Selected article
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Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941) is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science author. He was formerly Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford and was a fellow of New College, Oxford.
Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he introduced into evolutionary biology an influential concept, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms.
Dawkins is well known for his candid criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics.
Dawkins is an atheist, secular humanist, sceptic, rationalist and supporter of the Brights movement. He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler", by analogy with English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that faith qualifies as a delusion − as a fixed false belief. As of November 2007, the English language version had sold more than 2 million copies and had been translated into 31 other languages, making it his most popular book to date.
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Did you know...
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- …that Francisco de Vitoria (pictured), a Spanish Renaissance Roman Catholic theologian, was the founder of the tradition in philosophy known as the School of Salamanca?
- ...that Collective Intentionality is a topic in the Philosophy of Mind that has been explored by John Searle, Margaret Gilbert, and J. David Velleman, among others?
- …that a 2001 discovery of lost manuscripts by Majorcan philosopher and writer Ramon Llull showed that he had indeed discovered the Borda count and Condorcet criterion, and as a result he has been called the father of computation theory?
- …that although the paradox, Buridan's ass, is named after French priest Jean Buridan, it had already been previously stated in De Caelo by Aristotle?
- …that besides being a philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz was an engineer, lawyer, philologist, sinophile, and a famed mathematician who co-invented calculus?
- …that while most Enlightenment scholars criticized the Byzantine system of the Eastern Roman Empire, Konstantin Leontiev, a scholar from the Russian Empire praised it for the very same reasons?
- …that Marc Sautet started the philosophical cafe known as Café Philosophique?
- …that criteria of truth are standards and rules used to judge the accuracy of statements and claims?
- …that a deductive fallacy is an argument that has true premises, but may still have a false conclusion?
- …that Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers is the first dated book printed in England?
- …that Wikipedia has information on everything?
- …that a successful experimental system must be stable and reproducible enough for scientists to make sense of the system's behavior, but unpredictable enough that it can produce useful results?
- …that the ancient Chinese text Huangdi Yinfujing, attributed to the mythical emperor Huangdi in the 3rd century BCE, may have been a forgery from the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE)?
- …that Time magazine editor Otto Fuerbringer was responsible for the controversial 1966 Is God Dead? cover?
- …that alternative theories of speciation besides natural selection include Lamarckism and orthogenesis?
- …that before the 17th century it was believed that all organisms grew from miniature versions of themselves that had existed since the beginning of creation, a theory called preformationism?
- …that children have trouble attributing implicit meaning to aspect verbs implicating non-completion such as start, but find implicit meaning in degree modifiers such as half, as in half-finished?
- …that Jagadguru Rāmabhadrācārya (pictured), a blind Hindu religious leader, has observed nine Payovrata, a six-month diet of only milk and fruits, per the fifth verse of the Dohāvalī composed by Tulasidāsa, which says that chanting the name of Rāma subsisting on a diet of milk and fruits for six months will result in all the auspiciousness and accomplishments in one's hand?
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