Dear Readers: Please feel free to review the Contents of my book and biography in Gods, Genes, Conscience (iUniverse.com worldwide release 2006); and/or here (Google Books Search 2007) or here (Amazon.com Look Inside 2008). A list of global booksellers near you can be found here. Thank you all for scrutinizing!Immediate Posting: The following Commentaries (developing thinkings) were made in response to the concerned articles, sources, and dates listed in January 2016, so as to promote the Good Dialogues worldwide. Thank you all for reading and scrutinizing!
- [NB: I'm in preparation of writing 2 books Decoding Scientism and Consciousness & the Subconscious (works in progress since July 2007), so my future Dialogues worldwide would not be engaged, and posted herein, as often as I had been over the past 10 years or so.]
- 1) Featured issue: May 2016 see the beginning of an end to the hubristic neo-Darwinist narrative of "evolutionary pseudogenetics" -- “The Selfish Gene” meme narrative, RIP (1976-2016)*, that is!?
Dawkinsism: See Richard Dawkins' latest self-aggrandizing and reflexive memoir "An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist" -- whose subtitle I thought should have had been more appropriately reflected and entitled "The Making of a Great Pseudoscience Writer (since 1976)"!? -- See also how “The Selfish Gene” (1976) pseudogenetic determinism has had been deftly deconstructed or debunked by the science journalist David Dobbs therein (AeonUK; December 3, 2013); and how Dawkinsism has had been morphed into a New Scientistic Atheism here: “New Atheism and the Scientistic Turn in the Atheism Movement” by the evolutionary biologist turned philosopher Massimo Pigliucci [Midwest Studies In PhilosophyUSA, XXXVII (2013)]; and a more serious critique of “Scientism in the Arts and Humanities” by the British sociocultural critic and philosopher Roger Scruton therein (TheNewAtlantisUSA; Fall 2013). And last, but not least, Dawkins has just finished the part II of his self-aggrandizing memoir “Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science” (see a fair but short review by Nathaniel Comfort therein: NatureUK; September 9, 2015). -- Time and again, Dawkins’ latest aggrandizing reflexive autobiography should have had been more appropriately summarized and entitled “A Brief Candle Extinguished by The Selfish Gene, Meme: How My Life is Imbued with Reanimated Neo-Darwinism Rhetorics, Misinterpretations, Jargons, the Galtonian Ego-centric Elitist, Positivist, Reductionist, Selectionist Eugenics Scientism Fantasies (1883) being All too Eagerly Anthropomorphized, Naturalized, Sensationalized, and Propagandized as Gene-centric Determinist Self-replicating Geneticism Pseudoscience, Meme Narrative (since 1976); And I Still Have No Clues as How to Get Out of, or Correct, It; Instead I Have been Piling Higher, Deeper of It -- Self-deceitfully Reviving, Cocooning in, Rocking and Rolling with It, Of course, For My Unsuspecting Undeterred Fandom, Readership, Worldwide”!? -- See my in-depth comments on the controversy therein: under an-expert-roundtable on The Selfish Gene “Dead or Alive?” (AeonUK*; March 11, 2014).
*AeonUK from time to time may change or upgrade its positing format: as a result, by the last quarter of 2015, my comments and others to that article “Dead or Alive?” (including the survey results) were all left out; luckily I have a cc record of my own commentary, which is now en masse posted herein under for the interested reader’s convenience:
[This is a serialized posting of my original and edited comment on March 17, 2014 (AeonUK; March 11, 2014)]:
RE: Controversial conspiracy or irrational ideas will never die*; they only die within the irrationalist conspirators themselves: One funeral (of irrationalism) at a time -- just as observed by the physicist Max Planck (1858-1947) that “Science advances one funeral at a time”!?
Philoscientifically, I thought that the Aeon Editor Brigid Hains has had posed a very ambiguous and dubious question, which I briefly answered in my “RE title” above; whereas I must compliment on the science journalist David Dobbs -- whose previous article “Die Selfish Gene” that I retrospectively and prominently footnoted in my last September review of the neo-Darwinism vs Darwinism issues (linked below, footnoted in Dawkinsism) -- for his intellectual bravery, depth, and sincerity, in his attempt to deconstruct and debunk the world’s most renowned and controversial neo-Darwinist book “The Selfish Gene” (TSG) since 1976 -- even the 4 Aeon invited experts have had relented in their explicit criticism of it -- whereas TSG with its mythic “meme” has taken me many years (since 2006) to revisit and reevaluate the whole field of “evolutionary biology” (or EB, as TSG has purported to represent, pursue, portray, and dictate) as EB is theoretically related but philoscientifically and diametrically opposed to the then and now (since the 1980s) revival of the empiricist (not evolutionist nor EB theorist) driven research, inquiry, and pursuit in the developmental biological field of “molecular genetics” or “cell and tissue engineering” or “cloning” or “nuclear and organelle transplantations” etc, that all the empirical inquiry of cell biology, physiology, genetics, and biotechnology had had begun to emerge and pursue ever since the “modern cell theory” (not Darwinism or EB theory or evolutionism) was first sketched out by the botanist Matthias Schleiden (1804-81) and the animal physiologist Theodor Schwann (1810-82); and the “proto-genetics” of peas plants (the phenotype of which) was first empirically and statistically demonstrated and described by the Augustinian monk (one who had had previous trainings in both physical and non-physical sciences) Gregor Mendel (1822-84) in the late first-third and the mid-19th century, respectively [please see my historical and scientific scrutiny of these subject matters therein: “Reductionism vs. Holism in Modern Biology and History: Neo-Darwinism vs. Genetics and Physiology!?” (September 1, 2013)].
Consequently, and strictly speaking, and by modern philoscientific analysis: TSG with its extended meme has not been a standard model of science writing, nor an insightful philosophy of biology or natural phenomenology (as the authentic Darwinism that was first conceptualized in 1837-59) of evolution (of organisms and common ancestors) at all; in fact, TSG is a perverted, physicalist, reductionist, positivist, evolutionist, and sophist literary masterpiece in the first order of its physico-reductionist, pseudoscientific evolutionist, neo-Darwinist, pseudogenetic determinist, description and rhetoric of “genes as the generic or common replicators of all organisms” [as analogically and physico-reductively extended and modeled on the naturalist Charles Darwin’s (1809-82) “common ancestry” geo-biomorphism (not geneticism) hypothesis] that TSG has had come to firmly believe in, parasitize, and privilege on the earlier evolutionist flawed theory of the “Modern Synthesis” (MS) or the “superimposing Darwinism (1859) over Mendelism (1866) synthesis” since the 1930s-40s past; and that most (> 55%) today’s sophists and evolutionists alike in EB and/or in pseudo-genetics (like Richard Dawkins of TSG fame; and see the survey results above) have had unequivocally inherited, accepted, and unapologetically extended and morphed their thus newfound MS fallacy as their supremely-prided Darwinian legacy -- while their unwittingly and uncritically nor scientifically turning their thus misinterpreted or reanimated Darwinism into their modern-day dogma, or orthodoxy, that is Neo-Darwinism or the MS evolutionism, geneticism, scientism, irrationalist neo-atheism (since 2006)!?
As such -- unless Dawkins himself could or should be willing to philoscientifically reflect, rationalize, reevaluate, correct, or retract his very flawed, neo-Darwinist, physico-reductionist, pseudogenetic determinist thinking and rhetoric and his subsequent use of clueless metaphors and analogies -- in and with his such an enduring sophist and evolutionist pseudoscience and his neo-Darwinist gene-animated or physico-reductionist anthropomorphized solipsism and crafty penmanship (since 1976), TSG and its amorphous memes will never die: neither be scientifically debunked or challenged, nor be philosophically repudiated or falsifiable, big time, especially in the wake of its evermore philoscientific fallacies; clueless rhetoric; analogies; metaphors; embedded in its penultimate pseudogenetic anthropomorphism; sophistry and penmanship syntheses of evolutionism and scientism alike; etc, since the mid 1960s-70s!?
Thus, as the erudite minority (< 45%) Aeon readers may have observed (in the survey results above): TSG and its ethereal memes have had permeated and almost saturated the pseudoscience literary mythosphere; and that the Planck’s observation of “how scientific advances are made” in the mid-17th to 20th-century “physical sciences” like physics, chemistry, etc, may soon become true as well, in the late-20th to 21st-century “non-physical sciences” like neurobiology, genetics, biomedicine, psychiatry, etc -- QED!?
Best wishes, Mong 3/17/14usct4:39p; practical science-philosophy critic; author "Decoding Scientism" and "Consciousness & the Subconscious" (works in progress since July 2007), Gods, Genes, Conscience (iUniverse; 2006) and Gods, Genes, Conscience: Global Dialogues Now (blogging avidly since 2006).
*PS: Currently the Royal Society (RS) is organizing a public Scientific Meeting on “New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives” (co-sponsored by the British Academy for the humanities and social sciences) to be held on 7-9 November 2016; it is very prudent and interesting to update any specific developments, and the meeting outcomes, on its web pages, regularly. This reminds me of another scientific conference (2008) that had pronounced to revolutionize the neo-Darwinist theory of evolution: the Modern Synthesis (MS) since the early 20th century past; unfortunately the 2008 meeting outcome has turned out to be anything revolutionary but an attempted extension to the very flawed MS theory indefinitely!? -- Please see “Evolution, the Extended Synthesis” (MIT Press March 2010; edited by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. Müller). Let’s hope that the upcoming RS conference would turn out to be more revolutionary in its trends and ideas so as to help define and refine the “definitive evolutionary theory” in Biology: as One Unified Comprehensive Theory that would encompass all those budding evolutionary theories in the physical sciences, especially in Physics and Chemistry; and not the other way round, as most "research and development biologically-ignoramus but vocal physicists, physicalists" including the Galtonian ego-centric elitists, positivists, reductionists, pseudogenetic evolutionists, selectionists, eugenicists, and neo-Darwinists, have had at once misread and adopted this superficial line of evolutionary thinking; and intended for all physical matters and electromagnetic fields in the Universe above and beyond as “evolutionary” by their misinterpreted Darwinian natural selectionism or geo-biomorphism theory of evolution since 1859 as identified by the several distinctions below: 1) by solely based on the physical terms and appearances of matters or “morphism” -- not developmental morphology as in Embryology; nor the Haeckelian recapitulation theory derived from his biomorphism laws of 1868 (modeled on Darwin’s “tree of life” sketch-hypothesis of 1837 and at once misrepresented Darwin’s geo-biomorphism concepts of 1859); nor the Darwin’s indigenous philoscientific naturalism or his overarching theory of evolution by natural selection itself, namely distinction 1: evolutionary morphism in physical sciences such as Geology, Geography, Paleontology, Taxonomy, etc (on which principles Darwinism has primarily based, and derived from) vs developmental morphology in non-physical sciences especially in Developmental Biology and Molecular Biology (on which disciplines more aspiring biologists are nowadays being trained and doing intensive research in such as Genetics and Bioengineering projects including Robotics and Artificial Intelligence or Infomatics but not exclusively limited to, nor defined by the latter physicalism or roboticism at all); or macroevolutionism vs microevolutionism, etc -- while 2) the neo-Darwinists, physicalists negating all other invisible essences, organismal-internal phenomena such as the existences of psychosomatic vitalism (internal life forces) or spiritualism (imaginative psychical powers, inspirations, aspirations, etc) or emotionalism (corporeal experiences, memories, consciousness, etc) in Psychology and Physiology, especially in our Humanities as a whole on Earth, namely distinction 2: mentalism vs materialism; physicalism vs spiritualism; or scientism vs religionism, etc; and 3a) by their persistently fantasizing and even once attempting to exterminate their all-too-eagerly anthropomorphized, naturalized, super-elitist and self-determinist deemed, undesirable "biomorphism or phenotype defective genes” or their neo-Darwinists-misinterpreted "pseudogenetics" or group/kin or population geneticisms as derived and morphed abstractly from, and by their very un-empirically and unscientifically asserting of superimposing Darwinism of the "natural selectionism" of the "evolutionary geo-biomorphism" fame (1859) over Mendelism of the "germline inheritance" of the 1900-rediscovered "proto-genetics" empiricism, the peas plants hybridizations and Mendel's experimentation-derived biostatistics (1866) all being too selectively and determinately extrapolated, translated, and fixated or literally fossilized in their then neo-Darwinism of the MS evolutionary-developmental, confused and corrupted pseudoscience rhetoric thereof, in the early and mid-20th-century Europe and Americas; in essence and consequences, 3b) their gravely and specifically emboldening their concurrently Nazis-escalated Holocaust (1933-45), that is; and their subsequently Eugenics Movements in the USA past, namely distinction 3: Galtonism or neo-Darwinism vs Darwinism vs Mendelism; geneticisms vs genetics, etc of the late-19th to the late-20th century past!? -- See “Dawkinsism” and “Neo-Darwinism vs Darwinism” debates, demarcations, distinctions, and delineations above, and elsewhere in these “GGC:GDN” blogs, since 2006 (especially in the 2013 blogs). -- And now there is an interesting article by the evolutionary science affairs journalist Suzan Mazur, who very much likes to anticipate and report what might be coming at the upcoming RS meeting this year: "John Dupré Interview: Deeper into the Royal Society Evolution Paradigm Shift Meeting" (HuffingtonPostUSA; February 8, 2016). For the readers who are more academically inclined or grounded, you might be interested in following through the ASAPbio conference: here, one that is currently in progress (February 16-17, 2016).
