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Thursday, September 18, 2008

E. O. Wilson and James D. Watson Discuss Darwin with Charlie Rose

A great discussion about Darwin, faith, and science from two great thinkers.

4 comments:

  1. I don't want to 'belittle' James Watson's scientific importance, but shouldn't a great thinker be a little more thoughtful about his utterance than he was the last years?

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  2. I think Watson is a good example of how a great scientist can still be not such a nice person. It doesn't make his discovery any less true. I like to use that example when some creationist plays the "wasn't Darwin a racist/sexist/whatever" card.

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  3. From what I've read, the statement he made was blown out of proportion. I believe he simply stated that Native Africans do more poorly than people of European descent on IQ tests. This can be easily demonstrated by the data if this is the case....and if it is so, it doesn't say they are less intelligent (read Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man).

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  4. If that's true then that's really scary. Something the field of psychology often worries about is if they will reveal sexist or racists results in their research and then people will use the results for evil and the field will have a poor reputation.

    Clos,

    I still have to get around to reading Gould, maybe next summer. Right now I'm doing the maximum course load at my school and I barely have time to breathe. I can only imagine how busy you must be though.

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