Jerry Coyne is just about the most interesting evolutionist active today. He has done top-notch work on speciation (with his student Allen Orr), he has written devastating critiques of some of the most popular ideas in the field (notably the shifting balance theory of the late Sewall Wright), and more recently he has ventured into the public field with his terrific Why Evolution Is True.
Now he writes a blog of the same name, and almost every day he comments perceptively on some new finding or theory. He is an ardent Darwinian, thinking natural selection is the key to causal understanding, and I should say that his cool but highly informed common sense on these matters is altogether admirable. For instance, he recently wrote a piece on human races that struck me as balanced and sensitive, but at the same time fearless in going where the science leads.
Coyne has another string to his bow – religion. I describe him as a “junior New Atheist,” meaning he is not one of the big four (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens) but that he goes right along with the attack. In fact, I am being a bit unfair in so describing him because it seems to me that often he is more incisive than some better known, and he has a turn for ridicule that is quite unequaled. I should say that in his criticisms I agree with him 95% of the time, and only fail to agree entirely because I cannot remember the other 5%. I don’t think he has yet been after sacred underpants, so I am one up on him there.
Coyne also writes on philosophy where I don’t think he is quite so sure-footed – he seemed happy with some pretty crude ideas of Sam Harris about deriving moral norms from matters of fact – and I have often thought that this lack of understanding may be a big reason why I am one of Coyne’s big hate objects. Although I have little time for most religion, qua philosophy I still argue that science does not have all of the answers and it is at least legitimate for believers to try to offer their answers. I don’t think the answers are necessarily beyond criticism, but at the same time I do not think that because they are not scientific answers this thereby makes them wrong or pernicious.
Coyne has no time for this and sneers at me frequently – although, recently there has been a bit of a lull in the invective and so (on Dr Johnson’s dictum that none but a blockhead ever writes for anything but money) I sent him 50 bucks as a retainer to keep up the good work. My favorite moment was when Coyne quoted George Orwell about me that some of my ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.
I do not mention Coyne’s tin ear for philosophy to criticize. There are those, starting with my wife Lizzie, who think that far from a failing in philosophy being a matter of fault and regret, it speaks positively to the character. (At least, she thought that until our youngest kid Edward declared that he was majoring in philosophy. Now the maternal reason is in conflict with the maternal emotions, and as Plato could have told her, this does not make for a happy human being.)
However Coyne does have (let us say) some quirks, that are nigh obsessions. One is a passion for cowboy boots. Rick Perry and Roy Rogers have nothing on him. Frankly, I am rather reminded of a French movie I once saw, starring Jeanne Moreau, about a chap with a foot obsession. As I remember, things did not work out well for him.
And then there are cats. Jerry, if I might now presume to call him – after all, he is an employee – is nuts about cats. Day after day, there are hymns of praise and love for cats. Day after day there are pictures of white cats, black cats, happy cats, sad cats, naked cats, clothed cats – cats, cats, cats, cats, cats. Dogs don’t cut the mustard. Ferrets (my favorites) are nowhere. Horses are, well, horses. But cats! If ever there were a proof of the existence of a good god, it is cats. Indeed, I suspect that Jerry’s nonexistent deity has whiskers.
But now alas, if an article in the Atlantic is to be believed, cats are killers and worse. They harbor a parasite that gets into your brain and makes you what Richard Dawkins has called an “extended phenotype.” You do all sorts of daft things because it is in the interests of the parasite that you do them. You think you are being clever and rational but it is the bug that is driving you.
In a way, Jerry should find all of this rather satisfying. One of his big bugaboos about philosophy is our belief in free will. He will have none of it. We are all robots. This cat finding is grist for his mill. When we think we are acting freely, it is the parasite that is in charge.
But in another sense, even if he does not find it depressing – and the article rather suggests that the parasite is pretty good at keeping us happy as clams – I confess I rather do. It suggests that Jerry’s most outlandish behavior, namely criticizing me, is not based on sound logic and evidence but on his being too much in feline company. There I thought I had attracted the attention of one of the best minds of our generation, and it is all a matter of infrequently changed litter boxes.
I wonder if Calvinist philosopher Alvin Plantinga, another who fails to appreciate the wit and wisdom of Michael Ruse, is also a cat lover.