I was interviewed about a month ago by Thomas Mahler and Laetitia Strauch -Bonart for the French magazine L’Express; the topic was attacks on the Left coming from science. (The title translates as “Big interview. Jerry Coyne: ‘The attacks against science from the left are worrisome.'”)
If you can read French, the link below is free (click screenshot). If you want a not-so-great Google translation into English, simply contact me.
Great article and good resumé of your ideas. I loved the jab at Foucault and Derrida. I’ve tried to read both and never got past the first few pages.
I found several Foucault works very readable, Derrida’s less so.
There are very interesting remarks about morality and nature (Nietzsche well knew how “problematic” was the basing of systems of morality on nature) and about “human exceptionalism”, explanations of human behavior as having anything whatsoever to do with biology being “problematic” both to the right (humans having been made in the image of God) and to the left (culture, language, history, political economy, etc being fully sufficient to explain the comportment of “featherless bipeds”).
Great interview and well rendered in French. You mention Lewontin. I visited him in the early 1980s for a book project, and while we were talking, he received a call by the editors of Le Monde, asking if the interview transcript or translation of his article was OK..
Yes, Dick could speak and read French fluently, and had a French-speaking governess when he was a child to facilitate this!
I loved your explanation of binary sexes in biology. Thank you for sending the link to the article. I thought the conversation was fantastic.
“… the topic was attacks on the Left coming from science.” Oui. La science n’aime pas la gauche, ni la droite.
What a truly great interview!
Great and wide-ranging well done interview
Had to look up “autochtone” = native
Liked the vinegar fly
You cover many taboos but there are more in my view. For instance, any measurable characteristic has ready distributions that can be used to compare populations or races, but only at the peril of the measurer being tarred as racist
Good article. It seems the interviewer did well in addressing your main theses, and allowed you to explain them clearly.
Great interview, boss. Particularly the Maori “science” scandal. Everything you can do to amplify that mess is a service to NZ and its education system, a service that kiwis themselves are estopped from doing.
My French is crap but google.translate does a good job on European languages. (Less on Japanese, but better than a few years ago).
merci
D.A.
NYC (FL)
Hello, I stumbled onto this interesting interview. I would like to get the “not so good” google translation of the interview. Please let me know how. Thank you