Saturday, April 11, 2015

My Eyes Hurt From Too Much Online Research

so I'm going to leave you guys with a video while I take some aspirin and lie down in a darkened room.  

This virtuoso lecture by Richard Lewontin is the third in a series he gave at the Santa Fe Institute in 2003,  "Does Culture Evolve?"  Its explanation of the ideological and professional motivations of how we came to impose the Darwinist dogma to areas where it was such an obviously bad fit is nothing less than brilliant.  Even when I disagree with him I'd never accuse him of superficial reasoning and being misinformed.  His honesty about himself and his motives are part of his rigorous intention to present reality.  It's too bad that habit of honesty wasn't more practiced in science, not to mention history and other academic topics.



I would recommend the other two in the series and might post them later.  I've listened to a number of his lectures in the last two days and think one of them is the one in which he gives one of the most succinct explanations of genetic drift I've heard.

No comments:

Post a Comment