"...the ever admirable Steve Jones...speaks about his own field of snail
genetics, which he holds to be 'a microcosm of evolutionary biology at its
worst. Its literature is filled with the great vagueness of evolution--with
words that, when you deconstruct them, are like shovelling fog; they don't
mean much. 'Coadaptation', 'adaptive landscape', 'punctuated
equilibrium'--what I sometimes think of as theological population genetics.
They're words that don't help at all when you're trying to decide what
experiment to do next.'"
The reviewer opines that Jones' is a refreshing counterpoint to the
"repugnant sense of autointoxication in too many of (the other) acts of
self-revelation" from the likes of S.J. Gould, R. Dawkins and others. The
reviewer concludes with the warning that "The danger of (this) extraordinary
conflation...is that people who do not know much about science will take it
for a true picture of what scientists actually do and how they behave...But
as a tour around the wilder fringes of scientific enquiry it is undoubtedly
...valuable..."
This addresses an important point regarding the danger of deciding what
science is and what scientists do soley from the public image presented by a
select few, such as Gould, Dawkins, Sagan, et al. Steve Jones and countless
other scientists have a much less public impact than these others. In my
experience, it is a minority of my colleagues who would go the intellectual
extremes of someone like Dawkins. Most of my colleagues do not write books
on evolution or God, or have our inflated egos presented as representing on
television, the view of all scientists, as do this select few. I submit
that their philosophies are not necessarily representative of most scientists.
Cheers,
Steve
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Steven S. Clark, Ph.D. Phone: (608) 263-9137
Associate Professor FAX: (608) 263-4226
Dept. of Human Oncology and email: ssclark@facstaff.wisc.edu
UW Comprehensive Cancer Ctr
University of Wisconsin "To disdain philosophy is really to
Madison, WI 53792 be a philosopher." Blaise Pascal
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