Darwin Day Lecture 2008

This evening I attended the British Humanist Association’s Darwin Day Lecture at University College, London, which was on this occasion given by Tim Lewens, a lecturer in Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. You can see some photographs of the occasion here and some short video clips are on my Facebook page.

I will admit that the principal reason for me attending this lecture was to be in the presence of Richard Dawkins. I am delighted to say that I was able to speak to Professor Dawkins and tell him face to face how much I admire his courageous work, and how I am keen to assist further in the cause of fighting irrationality.

I can tell you that in real life Prof. Dawkins comes across as the same highly capable yet humble person that he does in videos and, while direct and to the point, he is always unfailingly polite and devoid of the arrogance sometimes wrongly attributed to him (but sometimes possessed by other senior academic figures to their own disadvantage).

With regard to Tim Lewens’ lecture, Mr Lewens spoke well - it is difficult to speak in front of a room full of people - but did seem, from his style, to be more used to addressing undergraduates, and did insist upon refering to Darwin in the present historical tense (”Darwin thinks”, “Darwin says”). I was pleased that Richard Dawkins picked him up on this at the end, because indeed it does not fully take into account the period in which Darwin was writing and it can sound pretentious.

Regarding the contents of the lecture, I would need to see a transcript to analyse them in detail, but to a large degree Mr Lewens seemed to be “bolting Darwin’s subject onto his own”, because - it seems - Darwin did not actually say very much about philosophy, prefering to to write about science. This left Mr Lewens with not much material, I felt, but the lecture was interesting when he discussed the commonly perceived conflict between acting selfishly and acting altruistically. Here I feel he would have been well advised to have mentioned not only the Peacock theory (mentioned in The Selfish Gene) which I find very convincing, but also Sam Harris’s excellent points made in The End of Faith, where he explains that to act really fully selfishly actually entails acting altruistically as well as we seek psychological fulfilment (there is more to human beings than simply the selfish gene, as Mr Dawkins himself has said - we are unique in this respect) . I would like to expand upon this argument in detail at another time, because a widespread comprehension of it would undoubtedly be the solution to a great many problems in society.

With regard to the evolutionary advantages of being altruistic, these were rightly attributed to the group surviving, as Mr Dawkins pointed out even in The Selfish Gene, and with regard to our sympathy for disabled people, whose genes do not seem to favour natural selection, I believe this too can be shown to actually be compatible with natural selection in the sense that nobility is again beneficial at a group level - however this topic again is derserving of an article in its own right.

Mr Lewens made a number of claims about and interpretations of Darwin which jarred with me and I found rather unlikely, and I was therefore not surprised when Prof. Dawkins picked him up on them in no uncertain terms at the end of the lecture, but the lecture was to some degree informative. When Mr Lewens seemed to disagree with Prof. Dawkins, I (and probably most of the audience) had the distinct feeling he was picking the wrong man with whom to disagree, and it even crossed my mind that he might have been doing so in order to try to make a name for himself rather than through genuine disagreement, though I don’t claim this with certainty.

Following the lecture the floor was opened to the audience, and the kind of questions asked were, for the most part, typical of audience questions at such an event: lacking precision, forethought or relevance, and a little embrrassing for the speakers to have to contend with, but then Mr Dawkins is now a veteran of handling such remarks and it must come as a very pleasant surprise when an intelligent question is asked or valid point made.

All in all I do not want to be too scathing of this lecture because it is all in a very good cause and the BHA needs, and should receive, all the support it can get. Professor Dawkins spoke excellently prior to the lecture and so did a senior member of the BHA (whose name I missed), stating clearly that the organisation will not stop fighting the encroachment of religion in our secular lives and law. Thank goodness, for all of us, that we have many great people in the country doing this, but there is a long way to go yet. Why not sign up and help?