RE: law & economics & everything else...

["Davies, Daniel" <daniel.davies@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> He returns to his first idea. In writing about intelligence, Gould
>has stepped outside his expertise. Posner admits this is not obvious.
"Since
>Gould is a biologist, he may seem to have been writing within his field.
The
>appearance is deceptive. He is a paleontologist and not an expert on the
>problem of intelligence."

Interesting things go unsaid here.  Of course, this statement goes double
triple in the Dawkins/Gould controversies, where Gould (with Eldredge) has
done genuine and important original work in evolutionary theory while
Dawkins hasn't.  Posner could have used this example but didn't, for fairly
obvious reasons.  And of course, Lewontin isn't dismissed so easily on the
direct question of intelligence.

> Don't buy this book. If you must
>examine this maddening and provocative work, peruse it in a store or borrow
>it from a library.

Borrowing it from a library could in principle yield a royalty for Posner if
enough people did it, while perusing it in a store might end up making the
copy in the store dog-eared and unreturnable.  I maintain my view that the
only morally tolerable way of reading the works of an author you dislike is
to break into their house and steal one of their promotional copies. :-)

dd


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