Why Gould was wrong, and why Dawkins might be even more wrong
A science writer who knows how to communicate to a lay audience is a rarity. But to find two in the same field, battling each other’s ideas in the public domain, is a real treat, and the long-running contest on evolutionary theory between the late Harvard palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould and the Oxford ethologist and biologist Richard Dawkins was a gem of the first rank. If the modern science-inclined public has better than a cartoon Darwinist grasp of the complex story of evolution it is in no small thanks to these two outstanding writers.
How scientific are scientists?
The materialist conception of history was first outlined publicly 150 years ago this month.
This year is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin The Origin of Species but also of the publication of Marx’s first economic writings after his more detailed study of the workings of capitalism, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
In his latest book, Coral, A Pessimist in Paradise, the biologist and popular science writer Steve Jones attributes to Marx the statement that “we see mighty coral reefs rising from the depth of the ocean into islands and firm land, yet each individual depositor is puny, weak, and contemptible”. Marx was something of a polymath, but an expert on corals?
London’s widely read book of this title was published a hundred years ago.
But how realistic was it and how much of a socialist was Jack London?
Massive reform programme
The Real Venezuela – Making Socialism in the 21st Century.
By Iain Bruce, Pluto Press 2008
Venezuela, since Chavez, has been both hailed as champion of the poor and underclasses and also excoriated by leaders of the global capitalist hegemony. In this book Bruce takes no side but over a period of several years and a number of visits to various parts of the country – urban, rural, factories and farms – he has interviewed ‘ordinary folk’ involved in co-operative initiatives ranging from the workplace to community planning, land reform and literacy programmes.
