeeded in making us feel embarrassed when we use 'he' when it could be 'she', a phrase like 'Catholic child' or 'Muslim child' must be felt as improper as 'Marxist child' or 'Neo-Libertarian child'. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when asked if the world had changed, and if it had, how had it changed, Dawkins responded:
Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!
On the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould, Dawkins refuses to participate in debates with creationists because doing so would give them the "oxygen of respectability" that they want with the public; Dawkins argued that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public." (A Devil's Chaplain, p. 256)
As a supporter of the Great Ape Project, a movement to extend 'human rights' to all Great Apes (Gorillas, Chimpanzees, and Orang-utangs), he contributed an article to a book of the same name entitled 'Gaps In The Mind.' In this article, he criticised contemporary society's moral attitudes which are based on a 'discontinous, speciesist imperative.'
Bibliography
Books by Dawkins
- Dawkins, R. The Selfish Gene (1976; second ion, 1989) ISBN 0192860925
- Dawkins, R. The Extended Phenotype (1982) Revised ion (1999) ISBN 0192880519
- Dawkins, R. The Blind Watchmaker (1986); reissue pb (1996) ISBN 0393315703
- Dawkins, R. River Out Of Eden (1995) Reprint ion (1996) ISBN 0465069908
- Dawkins, R. Climbing Mount Improbable (1997) ISBN 0393316823
- Dawkins, R. Unweaving the Rainbow (1998) pb (2000) ISBN 0618056734
- Dawkins, R. A Devil's Chaplain (selected essays, 2003) ISBN 0618335404
- Dawkins, R. The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life (2004) ISBN 0618005838
According to an interview with salon.com published 2005-04-30, Dawkins is currently writing on a new book, tentatively titled The God Delusion.
Books about Dawkins
- Sterelny, K., Dawkins vs Gould: Survival of the Fittest (2001) ISBN 1840462493 Debates on evolutionary theory between Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould
- Alister McGrath Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, And The Meaning Of Life (2005) ISBN 1405125381 A critique of Dawkins' crusade against theistic religion
See also Books by and about Richard Dawkins and Richard Dawkins Bibliography, these links are useful but no longer maintained.
Essays by Dawkins
- Viruses of the Mind (1993)
- The real romance in the stars - A critical view of astrology (1995)
- Race and creation - On race, its usage and a theory of how it evolved. (exerpted from Prospect)
- What Use is Religion? - Piece by Dawkins on SecularHumanism.org
- 1999 Snake Oil and Holy Water
- 2003 Bin Ladens Victory - Guardian orial about Osama bin Laden
- 2005 The lava lizard' s tale
- 2005 The turtle's tale
- 2005 The giant tortoises's tale
See also Papers and commentary by Richard Dawkins, no longer maintained.
Documentaries
- The God Who Wasn't There
- Double Helix: The DNA Years
- Three Tales'
- The Richard Dimbleby Lecture
- Don't Panic
- The Selfish Green
- The Atheism Tapes
- Jonathan Miller's Brief History Of Disbelief
Multimedia
Criticisms
- Raymond G. Bohlin, review of River Out of Eden, TJ 10(3):322–327, 1996. +
- Jonathan Sarfati, review of Climbing Mount Improbable, TJ 12(1):29–34, 1998. +
- Royal Truman, review of Unweaving the Rainbow, TJ 13(1):33–36, 1999.
- Les Ey and Don Batten, Weasel, a flexible program for investigating deterministic computer 'demonstrations' of evolution, TJ 16(2):84–88, 2002.
- Double-Dealing in Darwin: Are intellectuals allowing dogma in science but not in religion? by Michael Ruse
- Short interview with Dawkins seeking a most sought-after answer by Creationists (requires Macromedia Flash Player)
External links
- The Current Simonyi Professor: Richard Dawkins
- The World of Richard Dawkins Extensive website on Dawkins; apart from new calendar items, it is no longer updated.
- Free Inquiry
- Edge.org: Richard Dawkins
- Double-Dealing in Darwin: Are intellectuals allowing dogma in science but not in religion? by Michael Ruse
- The Atheism Tapes, program 4 - the transcript of an extended interview with Richard Dawkins for the Jonathan Miller BBC TV series The Atheism Tapes.
- Dawkins in the news:
- Richard Dawkins: The foibles of faith Dawkins views on the dangers of faith
- Q&A: Richard Dawkins Dawkins tops poll for Britain's leading 100 public intellectuals.
- Atheist Dawkins gives Thought for the Day Dawkins presents religious programme Thought for the Day
- Dawkins calls for school inspectors to re-examine a UK school over teaching of evolution
- Nothing wrong with clones says Dawkins Dawkins views on human cloning
- Slate interview with Dawkins 2004
- "Revolutionary Evolutionist", Michael Schrage, Wired 3.07, July 1995
- Does Richard Dawkins back astrology? Dawkin's response to a false claim by Sunday Times.
- "The Atheist", interview with Gordy Slack, Salon.com, April 28, 2005
- "Bin Laden's victory", Dawkins on the war in Iraq, March 2003
| Richard Dawkins |
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| Books: The Selfish Gene - The Extended Phenotype - The Blind Watchmaker - River Out Of Eden - Climbing Mount Improbable - Unweaving the Rainbow - A Devil's Chaplain - The Ancestor's Tale |
| See also: W. D. Hamilton - Williams revolution - atheism - humanism - evolution - Lalla Ward |