Review of the Dawkins festschrift

Nick Wade reviews and summarizes the new festschrift to Richard Dawkins, Richard Dawkins : How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think. Here is the list of contributors (from Edge):

Dr Robert Aunger, Senior Lecturer, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
David P.Barash, Professor of Psychology, University of Washington
Sir Patrick Bateson, Professor of Ethology, University of Cambridge
Dr Seth Bullock, University of Leeds
Helena Cronin, Co-Director, Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, LSE
Martin Daly, Department of Psychology, McMaster University
Marian Stamp Dawkins, Professor of Animal Behaviour, Oxford University
Daniel C. Dennett, Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University
David Deutsch, Professor, Centre for Quantum Computation, University of Oxford
A.C.Grayling, Professor of Philosophy, Birkbeck College
David Haig, Associate Professor of Biology, Harvard University
Michael Hansell, Professor, Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow
The Rt Revd Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford
Sir John Krebs, Professor, Department of Zoology, Oxford Universit
Dr Marek Kohn, author
Randolph Nesse, Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology, The University of Michigan
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology, Harvard University
Philip Pullman, author
Andrew Read, Professor of Natural History, University of Edinburgh
Dr Matt Ridley, author
Michael Ruse, Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University
Ullica Segerstrale, Professor of Sociology, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago
Michael Shermer, Director of the Skeptics Society, columnist, and author
Kim Sterelny, Professor of Philosophy, Victoria University, Wellington
Margo Wilson, Professor of Psychology, McMaster University

The list is long and varied. Dawkins has influenced psychologists and philosophers, but note that there are biological scientists on the list. A while back I left Dawkins off the top 10 evolutionary biologists list, but that doesn't mean I think he is an inconsequential individual. As a public intellectual he is top notch and wide ranging, but people shouldn't confuse that for original scientific research, which is a different brand of inquiry and analysis than what Dawkins has specialized in. Surveying the list above it could be argued that Richard Dawkins has had a broader impact than he would have had if he focused on research in evolution and ethology after obtaining his Ph.D. One might even ponder the intangibles, for instance, how many biologists were inspired by reading one of Dawkins' books? These are not trivial matters. I would like to think that W.D. Hamilton's body of work would speak for itself, but reading any of Dawkins' books and you see that his prose brings to life the science of others. Sometimes packaging matters a great deal.

Some would argue that Dawkins' evangelistic atheism is infantile (I am more neutral on this question than others, I think it is an important contribution to the chorus of disparate voices), others might find his Leftish politics uncomfortable (man is a political animal, deal!), while there are those who would take issue with his gene selectionist paradigm. But, no matter these dissents, Dawkins does express, I believe, the central tendency of modern evolutionary biology. He may be a bit zealous, and his way with words might elide over problems with his own paradigm, but in the end the question to ask, has he been good for science? I believe yes, and unequivocally so.