Dennett on Gould

Published 2008

An excerpt of an interview led by Dan Schneider with Daniel Dennett. About: Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) (Wiki). (First at "Monsters and Critiques", July 2007) (1):

M & C: (...) Before I move on to Consciousness Explained, let me sidestep a moment to your views on the late Stephen Jay Gould? You spent a good portion of 'Darwins Dangerous Idea' (= DDI) 'tattooing his intellectual ass.' What did you think of him as a thinker, scientist, and man? I ask because there was a famed brouhaha between the two of you. My opinion of Gould is generally favorable. In an essay and review of his final book I wrote:

Yes, he had faults. His almost comical misinterpretation of the fossils found in the Burgess Shale, in his 1989 book Wonderful Life (one of his few published books that was not a collection of previously published essays), was totally devastated by Simon Conway Morris's 1998 book The Crucible Of Creation. He also denied that there were any trends in evolution when arguing against linearity or determinism, an addendum which kyboshed an otherwise valid point. (...) To his credit, in this book's preface, Gould admits his occasional faux pas: 'Although I have frequently advanced wrong, or even stupid, arguments, at least I have never been lazy.'

Would you generally agree with that assessment? You too seem to feel Gould totally flubbed the Burgess Shale fossils. In effect, he claimed that the Cambrian Explosion could have led to wholly different bodily forms than the symmetrical sort we see now. He mistook body parts for whole bodies, looked at front ends of bodies as rears, ups as downs, etc., and generally tried to impose his presuppositions for reality. Yet, despite that, he was a tireless defender of rationalism, even if his conclusions differed from others. If you agree with that view of Gould, why the hell are not real debates and disagreements in science, such as you vs. Gould, put out for debate amongst the masses? (...)

Daniel Dennett: I see Gould quite differently. He was an academic bully, who exploited his scientific credentials to push his political views - or maybe they were closer to religious views. (Remember: I started out as a friend of his; I often attended his seminars at Harvard but eventually I got so annoyed with the way he would misrepresent his critics and bully the students that I had to leave.) When I wrote DDI, I knew I was going to have to expose Gould's history of misrepresentation - since he was going to hate my book, and would pillory it with his usual tricks if I didn't attempt to preempt that vilification effort with an analysis of his own work. Gould had been selling America a watered-down and distorted version of basic evolutionary theory for decades, and when I pointed this out, he reacted--not unreasonably!-- with a venomous attack on what he called my "Darwinian fundamentalism," but, you know, the evolutionary biology community knew I was right, and said so. (I am not alone in incurring Gould's wrath: I'm proud to stand with Richard Dawkins, the late, great John Maynard Smith and Steve Pinker, as sane and forthright a team of "fundamentalists" as one could ask for.).

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1. The Dan Schneider Interview 2: Daniel Dennett, first posted 7/1/07, http://www.cosmoetica.com/DSI2.htm
2. Dan Schneider: Review of Stephen Jay Gould’s I Have Landed, 2/17/06, http://www.cosmoetica.com/B330-DES270.htm
3. Ronald Bailey: Philosopher Daniel Dennett On Religion, Gould and UFOs at Monsters & Critics, 7.11.2007,  https://reason.com/2007/07/11/philosopher-daniel-dennett-on/

Evolution of Religion - according to D. S. Wilson

David Sloan Wilson has a very important piece of critique of "The God Delusion" of Richard Dawkins. (Skeptic) "I recently attended a conference on evolution and religion in Hawaii that provided an opportunity to assess the state of the field." He gives a good overview of new research in the field. And he gives some very interesting informations about the ascetic ideals of the indian Janism (deutsch: Jainismus):

...

Jainism is one of the oldest and most ascetic of all the eastern religions and is practiced by approximately three percent of the Indian population. Jain ascetics filter the air they breathe, the water they drink, and sweep the path in front of them to avoid killing any creature no matter how small. They are homeless, without possessions, and sometimes even fast themselves to death by taking a vow of “santhara” that is celebrated by the entire community. How could such a religion benefit either individuals or groups in a practical sense? It is easy to conclude from the sight of an emaciated Jain ascetic that the religion is indeed a cultural disease — until one reads the scholarly literature.

It turns out that Jain ascetics comprise a tiny fraction of the religion, whose lay members are among the wealthiest merchants in India. Throughout their long history, Jains have filled an economic niche similar to the Jews in Western Europe, Chinese in Southeast Asia, and other merchant societies. In all cases, trading over long distances and plying volatile markets such as the gem trade requires a high degree of trust among trading partners, which is provided by the religion. Even the most esoteric (to outsiders) elements of the religion are not superfluous byproducts but perform important practical work.

For example, the ascetics must obtain their food by begging but their religion includes so many food restrictions that they can only accept food from the most pious lay Jain households. Moreover, the principle of non-action dictates that they can only accept small amounts of food from each household that was not prepared with the ascetics in mind. When they enter a house, they inspect the premises and subject the occupants to sharp questions about their moral purity before accepting their food. It is a mark of great honor to be visited but of great shame if the ascetics leave without food. In effect, the food begging system of the ascetics functions as an important policing mechanism for the community. This is only one of many examples, as summarized by Jainism scholar James Laidlaw in a 1995 book whose title says it all: Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy, and Society Among the Jains.

How then, is it possible to live by impossible ideals? The advantage for addressing this question to Jainism is that the problem is so very graphic there. The demands of Jain asceticism have a pretty good claim to be the most uncompromising of any enduring historical tradition: the most aggressively impractical set of injunctions which any large number of diverse families and communities has ever tried to live by. They have done so, albeit in a turbulent history of change, schism, and occasionally recriminatory “reform,” for well over two millennia. This directs our attention to the fact that yawning gaps between hope and reality are not necessarily dysfunctions of social organization, or deviations from religious systems. The fact that lay Jains make up what is — in thoroughly worldly material terms — one of the most conspicuously successful communities in India, only makes more striking and visible a question which must also arise in the case of the renouncers themselves.