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Clinton Richard Dawkins DSc, FRS, FRSL (known as Richard Dawkins; born March 261941) is an eminent British ethologist, evolutionary theorist, and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene which popularised the gene-centric view of evolution, and introduced the terms meme and memetics into the lexicon. In 1982, Dawkins made a major contribution to evolutionary theory with the publication of his book The Extended Phenotype which argued phenotypic effects could stretch far beyond an organism's body. He has since written several best-selling popular books on evolution, and appeared in a number of television programmes on evolutionary biology, creationism and religion. He is an atheist, Humanist, skeptic, "Bright," and - as a commentator on science, religion and politics - is among Britain's best known public intellectuals. In a play on Thomas Huxley's epithet "Darwin's bulldog", Dawkins' outspoken manner has led him to be dubbed Darwin's Rottweiler.

Personal life

Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya, where his father, Clinton John Dawkins, was a farmer and former wartime soldier, called up from colonial service in Nyasaland (now Malawi). Dawkins' parents came from an upper-middle class background; the Dawkins name was described in Burke's Landed Gentry as "Dawkins of Over Norton". His father was a descendant of the Clinton family which held the Earldom of Lincoln and his mother was Jean Mary Vyvyan Dawkins, née Ladner. Both were interested in the natural sciences and answered the young Dawkins' questions in more scientific than anecdotal or supernatural terms.

Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing" but reveals he began doubting the existence of God when he was about nine years old. He was later reconverted because he was persuaded by the argument from design; though he began to feel the customs of the Church of England were "absurd" and had more to do with dictating morals than with God. When he was taught about evolution at the age of sixteen his religious position changed, as he felt that evolution explained the illusion of design.

He married Marian Stamp on August 191967. They divorced in 1984. Later that year, Dawkins married Eve Barham – with whom he had a daughter, Juliet – but they too subsequently divorced. He married his third wife, actress Lalla Ward, in 1992. Dawkins had met her through mutual friend Douglas Adams, who worked with Ward on the BBC TV sci-fi series Doctor Who.

Career

Dawkins moved to England with his parents when he was eight and attended Oundle School. He then studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was tutored by Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen. He gained a second class BA degree in zoology in 1962, followed by an MA and DPhil degree in 1966.

Between 1967 and 1969, Dawkins was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1970 he was appointed a lecturer and then in 1990 a reader in zoology at the University of Oxford, before becoming the University's first Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science in 1995. He has been a fellow of New College, Oxford, since 1970.

Dawkins has been editor of four scientific journals, and founded the Episteme Journal in 2002; he has also acted as editorial advisor for nine publications, including the Encarta Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Evolution. He writes a column for the Council for Secular Humanism's Free Inquiry magazine and serves as a Senior Editor. Since May 2005, Dawkins has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. He was formerly president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and serves as advisor for several other organisations. He has sat on several judging panels for awards as diverse as the Royal Society's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards. In 2004 the Dawkins Prize – awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities" was initiated by Oxford's Balliol College.

In 2005 Discover Magazine referred to Dawkins as "Darwin's Rottweiler", a description later adopted by the Radio Times and Channel 4, recalling the epithet "Darwin's Bulldog" given to Darwin's nineteenth-century advocate Thomas Henry Huxley. It also suggests comparison with Pope Benedict XVI, who, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was known as "God's Rottweiler".

Work

Evolutionary biology

Dawkins is probably best known for his popularisation of the concept of the selfish gene. This view is most clearly demonstrated in his books The Selfish Gene (1976), where he notes that "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities", and The Extended Phenotype (1982) which describes natural selection as "the process whereby replicators out-propagate each other." As an ethologist, interested in animal behaviour and its relation to natural selection, he popularised the idea that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution. This gene point of view also provides a basis for understanding kin selection which was formulated by his friend, Bill Hamilton. In his books, Dawkins uses the imagery of the Necker Cube to explain that the gene-centric view is not a scientific revolution, but merely a new way of visualising evolution.

Critics of Dawkins' approach suggest that the gene as the unit of selection is misleading, but that the gene could be described as a unit of evolution. The reasoning for this assertion is that in a selection event an individual either succeeds or fails to survive and reproduce, but over time proportions of alleles in a population changes. In The Selfish Gene, however, Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams' definition of gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency," rather than the now common molecular biology usage. Similarly, it is commonly argued that genes can not survive alone, but must cooperate to build an individual, but in The Extended Phenotype Dawkins argues that because of genetic recombination and sexual reproduction, from an individual gene's view all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted.

In the controversy over interpretations of evolution (the so-called Darwin Wars), one faction is often named for Dawkins and its rival for Stephen Jay Gould. This reflects the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of contesting viewpoints, rather than because either is the more substantial or extreme champion of these positions. In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, with Dawkins generally approving and Gould critical. A typical example of Dawkins' position is his scathing review (published in January 1985) of Not in Our Genes by Rose, Kamin and Lewontin. Two other thinkers often considered to be in the same camp as Dawkins are evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker and philosopher Daniel Dennett, who has promoted the gene-centric view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology.

Memetics

Dawkins coined the term meme to explain how ideas spread, which spawned the theory of memetics. His intention in using the idea in The Selfish Gene was originally as a thought experiment on the evolution of self-replicating units, and Dawkins has largely left it to other authors, such as Susan Blackmore, to expand on the idea. Memetics, gene selection and sociobiology have been criticised as being overly-reductionist by such thinkers as the philosopher Mary Midgley, with whom Dawkins has debated since the late 1970s. Midgley said that to debate Dawkins would be as unnecessary as to "break a butterfly upon a wheel." Dawkins replied that this statement would be "hard to match, in reputable journals, for its patronizing condescension toward a fellow academic."

Although Dawkins coined the term independently, he has never claimed that the idea of the meme was new; there had been similar terms for similar ideas in the past. John Laurent, in The Journal of Memetics, has suggested that the term "meme" itself may have derived from the work of the little-known German biologist Richard Semon. In 1904, Semon published Die Mneme (which was published in English, as The Mneme, in 1924). His book discussed the cultural transmission of experiences with insights parallel to those of Dawkins. Laurent also found the use of the term "mneme" in The Soul of the White Ant (1927), by Maurice Maeterlinck, and highlighted its similarities to Dawkins' concept. The key distinction of Dawkins' formulation, ironically paralleling the insights provided by memetics, is that it caught on and thus became dominant.

Creationism and religion

Dawkins is an established critic of creationism, describing it as a "preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood." His book The Blind Watchmaker is a critique of the argument from design, and his other popular-science works often touch on the topic. On the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould, Dawkins refuses to participate in debates with creationists because doing so would give them the "oxygen of respectability" that they want; Dawkins argued that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public." Dawkins did, however, take part in the Oxford Union's 1986 Huxley Memorial Debate, in which he and John Maynard Smith defeated their creationist counterparts by 198 votes to 115.

In a December 2004 interview with Bill Moyers Dawkins stated that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know." When Moyers later asked, "Is evolution a theory, not a fact?", Dawkins replied, "Evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening."

Dawkins is an ardent and outspoken atheist, an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and vice-president of the British Humanist Association. In his essay "Viruses of the Mind," he uses memetic theory to explain the phenomenon of religious belief and the various characteristics of organised religions, such as the common belief in punishments awaiting non-believers. The Atheist Alliance instituted the Richard Dawkins Award in 2003 in his honour. Dawkins is known for his contempt for religious extremism, from Islamic terrorism to Christian fundamentalism, but he has also argued fiercely with liberal believers and religious scientists, including many who otherwise champion his science and fight creationism alongside him, from biologist Ken Miller to Bishop of Oxford Richard Harries.

Dawkins continues to be a prominent figure in contemporary public debate on issues related to science and religion. He sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers religious dogma. These tools include the fight against certain stereotypes. Dawkins notes that feminists have succeeded in making us feel embarrassed when we use "he" when it could be "she". Similarly, he suggests, a phrase like "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should be seen just as improper as "Marxist child" or "Neo-Libertarian child." Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when asked if the world had changed, and if it had, how had it changed, Dawkins responded:

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!

Dawkins has expressed a Malthusian concern over the exponential growth of human population and the issue of overpopulation, though his proposed solutions can be described as typically Humanist. He is critical of Catholic attitudes to family planning and population control.

As a supporter of the Great Ape Project, a movement to extend human rights to all great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans), he contributed an article to the Great Ape Project book entitled "Gaps In The Mind". In this article, he criticised contemporary society's moral attitudes as being based on a "discontinuous, speciesist imperative."

In January 2006, Dawkins presented a two-part Channel 4 documentary, The Root of All Evil?, addressing what he sees as the malignant influence of organized religion in society. It included excerpts from his discussions with various religious individuals. Critics claimed the programme gave too much time to marginal figures and extremists, and that Dawkins' confrontational style did not help his cause; Dawkins, however, rejects these claims, citing the number of moderate religious broadcasts in everyday media as suitable balance to the extremists in the programmes. Further, he challenges the definition of 'extremist', given that the general British perception of 'extreme' religious views may be viewed in some countries as "mainstream".

Views on Alternative Medicine

Critics of alternative medicine assert that they are not effective and consequently are not legitimate alternatives to conventional medicine. Dawkins understands the matter well and has this to say:

Scientific medicine is defined as the set of practices which submit themselves to the ordeal of being tested. Alternative medicine is defined as that set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests. If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply.....becomes medicine. Conversely, if a technique devised by the President of the Royal College of Physicians consistently fails in double-blind trials, it will cease to be a part of "orthodox" medicine. Whether it will then become "alternative" will depend upon whether it is adopted by a sufficiently ambitious quack (there are always sufficiently gullible patients)."

He states it even more succinctly:

"There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work."

He has an unequivocal stance in regard to testing alternative medicine:

"There is no such thing as an alternative test....Either it is true that a medicine works or it isn't. It cannot be false in the ordinary sense but true in some "alternative" sense."

Dawkins thus places himself in line with other skeptics of alternative medicine, such as Fontanarosa, Lundberg, Happle, Barrett, Angell, and Kassirer.

Awards and recognition

Dawkins holds honorary doctorates in science from the University of Westminster and University of Hull, and is honorary doctor of the Open University. He also holds honorary doctorates of letters from the University of St Andrews and Australian National University, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997 and Royal Society in 2001. He is Vice-President of the British Humanist Association and honorary patron of the Trinity College University Philosophical Society.

Other awards he has won include the Royal Society Literature Award (1987), Los Angeles Times Literary Prize (1987), Zoological Society of London Silver Medal (1989), Michael Faraday Award (1990), Nakayama Prize (1994), Humanist of the Year Award (1996), the fifth International Cosmos Prize (1997), Kistler Prize (2001), Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic (2001), Bicentennial Kelvin Medal (2002). In 2005 the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Stiftung organization awarded him their Shakespeare Prize in recognition of his "concise and accessible presentation of scientific knowledge."

Dawkins topped Prospect magazine's 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, as decided by the readers, receiving twice as many votes as the runner-up. Additionally, in 1995 Dawkins was invited on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4.

Publications

Books by Dawkins

• The Selfish Gene (1976; second edition 1989) ISBN 0192860925
• The Extended Phenotype (1982; revised edition 1999) ISBN 0192880519
• The Blind Watchmaker (1986; reissue pb 1996) ISBN 0393315703
• River Out of Eden (1995; reprint edition 1996) ISBN 0465069908; Audio (2000) ISBN 0752839853
• Climbing Mount Improbable (1997) ISBN 0393316823
• Unweaving the Rainbow (1998) ISBN 0618056734
• A Devil’s Chaplain (2003) ISBN 0618335404
• The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life (2004) ISBN 0618005838; Audio (2005) ISBN 0752873210

Since 2004 Dawkins has been working on a new book, tentatively titled The God Delusion.

Essays by Dawkins

• Viruses of the Mind (1993)
• The real romance in the stars - A critical view of astrology (1995)
• Race and creation - On race, its usage and a theory of how it evolved. (excerpted from Prospect)
• What Use is Religion? - Piece by Dawkins on SecularHumanism.org
• 1999 Snake Oil and Holy Water
• 2003 Bin Laden's Victory - Guardian editorial about Osama bin Laden
• 2005 The lava lizard' s tale
• 2005 The turtle's tale
• 2005 The giant tortoise's tale

See also Papers and commentary by Richard Dawkins, no longer maintained.

Documentaries

• The God Who Wasn't There
• Double Helix: The DNA Years
• Three Tales (opera)
• The Richard Dimbleby Lecture
• Don't Panic
• The Selfish Green
• The Atheism Tapes
• Jonathan Miller's Brief History Of Disbelief
• The Root of All Evil? - broadcast January 2006 on Channel 4 (UK)

Books about Dawkins

• Kim Sterelny Dawkins vs Gould: Survival of the Fittest (2001) ISBN 1840462493 Debates on evolutionary theory between Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould
• Roger Steer Letter to an Influential Atheist (2003) ISBN 1850784787 A Christian critique of Dawkins
• Alister McGrath Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, And The Meaning Of Life (2005) ISBN 1405125381 A critique of Dawkins' crusade against theistic religion
• Alan Grafen, Mark Ridley (editors) (2006) Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think, Oxford University Press

See also Books by and about Richard Dawkins and Richard Dawkins Bibliography, these links are useful but no longer maintained.

External links

Official websites

• The Current Simonyi Professor: Richard Dawkins
  • Dawkins FAQs
• The World of Richard Dawkins Extensive website on Dawkins; apart from new calendar items, it is no longer updated.

Interviews and feature articles

• Edge.org: Richard Dawkins
• The Atheism Tapes, program 4 - the transcript of an extended interview with Richard Dawkins for the Jonathan Miller BBC TV series The Atheism Tapes.
• Double-Dealing in Darwin: Are intellectuals allowing dogma in science but not in religion? by Michael Ruse
• Richard Dawkins, Relativism and Truth Short essay by S. Abbas Raza of 3 Quarks Daily
• Richard Dawkins: Beyond belief Profile by The Guardian
• BBC radio interview transcript from the 'Belief' series in 2004
• Huffington Post articles

In the news

• Richard Dawkins: The foibles of faith Dawkins views on the dangers of faith
• Q&A: Richard Dawkins Dawkins tops poll for Britain's leading 100 public intellectuals.
• Atheist Dawkins gives Thought for the Day Dawkins presents religious programme Thought for the Day
• Dawkins calls for school inspectors to re-examine a UK school over teaching of evolution
• Nothing wrong with clones says Dawkins Dawkins views on human cloning
• Slate interview with Dawkins 2004
• "Revolutionary Evolutionist", Michael Schrage, Wired 3.07, July 1995
• Does Richard Dawkins back astrology? Dawkins' response to a false claim by Sunday Times.
• "The Atheist", interview with Gordy Slack, Salon.com, April 28, 2005
• "Bin Laden's victory", Dawkins on the war in Iraq, March 2003
• "Darwin's child", Simon Hattenstone interviews Dawkins - giving both positive and negative comments about Dawkins.
• "Faith, hype and a lack of clarity", Professor Keith Ward, colleague of Dawkins at Oxford University, critiques Dawkins' The Root of All Evil? television series.

Creationist websites critical of Dawkins

• Paul Taylor, review of a TV documentary series The Root of All Evil?, Jan 2006
• Raymond G. Bohlin, review of River Out of Eden, TJ 10(3):322–327, 1996. +
• Jonathan Sarfati, review of Climbing Mount Improbable, TJ 12(1):29–34, 1998. +
• Royal Truman, review of Unweaving the Rainbow, TJ 13(1):33–36, 1999.
• Les Ey and Don Batten, Weasel, a flexible program for investigating deterministic computer 'demonstrations' of evolution, TJ 16(2):84–88, 2002.

Other

• Multimedia files featuring Richard Dawkins
• A look at Dawkins' treatment of exponential growth
• Livejournal community dedicated to discussing Richard Dawkins' ideas, work and activities

Notes and references

1. ^ Stephen S. Hall, 2005. "Darwin's Rottweiler." Discover Magazine.
2. John Catalano, 1995. Biography of Richard Dawkins. World Of Dawkins. Accessed 2006-01-29.
3. BBC News Online, 2001-10-12. "Richard Dawkins: The foibles of faith". Accessed 2006-01-29.
4. ^ Jonathan Miller, Richard Dawkins & Richard Denton (director), 2003. The Atheism Tapes: Richard Dawkins. BBC Four television. Unofficial transcript.
5. ^ Richard Dawkins, 2006 Curriculum Vitae (PDF).
6. Simonyi Professorship, 2006. Prof. Richard Dawkins. Accessed 2006-01-29.
7. Balliol College News The Dawkins Prize. Accessed 2006-02-06.
8. Radio Times, 2006-01-02 p27.
9. Gabriel Dover, 2000. Dear Mr Darwin. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 0753811278.
10. George C. Williams, 1966. Adaptation and Natural Selection. Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-02615-7.
11. Ernst Mayr, 2000. What Evolution Is. Basic Books, ISBN 0465044263.
12. Henry Morris, 2001. The Evolutionists. Henry Holt & Company, ISBN 071674094X.
13. Richard Dawkins, 1985. "Sociobiology: the debate continues", New Scientist January, 24, 1985
14. Daniel Dennett, 1995. Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0684802902.
15. Susan Blackmore, 1999. The Meme Machine. Oxford University Press, ISBN 019286212X.
16. Mary Midgley, 2000. Science and Poetry. Routledge.
17. Mary Midgley, 1979. "Gene Juggling." Philosophy 54, no. 210, pp. 439-458
18. Ophelia Benson, 2003. "About Butterflies and Wheels." ButterfliesAndWheels.com.
19. Richard Dawkins, 2002. "A Scientist's View." The Guardian.
20. Richard Dawkins, 2003. A Devil's Chaplain. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, p. 256.
21. John Durant, n.d. "A critical-historical perspective on the arguments about evolution and creation", from Evolution and Creation: A European perspective, Svend Anderson & Arthur Peacocke Eds. Aarhus, DK: Aarhus Univ. Press. PP. 12-26.
22. Bill Moyers et al, 2004. "Now with Bill Moyers". PBS. Accessed 2006-01-29.
23. Richard Dawkins, 2006. The Root of All Evil?.
24. The Guardian, 2001-10-11 "Has the world changed?". The Guardian. Accessed 2006-01-29.
25. Richard Dawkins, 1993. "Gaps In The Mind." In The Great Ape Project, Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer eds. London: Fourth Estate.
26. Howard Jacobson, 2006. "Nothing like an unimaginative scientist to get non-believers running back to God." The Independent.
27. Ron Ferguson, 2006. "What a lazy way to argue against God." The Herald.
28. Richard Dawkins, 2006. "Diary." New Statesman.
29. Foreword to the posthumous book "Snake Oil, and Other Preoccupations" by John Diamond
30. A Devil's Chaplain : Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
31. Foreword to the posthumous book "Snake Oil, and Other Preoccupations" by John Diamond
32. British Embassy in Berlin, 2005. "Shakespeare Prize for Richard Dawkins." Accessed 2006-01-29.
33. David Herman, 2004. "Public Intellectuals Poll." Prospect Magazine.
34. Gordy Slack, 2004-04-30. "The Atheist. Salon.com. Accessed 2006-01-29.

• 1941 births
• Atheist thinkers and activists
• British biologists
• British science writers
• Ethologists
• Evolutionary biologists
• Fellows of New College, Oxford
• Fellows of the Royal Society
• Former students of Balliol College, Oxford
• Humanists
• Living people
• Skeptics