Tag: systems

Further to the last post, look at this video (thanks Josh)

Steven Rose by blindwatcher

It seems to me they all agree on the question where does “good” come from. Steven Rose is systemic in his thinking, Dawkins more reductionist.

Background to this discussion:

Steven Rose – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Research and scientific controversies With Richard Lewontin and Leon Kamin, Rose championed the “radical science movement.”[3][page needed] The three criticized sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and adaptationism, most prominently in the book Not in Our Genes (1984), laying out their opposition to Sociobiology (E. O. Wilson, 1975), The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins, 1976), and other works promoting an evolutionary explanation for human social behaviour. Not in Our Genes described Dawkins as “the most reductionist of sociobiologists”. In retort, Dawkins wrote that the book practices reductionism by distorting arguments in terms of genetics to “an idiotic travesty (that the properties of a complex whole are simply the sum of those same properties in the parts)”, and accused the authors of giving “ideology priority over truth”.[4] Rose replied in the 2nd edition of his book Lifelines. Rose wrote further works in this area; in 2000 he jointly edited with the sociologist Hilary Rose, a critique of evolutionary psychology: Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology. In 2006 he wrote a paper dismissing classical heritability estimates as useful scientific measures in respect of human populations especially in the context of IQ.[5] Rose was for several years a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4’s ethics debating series The Moral Maze.[1] Rose is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.