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The Selfish Genius: How Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy
Posted at 3:02PM Friday 03 Jul 2009
THE SELFISH GENIUSHow Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy FERN ELSDON-BAKER PUBLICATION DATE: 16 JULY 2009 Paperback Original On July 1st 1858, in a sweltering meeting room in the heart of London, Charles Darwin's pioneering and then unpublished theory of evolution was unveiled to a small group of eminent scientists and professors. Now, over one hundred and fifty years later, Fern Elsdon-Baker – Head of the British Council's Darwin Now International Project – enters the evolutionary debate with her own controversial offering, THE SELFISH GENIUS. Provocative and entertaining, THE SELFISH GENIUS is a much-needed corrective of famous evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins' highly popular neo-Darwinist theories. Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene was a smash hit in the 70s, single-handedly wrestling the evolutionary debate from the hands of scientists and placing it in the hands of the public. Dawkins' passion and vision make his books important reading, but, thirty years on, Elsdon-Baker fears that the Dawkins Discussion has become the Dawkins Discourse, an outdated and prescriptive way of understanding evolution that actually restricts debate rather than exciting it. As a rational pro-science atheist and specialist in the history and communication of evolutionary theory, Fern Elsdon-Baker has the academic tools and the intellectual daring to disassemble the Dawkins myth and method that has monopolised the popular understanding of evolutionary development for the latter half of the twentieth century. Richard Dawkins, she argues, was the typical "Enlightenment Gent," an outdated and uncompromising figurehead that wielded the broad sword of popular Science in a violent attempt to silence any evolutionary narrative that wasn't his own. 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's seminal work, On The Origin of the Species, as well as the bicentenary of Darwin's birth. So what better gift to the founder of evolution than reclaiming his groundbreaking theories from the dangerously totalitarian science of Dawkins' populist hypotheses. Just as The Selfish Gene attempted to tie up the evolutionary debate once and for all, THE SELFISH GENIUS seeks to re-inject inquiry and current research back into the debate, to separate Darwin from Dawkins and in doing so, re-open both public and scientific conversations about where we come from and where we are heading. FERN ELSDON-BAKER holds a BSc in Environmental Sciences and a PhD in which she specialised in the history and philosophy of evolutionary theory. Dr Elsdon-Baker is currently a member of the central council and the programmes committee for the British Society for the History of Science and also the Recorder for the History of Science section of the British Science Association. In 2008 she became Head of the British Council's Darwin Now International Project. For more information please contact Najma Finlay, Head of Publicity, Icon Book (najma.finlay@iconbooks.co.uk/ D/L 020 7700 9962) Notes to Editors • THE SELFISH GENIUS: HOW RICHARD DAWKINS REWROTE DARWIN'S LEGACY by Fern Elsdon-Baker (Icon Books) • Paperback Original, RRP £8.99, 16 July 2009 • ISBN 978-184831-049-0 • Icon Books was founded in 1991 and is a publisher of popular, intelligent trade non-fiction • Icon is a member of the Independent Alliance • More information at www.iconbooks.co.uk
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