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Yes, this stood out to me when I read the article. The examples he gives are all pop-science, all take some thesis and making a story from it that'll be interes

Yes, this stood out to me when I read the article. The examples he gives are all pop-science, all take some thesis and making a story from it that'll be interesting to a general audience. I feel like he's looking at this through the prism of his speciality (producing interactive learning materials), and by doing that has missed the point a little bit. He's looking a genre of books at if they're a different thing to what they actually are, it's the wrong level. I get reading a book once doesn't translate directly to "facts retained in memory" whereas his idealised new form of media does. But as you say, his examples are edutainment. I feel like what he's suggesting only usefully applies to either textbooks (which he's separated off into a different category anyway) or to a situation where the aim is to memorise as much as possible in a single reading. Which is fine! But it doesn't really need to happen for pop science -- just getting the general gist of an idea across in an entertaining package is okay.

radford-neal 6y ago
"The examples he gives are all pop-science" I don't think that's true of The Selfish Gene (and even more so for its successor, The Extended Phenotype, as one can tell just from the title). It seems to me to be a serious work on evolutionary biology.
- mongol 6y ago
  Agreed. Was it not The Selfish Gene that coined "meme"? Or was that word used before by Dawkins in research papers or similar?
  - liability 6y ago
    'Meme' came about when Dawkins modified the word 'mimeme' to sound like 'gene'. AFAIK that was first done in that book.
- jfengel 6y ago
  It's "pop science" in the sense that he's taking academic work and making it palatable to a general audience, minus the rigor and complexity. His sources were books like Fisher's Genetical Theory of Natural Selection and papers by WD Hamilton. It's not that it isn't serious. Pop science doesn't have to be BS. But it often risks conveying to readers that they have a better grounding than they actually have, which The Selfish Gene has also done. Pop science books are good ways to attract young readers to the sciences and to keep older readers engaged in it, but they are not in and of themselves contributions to the field.
  - radford-neal 6y ago
    I'm not really up on the history of these ideas, but my impression is that The Selfish Gene was a contribution in the same sense that Einstein's paper on special relativity was a contribution. Neither really changed what one would predict the result of any experiment to be (the Lorentz transformation had already been produced before Einstein, by, err, Lorentz...), but rather in the perspective by which one views the field, which does affect future research.
- RobertKerans 6y ago
  He's a populariser of science though. No criticism intended by that. His books are still serious works, but the serious intent is to educate a general audience, not be an important document for a specialist audience. It's a story about his theory. And good popularisers of science, which I think he definitely is (or was?) are good storytellers. He takes a basic thesis then uses multiple lyrical examples to illustrate it. As a layman, I loved that book and read it several times, it made me feel like I had an understanding of genetics, and many of its ideas have informed how I think about things now (the additional, if somewhat vague, stuff he added re memetics in particular). But I'd also say that book is an epitome of pop science, and that feeling of understanding of genetics was just the basic concepts clicking. Which is also fine, that's a really good thing! Edit: to go back to original article: memorising the stuff in detail isn't hugely useful -- it's a useful jumping off point to investigate in more detail, but the books basic ideas are easily understood, that's the point

radford-neal 6y ago

"The examples he gives are all pop-science" I don't think that's true of The Selfish Gene (and even more so for its successor, The Extended Phenotype, as one can tell just from the title). It seems to me to be a serious work on evolutionary biology.

mongol 6y ago
Agreed. Was it not The Selfish Gene that coined "meme"? Or was that word used before by Dawkins in research papers or similar?
- liability 6y ago
  'Meme' came about when Dawkins modified the word 'mimeme' to sound like 'gene'. AFAIK that was first done in that book.
jfengel 6y ago
It's "pop science" in the sense that he's taking academic work and making it palatable to a general audience, minus the rigor and complexity. His sources were books like Fisher's Genetical Theory of Natural Selection and papers by WD Hamilton. It's not that it isn't serious. Pop science doesn't have to be BS. But it often risks conveying to readers that they have a better grounding than they actually have, which The Selfish Gene has also done. Pop science books are good ways to attract young readers to the sciences and to keep older readers engaged in it, but they are not in and of themselves contributions to the field.
- radford-neal 6y ago
  I'm not really up on the history of these ideas, but my impression is that The Selfish Gene was a contribution in the same sense that Einstein's paper on special relativity was a contribution. Neither really changed what one would predict the result of any experiment to be (the Lorentz transformation had already been produced before Einstein, by, err, Lorentz...), but rather in the perspective by which one views the field, which does affect future research.
RobertKerans 6y ago
He's a populariser of science though. No criticism intended by that. His books are still serious works, but the serious intent is to educate a general audience, not be an important document for a specialist audience. It's a story about his theory. And good popularisers of science, which I think he definitely is (or was?) are good storytellers. He takes a basic thesis then uses multiple lyrical examples to illustrate it. As a layman, I loved that book and read it several times, it made me feel like I had an understanding of genetics, and many of its ideas have informed how I think about things now (the additional, if somewhat vague, stuff he added re memetics in particular). But I'd also say that book is an epitome of pop science, and that feeling of understanding of genetics was just the basic concepts clicking. Which is also fine, that's a really good thing! Edit: to go back to original article: memorising the stuff in detail isn't hugely useful -- it's a useful jumping off point to investigate in more detail, but the books basic ideas are easily understood, that's the point