Professor Richard Dawkins Beautiful Minds


Professor Richard Dawkins

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What does it take to be a scientific pioneer?

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To reframe and popularise evolutionary theory?

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To reveal a new material and win science's most coveted prize.

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Or discover one of palaeontology's elusive missing links.

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Is the key to brilliance pure talent, ego,

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or just plain good luck?

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What makes a beautiful scientific mind?

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Prof Richard Dawkins is amongst Britain's most outspoken

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and prolific scientific thinkers.

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I don't think he's quite in the Oxford English dictionary yet,

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but it's almost at that level.

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In the 1970s, he made his name with an explosive book

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that turned evolutionary thinking on its head.

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It was a wonderful, radical new vision, set out in sparkling prose,

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and, above it all, this wonderful, wonderful metaphor, the selfish gene.

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The book propelled him into the spotlight and gave Dawkins

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a platform to speak out as a ferocious critic of religion.

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Lord Jakobovits is an educated man,

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he knows perfectly well the world was not created in six days.

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Richard gives definitive answers to things.

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If you don't like those answers, you'll find it controversial and you're not going to like him.

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Sir, there could be many things that you know well, but, please,

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in the process of it, don't be arrogant.

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How did Richard Dawkins become the most influential

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evolutionary thinker of a generation?

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And how did this lead him

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to assume the mantle of evangelical spokesman for atheism?

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Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Professor Richard Dawkins!

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Richard Dawkins' public career spans four decades.

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Since the publication of his global bestseller, The Selfish Gene,

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he has penned a further 10 books, written hundreds of articles,

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and become a well-known TV personality.

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INAUDIBLE

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Would you please welcome Professor Richard Dawkins.

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Please welcome Professor Richard Dawkins.

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His message about science is simple.

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I try to emphasise

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that science is magical in the best sense of being

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spellbinding, spine-crawling, exciting - magical, in that sense.

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His thinking is defined by logic

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and by an insistence on scientific evidence.

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To say, "I don't understand X, therefore it must be magic,

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"or therefore it must supernatural, must be a miracle,"

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that is cowardly and defeatist, lazy.

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I try to rather strongly make the case against that.

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You have to be open and constantly questioning

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and using the methods of science to try to find out what is really true.

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A zoologist by training, Richard Dawkins has spent a lifetime

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questioning the mechanisms of the natural world.

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As a child of keen naturalists, biology was practically in his DNA.

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I grew up in what was then Nyasaland, now Malawi, until I was seven.

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Both my parents loved flowers, when my sister and I were young,

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and when we went on walks, they would constantly be telling us the names

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of all the wildflowers, my father in Latin, my mother in English.

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And, um, so, we both of us

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had every opportunity to love nature.

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Perhaps surprisingly, Richard did not share his family's passion

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for animals and plants.

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I suppose it should have been a paradise for a young naturalist

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and I did enjoy what I saw, and I love butterflies and birds and things,

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but I never really developed properly into a young naturalist,

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I think perhaps a bit to the disappointment of my father, who always was,

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and his father, my grandfather.

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I remember, on a visit to England, which we occasionally did,

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my grandfather looked out of the window and asked me

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whether I could identify a bird that was on the bird table.

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I hadn't the faintest idea.

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So I said, "Is it a chaffinch?"

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And Grandfather was absolutely shocked that I didn't know that it was a blue tit.

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Instead, Richard showed signs of being a different kind of thinker,

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one who was more interested in ideas than in outdoor life.

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I loved reading and I used to read in a rather sort of

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clandestine way, both at school and at home.

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Um, at school, I used to sort of disappear when I was supposed to be

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using my hands in the workshops and things like that, and read.

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And at home, I used to sort of sneak up my bedroom and read

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when I was really supposed to be out in the big outdoors.

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The natural order of things came alive to Richard,

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not through country walks,

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but in the pages of Hugh Lofting's Doctor Doolittle books.

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Dr Doolittle is rather like Charles Darwin on the Beagle.

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All the plots of the Doctor Doolittle books concern

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animals and animal welfare, really,

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and I think that really did influence me

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in the direction of having a great sympathy for non-human animals.

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When I learned about evolution,

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I became even more aware of the continuity, as Darwin very much was,

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the continuity between humans and other animals.

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We are African apes and we are

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a rather recent offshoot from other African apes.

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And so, the sort of great moral and political barrier

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that we tend to erect around homo sapiens,

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as an evolutionist I can see is not logical,

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and, as a child, I was kind of schooled into by Doctor Doolittle.

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Though Darwin's theory of natural selection would come to form

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the bedrock of Richard's science,

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as a child he did not immediately grasp it.

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I'm not sure that I really got it, actually.

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I think I sort of misunderstood it.

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I didn't really think it was up to the job of explaining all of life.

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"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank,

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"clothed with many plants of many kinds,

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"with birds, and with various insects flitting about.

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"And to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms

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"have all been produced by laws acting around us."

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To Richard, natural selection appeared to be inadequate because

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Darwin's idea was so simple.

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Darwin's original argument

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was that species produce more offspring

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than can survive to adulthood.

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And among those offspring, it is not random who survives,

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but larger ones survive or ones who are somehow better fitted to

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survive and to reproduce do.

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As the fitter individuals reproduce,

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their characteristics are transmitted to their young,

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while the less fit individuals perish, or leave behind fewer offspring.

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As those forces work through,

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down the generations,

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those that have that characteristics that that enable them to

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survive will do so and will be more represented in the generations.

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Natural selection takes place slowly,

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through tiny, incremental changes, over vast spans of time.

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Richard would be in his teens before he really took this in.

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It was probably my father who explained it to me

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so that I first got it.

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Then, fairly gradually,

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became aware that Darwinian natural selection really was not just big enough,

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but hugely big enough, it was a really gigantically good idea.

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Aged 13, the bookish Richard went to Oundle School in Northamptonshire.

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Here he met Mr Thomas,

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a teacher who would shape his approach to scientific thinking.

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He was an inspired teacher.

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He clearly was inspired by the living world

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and he spoke with great passion and...poetry, really,

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of what a marvellous subject biology is, and how much it would encompass.

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Ioan Thomas taught his class to rigorously question

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scientific ideas.

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But Richard did not yet stand out amongst his classmates.

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He wasn't a star pupil, but the group that I had were

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a lot of very able - it would be rather difficult

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to be a star amongst them.

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They were great fun to teach and he was somebody who was fun to teach

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because he responded in the right sort of way.

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But he didn't look necessarily as being outstanding.

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His parents became concerned that he was not applying himself enough

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to make the grade and get into the Oxford college they were set on.

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I think I'm right in saying that 11 members of the Dawkins family

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went to Balliol College, Oxford,

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and it was my grandfather's great hope, and my father's great hope,

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that I would as well.

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So I was sort of automatically entered for Balliol.

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My parents went to see Mr Thomas to talk about it.

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They did come to see me where I was staying in Oundle,

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and I think I did say that I don't think he is going to get to Balliol at this stage.

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He'll get into Oxford but he won't get to Balliol.

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But anyway, I applied to Balliol

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and Mr Thomas had me in his house for several evenings,

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I think about once a week, actually, for extracurricular coaching.

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And then the pace seemed to change,

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which was what my intention had been.

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Spurred on by Mr Thomas's hot housing,

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Richard rose to the challenge, and, in 1959,

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he made it to Balliol College, where he would study zoology.

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Here, he entered a world where Darwin's theory was

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barely on the radar for academic biologists.

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Darwin's theory has a curious history. People think of it

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as Darwin revealing it to the world in 1859

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and then the Origin sailing forth

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and Darwinian theory being on top of science ever since.

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It wasn't at all like that.

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It actually went through a great decline,

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it is sometimes called the eclipse of Darwinian theory.

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That started around the time that Darwin died in 1882,

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and went on until, really, past the middle of the 20th century.

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During that time it was deeply misunderstood, often ignored

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and reviled, but when it was used,

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it was not understood how the logic of it worked.

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As an undergraduate, Richard was less concerned with Darwin

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than with the meticulous detail of his weekly essays.

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He was developing a flair for writing and original thinking.

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The topics we were given for our weekly essay could well have been

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very specialised, narrow topics,

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and we were given the latest research literature on that topic,

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went into the library, one of the finest libraries in the world,

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and spent a whole week immersing oneself in this topic.

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And I did that to such an extent that I would kind of sleep,

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eat and dream the topic, whatever it was.

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I never, ever just sort of produced a textbook answer.

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It was always my own take on something, which I absolutely adored.

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My tutors, they said they loved my essays,

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I don't know whether they were just being nice.

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His talent for refining and communicating ideas

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caught the eye of one tutor in particular.

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World-renowned animal behaviourist Niko Tinbergen.

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When I do this, you know at once what I mean.

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The angry face, the clenched fist, convey a mood of aggression.

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It is a simple form of communication.

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Richard graduated in 1962 and Tinbergen was so impressed by

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his abilities that he agreed to take Richard on as a doctoral student.

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I then became a member of his group on animal behaviour.

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And that was a big turning point in my life.

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Before I had tutorials with Tinbergen

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I had been going to do something biochemical,

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which I know would not have suited me.

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And so I am very, very glad that that happened.

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The doctoral subject Tinbergen set for Richard was

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the study of innate behaviour in young animals, such as chicks.

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Richard immersed himself in the work.

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At that time, the animal behaviour group lived in

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and worked in an old Victorian house in North Oxford.

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It was one of those very vertical houses with two rooms on each floor.

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My memory of Richard was as

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one of the senior, perhaps slightly austere figures in the group,

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but absolutely remarkable for his clarity of thought

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and clarity of expression. That was one of the things that struck me from the very beginning.

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The high spot of the week, for me, was the Friday night seminars,

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where we all gathered around, and Niko was there

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and somebody gave a talk about their research.

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And Niko was quite, um, relentless in his questioning.

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I can remember one of these weekly seminars where

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a very distinguished scientist from Bristol University called John Crook

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came to give the seminar, and he got through the first sentence

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and Niko stopped him and said, "What exactly do you mean by that?" - whatever it was he'd said.

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He never had a proper chair, he sat on an old orange box or something,

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and was chain-smoking, rolling his own,

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chain-smoking, pacing up and down,

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chain-smoking, sitting on the old orange box,

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and interrupting quite frequently.

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"Ja, ja, ja," and then interrupt.

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That insistence on absolute clarity of thought must have had

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an influence on Richard's thinking.

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It certainly had an influence on my thinking.

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So, in a sense, Richard was following in the Tinbergen tradition.

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I think I came away from that enormously enthused about science,

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about asking scientific questions.

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And feeling that science really was for me.

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Richard had found his vocation at an exciting time.

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Zoologists were returning to Darwinian ideas and beginning

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to wrestle with the question of how natural selection really worked.

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They knew that evolution favoured the survival

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and reproduction of the fittest, but the fittest what?

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The fittest individuals, groups, or species?

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For Darwin, it was the individual.

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It is us, WE reproduce.

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But, in the 1960s, it became apparent that that view

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was not wholly adequate.

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It was very difficult to take that view and still account

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for some of the behaviours that we see out there in the natural world,

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especially altruistic behaviours.

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Behaviours where animals apparently sacrifice themselves for other animals.

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How could that be,

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if we are, if individuals are programmed to survive and reproduce?

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The answer for many biologists was that

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the fittest groups of organisms survived and reproduced.

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If one wildebeest behaved altruistically,

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to take care of another wildebeest's infant,

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the whole group would be successful and altruism would blossom.

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But other biologists thought this approach illogical.

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Let's imagine a hypothetical example where everybody in a group

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behaved altruistically.

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And let's say they give up their food for other people,

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but that one individual in that group now behaves differently, behaves selfishly.

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So, instead of giving up food, it grabs food from others,

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and food translates into survival and reproduction.

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You play the tape forward through a few hundred generations

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and what's happened, all the goody-goodies, the altruists who gave away their food,

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have been supplanted, replaced, by the selfish individuals who scoffed

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the food and reproduced as result.

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An alternative theory was proposed by Bill Hamilton,

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an evolutionary biologist with a particular interest

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in social insects.

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He wanted to know why female worker insects take care of the colony

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when they have no chance of ever reproducing in their own right.

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He came to believe that the sterile workers were sacrificing

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themselves for the Queen and male drones

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because they all contained the same genes.

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And he believed it was true not just of social insects

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but of all biological organisms.

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The main thrust was the idea

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that animals share genes with their relatives.

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So, if I do something for my brother, let's say,

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then the genes that cause me to do it will survive in him.

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And so there is a kind of...

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There is essentially a gene-centred process going on.

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If we took a gene-centred view of the world

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we could explain some of those behaviours

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because it is the case that although we have our genes,

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our genes are not uniquely ours, we share them with our relatives.

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What Bill Hamilton did, in 1964,

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was to realise that what matters

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is not just reproduction, not just producing children,

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but assisting the survival of your own genes, any gene that

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assists the survival of itself by working through

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sisters and brothers and nephews and nieces and so on,

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such a gene would propagate itself.

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Though Bill Hamilton published his work in the mid-60s,

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it attracted little attention.

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It was, I think, one of the most difficult papers to follow

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that has ever been written.

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So, although the paper was there, it wasn't having much impact.

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But Richard, now lecturing for Tinbergen at Oxford,

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had found his way through Hamilton's complex mathematics

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and he brought the ideas into his 1966 course notes.

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I was immensely enthusiastic about it and brought it into my lectures.

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The '66 lectures were a eureka moment for me.

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I has this sort of semi-poetic vision of immortal genes manipulating

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mortal bodies, survival machines, as I call them,

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throwing them away, and then marching on down the generations.

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It, it's...

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It's true, it's what happens,

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the thing about genes is that they are potentially immortal

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because they are copied and copied and copied, identically,

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down through countless generations, and the bodies are thrown away.

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These were ideas Richard would later immortalise in The Selfish Gene.

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But for now,

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an emerging technology kept him from getting down to writing.

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He was still studying behaviour in chicks

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and was swamped in statistics.

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What Richard needed was a way to process the data.

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He was one of the very early people into the use of computers.

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In those days, there was just one computer in Oxford

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and you had to submit your job on punched-paper tape and then you

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came back the next day, or maybe two days later, got the results,

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and you found a stupid mistake which you corrected,

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put back the paper tape, and came back with another stupid mistake

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and so on, so it was a very laborious business.

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I learned how to program and became utterly intrigued by it.

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Richard was then in charge of an animal behaviour group computer,

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which was about the size of a room, and had about the calculating power

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of a mobile phone, or less than a mobile phone, in fact.

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But Richard was one of the very early adopters.

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I remember once I dreamed that I was a computer just chugging my way through,

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repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating,

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a sort of horrible nightmare of a night.

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I got up very early at dawn!

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But, anyway, the fascination of computers stayed with me.

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I can remember Richard trying to teach all of us

0:24:140:24:17

in the animal behaviour group how to write computer programs in machine code,

0:24:170:24:21

a string of zeros and ones, so he was a real pioneer in that field.

0:24:210:24:28

And it reflects his logical mind and, I think,

0:24:280:24:32

his interest in how things work.

0:24:320:24:34

I became, I think the correct word would be addicted,

0:24:340:24:39

to computer programming, and the addiction became much worse

0:24:390:24:43

when computers, following Moore's Law, became smaller and faster

0:24:430:24:48

and cheaper and so one could have access to one's own.

0:24:480:24:51

And then I really did become addicted

0:24:510:24:54

and had to more less positively cure myself of it.

0:24:540:24:57

Richard was not only distracted by computers.

0:25:100:25:13

In the late '60s, he took a lecturing post at the University of California in Berkeley.

0:25:130:25:19

It was the height of flower power

0:25:220:25:25

and he soon discovered a passion for campaigning.

0:25:250:25:28

My first wife, Marian and I, had just got married,

0:25:300:25:34

and we went out together for a sort of adventure, in our 20s.

0:25:340:25:37

We were, both of us, very politically active.

0:25:370:25:40

We got involved in the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations.

0:25:400:25:45

We got involved in the campaigning for

0:25:450:25:48

the Democratic candidacy for the presidency.

0:25:480:25:52

And so our old car was simply covered with electioneering posters

0:25:520:25:57

and things, and we went to demonstrations

0:25:570:25:59

and political meetings and things,

0:25:590:26:01

both in Berkeley and in San Francisco.

0:26:010:26:05

And I lectured on animal behaviour, and I suppose it is really a time

0:26:050:26:10

of youth which sort of haunts one's dreams for some time afterwards.

0:26:100:26:16

But after two short years, Niko Tinbergen managed to lure

0:26:190:26:23

Richard away from California, back to a research position at Oxford.

0:26:230:26:27

The England he returned to could not have been

0:26:320:26:34

more different from sunny California.

0:26:340:26:37

-ARCHIVE:

-There have been fierce struggles between the police

0:26:370:26:40

and pickets as the strikers tried to stop lorries entering and leaving.

0:26:400:26:45

Britain was in the grip of industrial unrest.

0:26:460:26:50

A miners' strike in the early '70s brought Richard's computer work to a standstill.

0:26:500:26:53

There were constant power cuts

0:26:560:26:58

and it wasn't possible to do research that involved electrical apparatus.

0:26:580:27:03

So I thought it would be a good idea if I tried to put together

0:27:030:27:08

the ideas that had so inspired me in 1966, and write a book.

0:27:080:27:15

And I started to write it, I wrote two chapters.

0:27:170:27:20

But then the power came back on, and so I gave up the project

0:27:200:27:23

and went back to my research.

0:27:230:27:25

But evolutionary thinking was moving fast.

0:27:280:27:31

Like Bill Hamilton, who had inspired Richard in the '60s,

0:27:310:27:35

other academics such as John Maynard Smith

0:27:350:27:37

and Bob Trivers were also publishing papers about altruism and genes.

0:27:370:27:43

Reading their work spurred Richard into action.

0:27:430:27:45

It was the advent of the Trivers papers and the Maynard Smith papers

0:27:480:27:51

in 1971, '72, '73 and '74,

0:27:510:27:55

which goaded me into finally getting back to

0:27:550:28:00

taking out my first two chapters out of the drawer

0:28:000:28:03

and getting down to it properly.

0:28:030:28:06

I think I felt, yes, I think that is right now, it is coming back to me -

0:28:060:28:09

I think those extra papers,

0:28:090:28:11

I really felt, gosh, I've got to get back to that book,

0:28:110:28:14

this is so exciting, there's so much to add.

0:28:140:28:17

So I wrote it in quite a frenzy of energy.

0:28:170:28:21

The manuscript was finished in 1975. Now, it needed a title.

0:28:260:28:33

I remember Richard ran a little competition amongst us,

0:28:330:28:36

his friends and colleagues, for the title of the book.

0:28:360:28:39

And my...my submission was Immortal Coils,

0:28:390:28:44

which I think he used as one of the chapter headings.

0:28:440:28:46

But he stuck with his own idea as the title of the book.

0:28:460:28:50

The title Richard chose was The Selfish Gene.

0:28:530:28:57

I called the book The Selfish Gene because if anything is

0:28:580:29:01

a selfish entity maximising its own survival, it is the gene.

0:29:010:29:05

You don't want to talk about the selfish organism,

0:29:050:29:07

the selfish individual, because most of the time, a good bit of the time,

0:29:070:29:11

organisms are being altruistic.

0:29:110:29:12

There are driven to be altruistic by the selfish genes.

0:29:120:29:16

It was this now iconic title that appealed to publisher

0:29:180:29:22

Michael Rodgers at Oxford University Press.

0:29:220:29:25

So Michael asked if he could see what I was working on and I gave him

0:29:260:29:30

some chapters.

0:29:300:29:31

And I was phoned up and he said,

0:29:310:29:33

"I must have that book!"

0:29:330:29:35

And he then, nothing would deter him,

0:29:350:29:37

I mean, it was absolutely...

0:29:370:29:39

I don't what you'd call it, like a bull charging.

0:29:390:29:43

I started reading and I couldn't stop.

0:29:430:29:46

It was so good, and it was so brilliant,

0:29:460:29:51

and I was completely, absolutely gripped

0:29:510:29:53

and I thought it was so wonderful.

0:29:530:29:55

And from then on, um...I couldn't sleep for worrying

0:29:550:30:01

that, um, we wouldn't get the book.

0:30:010:30:03

I wanted to publish this book

0:30:030:30:05

because I thought it was going to be important and do really well.

0:30:050:30:08

The book was a huge success.

0:30:110:30:14

Dawkins' gift for distilling ideas and communicating them

0:30:140:30:17

had come together in one seminal piece of work.

0:30:170:30:21

It gave a radically new view of the world.

0:30:240:30:28

It was a view that we are just vehicles for our genes.

0:30:280:30:34

It's the genes' interests that matters, it's not us.

0:30:340:30:39

And that, he showed, has all sorts of unintended consequences

0:30:390:30:43

for the way in which we think.

0:30:430:30:46

New consequences for the way in which we view human behaviour.

0:30:460:30:50

And it was a wonderful, radical new vision set out in sparkling prose.

0:30:500:30:57

And above it all, this wonderful, wonderful metaphor,

0:30:570:31:00

The Selfish Gene.

0:31:000:31:03

It revealed the logic with crystal-clear precision.

0:31:030:31:09

And that enabled people to see

0:31:090:31:11

why natural selection must be gene centred.

0:31:110:31:16

Why it doesn't make sense to talk about it in any other way.

0:31:160:31:19

Richard was, in a way, taking ideas that existed,

0:31:240:31:28

but making us look at them in a different way.

0:31:280:31:31

Viewing them through a different window.

0:31:310:31:34

Through the window of The Selfish Gene.

0:31:340:31:37

It was just the beauty of the way he expressed the ideas

0:31:370:31:41

was absolutely riveting.

0:31:410:31:43

And, I thought, overwhelming, for me. Captivating.

0:31:430:31:46

As somebody who knew a lot about the ideas,

0:31:460:31:49

but hadn't really seen them

0:31:490:31:50

expressed in exactly that way before.

0:31:500:31:53

It's stunningly right. It's stunningly clear.

0:31:560:32:00

It is the most extraordinary book.

0:32:000:32:03

The book was immensely popular.

0:32:080:32:10

But it also came in for heavy criticism.

0:32:100:32:13

Some biologists argued that The Selfish Gene was wrong

0:32:180:32:23

because genes do not code

0:32:230:32:24

for any specific characteristics of an organism.

0:32:240:32:28

There is no one-to-one correlation between any gene

0:32:330:32:36

and any bit of how an organism actually operates.

0:32:360:32:40

Many genes are involved in the expression of any feature

0:32:400:32:42

in the organism and, um, each gene is involved

0:32:420:32:46

in many, many different aspects of how an organism is.

0:32:460:32:49

Once you don't have that one-to-one correlation,

0:32:490:32:52

it cannot be the gene is the unit of selection in this sort of way.

0:32:520:32:56

I have never, ever suggested

0:32:590:33:02

a sort of atomistic relationship

0:33:020:33:04

between genes and the actual form of the body

0:33:040:33:06

and the behaviour of the body and what it does.

0:33:060:33:09

Complete nonsense.

0:33:090:33:11

I never said it and I certainly don't think it and never did think it.

0:33:110:33:14

My emphasis on genes is strictly an evolutionary emphasis.

0:33:140:33:19

That the gene is the level in the hierarchy of life

0:33:190:33:22

at which natural selection acts.

0:33:220:33:24

It is the gene which survives or doesn't survive.

0:33:240:33:27

That's my emphasis on the gene.

0:33:270:33:29

But the debate around The Selfish Gene

0:33:350:33:37

goes beyond the argument about what genes specifically code for.

0:33:370:33:42

Richard Dawkins' critics claim that his ideas reduce human beings

0:33:420:33:46

to mindless agents, controlled by our genes.

0:33:460:33:49

You cannot say, as Dawkins did in The Selfish Gene,

0:33:500:33:55

that organisms are simply lumbering robots, passive vehicles,

0:33:550:33:59

whose only function is to help a gene transmit itself

0:33:590:34:02

into the next generation.

0:34:020:34:04

This gene-centred, gene-metaphor way of describing the world

0:34:060:34:11

is what I would call genetic determinism,

0:34:110:34:14

what many people call genetic determinism.

0:34:140:34:16

Genetic determinism is the notion that, um,...

0:34:160:34:20

if there is, "a gene for altruism

0:34:200:34:23

"or another gene for another kind of behaviour,"

0:34:230:34:26

somehow, that means that the genes

0:34:260:34:28

determine everything in our bodies and the way we are

0:34:280:34:32

and we have no liberty to change things, no free will.

0:34:320:34:35

It's the idea that our genes rule the show.

0:34:350:34:39

If we have a natural disposition to be nasty,

0:34:390:34:44

then we'll be nasty whatever,

0:34:440:34:46

and there's nothing we can do about it.

0:34:460:34:49

This is a deep, deep misunderstanding.

0:34:500:34:54

There is absolutely nothing fixed about our behaviour.

0:34:540:34:58

Look around us. We can see that it's not fixed.

0:34:580:35:01

We can see that we respond in different ways.

0:35:010:35:04

Genetics and Darwinism had always had a dark side.

0:35:110:35:15

Natural selection had long appealed

0:35:180:35:20

to those who wanted to use it as a justification

0:35:200:35:23

for weeding out the less-fit members of society.

0:35:230:35:26

TV: 'Not all mental deficiency is hereditary.

0:35:300:35:33

'But heredity accounts for more of the mild, feeble-minded types.

0:35:330:35:37

'such as you see in this group of men

0:35:370:35:39

'exercising in the grounds of the institution.

0:35:390:35:42

'If carefully trained, they can be taught simple routine tasks.

0:35:430:35:48

'But it would have been better by far for them

0:35:480:35:51

'and for the rest of the community if they had never been born.'

0:35:510:35:55

If we want to maintain the race

0:35:560:35:58

at a high level physically and mentally,

0:35:580:36:00

everybody sound in body and mind

0:36:000:36:02

should marry and have enough children

0:36:020:36:05

to perpetuate their stock and carry on the race.

0:36:050:36:07

Post World War II, eugenics had fallen from favour.

0:36:070:36:13

But in the '70s, extremist groups like the National Front

0:36:130:36:17

perpetuated the notion of racial purity.

0:36:170:36:19

They seized on The Selfish Gene

0:36:190:36:22

as an intellectual defence of their ideas.

0:36:220:36:25

'A warm review appeared in a journal

0:36:260:36:28

'published by the National Front.'

0:36:280:36:30

'One result of kin selection

0:36:300:36:33

'is a tendency to identify with individuals

0:36:330:36:35

'physically resembling oneself.

0:36:350:36:38

'And to be nasty to individuals different in appearance.'

0:36:380:36:43

Dawkins hit back against what he saw as

0:36:450:36:47

the political hijacking of his work.

0:36:470:36:51

Some people completely misunderstood what's implied

0:36:510:36:54

by a book I wrote called The Selfish Gene.

0:36:540:36:56

On the right, we had various writers from the National Front and French equivalents

0:36:580:37:02

who saw the idea of The Selfish Gene as chiming in very much

0:37:020:37:06

with their own rather nasty political philosophy.

0:37:060:37:09

On the left on the other hand,

0:37:100:37:12

I remember being blamed in a magazine article

0:37:120:37:14

by one influential left-wing writer,

0:37:140:37:17

almost personally blamed,

0:37:170:37:19

for the election of Mrs Thatcher in the last general election.

0:37:190:37:24

Though The Selfish Gene was conceived

0:37:280:37:31

in the halcyon days of the '60s,

0:37:310:37:33

it hit the zeitgeist in the '80s.

0:37:330:37:36

Many still see it as a justification

0:37:390:37:42

for a greedy, self-serving society.

0:37:420:37:45

During the 1980s, Thatcherism,

0:37:480:37:51

free market economics, what I call selfish capitalism,

0:37:510:37:54

was in urgent need of some kind of profound intellectual justification.

0:37:540:38:00

A deeper argument to justify it.

0:38:000:38:03

And it's interesting that The Selfish Gene

0:38:030:38:06

didn't become a bestselling book,

0:38:060:38:08

one that was read widely by the public,

0:38:080:38:10

rather than by just a few academics, until the 1980s.

0:38:100:38:14

During that time, it was interpreted

0:38:140:38:17

as suggesting that it's natural to be selfish.

0:38:170:38:21

That it seemed to be a justification

0:38:210:38:24

for the idea that greed is good.

0:38:240:38:26

When Margaret Thatcher famously said,

0:38:310:38:34

"There's no such thing as society, they're only individuals and families,"

0:38:340:38:38

she was, if you like, endorsing the claim of the gene myth

0:38:380:38:41

that what matters is not the social organisation in which we're embedded.

0:38:410:38:45

What matters is actually only the individuals,

0:38:450:38:50

their genes and their genetic relationships.

0:38:500:38:52

People have used it and taken it

0:38:520:38:56

as a philosophical justification for extreme right-wing politics.

0:38:560:39:01

What is your answer to that?

0:39:010:39:03

To the extent that natural selection

0:39:030:39:07

is politically unpleasant, which it actually rather is.

0:39:070:39:12

I mean, if you were to live your life

0:39:120:39:15

as though you were constantly aiming for Darwinian success,

0:39:150:39:19

then the political world which that would result in

0:39:190:39:23

would be a very unpleasant world,

0:39:230:39:26

with the strong oppressing the downtrodden.

0:39:260:39:30

We can emancipate ourselves politically by saying,

0:39:350:39:39

I want to live in a kind of society

0:39:390:39:41

which is very far from Darwinian natural selection.

0:39:410:39:44

I'm a passionate Darwinian

0:39:440:39:46

who believes that it's Darwinian natural selection

0:39:460:39:49

that's given us our bodies and our brains,

0:39:490:39:52

but I also believe that our brains have become big enough

0:39:520:39:55

that we can rebel against that.

0:39:550:39:56

Although the book argues this case,

0:40:020:40:04

Dawkins has never entirely rid himself of the accusation

0:40:040:40:08

that his book was a defence of selfishness.

0:40:080:40:11

It is a lesson that sometimes people will read a book by title only

0:40:160:40:21

and omit to read the rather large footnote, which is the book itself.

0:40:210:40:27

The book could have been called The Selfish Gene And The Altruistic Individual,

0:40:280:40:33

or even just The Altruistic Individual.

0:40:330:40:35

That would have been a bit long.

0:40:350:40:37

Do you think if you'd had called it something else,

0:40:390:40:41

we'd still be talking about it 35 years later?

0:40:410:40:43

I like to think that the book itself has certain merits

0:40:430:40:46

which might have caused it to be being talked about.

0:40:460:40:49

Um,...yes, I think...

0:40:490:40:53

I'm kind of talking myself around to thinking

0:40:530:40:56

perhaps the title was a mistake.

0:40:560:40:59

But for Richard Dawkins, the disputes around The Selfish Gene

0:41:040:41:08

are also a lesson in the importance of scientific freedom.

0:41:080:41:13

You cannot govern science by saying,

0:41:130:41:16

if it's suggesting something to you

0:41:160:41:18

that's politically or morally or emotionally unpleasant,

0:41:180:41:21

therefore, it mustn't be allowed to be true.

0:41:210:41:24

The great John Maynard Smith once satirised a left-wing scientist

0:41:240:41:30

who was objecting to some scientific principle

0:41:300:41:33

on grounds that it was unpleasant.

0:41:330:41:35

More or less just that, politically unpleasant.

0:41:350:41:38

And John Maynard Smith said,

0:41:380:41:39

what should we have done, falsified the equations?

0:41:390:41:42

Of course you can't do that.

0:41:420:41:44

Of course you can't subvert your science

0:41:440:41:46

by just twisting it to be politically acceptable.

0:41:460:41:49

You have to report the science the way it is.

0:41:490:41:51

But then you can say, let's not run our politics like that.

0:41:510:41:55

Richard Dawkins followed up the success and controversy of The Selfish Gene

0:41:590:42:03

with The Extended Phenotype, an academic book

0:42:030:42:07

which explained gene-centred natural selection in more detail.

0:42:070:42:12

But it was his next book, The Blind watchmaker,

0:42:150:42:18

which would set the stage for his role as a defender of science

0:42:180:42:22

against the claims of creationists.

0:42:220:42:25

The Blind Watchmaker was a book about

0:42:280:42:32

the argument from design and what's wrong with it.

0:42:320:42:34

And it seemed to me a very natural place to go.

0:42:340:42:39

The Selfish Gene had dealt with the topics of The Selfish Gene.

0:42:390:42:42

There was nothing more I wanted to say about that.

0:42:420:42:44

And so, the next obvious thing was

0:42:440:42:47

the widespread scepticism about evolution.

0:42:470:42:51

Creationists believe that the complexity of nature

0:42:530:42:56

can only be explained by the work of a creator.

0:42:560:43:00

The concept is called intelligent design.

0:43:000:43:03

And in the '80s, the creationist movement was gathering support.

0:43:030:43:07

'For over 100 years, science has told us

0:43:110:43:14

'that human beings are a chance product of a mindless process.

0:43:140:43:18

'Evolution.'

0:43:180:43:19

'But, as the human future gets bleaker,

0:43:210:43:24

'so more and more people are turning from the cold analysis of science

0:43:240:43:27

'to the apparent certainties of religion.'

0:43:270:43:30

# I'm no kin to the monkey No, no, no

0:43:320:43:35

# The monkey's no kin to me

0:43:350:43:38

# I don't know much about his ancestors

0:43:380:43:42

# But mine didn't swing from a tree

0:43:420:43:45

# It seems so unbelievable

0:43:450:43:48

# And yet they're saying it's true... #

0:43:480:43:52

'A new battle for the literal truth of Genesis

0:43:520:43:54

'is being fought out on the campuses of American high schools.

0:43:540:43:57

'It's an attack on what's being taught in science classes.

0:43:570:44:00

'Kelly Segraves is a fundamentalist Christian

0:44:000:44:03

'with three children at school.

0:44:030:44:05

'Earlier this year, he took his battle

0:44:050:44:07

'with the school authorities into the law courts.'

0:44:070:44:10

We believe in the home and in our church that God created man as man.

0:44:100:44:15

I send my son to school and I tell him, you're going to get an education here

0:44:150:44:19

and I want you to listen to the teacher.

0:44:190:44:21

Then the teacher's teaching things in opposition to our faith.

0:44:210:44:24

In the book and the TV version of The Blind Watchmaker,

0:44:280:44:31

Richard Dawkins led the charge

0:44:310:44:34

against what he sees as the false scientific claims of creationism -

0:44:340:44:38

like the idea that men and dinosaurs walked the Earth together.

0:44:380:44:43

These two have been interpreted as a man's two feet standing together.

0:44:440:44:50

This one is a very large foot with the big toe there

0:44:500:44:53

and the other toes going around here and here.

0:44:530:44:57

Although why Cretaceous man should have stood

0:44:570:45:00

with his legs like that requires a little bit of explaining.

0:45:000:45:04

These are the kinds of slight unimpressive resemblances

0:45:040:45:08

that can be produced by chance alone,

0:45:080:45:10

by the random forces of physics alone.

0:45:100:45:12

But there are things in the world - living organisms, you and me -

0:45:120:45:16

that are so complicated they are vastly too improbable to have

0:45:160:45:20

been brought about by chance alone.

0:45:200:45:23

Dawkins became a tireless promoter of evolution,

0:45:250:45:29

arguing the case that only natural selection

0:45:290:45:31

could produce such complexity.

0:45:310:45:35

This is a flatfish, a halibut.

0:45:350:45:38

Its ancestors once swam normally in the water,

0:45:380:45:42

like a normal fish does, like that.

0:45:420:45:44

But the ancestors of the halibut settled down on the bottom

0:45:440:45:47

of the sea, one side down.

0:45:470:45:49

But when it did that, the ancestor found that one of its eyes

0:45:490:45:53

was looking straight into the sand...

0:45:530:45:55

only the other one was looking up.

0:45:550:45:57

And so, gradually in evolution, the other eye,

0:45:570:46:00

the one that was looking into the sand,

0:46:000:46:01

migrated round the side of the head and came up to the top.

0:46:010:46:05

Now, anybody who was going to design a flatfish wouldn't do it that way.

0:46:050:46:08

For Dawkins,

0:46:110:46:13

this kind of adaptation is key evidence for evolution.

0:46:130:46:17

And an insistence upon evidence defines his thinking.

0:46:210:46:24

In a 2003 book of essays,

0:46:290:46:31

Dawkins even published a letter he had written to his daughter Juliet

0:46:310:46:35

stressing the value of critical thinking.

0:46:350:46:38

"Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important,

0:46:430:46:46

"think to yourself, "Is this the kind of thing that people probably

0:46:460:46:50

""know because of evidence?

0:46:500:46:52

""Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe

0:46:520:46:55

""because of tradition, authority or revelation?"

0:46:550:46:58

"And next time somebody tells you that something is true,

0:46:590:47:02

"why not say to them, "What kind of evidence is there for that?"

0:47:020:47:07

"And if they can't give you a good answer

0:47:070:47:09

"I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say."

0:47:090:47:13

I was trying to tell her how to think about certain things.

0:47:130:47:19

Not what to think, but how to think.

0:47:190:47:21

And I was trying to encourage her always to demand evidence.

0:47:210:47:25

So we know something only when there's evidence for it.

0:47:250:47:30

And I was particularly trying to warn her,

0:47:300:47:32

trying to guard her against various wrong ways of thinking

0:47:320:47:37

that you know something, such as tradition.

0:47:370:47:40

You should never say, "Our people have always believed X,

0:47:400:47:45

"so you should believe X."

0:47:450:47:47

Authority - you should never say, "Professor so-and-so believes X,

0:47:470:47:52

"therefore you should believe X."

0:47:520:47:54

Or your priest believes X so you should believe X.

0:47:540:47:57

Or revelation: "I have this inner conviction that X is true,

0:47:570:48:02

"therefore you should believe X."

0:48:020:48:04

No, the only reason you should believe X is that

0:48:040:48:06

there's evidence for X.

0:48:060:48:08

It is, ultimately, this passionate belief in the importance

0:48:110:48:15

of evidence which has fuelled Richard Dawkins'

0:48:150:48:18

most controversial role - as an outspoken advocate of atheism.

0:48:180:48:23

In 2006 he published The God Delusion,

0:48:250:48:29

a polemic against religion.

0:48:290:48:32

It became his fastest-selling book and pitted him head-to-head

0:48:320:48:36

with the religious establishment.

0:48:360:48:39

Richard really had two careers - his career as a very successful

0:48:390:48:44

writer on evolutionary biology - I mean, the most influential

0:48:440:48:47

figure of his generation, I would say, in broader public terms,

0:48:470:48:50

and one of the most influential in the scientific community.

0:48:500:48:54

But then he's had this other career as a promulgator,

0:48:540:48:58

as a proselytiser for atheism, which I think stems very much

0:48:580:49:03

from the same kind of logical clarity of thought that he's used in

0:49:030:49:08

his biological work to say, "Well, what does it actually boil down to?

0:49:080:49:12

"What is religious belief trying to explain?"

0:49:120:49:15

Dawkins sees this militant opposition to religion

0:49:170:49:21

as a natural progression from his scientific roots.

0:49:210:49:25

Right from certainly before the time when I wrote The Selfish Gene,

0:49:250:49:28

I have been every bit as militant an atheist as I ever became,

0:49:280:49:32

and the perception of The God Delusion as a militant book

0:49:320:49:36

is really because it is a book that's all about religion,

0:49:360:49:39

and my other books only touched on religion peripherally.

0:49:390:49:43

But if you look at The Selfish Gene you'll find phrases which are

0:49:430:49:46

just as militant as anything you'll find in The God Delusion.

0:49:460:49:48

It's just that that wasn't a book about religion,

0:49:480:49:51

whereas The God Delusion is.

0:49:510:49:52

Richard Dawkins has campaigned tirelessly to promote science over religion.

0:49:570:50:02

Religion is part of a complex of supernatural beliefs

0:50:050:50:08

that are founded on lack of evidence and astrology, homoeopathy,

0:50:080:50:13

all sorts of things like that.

0:50:130:50:14

And it could be said that some of these are harmless.

0:50:140:50:17

I don't think it's harmless. There is something insidious about

0:50:170:50:20

training children to believe things for which there's no evidence.

0:50:200:50:25

And so an uncritical, kind of too open-minded,

0:50:250:50:29

so open-minded your brains fall out attitude is a great pity

0:50:290:50:32

because it means you miss such a lot.

0:50:320:50:35

And merely to say that religion is harmless isn't good enough.

0:50:350:50:40

And he has taken every opportunity to publicly attack religion

0:50:410:50:45

in the strongest terms.

0:50:450:50:48

The God of the Old Testament has got to be the most unpleasant

0:50:510:50:54

character in all fiction.

0:50:540:50:56

Lord Jakobovits is an educated man.

0:50:560:50:59

He knows perfectly well the world was not created in six days.

0:50:590:51:02

There is nothing special about the Bible.

0:51:020:51:05

Richard gives definitive answers to things, and, um,

0:51:050:51:08

if you don't like those answers, you're going to find it

0:51:080:51:12

controversial, you're not going to like him.

0:51:120:51:14

I'm rather less interested in what people think than in what's true.

0:51:140:51:17

A human brain is extremely good at making things up.

0:51:170:51:21

The age of the Earth - 5,000 years - I mean,

0:51:210:51:24

that's... I'm sorry, Rabbi, that is ridiculous.

0:51:240:51:26

People find him argumentative

0:51:260:51:29

because he doesn't suffer fools gladly,

0:51:290:51:32

and he is rapier-like in his ability to pick up a hole in your argument.

0:51:320:51:38

And some people find that uncomfortable.

0:51:380:51:40

-I'm looking for God.

-Well, which God? I mean, why not Jupiter, why not Zeus, why not Thor?

0:51:400:51:46

You're a Taurean, you have great gravitas,

0:51:460:51:48

you find change anathema. You're Venus-ruled, that's why you've got

0:51:480:51:51

those rather lovely, kissy lips on your tie.

0:51:510:51:54

Richard Dawkins, where would you put astrology on a scale of belief?

0:51:540:51:58

Somewhere among fairies.

0:51:580:52:01

JEREMY PAXMAN LAUGHS

0:52:010:52:02

What if you're wrong?

0:52:020:52:04

LAUGHTER

0:52:040:52:06

Well, what if I'm wrong? I mean, anybody could be wrong.

0:52:060:52:09

We could all be wrong about the flying spaghetti monster

0:52:090:52:12

and the pink unicorn and the flying teapot.

0:52:120:52:14

What if YOU'RE wrong about the great juju at the bottom of the sea?

0:52:140:52:17

APPLAUSE

0:52:170:52:18

Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than "barking mad".

0:52:180:52:24

Sir, there could be many things that you know well.

0:52:240:52:28

There are other things that you don't know well.

0:52:280:52:30

But please, in the process of it, don't be arrogant.

0:52:300:52:33

Many of Dawkins' critics believe that their own spiritual

0:52:370:52:41

experiences are proof enough of God's existence

0:52:410:52:45

and that Dawkins treats their faith with a lack of respect.

0:52:450:52:48

I think they should grow thicker skins.

0:52:490:52:51

I mean, we all have to bear satire on whatever it is, our political views.

0:52:510:52:56

And if politicians sort of started blubbing every time somebody

0:52:560:53:00

drew a satirical cartoon of them or something,

0:53:000:53:03

they'd never get anywhere in politics.

0:53:030:53:05

There's no reason why religion should be regarded as particularly

0:53:050:53:09

vulnerable to satire

0:53:090:53:10

and should be handled with kid gloves any more than politics.

0:53:100:53:15

But a powerful argument against Dawkins is that he does not

0:53:180:53:22

appreciate the deeply consoling role religion plays in human life.

0:53:220:53:26

Science and religion are performing very, very different roles,

0:53:270:53:31

they're setting themselves very different questions

0:53:310:53:33

and they have very different ways of answering them.

0:53:330:53:36

What religion does is generate narrative structures.

0:53:360:53:40

We are storytelling animals, that's what human beings are.

0:53:400:53:43

They need stories.

0:53:430:53:44

And the thing about religions is that they all have

0:53:460:53:49

lots of stories, and I think those stories are about helping

0:53:490:53:52

human beings to find meaning and value and purpose.

0:53:520:53:56

And to come to terms with the seemingly arbitrary nature

0:53:560:54:00

of human experience.

0:54:000:54:01

I can see why you might want to find something consoling.

0:54:010:54:04

I can see why you might want consolation.

0:54:040:54:06

I can see why you might want to take a drug that consoles you,

0:54:060:54:11

or why you might go and cry on a friendly shoulder and get patted

0:54:110:54:15

and hugged and get consolation from that, but to believe that

0:54:150:54:19

something is the case when you have no more reason to think it's

0:54:190:54:23

the case than that it is consoling, that is just fatuous.

0:54:230:54:28

That's ridiculous and illogical.

0:54:280:54:30

If it's bleak, too bad.

0:54:310:54:32

I mean, why should it be anything other than bleak?

0:54:320:54:35

I mean, there's no caring about the universe, why should there be?

0:54:350:54:38

Why should the universe care about what happens to us?

0:54:380:54:42

But we can make our own world, we can make our own purposes,

0:54:420:54:46

our own warmth, our own affections, our own loves,

0:54:460:54:49

and we can lead a life that's anything but bleak.

0:54:490:54:53

We gaze up at the stars on a dark night, with no moon

0:54:570:55:00

and no city lights, and breathless with joy,

0:55:000:55:03

we say the sight is pure magic.

0:55:030:55:06

In this sense, "magical" simply means "deeply moving, exhilarating,

0:55:060:55:12

"something that gives us goosebumps, something that makes us

0:55:120:55:16

"feel more fully alive".

0:55:160:55:18

Richard Dawkins' evangelical stance has made him

0:55:200:55:24

one of the most recognisable faces in science.

0:55:240:55:26

He has sold five million books

0:55:260:55:28

and regularly packs out venues around the world.

0:55:280:55:32

But all of this may have come at a cost.

0:55:340:55:37

'Richard has become almost a household phrase.'

0:55:390:55:42

You see it in leaders in the broadsheet newspapers.

0:55:420:55:46

They refer to "Dawkins", or "Dawkinsisation",

0:55:460:55:49

or something like that.

0:55:490:55:50

So it's almost become... I don't think he's quite

0:55:500:55:53

in the Oxford English Dictionary yet, but it's almost at that level.

0:55:530:55:57

Yet Richard himself is actually quite a shy

0:55:570:55:59

and retiring person, in many ways.

0:55:590:56:01

He... I mean, I suspect he probably finds it quite stressful

0:56:010:56:06

to be continually on public platforms, as he is.

0:56:060:56:10

And, whilst many revere him, he has also faced very personal criticism.

0:56:130:56:18

His e-mail inbox has, at times, been flooded with hate mail.

0:56:180:56:22

People regard any attack on their religion almost as though

0:56:230:56:26

I'm saying they've got an ugly face or something,

0:56:260:56:29

it's a personal attack on them.

0:56:290:56:30

And I think that they feel cornered and so they lash out

0:56:300:56:37

with personal attacks, what amount to personal dislike.

0:56:370:56:41

So, given the hostility he faces, what drives Richard Dawkins

0:56:460:56:51

to continue as the outspoken public figure he has become?

0:56:510:56:54

'Richard keeps on going.'

0:56:570:56:59

I mean, his messages about evolution,

0:56:590:57:01

his messages about religion are very well articulated

0:57:010:57:04

and have been presented many times, but Richard keeps on going.

0:57:040:57:08

And one might wonder why that is, what drives him.

0:57:080:57:11

I think it's passion

0:57:110:57:13

and it's belief that he has got an important message to put across.

0:57:130:57:18

The true understanding, the scientific understanding

0:57:180:57:21

of the nature of existence is so utterly fascinating.

0:57:210:57:23

How could you not want people to share it?

0:57:230:57:27

Carl Sagan, I think, said,

0:57:270:57:29

"When you're in love, you want to tell the world."

0:57:290:57:32

And who, on understanding a scientific view of reality

0:57:320:57:36

would not, as it were, fall in love and want to tell the world?

0:57:360:57:40

And at the age of 70,

0:57:440:57:46

he shows no sign of giving up on his desire to understand

0:57:460:57:50

the wonders of the universe and communicate them to others.

0:57:500:57:54

Different people have different ways of responding to the thought

0:57:570:58:00

that they're very lucky to be alive.

0:58:000:58:02

For me, it seems to suggest a great responsibility

0:58:020:58:06

to make the most of it.

0:58:060:58:07

I mean, you're extremely lucky to be here.

0:58:070:58:09

The odds against your being here are far greater than the odds

0:58:090:58:12

against your winning the lottery,

0:58:120:58:13

so be thankful and spend your time - your brief time - under the sun,

0:58:130:58:20

looking around and rejoicing and wondering and being fascinated

0:58:200:58:24

and trying to understand everything about the universe in which

0:58:240:58:28

you are so fortunate to be born.

0:58:280:58:30

# It's all too beautiful

0:58:320:58:36

# It's all too beautiful

0:58:360:58:39

# Over Bridge of Sighs

0:58:390:58:43

# To rest my eyes in shades of green

0:58:430:58:47

# Under dreaming spires... #

0:58:470:58:52

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