Prof Slams New Book: Bumptious, Tedious, Dated, Primitive and Incoherent. Guess Who The Author Is

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Coal baron and part-time climate denier Viscount Matt Ridley has suffered a stinging rebuke from the political professor John Gray in a review of his new popular science title, The Evolution of Everything.

Gray, the โ€œpre-eminent philosopher of [the] dayโ€, has attacked Ridleyโ€™s latest opus as โ€œa bumptious and tediously repetitive tractโ€, and a โ€œdated and mechanical version of rightwing libertarianismโ€, while suggesting his arguments are โ€œprimitive andย incoherent.โ€

Ridley has taken the extraordinary step of defending social Darwinism: the belief that the fittest societies and institutions survive historical development and, therefore, represent progress or a higher form ofย existence.

‘Anything butย New’

The view is anything but new. As Gray points out, social Darwinism was popularised by Friedrich von Hayek during the 1940s as the central justification for extreme free market economics, and is known in academic circles asย neoliberalism.

But social Darwinism has always been tainted by its association with Hitler and the Nazis in Germany during the same period, and, more generally, its association with Fascism. The idea that humans are like rats fighting to survive is pernicious and is not supported by the latest developments in evolutionaryย physiology.

Gray is emeritus professor of European thought at the London School of Economics (where Hayek once taught), and is lead book reviewer for the Guardian. His attack on Ridleyโ€™s latest work isย scathing.

Ridley apparently claims that free market capitalism is the highest form of human evolution, but fails to recognise that, if the state and regulations exist today, they must logically be part of the same evolutionaryย progress.

Northernย Rock

Worse still, Ridley goes back on what appeared to be a sincere apology for his central role in the collapse of Northern Rock, which left thousands of families destitute, instead blaming state regulators and outsideย interference.

Gray compares Ridleyโ€™s new revelations to the predictions of the 19th-century โ€œprophet of early capitalismโ€, Herbertย Spencer.

He adds: โ€œSpencerโ€™s last years were spent in baffled gloom. On the basis of this bumptious and tediously repetitive tract, itโ€™s difficult to imagine Ridley displaying a similar capacity for realistic observation orย self-criticism.โ€

The philosopher attacks Ridley as holding โ€œa dated and mechanical version of rightwing libertarianism,โ€ and asks: โ€œWhy should anyone accept Ridleyโ€™sย libertarianism?โ€

Badย Ideas

Later in the review, he adds: โ€œIf he was a more serious and reflective writer, Ridley might have given some thought to Evolution and Ethics, a lecture given in 1893 by T.H. Huxley, Darwinโ€™s first and greatest disciple. Huxley was concerned to debunk the idea that evolution could teach anything of ethicalย importance.โ€

He goes on to say: โ€œRidley recommends letting evolution take its course. But any halfway civilised morality involves interfering with the evolutionary process. There is nothing in any theory of evolution that tells us to protect the weak and help them live independent and worthwhileย lives.โ€

โ€œIf The Evolution of Everything has any value, itโ€™s as a demonstration that, outside of science, there isnโ€™t much progress โ€“ even of the vaguer sort โ€“ in the history ofย thought.

โ€œBad ideas arenโ€™t defeated by falsification, and they donโ€™t fade away. As Ridleyโ€™s book shows, they simply recur, quite often in increasingly primitive and incoherentย forms.โ€

The demolition by Gray is even more effective because the English philosopher has demonstrated no tribal political allegiance, attacking Communism, Enlightenment philosophy andย Humanism.

Human progress itself is a myth. We are โ€œweapon-making animals with an unquenchable fondness for killingโ€. He has, however, expressed increasing concern about the destruction of the natural environment.

Photo: IAB UK viaย Flickr

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