Famous evolutionary biologist forced to confirm that 'humans are not worms'

[ArabellaScott]

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1753045097959100600

Thank you, Prof.

'I ken mysel’ by the queer-like smell
That the next stop’s Kirkcaddy!'

Kirkcaldy ahead of it's time, there.

That's not something said often about Kirkcaldy

I had a friend at St Andrews University when I was at a different one so I got off the train at Kirkcaldy when I went to visit her, don't remember the "queer-like smell" though!

😁The East-coasters willnae be happy with you beetle ...

👏👏👏👏

As a non-scientist I'd just add in the misinterpretation of the observation of sex on prenatal scans or at birth - the 'quick glance at genitals' which is made to sound so wrong and ?patriarchal or something, that something as complex as sex (usually interchanged with gender in these accounts) should be named this way.

When in fact it's the opposite - that sex is so binary, and so overwhelmingly correctly signalled by among many other things the development of our primary sexual characteristics, that a glance at the genitals is enough for it to be correctly named almost every time.

I am a WORM.

I am a Woman Of Radical Mind.

But I don’t want it on a T-shirt thank you.

"queer-like smell"

OT, but Canning Town has one of those. A weird bouncy-metallic smell I've never encountered elsewhere, although it has some commonality with the glue factory smell of Hitchin (40 years ago, the factory may well have gone by now). Whereas Welwyn is burnt B vitamins, and Park Royal is digestive biscuits.

Kirkcaldy is a real pocket of humanity

I’d quite like Woman of Radical Mind on a T shirt. Not WORM though.
I see this system of belief of ‘I know better’ fairly often at work (I’m a GP). Patients know better than I do what they need and I should just be there to give them it. They’ve read about it online after all and they know their bodies. I think some of it has come from medicine (at least General Practice) moving away from Paternalism and recognising patients as equal participants in their health (quite rightly). But I think we’ve gone too far in the opposite direction now. There are some circumstances when I do know better than a patient because I’ve studied it and practiced medicine for more than 15 years now, but in some parts of medicine to think or say this is verboten. So we have anti-vaxxers and Covid deniers.

And yet medicine as an establishment still routinely fails to take proper account of women’s healthcare, especially if that perspective comes from women of colour. Funny that.

Dawkins making the radical claim that humans are not worms reminds me of Psalm 22:6 “I am a worm and no man”. I wonder if Dawkins took that literally (as he seems to do with all the rest of the Bible when arguing against it) and therefore felt he had to deny it 😄.

I do like the analogy of Newtonian mechanics which pretty much rules our everyday interactions with the physical world around us, compared with the more sophisticated models of relativity and quantum mechanics which we don’t have to worry about in day to day life. We do not observe quantum and relativistic effects without sophisticated instruments.

Actually, we may need to worry about these things in day to day life, contrary to what you claim.

Examples?
Relativity: When you use your in-car GPS, it better be compensating for relativistic effects. Otherwise it'll be miles out a day or two after switching on.
Quantum mechanics: Why is grass green? Why is blood red? Yes QM has the answer (Newton, not.)
(See, perhaps, S. Waring: 'Quantum Biology: A Scientific Revolution in our Understanding of Biological Systems')

Not saying sex isn't binary. But I thought you might like to know queer theory isn't at all like QM and/or Relativity. The Newton/Einstein etc. analogy with binary sex/queer theory etc. is not really that close. Queer theory: nonsense, useless. QM, relativity: as close to the truth as we've ever got; (very) useful.

(Btw, Ptolemaic epicycles, (surely interesting in their own right but ...) not really such a good analogy either. But let's not get into that.)

Dawkins is just right about gametes and binary sex. That's easily seen - and well explained by him.

Physicists and people who work in very technical areas need to be aware of quantum mechanics and relativity, when they are working in their specialisms. The rest of us? We’re better off not worrying about quantum mechanics and relativity when, for example, driving, or playing pool. And if we do work in highly technical areas, we need to know when Newtonian mechanics is not a good enough model. I’m pretty sure that a naïve understanding of quantum mechanics is not going to help anyone with the practicality of work or life.

Likewise, an instinctive understanding of sex as a binary is enough for negotiating relationships healthily. A naïve understanding of DSDs, or a misunderstanding of sex as “a spectrum”, is a bit like attempting to treat your car or your pool ball as if it were a photon. It is more likely to lead to problems than success.

Agree, Rapid, Just as in some very specific and unusual instances 'edge case' DSDs or VSDs are pertinent, trying to extrapolate such niche specialist patterns to apply them to the vast 99.9%+ of people who do not have DSDs/VSDs makes just as much sense as trying to use Chaos Theory to plan a holiday.

Oh, I dunno, most of my holidays have turned out to be proofs of chaos theory.

I did sort of think that as I wrote it Garlick!

I think the word "model" is actually really important here.

Most people do not realize that scientific theories and explanations, and mathematical ones, are really models. Which is to say more or less complete approximations of an explanation of what we observe.

Different models of the same natural phenomena may be better or worse for use in certain situations. Just like you might not want the same kind of map for driving as you would for navigating a ship through the Panama Canal. All are trying to show reality but will in some sense fall short, or concentrate on certain elements. Language itself is a kind of model of reality.

But I think the real reason people struggle with sex is that they don't actually know what sexual reproduction means. They think it is about the external structures, not the basic differentiation of gametes.

If people have these trusted sources telling them the science is more complicated, they will tend to believe it. Just like they trust them when they talk about physics, or chemistry, and say that old theories have been supplanted. Why wouldn't they?

The big question is how are these articles appearing in so many supposedly good quality science publications?

It does keep people out of the queue at the post office though,so it's not all bad.

@TempestTost ”The big question is how are these articles appearing in so many supposedly good quality science publications?”

this is an excellent question. How (or possibly who) are these articles getting published? 🤔

Yes, gender is infinite and there's even a flag for it 😀
It's the Neutrois flag. From the web site...There is no one definition of Neutrois, since each person that self-identifies as such experiences their own gender differently.
https://www.theflagshop.co.uk/flags/gay-pride-flags/neutrois-flag-5ft-x-3ft.html

So personality.then? 😁👍

This would make an excellent band name.

The binary nature of sex is taught at GCSE, so unless a kid was no longer in school, most people will have been taught this in a British school.

It's in the GCSE biology specs.

So it's a wonder that no biology teacher has been brought up on a charge.

But of course noone will, because everyone really does know the truth and it's not about biology it's about men's power over women.

However.

I did go through the resources that we use in my school, and change "gender" back to "sex"

As in, retrieval questioning "what gender is XY?"