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David C. Stove

Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution Paperback – March 15, 2007

by David Stove (Author)

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Whatever your opinion of `Intelligent Design,â youâll find Stoveâs criticism of what he calls `Darwinismâ difficult to stop reading. Stoveâs blistering attack on Richard Dawkinsâ `selfish genesâ and `memesâ is unparalleled and unrelenting. A discussion of spiders who mimic bird droppings is alone worth the price of the book. Darwinian Fairytales should be read and pondered by anyone interested in sociobiology, the origin of altruism, and the awesome process of evolution. --Martin Gardner, author of Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience

Print length

345 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Encounter Books
Publication date

March 15, 2007
Dimensions

5.9 x 1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1594032009
ISBN-13

978-1594032004
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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Philosopher David Stove concludes in his hilarious and razor-sharp inquiry that Darwin's theory of evolution is "a ridiculous slander on human beings." But wait! Stove is no "creationist" nor a proponent of so-called "intelligent design." He is a theological skeptic who admits Darwin's great genius and acknowledges that the theory of natural selection is the most successful biological theory in history. But Stove also thinks that it is also one of the most overblown and gives a penetrating inventory of what he regards as the "unbelievable claims" of Darwinism. Darwinian Fairytales is a must-read book for people who want to really understand the issues behind the most hotly debated scientific controversy of our time.

About the Author

David Charles Stove (1927-1994), was an Australian philosopher of science, and essayist in the popular press. His work in philosophy of science included detailed criticisms of David Hume's inductive skepticism, as well as the alleged irrationalism of his disciplinary contemporaries Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Paul Feyerabend. He also marshalled a positive response to the problem of induction in his 1986 work, The Rationality of Induction. Stove was also a staunch critic of sociobiology, going as far as describing the field as a new religion in which genes play the role of gods. Stove is best known for scathing attacks on a variety of concepts, especially Popperian falsificationism, Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism. Stove remains controversial. Some regard him as one of the great and witty defenders of common sense, who managed to defeat inductive skepticism. However others are skeptical of his arguments for induction and his criticisms of the philosophies of contemporaries Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Paul Feyerabend, while his extreme language has led others to regard Stove as a mere reactionary and a controversialist.

Stove also wrote articles on a variety of topics for non-philosophical magazines. As he got older many of his articles and books became increasingly irreverent. Stove achieved increased prominence in North America in the early 2000's when Roger Kimball published a collection of his essays and since his death in 1994 four collections of his writings have been published

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Encounter Books (March 15, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 345 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1594032009
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594032004
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.09 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.9 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,616,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8,124 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
- #9,084 in Evolution (Books)
- #52,405 in Philosophy (Books)

Customer Reviews:
84 ratings

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5 star		64%
4 star		15%
3 star		9%
2 star		1%
1 star		11%

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Gaby

A most healing reading!

Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2019

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I read this book after reading several books on Intelligent Design. Even though I didn't think I would find anything particularly new, I was wrong. I've never enjoyed a philosophist's take as much as I loved Stove's view on Darwin. Stove is excellent at ripping apart all the B.S. in Darwinian thinking in a funny and surgical way. He' also has an amazing talent at getting to the crux of the matter when it comes to all that is wrong with pathological and dogmatic thinking. I felt like I was liberated of a few hundred years of pathological indoctrination. Bless Stove's soul and may he rest in peace knowing that his writings were highly useful for truth seekers.

6 people found this helpful

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Robert Bezimienny

Marking the explanatory limits of the theory

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2008

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For his rhetorical criticisms to have bite, David Stove focuses on a particular vision of Darwin's own thought and, later in the book, on the less circumspect pronouncements of Richard Dawkins. In both cases, Stove denies that he has constructed `straw men'. He wants his criticisms to strike at the core of Darwinian thought, both in its historical form and in the guise of current `Neo-Darwinism'. While his targets may not be made entirely of straw, they certainly do not seem central - it seems entirely likely that a proponent could reject Stove's characterisation and still feel a `mainstream' Darwinian.

In the early essays, Stove makes central to Darwin's thought the claim by the Reverend T.R.Malthus that populations tend to increase to the limits of their food supply. This idea is said to have been to key to Darwin proposing an explanatory theory - suddenly the change in species evident in the fossil record could be explained in terms of natural variation and Malthus' principle. Stove then delights in showing that populations are not constrained solely by food supply; he cites Malthus's own revisions to the theory, adding first the `biological' opposition of famine, war, and pestilence, and finally `moral restraint'; and, with rhetorical relish, he states the obvious in that humans do not, as a matter of fact, reproduce as frequently as well they might - and `hunger' is not the only restraint here. Stove's writing has wit, but it is also repetitive and verges on the condescending.

Stove also feels that `genunine' Darwinian thought is committed to a continuous and literal battle between conspecifics. If blood is not being spilt, then, for Stove, this is evidence that what is `predicted' by Darwinism is false. With this characterisation of Darwinism in mind, Stove then labours the point that we, along with other animals and plants, are not constantly tearing at each others throats. Many pages of faintly humorous examples follow.

In these essays, Stove has shown that Darwinian thinking, at least when deployed in the ways Stove cites, is a poor explanation of the everyday behaviour of humans, and for that matter most organisms. But Darwin's theory is one that hopes to explain the evolution of the species, not everyday behaviour. The fact that its explanatory limits stop well short of everyday behaviour is a point well made, but not that interesting a point - certainly it is not surprising, even by the lights of the theory itself.

When it comes to tackling Richard Dawkins, Stove aims his criticism at the imprudent extension of Darwinian explanation to human motivation. His strategy here is analogous to that mentioned above. In `The Selfish Gene' Dawkins makes himself a ripe target for such criticism, and the blows surely fall. Stove pillories Dawkins' use of anthropomorphic language in discussions of genes, along with Dawkins' disingenuous promises to translate such ideas back into the `respectable' language of science; Stove also gives a plausible psychological explanation as to why such interpretations of Neo-Darwinism are popular, drawing analogies with other `puppet theories' of human motivation or `demonologies', positing a perverse inclination to, evidence be damned, regard humans as `fundamentally' selfish, and acknowledging the startling effect the discovery of genes has had on the human psyche in general. As an addendum, the theory of memes is summarily dispatched, although with less rigorous argument that might be expected - Dawkins' own reservations, contained in a paragraph of The Extended Phenotype, are, ironically, more damning than Stove's invective.

Stove's discussion of `inclusive fitness' theory is more telling. He highlights the explanatory limitations of such a theory by demonstrating that many events it would predict do not in fact occur, often real life presenting the very opposite actuality.

Ultimately, the book reads as a warning not to take Darwinian theory as explanatory beyond certain boundaries. For fossils, and some of the baffling adaptations seen in insects, plants, and animals, the theory offers an explanation where no alternative exists. As some kind of guide as to how a human life is in fact lead or, worse still, how it should be lead, Darwinian thinking tells us precisely nothing. In sum, this is Stove's point and, unfortunately, obvious though it be, it seems like it is one that needs making. Perhaps thanks to its repetitiveness, lack of argumentitve rigour, and its sarcastic tone, the book is an entertaining read - although to actually extract arguments which one can use in one's own discussion is a much more onerous task.

6 people found this helpful

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Kyle K.

Good material for both an evolutionist and a creationist

Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2018

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Brilliance. I appreciate the perspective of a person who states he feels evolution is correct, who can also present good philosophical arguments against Darwinism itself.

2 people found this helpful

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Aramovich

What Did I Get Into

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2013

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This is an excellent book, but don't expect an easy read as with any philosopher. Stone's main point, which he trots out about a dozen times before the last page, is that humans so misfit the orthodoxy of Darwinian evolution that we can't possibly be a result of it. Interesting.

But, that is about as defensible as "because we have different genes than chimps, we got here by evolution". It all depends upon the structure you start with. Either idea is defensible only in that there is no evidence that absolutely forces us to abandon either model. You cannot say that simply because your model seem to fit (today) that it may not die a horrible intellectual death tomorrow.

What?! You mean science cannot prove anything? Sorry. Science can only disprove something and that makes a book like this, although heavy reading, an entertaining use of your time. Sometimes it's fun to see how the other side thinks.

4 people found this helpful

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Andy

Iconoclastic and punchy attack on the excesses of Neo-Darwinism

Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2014

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A wonderfully iconoclastic attack on the cult of Neo-Darwinism by an atheist philosopher. Stove does a wonderful job of highlighting the cracks not so much in evolutionary theory but its excesses—especially some of the ridiculous extremes it has been taken to by Richard Dawkins. Stove is unapologetic as he deconstructs Dawkins view of humanity ("genetic Calvinism") and meme theory and does so with humour and energy. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments as well as deep thinking. Stove has been a bit neglected since his untimely death: 'Darwinian Fairytales' deserves a wide reading by atheists and theists, simply for its fresh take on the subject.

10 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

awz1

Darwinism does not apply to humans

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 26, 2018

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Some very good arguments against darwinism being applied to humans. Stove clearly demonstrates that even if darwinism is true for all plant and animal life forms, it is not so with relations to humans. This is made vividly clear through interesting examples of human social behaviour. Stove also has a very witty and capturing writing style.

One person found this helpful

J. Wilson

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 5, 2016

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This man is really funny. I wish I could afford more of his books.

Bianca

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 7, 2016

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Perfect

Abid Lawliet

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 27, 2016

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Thanks

Neutral

Contrarian

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 13, 2008

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David Stove was a well known Australian contrarian opposing intellectual fashions such as feminism, Marxism and, in the final years before his suicide in 1994, Darwinism. Stove's strength - his wit and ability to draw out the absurdity in the prevailing paradigms of the intellectual world - are well set out in Darwinian Fairytales. He draws attention to the intellectual environment within which Darwin lived, the influence on the Origins of Species of the flawed ideas of Thomas Malthus on population, the political objective of Darwin's works and the failure of Darwinists to confront the dilemmas inherent in the application of evolution by natural selection and adaption to humankind.

The political context of the Origins, both prior to publication and, in the long term, to the development of the pseudo-science of Eugenics reflected the pomposity of the Victorian intelligentsia who believed they led the world, carrying Social Darwinism and "enlightenment" to foreign climes as a "favoured race".

Although he professed no religion himself Stove placed Darwinism in the category of a secular religion. "Genetics has merely provided the new religionists with the precise locality of their gods, on the chromosomes of the sex cells." However, the moral and intellectual arrogance, bordering on madness, of the new Darwinist socio-biological priesthood in the era of post-modernist deconstruction leaves them as vulnerable to attack as their monotheist religious predecessors.

Darwinism, he concludes, is irrelevant to human life. It does not describe or explain it. Darwin knew it, Huxley knew it and modern day Darwinists know it too but have deserted science for pseudo-science and the advocacy of atheism, suppressing truth in the process.

This book would have received five star status had not Stove's polemics and wordiness got in the way of a straightforward read. Nonetheless it is an excellent book which should be read as a corrective to the mythical world of Dawkins's meme which has perpetuated the errors of Darwin and Malthus for a century and a half and produced countless deaths of those considered not fit to survive.