Product Description

"Whatever your opinion of ‘Intelligent Design,’ you’ll find Stove’s criticism of what he calls ‘Darwinism’ difficult to stop reading. Stove’s blistering attack on Richard Dawkins’ ‘selfish genes’ and ‘memes’ is unparalleled and unrelenting. A discussion of spiders who mimic bird droppings is alone worth the price of the book. Darwinian Fairytales should be read and pondered by anyone interested in sociobiology, the origin of altruism, and the awesome process of evolution." --Martin Gardner, author of Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #313948 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Like a clever agnostic in Sunday school, Stove (Scientific Irrationalism) relentlessly frustrates Darwinism in this posthumous collection of 11 linked essays. To the chagrin of creationists, however, he also takes pains to note he is of no religion and believes it's "overwhelmingly probable that humans evolved from some other animal." His more modest objective is to show that Darwinism, while largely valid, fails to explain known humanity. Unfortunately, this effort is confused: if Darwin's theory of evolution were true, "there would be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive," when "it is perfectly obvious that human life is not like that." To illustrate, Stove cites altruism, alcohol, anal intercourse, abortion and other behaviors that shorten lives or lessen the number of children people have. He goes so far as to condemn Darwinism as a "ridiculous slander on human beings," whom he views as mammals, but not animals in the evolutionary sense. The great unexamined problem in all of this is how did humans jump off the evolutionary track? This is not to say that Stove, who made a name for himself as a conservative philosopher (most recently at the University of South Wales), is necessarily wrong. Rather, he exists in a skeptical abyss, borrowing from two distinct and potentially correct perspectives. This makes his work provocative, but flawed.
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From the Publisher
Philosopher David Stove concludes in his hilarious and razor-sharp inquiry that Darwin's theory of evolution is "a ridiculous slander on human beings." But wait! Stove is no "creationist" nor a proponent of so-called "intelligent design." He is a theological skeptic who admits Darwin's great genius and acknowledges that the theory of natural selection is the most successful biological theory in history. But Stove also thinks that it is also one of the most overblown and gives a penetrating inventory of what he regards as the "unbelievable claims" of Darwinism. Darwinian Fairytales is a must-read book for people who want to really understand the issues behind the most hotly debated scientific controversy of our time.

About the Author
David Charles Stove (1927-1994), was an Australian philosopher of science, and essayist in the popular press. His work in philosophy of science included detailed criticisms of David Hume's inductive skepticism, as well as the alleged irrationalism of his disciplinary contemporaries Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Paul Feyerabend. He also marshalled a positive response to the problem of induction in his 1986 work, The Rationality of Induction. Stove was also a staunch critic of sociobiology, going as far as describing the field as a new religion in which genes play the role of gods. Stove is best known for scathing attacks on a variety of concepts, especially Popperian falsificationism, Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism. Stove remains controversial. Some regard him as one of the great and witty defenders of common sense, who managed to defeat inductive skepticism. However others are skeptical of his arguments for induction and his criticisms of the philosophies of contemporaries Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Paul Feyerabend, while his extreme language has led others to regard Stove as a mere reactionary and a controversialist.

Stove also wrote articles on a variety of topics for non-philosophical magazines. As he got older many of his articles and books became increasingly irreverent. Stove achieved increased prominence in North America in the early 2000's when Roger Kimball published a collection of his essays and since his death in 1994 four collections of his writings have been published

Customer Reviews

Solid, brilliant, amusing.
Many scientists and laypersons, sadly, never read philosophy of science. Though informal and humorous, this is a fine introduction to the genre. Those who grasp its importance may also enjoy Midgley's "Darwinism as a Religion" and Polanyi's "Science, Faith, and Society." Like Stove, but with less humour, they harangue those (such as Dawkins and Sagan) who publish popular propaganda or religion disguised as science.

Stove highlights how illogical science can be silly or, in the case of neo-Darwinism applied to humankind, insulting. Midgley does that and more--especially by showing how Darwinism's core tenets are held by faith. Polanyi, though, is the scariest of the lot, for he describes (from his experiences of Nazism and Stalinism) how pop evolution has led to the inhumanities of abortion, euthanasia, eugenics and genocide.

When Stove attacks neo-Darwinian's use of purposive language (for, in order to, plan, strategy, etc.), and especially, when he compares it to the language of Intelligent Design, he is very, very good. I've long wondered how unguided natural forces, without the benefits of intent, are supposed to "adapt for" anything. Perhaps most delightful is Stove's description of how the anti-religious Dawkins has ordained himself the high priest of gene worship. At times, Stove takes too long (by, say, 20-30%) saying what he says. His prose is so delightful, though, that I forgive (even welcome) his verbosity.

Reviewers read books. Since "reviewer" John's last sentence points out that he has not read this one, I'm not sure what he was reviewing. If, however, he's looking for "real scientists" (i.e. not philosophers or Christians!) who question neo-Darwinism, he'll find plenty, of all faiths or none, among the hundreds of credentialed academics at www.dissentfromdarwin.org

My field (linguistics) intersects with and draws upon acoustics, anatomy, anthropology, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, information theory, literature, physics, statistics, and yes, logic and philosophy, to name just a few. All sciences (which used to be called "natural philosophies") in fact, depend upon philosophy--esp. logic--for their foundational procedures: falsifiability, inference, proof, etc. Stove's arguments and examples show what happens when scientists do without logic: they write hilarious fairytales about selfish genes or flirtatious cabbages. Read Stove, but don't stop there (and don't miss Polanyi or Midgley).

A skeptical, analytical philosopher takes on Darwin, Dawkins
"[Stove] is particularly good at exposing the `amazingly arrogant habit of Darwinians' of `blaming the fact, instead of blaming their theory' when they encounter contrary biological facts. Doctrinaire Darwinists have an answer for everything, always a bad sign in science, since it means that mere facts can never prove them wrong." - from Roger Kimball's Introduction

It is not at all the case that Stove objects to Darwinism on religious grounds, in fact he believes that present life has by some means evolved from earlier forms; however he is quite certain that "Darwin's explanation of evolution, even though it is . . . still the best one available, is not true." Stove would object, and strongly so, to having his essays cast as being sympathetic to `creationism' or, so far as I can tell, `intelligent design', as he defines himself as a man "of no religion." His knowledge and scholarship of Darwinian theory is self-evidently vast; he suggests that he has "wasted" his time reading hundreds of Darwinism's books and `Darwinian Fairytales' makes it quite evident that he has indeed studied every prominent Darwinian "from 1859 to the present hour."

I had just begun reading Richard Dawkins' `The Blind Watchmaker' when I noticed that David Stove's `Darwinian Fairytales' had been reprinted. While reading them both it quickly seemed imperative that I read Dawkins' `The Selfish Gene' before proceeding with either TBW or DF. So that is what I did. Reading the three books in close conjunction was quite a fascinating experience, and, as I have indicated elsewhere (my review of TSG), Dawkins didn't fare to well.

Stove, the late Australian philosopher of science, effectively skewers Dawkins (especially TSG, but, to a lesser extent, TBW as well), Stove nails E.O. Wilson too, in fact he takes a troupe of Darwinian champions to the woodshed -- T.H. Huxley, R.D. Alexander, R. Trivers, R.A. Fisher, among many others. A skeptic in Hume's mold, Stove has acerbically critiqued various iconic founts of Western thought, some more effectively than others, so Darwinians need not feel singled out (but of course they probably will). This book was his last, completed not long before his death in 1994.

Although he presents a few other criticisms, Stove relentlessly targets (1) Darwinism's ideological death-struggle with "altruism" -- that it must deny is actually altruism, and (2) Darwinism's non-falsifiable teleological doctrine: the immutable Lordship of "the selfish gene" -- a doggedly fideistic article of simple faith. Darwinism's teachings on altruism are easily sacked, both by clear logic and by mere empirical evidence; its supposedly anti-teleological teleology of itself qualifies Darwinism as being a religion.

If there is something to be faulted in Stove's book (a collection of 11 essays), it is the repetitiveness (not surprising as this is usually a problem in works of argumentation, witness especially Dawkins, for example). Long after Stove has illustrated the teleological confusions and defeated the "altruism" defamations demanded by Dawkins, Wilson, and the like, he is still throwing the badly bloodied doctrines to the ground. Because of this, and because each of the essays can more or less stand on its own, I recommend reading the first essay (Darwin's Dilemma), the second and the last (eleventh) before heading into the others. If the essay (#4) treating the influence of Malthus' population dynamics on Darwin's thought becomes dry or uninteresting, then skip it, perhaps moving to essays #9 (A New Religion) or 10 (Paley's Revenge, or Purpose Regained).

enjoy the ride
Modern "scientists" have elevated evolution to a cult. Enter intelligent design (ID) critics, whacked on by their roots with creationists (their own pre-Socratics), and you have one helluva fight. With these ideologues migrating to extremism and away from reason as understood by both scientific method and Aristotelian logic you are bound to have very murky waters indeed. The debate becomes unrecognizable to the classically educated.

Enter the reasonable atheist apologist for no side with whom people of faith (like myself) and no faith (like my friends) can wholeheartedly cheer on by anchoring the conversation in reason once again. The late David Stove does just that, with precision, wit, logic, clarity, and joy. Reading this book is like a breath of fresh air, and restores faith in human reason and the ability of thinkers to expose unsupportable extremes cloaked in unearned authority, whether it is "science" or "religion." A marvellous book which will have ideologues steaming and truth lovers and sideline quarterbacks enjoying the game.