Dawkins - A Devils Chaplain

Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston New York
2003

Copyright 2003 by Richard Dawkins

All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dawkins, Richard, 1941
A devil's chaplain : reflections on hope, lies, science,
and love / Richard Dawkins.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-618-33540-4
1. Evolution (Biology) 2. SciencePhilosophy.
3. Religion and science. I. Title.
QH366.2.D373 2003
500dc21 2003050859

Printed in the United States of America

QUM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The author is grateful for permission to reprint the following: "What Is True?": published as "Hall
of Mirrors" in Forbes ASAP, October 2, 2000. Reprinted by permission of Forbes ASAP,
2003 Forbes Inc. "Crystalline Truth and Crystal Balls": published in the Sunday Telegraph.
Copyright Richard Dawkins / Telegraph Group Ltd. 1998. "Postmodernism Disrobed":
reprinted by permission from Nature 394, 3 (1998). Copyright 1998 Macmillan
Publishers Ltd. "Darwin Triumphant": from Man and Beast Revisited, edited by Michael H.
Robinson and Lionel Tiger, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. Copyright
1991 by Smithsonian Institution. Used by permission of the publisher. "The Information
Challenge": originally published in December 1998 in the official journal of Australian skep
tics, The Skeptic, vol. 18, no. 4. Reprinted by permission. "Son of Moore's Law": from The
Next Fifty Years, edited by J. Brockman, Vintage Books, Random House, Inc. Reprinted by per
mission of Vintage Books. "Chinese Junk and Chinese Whispers": published as the foreword
to The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore, Oxford University Press, 1999. Reprinted by per
mission of Oxford University Press. "Viruses of the Mind": published in Dennett and His Crit-
ics: Demystifying Mind, edited by B. Dahlbom, Blackwell, 1993. Reprinted by permission of
Blackwell Publishing. "The Great Convergence": published as "Snake Oil and Holy Water"
in Forbes ASAP, October 4, 1999. Reprinted by permission of Forbes ASAP, 2003 Forbes Inc.
"Rejoicing in Multifarious Nature": reprinted by permission from Nature 276, 3
(1978). Copyright 1978 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. "Human Chauvinism": reprinted by
permission from Evolution 51, no. 3, pp. 101520 (1997). "The Lion Children": published as
the foreword to The Lion Children, by Angus, Maisie, and Travers McNeice, Orion Publishing
Group, 2001. Reprinted by permission of the Orion Publishing Group Ltd.

Introduction to the American Edition

1 Science and Sensibility

1.1 A Devil's Chaplain

1.2 What is True?

1.3 Gaps in the Mind

1.4 Science, Genetics and Ethics: Memo for Tony Blair

1.5 Trial By Jury

1.6 Crystalline Truth and Crystal Balls

1.7 Postmodernism Disrobed

1.8 The Joy of Living Dangerously: Sanderson of Oundle

2 Light Will Be Thrown

2.1 Light Will Be Thrown

2.2 Darwin Triumphant

2.3 The 'Information Challenge'

2.4 Genes Aren't Us

2.5 Son of Moore's Law

3 The Infected Mind

3.1 Chinese Junk and Chinese Whispers

3.2 Viruses of the Mind

3.3 The Great Convergence

3.4 Dolly and the Cloth Heads

3.5 Time to Stand Up

4 They Told Me, Heraclitus

4.1 Lament for Douglas

4.2 Eulogy for Douglas Adams

4.3 Eulogy for W. D. Hamilton

4.4 Snake Oil

5 Even the Ranks of Tuscany

5.1 Rejoicing in Multifarious Nature

5.2 The Art of the Developable

5.3 Hallucigenia, Wiwaxia and Friends

5.4 Human Chauvinism and Evolutionary Progress

5.5 Unfinished Correspondence with a Darwinian Heavyweight

6 There is All Africa and her Prodigies in Us

6.1 Ecology of Genes

6.2 Out of the Soul of Africa

6.3 I Speak of Africa and Golden Joys

6.4 Heroes and Ancestors

7 A Prayer for My Daughter

7.1 Good and Bad Reasons for Believing

Endnotes

Index

For Juliet on her Eighteenth Birthday

This book is a personal selection from among all the articles and lectures, tirades and reflections, book reviews and forewords, tributes and eulogies that I have published (or in some cases not published) over 25 years. There are many themes here, some arising out of Darwinism or science in general, some concerned with morality, some with religion, education, justice, mourning, Africa, history of science, some just plain personal or what the late Carl Sagan might have called love letters to science and rationality.

Though I admit to occasional flames of (entirely justified) irritation in my writing, I like to think that the greater part of it is good-humoured, perhaps even humorous. Where there is passion, well, there is much to be passionate about. Where there is anger, I hope it is a controlled anger. Where there is sadness, I hope it never spills over into despair but still looks to the future. But mostly science is, for me, a source of living joy, and I hope it shows in these pages.

The book is divided into seven sections, chosen and arranged by the compiler Latha Menon in close collaboration with me. With all the polymathic, literate intelligence you would expect of the executive editor of Encarta Encyclopedia's World English Edition, Latha has proved to be an inspired anthologist. I have written preambles to each of the seven sections, in which I have reflected on the pieces Latha thought worthy of reprinting and the connections among them. Hers was the difficult task, and I am filled with admiration for her simultaneous grasp of vastly more of my writings than are here reproduced, and for the skill with which she achieved a subtler balance of them than I thought they possessed. But as for what she had to choose from, the responsibility is, of course, mine.

It is not possible to list all the people who helped with the individual pieces, spread as they are over 25 years. Help with the book itself came from Yan Wong, Christine DeBlase-Ballstadt, Michael Dover, Laura van Dam, Catherine Bradley, Anthony Cheetham and, of course, Latha Menon herself. My gratitude to Charles Simonyi so much more than a benefactor is unabated. And my wife, Lalla Ward, continues to lend her encouragement, her advice and her fine-tuned ear for the music of language.

Richard Dawkins

The first essay in this volume, A Devil's Chaplain (1.1), has not previously been published. The title, borrowed by the book, is explained in the essay itself. The second essay, What is True? (1.2), was my contribution to a symposium of that name, in Forbes ASAP magazine. Scientists tend to take a robust view of truth and are impatient of philosophical equivocation over its reality or importance. It's hard enough coaxing nature to give up her truths, without spectators and hangers-on strewing gratuitous obstacles in our way. My essay argues that we should at least be consistent. Truths about everyday life are just as much or as little open to philosophical doubt as scientific truths. Let us shun double standards.

At times I fear turning into a double standards bore. It started in childhood when my first hero, Doctor Dolittle (he returned irresistibly to mind when I read the Naturalist's Voyage