Read the first four chapters, some from the original English version and some from the Arabic version.

According to a profile in The Guardian, Mary Midgley is 'the foremost scourge of scientific pretensions in this country; someone whose wit is admired even by those who feel she sometimes oversteps the mark'. Considered one of Britain's finest philosophers, Midgley exposes the illogical logic of poor doctrines that shelter themselves behind the prestige of science. Always at home when taking on the high priests of evolutionary theory - Dawkins, Wilson and their acolytes - she has famously described evolution as 'the creation-myth of our age'. In Evolution as a Religion, she examines how science comes to be used as a substitute for religion and points out how badly that role distorts it. As ever, her argument is flawlessly insightful: a punchy, compelling, lively indictment of these misuses of science. Both the book and its author are true classics of our time.

An interesting take by a philosopher on the science/religion conflict, or non conflict. Midgley argues two broad cases. Firstly, she critiques the way scientists piece together the meaning of their research into a narrative (followers of Darwin and proponents of the Big Bang origin of the cosmos in particular), and promote this narrative as a myth. She notes how cautious Darwin was. He avoided the meta-narrative that leads to absurdities like stating that their are no purposes in evolution and then using the metphor of selfishness as if it were a biological fact.
The second case she puts forward concerns the range of ethics. Because 'scientism' promotes the idea of the solitary individual, many ethicists can argue only about ethics where there is a covenant between equals. The language of rights and duties applies to some extent here, but beyond this narrow band, we need other language to show what is right and wrong in our treatment of e.g. the dead, children, the insane, plants, animals and ourselves. Robinson Crusoe would not have thought it good to destroy his island!
Midgley's writing is clear, but I was unsure how the two main threads were to work together. ( )

Midgley is a pleasure to read. Her turn of phrase is amusing and engaging. Her perspective seems very sane. The claim is that evolution is not just a parsimonious theory about origins and life, but that it functions as a metaphor, indeed a myth (in its neutral sense), that can take on a life of its own. Midgley's method of giving the thumbs down is to use amusingly gentle words such as 'odd' and 'curious' for the tendency of some scientists to become so excited about their findings in their particular area, that they fall for the 'hubris' of thinking that their idea is capable (now or one day) of explaining everything. Midgley is careful to exonerate Darwin from this programme, as he was all too aware of these dangers, and explicitly distanced himself from the word 'evolution' and the idea of some kind of inexorable upward progress (Lamarck's ladder), and Spencer's vision of the 'survival of the fittest'. The language and approach of E O Wilson and sociobiology is given scathing treatment with a refutation of the idea that (in the words of Ghiselin) "scratch an 'altruist' and watch a 'hypocrite' bleed'".

Many celebrated writers are given the Midgley treatment. Dawkins' notorious over-metaphorising the idea of 'selfishness' in a gene is seen as implying a naïve 'bean-bag genetics', an 'animistic' personification of the gene, describing 'competition' emotively as a deliberate project, and what Midgley considers a sleight of hand in transfering the 'selfishness' of genes to humans: 'we are born selfish'. Monod's imagining of the absurdity (but in his view the unfortunate truth) of humans as alone in a godless universe is shown to be one mythic choice amongst other, more positive possibilities (eg a sense of oneness). Russell's 'logical atomism' in which there are only isolated truths is seen as an unnecessary reaction to the mystical holism of Hegel's scheme, and answered with Wittgenstein's observation that particulars do not always precede generalities.

As someone who lived for many years as a devout Christian believer, I was engaged by her discussion of what constitutes a 'religious' approach to 'awe, reverence and mystery' (ch 13). Inspiring quotations are given from Dostoevsky, James, and Russell about a sense of destiny, submission, purpose and humility in the face of the vastness of our ignorance that religion enables (but in Russell includes every 'deeply serious view of the world and human destiny'). This attitude is contrasted with the optimism of those such as E O Wilson, and Crick, who consider that the major part of the scientific programme is graspable in the forseeable future.

An appeal is made to reconcile 'right' and 'left' perspectives on life to replace the 'vs' with 'and' in 'reason vs feeling/emotion' or 'physical science vs the humanities'. Kipling's quotation is amusingly apt here:

Something I owe to the soil that grew-
More to the life that fed -
But most to Allah Who gave me two
Separate sides to my head

I would go without shirt or shoes
Friends, tobacco or bread
Sooner than for an instant lose
Either side of my head

In this spirit, the specialisation in science is seen to require a broader education as compensation, lest scientists compensate by over-applying the results of their particular work, or by finding themselves ill-equipped for the moral, ethical, aesthetic and cultural aspects of a full human life.

The author's parting shot is a discussion of the inadequacy of our inherited language of 'rights' and 'duty' to describe the most ethical relation to the non-human world, a theme taken up in her other works.

Favourite quotation:

"Meaning is connection, so it can always be removed from a pattern by cutting it up into sufficiently small pieces" (p 96)

This is a precursor to a much fuller treatment of 'greedy reductionism' and 'atomism' given in 'The Myths We Live By', a book I would recommend in preference to the earlier book of this review, alongside 'Science and Religion' in which Midgley discusses the need for a reconcilliation between science and artistic ways of knowing. Those two books render this one a strictly unnecessary but highly enjoyable supererogation.

Further informal notes here ( )