Thread by @EvolOdonata

Thankyou @hopihoekstra and @CorrieMoreau for removing your names from this blog post led by Razib Kahn.

I agree that the original article in @sciam was very problematic and deserved a critical rebuttal, but Kahn is not the guy who should lead it.

Thread with some thoughts 1/14

https://twitter.com/hopihoekstra/status/1483965066395459586

I confess I was not aware of the problematic history and questionable views expressed by Razib Kahn in the past, including his opinions on eugenics and affiliations with the "alt-right", but now I have informed myself. And it is not pretty. 2/

For me, Kahn was just a person I followed on Twitter, but given his questionable views on many issues I would never sign anything with him on any topic whatsoever.

Company matters more than one thinks. 3/

The debate about EO Wilson's legacy is needed, and should continue.

I see no reason to smear Wilson and accuse him for being a fanatic far-right nazi or ideological racist, but we should neither avoid discussing some of his more problematic viewpoints and ideological biases 4/

To be fair, some of the knee-jerk reactions against "Sociobiology" have not stood the test of time well, such as human behaviours are entirely culturally determined, with no biological or genetic basis.

But many other criticisms against Wilson were both fair and reasonable 5/

Wilson accused some of his critics like Gould and Lewontin for being "ideological" in their criticisms, pointing to their explicit left-wing politics and Marxist views.

In contrast, Wilson saw himself as just representing "science", telling how things "are". 6/

This is an extremely naive view, both philosophically and scientifically.

It is true that Gould and Lewontin were political, but they did never hide their views (which they should have credit for), but so was Wilson, even though he never admitted it 7/

So are many of Wilson's modern followers and admirers, like Stephen Pinker and @RichardDawkins: they are deeply political, even though they would never admit it.

Instead they pretend they are just objective observers of the world without any ideological filters 8/

To me, this is just laughable, as it is obvious to anyone with a minimum of historical and political knowledge that Wilson, Pinker and Dawkins are deeply embedded in a pro-capitalist, Western liberal ideological tradition with its roots in the European Enlightment 9/

This tradition is not entirely bad or evil, and the Enlightment entailed some good things.

So did capitalism, when it replaced feudalism. But one should not pretend that this is the only view one could view the world through, and neither that it is an apolitical view. 10/

I personally do not share the views by Wilson, Pinker and Dawkins that Western capitalist market economy of the current style is the only possible or even the best economic system we can imagine, but that is not my main point.

My main point is this: 11/

If you are a scientist: don't pretend you are "apolitical". Because it is a self-deception and and an illusion. You are always political, whether you admit it or not, as you are not an objective fact-seeking machine, but an organism with built-in biases 12/

Learn from Lewontin and Gould and don't be afraid of admitting that you have biases, resulting from your social, national and political background, education and class 13/

If everyone who engage in the much-needed discussion about the positive and negative scientific legacy of EO Wilson and other prominent figures could just admit this and stop pretending you are just defending "science" against "ideology", maybe we can make some progress 14/end