miércoles, 26 de agosto de 2015

DAWKIN

It’s to Dawkins’s credit here that he gives a little space to a fellow science populariser, the American physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, making an impromptu suggestion that Dawkins might be more effective in selling his scientific wares if he did some market research. “You are professor of the public understanding of science,” Tyson said, “not professor of delivering truth to the public, and these are two different exercises. Persuasion isn’t always ‘Here’s the facts, you are either an idiot or you’re not.’ It’s ‘Here’s the facts, and here is a sensitivity to your state of mind.’ And I worry that your methods, and how articulately barbed you can be, end up simply being ineffective.” Dawkins reports that he “gratefully accepted the rebuke”, but there’s no evidence here that he recognised its wisdom.