BBC World Book Club with Richard Dawkins

Well, here's my first worthy blog entry really, as the first one was just a way of getting me into the blogging community/breaking down that initial barrier that confronts us in new tasks.

I'm still shaking with excitement (I do have nerve endings I've discovered, despite being pretty relaxed physically most of the time except while running!) from being involved with the show, being some 3 metres away from Richard Dawkins, a man who has had a massive influence on modern thought. The setting of a dead-quiet BBC recording studio, with padded walls and producers darting in and out with "health and safety" talks, advice on how to approach it, and I was heartened that it was really relaxed, not to a schedule, and could be re-edited to allow for cock-ups, and above all, that they encouraged us to have a shout if you want to- it had suddenly become not just a lecture but a form of debate.

Richard Dawkins, the erudite scientist, as he likes to style himself, was discussing his inaugural best-seller "The Selfish Gene", the main theme encapsulated in the title, which was one of the most exciting prospects in philosophy and popular science. He was a smallish man, with a jutting jaw, pince-nez glasses, a wandering curious but intense gaze and the most incredible feature of all, his incredible voice. He is truly a great performer, his sincere tone was not deep but incredibly powerful and his underlying determination to assert his views on the world became clear from the beginning.

I confess I still haven't read his first book cover to cover, but after this I will be racing through Dawkins literature, on his evolution stuff anyway! My Dad is an evolutionary theorist, so I may get my interest (through heredity or environment!) from him, but I'd agree with my old man in that it is baffling how so few people take such a casual or uninterested stance in that most important subjects in my opinion which are who or what we are, where we've come from and probably the most important question: why?

Dawkins commented during the show that the 'why' part is unimportant or not worthy considering, which is probably due to his aversion against religion and that emphasis on the begining of life: indeed he believes the 'word' of genesis is not worth mentioning. As a man interested in words, I find that hard to stomach, but apart from personal prejudices towards linguistics and languages, I do believe you can't just dismiss the ultimate question with such a casual attitude as indeed every story has a beginning. The story of life, which he tries to tell, lacks this definite start, it's all exposition and development, where as on the other hand, the creation story has a perfect structure, not that I believe in it personally. It can be said that the biblical tale is attractive, it has a sense of unity and purpose that we seek as humans.

So, as for my actual involvement in the debate, which was, I have to admit, more than I expected, and I felt like I was that six-year-old-grade-one-piano-taking kid again, absolutely loaded with fear and pressure- I failed my grade one, so pressure may not be good for me, but I think I managed a semi-coherent first question. It was a bit of a parasitic tag-along to the previous questioner who asked about the appropriateness of using the emotive term "Selfish" in the title of his great work, if Dawkins did want to come across objectively as a scientist. No doubt and self-confessedly Dawkins is a great communicator of science to the ignorant masses, but should such rhetoric be employed when looking at life in terms of 'survival machines', 'replicators' and other such inanimate or emotionless objects. The use of the adjective actually implies anthropomorphism, which I believe lies more in the realm of fiction.

So I followed with a little trash-culture question to ease my way in, which I mumbled out not quite correctly, asking whether the title could evoke notions which are not good for society, as in the projection of selfishness (although he doesn't advocate that in individuals) being a bad thing, I managed to get out that it permeates modern Western society, particularly on reality T.V. shows, with horrendous terms (I think for civilized society) like 'dog-eat-dog' and 'alpha male' being employed in everyday situations, and I don't think that's the best way of espousing an attitude that takes us away from animals in an evolutionary sense. He replied, as I expected as if I was a complete ignoramus, by saying that he is only espousing selfishness on the level of the gene, and not in individuals, to which I retorted that I understood that, just that others may not, and particularly if he wants to market his ideas in popular science. He got the last word in of course, saying, "Well these people obviously haven't read beyond the title."

First brush with genius over, I recline back feeling a little embarrassed to have asked a trivial question that he felt was so obvious and misinterpreted by me. I watch the red 'on air' light and the fascinated faces, all taken in by that voice. He never stutters, he reels off ideas with ease and at an incredible rate. His reciting tone is incredibly powerful, as for his sound test he recited a story he learned in his childhood perfectly. His ability with words is outstanding for a man of science. Anyway, not wishing to butter him up, I was pretty aggressive with the hand raising at every opportunity from then on in, as I'm sure he has no doubt of his ability to look and sound the part at these gigs, heckling time was in session!

So my big question, which stems from Dad's ideas, though I have thought about it personally, to do with the lack of attention paid to the random mutations that are the basis of neo-Darwinism espoused by Dawkins. I took the contentious line that if he persistently took this line on the computational nature of evolution, how could he justify copying errors within this theory? He replied that some mutations in the genes were beneficial, while others were errors in a negative sense, to which I got a little jab in "But is it good thing to look at evolutionary progress through copying errors?", to which I think he may even have got a little flustered: "Oh come on!"
His calm objectivity may have been rattled slightly? If it was he regathered composure in a microsecond, as he cut me down and indeed the interviewer cut me out of my follow-up on hybridism, which I admit now, wasn't completely related and due to my lack of thorough research, I meant 'mutants', but anyway, you win some you lose some!

The whole experience was fascinating, as he did express himself on a number of levels about so many topics, such as the idea of mimes, gayness in nature and his normal repartee on the ignorance and wickedness on religion. Well Professor Dawkins, the Hough clan aren't quite dead and gone yet, you may be the Alpha at the moment, but there's no reason why a few cunning like-minded people couldn't at least pose a threat to your dominance yet sir!