In a lecture on environmentalism broadcast in Great Britain on May 17, Prince Charles took swipes at science, Bertrand Russell, “scientific rationalism,” a creator-less idea of evolution, and biotechnology, praising instead “ancient wisdom” and “traditional agriculture.” Said Prince Charles “It is because of our inability or refusal to accept the existence of a guiding hand that nature has come to be regarded as a system that can be engineered for our own convenience or as a nuisance to be evaded and manipulated, and in which anything that happens can be fixed by technology and human ingenuity. “. . . So it is only by employing both the intuitive and the rational halves of our own nature–our hearts and our minds–that we will live up to the sacred trust that has been placed in us by our Creator,–by our ‘Sustainer,’ as ancient wisdom referred to the Creator.” His notions were rebutted by zoologist and award-winning science writer Richard Dawkins.
Dawkins, reacting, in the Guardian/Observer interview, May 17, 2000: Far from being demeaning to human spiritual values, scientific rationalism is the crowning glory of the human spirit. Of course you can use the products of science to do bad things, but you can use them to do good things, too. I am saddened by Prince Charles’s lecture, the more so because he is so obviously a very nice man and very well-meaning. What person of goodwill could disagree that our primary concern should be with long-term stewardship, with the welfare of the whole planet?
But how grieving that Prince Charles should tie this enlightened view to a wholly unnecessary hostility towards scientific rationalism. Worse, that he should link it to a championing of traditional religious world views. What have they ever done for the long-term welfare of the planet? In an open letter to Prince Charles published in the Sunday, May 21 Observer, Dawkins continued his rejoinder: . . . your hostility to science will not service those aims; and your embracing of an ill-assorted jumble of mutually contradictory alternatives will lose you the respect that I think you deserve. I forget who it was who remarked: ‘Of course we must be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.’ . . . My own passionate concern for world stewardship is as emotional as yours. But where I allow feelings to influence my aims, when it comes to deciding the best method of achieving them I’d rather think than feel. And thinking, here, means scientific thinking. . . .
Next, Sir, I think you may have an exaggerated idea of the naturalness of ‘traditional’ or ‘organic’ agriculture. Agriculture has always been unnatural. . . . Almost every morsel of our food is genetically modified–admittedly by artificial selection not artificial mutation, but the end result is the same. A wheat grain is a genetically modified grass seed, just as a pekinese is a genetically modified wolf. Playing God? We’ve been playing God for centuries! . . .
On the other hand, we must beware of a very common misunderstanding of Darwinism. Tennyson was writing before Darwin but he got it right. Nature really is red in tooth and claw. Much as we might like to believe otherwise, natural selection, working within each species, does not favour long-term stewardship. It favours short-term gain. . . . No wonder T. H. Huxley, Darwin’s bulldog, founded his ethics on a repudiation of Darwinism. Not a repudiation of Darwinism as science, of course, for you cannot repudiate truth. But the very fact that Darwinism is true makes it even more important for us to fight against the naturally selfish and exploitative tendencies of nature. . . . We can do it because our brains . . . are big enough to see into the future and plot long-term consequences. Natural selection is like a robot that can only climb uphill, even if this leaves it stuck on top of a measly hillock. . . .
There is no natural foresight, no mechanism for warning that present selfish gains are leading to species extinction–and indeed, 99 percent of all species that have ever lived are extinct.. . . It may sound paradoxical, but if we want to sustain the planet into the future, the first thing we must do is stop taking advice from nature. Nature is a short-term Darwinian profiteer. Darwin himself said it: ‘What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature.’ . . . What saddens me most, Sir, is how much you will be missing if you turn your back on science. . . . may I take the liberty of presenting you with . . . The Demon-Haunted World by the lamented Carl Sagan. I’d call your attention especially to the subtitle: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
