"Liberal antiracism has
not only helped resurrect racial thinking. It has also become increasingly
hostile to traditional notions of science, knowledge and freedom of
thought - as the Watson row revealed. And this is perhaps the most
paradoxical aspect of the new race debate - that in challenging the
irrationality of racial science, liberal antiracists have become so
irrational themselves."
'On Strange Fruit'
Publishing News
2 May 2008
"The brain, Tallis insists,
is 'absurdly overrated'. True, if someone had surgically removed Tallis'
brain his IQ would have plummeted, his consciousness vanished, his
self disappeared, and his book remained unwritten. But, Tallis argues,
all that means is that 'the brain is a necessary condition for all
forms of consciousness from the slightest twinge of sensation to the
most exquisitely constructed sense of self'. It does not mean that
the brain is a sufficient condition."
Review of The Kingdom of Infinite
Space by Ray Tallis, Sunday Telegraph, 4 May 2008
"The ambiguous character
of race in scientific research resides in the fact that race is a
social category but with biological consequences. Many of the ways
in which we customarily group people socially - by race, ethnicity,
nationality, religious affiliation, geographic locality and so on
- are not arbitrary from a biological point of view. Members of such
groups often show greater biological relatedness than two randomly
chosen individuals."
'The science of race and the politics
of ignorance'
The Philosophers' Magazine
Issue 41
"Mitigation is rooted
in the idea that we need to slow down economic growth. But slowing
down growth will undermine that capacity of a country like Bangladesh
to build the necessary infrastructure. Poverty is already condemning
Bangladesh to annual floods. How much worse will it be if we combine
rising sea levels with slowing economies?"
'Mitigating guilt or adapting
to change?'
Bergens Tidende
17 April 2008
"There are readings here
on the Big Bang theory, on quantum mechanics, on evolution and genetics.
But the anthology is less about science as a body of knowledge than
it is about the poetry of nature and the nature of the scientific
imagination. It is a meditation on how scientists relate to wonder
of the world."
Review of The Oxford
Book of Modern Science Writing edited by Richard Dawkins
Sunday Telegraph
13 April 2008
"For many environmental
activists there's a touch of the Marie Antoinettes about the argument
for adaptation. Telling Bangladesh to build dykes is a bit like telling
the poor to eat cake. But that’s only because they're being
held back by current policies, responds Richard Tol. Stop pouring
resources into mitigation and even the poorest might be able to build
dykes – and probably eat cake, too."
'The wrong road to a warmer
world?'
Analysis
BBC Radio 4
3 April 2008
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