Monday

The Anti-Dawkins: Are We Hardwired to be 'Selfish' or 'Social'? (Part 2 of 3)

In contrast to Darwin's modern champions (most of whom are men), Roughgarden comes across as refreshingly humble and, well, genial, in person.

Over lunch at a charity-run café near her home in San Francisco, she tells me that she'd like to think of the British Darwinist, Richard Dawkins, as a friend.

Nevertheless, the title of her book is an obvious play on his work.

Roughgarden recalls teaching from The Selfish Gene after it came out in 1976. 'I noticed the appeal that a naturalized doctrine of selfishness has to certain students and to those in the general public who, for example, identify with Ayn Rand's writings that celebrate the ethic of individualism,' she writes.


However, Roughgarden argues that the days of 'the selfish-gene narrative' are 'numbered—they have to be numbered. It's not what birds and bees do. Like two birds in a nest: each is not trying to get the other to do all the work, which would be a typical proposition by which a selfish-gene proponent would try to understand the dynamics at a bird's nest.'

Instead, her theory of 'social selection' emphasizes cooperation and reproduction rather than competition and mating.

'(The) sophisticated constellation of decisions that females make about males goes far beyond the simplistic conceptualization that Darwin put forth: that all a female is searching for is a hulk with great genes,' she writes.

And just as Darwin was a man of his time, it's tempting to cast Roughgarden and Dawkins as stranger-than-fiction opposites in our own era.

She's a relatively obscure, 'transgendered female' from one of the most liberal parts of America—and a self-professed Christian to boot—while he's a celebrated male atheist who's literally a product of British imperialism, having been born the son of a civil servant in colonial Kenya.

Dawkins published The Selfish Gene the same year that the Seventies were dubbed 'The Me Decade', and in retrospect, you can't help but wonder if his book, complete with its talk of 'cheat' and 'sucker' strategies, has helped justify the Greed-is-Good capitalism that's since wrecked the world's economy.

Likewise, it's probably no coincidence that a 'transgendered' academic in California is now highlighting cooperation over competition at a time when the world is trying to recover from the damage.

And although scientists like to tout their objectivity, Roughgarden notes that the most scathing attacks against her have come from Darwin's homeland.

'It must be like a Brit coming over here and taking potshots at George Washington!' she laughs. 'They don't want a Yank takin' potshots at Darwin.'

True Brits Linkwithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...