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Mary Midgley

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Mary Midgley, née Scrutton, (born 1919-09-19) is a British moral philosopher. She was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and is best known for her popular works on religion, science and ethics. She strongly opposes reductionist and scientistic philosophies and is especially concerned with attempts, as she sees it, to make science function as a substitute for the humanities, a role for which she claims it is wholy inadequate. Midgley has famously sparred with Richard Dawkins over selfish genes and memes and has also written in favour of a moral interpretation of the Gaia theory.

Biography

Midgely was born in London to Lesley and Canon Tom Scrutton, the chaplain at Kings College, Cambridge. She was educated at Downe House School (originally based in the former home of Charles Darwin) and Somerville College, Oxford where she was a scholar. She married Dr Geoffrey Midgley in 1950 and they have three sons.

She wrote her first book, Beast and Man, at the age of 56. "I wrote no books until I was a good 50, and I'm jolly glad because I didn't know what I thought before then". 1 Since then she has written a series of books and other publications, which have led to her being described as "fiercely combative", "the most frightening philosopher in the country" and "the foremost scourge of scientific pretension in this country: someone whose wit is admired even by those who feel she sometimes oversteps the mark." 1

Thought and writings

Midgley sees philosophy as plumbing, that is, something that nobody notices until it goes wrong. "Then suddenly we become aware of some bad smells, and we have to take up the floorboards and look at the concepts of even the most ordinary piece of thinking. The great philosophers ... noticed how badly things were going wrong, and made suggestions about how they could be dealt with." 2

She is not a Christian, as she believes that it is impossible for educated people to subscribe to many of its central doctrines. However, she also believes that the world's religions can't simply be ignored: "It is absurd to talk as if religion consisted entirely of mindless anxiety, bad cosmology, and human sacrifice." 1

It turns out that the evils which have infested religion are not confined to it, but are ones that can accompany any successful human institution. Nor is it even clear that religion itself is something that the human race either can or should be cured of.

— Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By (2004)

Midgley's first book Beast and Man (published in 1978) was an examination of human nature and a reaction against both the reductionism of sociobiology and the relativism and behaviorism then prelevant in much of social science. Midgley argued that humans were more similar to animals than many social scientists then acknowledged, while animals were in many ways more sophisticated than humans. Midgley also criticised the belief that humans could be understood in terms of their genetic make-up, as popularised in Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (published in 1976). Instead, Midgley argued that humans (and their relationship to animals) could be better understood by using the qualitative methods of ethology and comparative psychology.

Writing in the 2002 Introduction to the reprint of Evolution as a Religion (first published in 1985) Midgley reports that she wrote both this book and the later Science and Salvation (1992) to counter the "quasi-scientific speculation" of "certain remarkable prophetic and metaphysical passages that appeared suddenly in scientific books.. often in their last chapters." The first book dealt with the theories of evolutionists (including Dawkins') while the second book dealt with physicists and Artificial intelligence researchers. Midgley writes that she still believes that these theories "have nothing to do with any reputable theory of evolution" and will not solve the real social and moral problems the world is facing, either through genetic engineering or using machines. She concludes: "These schemes still seem to me to be just displacement activities proposed in order to avoid facing our real difficulties."

In exposing these rhetorical attempts to turn science into a comprehensive ideology, I am not attacking science but defending it against dangerous misconstructions.

— Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By (2004)

Midgley and Dawkins

In volume 53 (1978) of Philosophy (the journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy), J.L. Mackie published an article entitled The Law of the Jungle: Moral Alternatives and Principles of Evolution [1], praising Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene, and indicating ways in which Dawkins' theory might be applied to moral philosophy. Midgley responded in volume 54 (1979) with Gene-Juggling[2]. This article criticised Dawkins' concepts, but was written in a remarkably intemperate and personal tone, and, in turn, has been criticised by many biologists as showing a fundamental misunderstanding of both Dawkins' ideas and ethology. For example, for rhetorical purposes, Midgley interprets the expression "selfish gene" to literally mean that genes have a psychological dimension.

Mackie[3] and Dawkins[4] responded in volume 56 (1981). Both authors criticised her rudeness and argued that Midgley had misunderstood their arguments. In volume 58 (1983), Midgley responded to these criticisms[5], saying : "Apology is due, not only for the delay but for the impatient tone of my article. One should not lose one’s temper, and doing so always makes for confused argument. My basic objections remain. But I certainly ought to have expressed them more clearly and temperately".

The bad feeling between Dawkins and Midgely apparently remains 3, while Midgley has continued to criticise Dawkins' ideas.

Publications

Books:

  • Beast And Man: The Roots of Human Nature 1978 (revised edition 1995) Routledge ISBN 0415289874
  • Heart and Mind: The Varieties of Moral Experience 1981 Routledge ISBN 0415304490
  • Animals And Why They Matter 1983 University of Georgia Press ISBN 0820320412
  • Wickedness 1984 Routledge ISBN 0415253985
  • Evolution As A Religion 1985 Routledge (reprinted with new introduction 2002) ISBN 0415278333
  • Wisdom, Information and Wonder: What Is Knowledge For? 1989 Routledge ISBN 0415028302
  • Science And Salvation: A Modern Myth and Its Meaning 1992 Routledge ISBN 0415107733
  • The Ethical Primate: Humans, Freedom and Morality 1994 Routledge ISBN 041513224X
  • Utopias, Dolphins and Computers: Problems of Philosophical Plumbing 2000 Routledge ISBN 0415133785
  • Science And Poetry 2001 Routledge ISBN 0415276322
  • Myths We Live By 2003 Routledge ISBN 0415340772
  • The Owl of Minerva: A Memoir 2005 Routledge ISBN 0415367883 Midgley's autobiography

Pamphlets:

Selected Articles:

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