Aunger vs. Pinker on Galton

From: Scott Chase (osteopilus@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat 16 Apr 2005 - 16:54:12 GMT

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    Ok, when reading Aunger's book, I sometimes wonder if he's gotten so ambitious to make a case for his view that he might neglect to do some basic fact checking. I don't know if this has been pointed out before, but on page 66 of the hardcopy of _The Electric Meme_ he refers to Francis Galton as "Darwin's nephew". I had thought of Galton as a cousin of Darwin's.

    Let's see what Pinker says. Aunger refers to Pinker as
    "the prominent linguist at MIT and chief band-leader for evolutionary psychology" on page 38. Is it just me or does it seem that Aunger likes using adjectives like "prominent" and "eminent" a lot when talking about different people?

    Anyway Pinker, in his book _The Blank Slate_, refers to Galton as "Darwin's cousin" (page 16 hardcopy).

    Which eminent evolutionary author is correct on Darwin's relation to Galton, Aunger or Pinker?

       

                    
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