Subject: RE: refund my money or send the book please

From: "Nancy G. McClernan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 02:58:38 -0500

Dear David Harris,

Thanks for your response.

I found the Gould review of The Ant and the Peacock here:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=2745

but you can't read it for free online.

However, I purchased a copy a couple of years ago, and I've attached it in
Word .doc format to this email. I especially recommend the section entitled
"Fallacies of Cronin's Particular Arguments"

There is also another Gould article about Darwinian fundamentalism,
available on the NY Review of Books for free here:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1151

But as far as I'm concerned, the best case against Helena Cronin's brand of
Darwinian fundamentalism is made by Cronin herself, in her policy paper
entitled "The Evolved Family" in which she argues, based on "Darwinian
logic" (she is not a biologist but a philosopher) that there should be two
entirely separate employment spheres for men and women, so that women can
have more time to stay home with the kids, because all women are so
nurturing by nature.

The paper is no longer available on the Darwin@LSE web site, but luckily I
saved a copy, also attached to this email.

It really is stunning how many hard-core evolutionary psychologists you have
on your Advisory Board - Cronin, Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker and Wilson. And
I'm pretty certain that Michael Shermer is a proponent of evolutionary
psychology too.

Not that I think that the perspective of evolutionary psychologists
shouldn't be represented, but your board is skewed too far in that
direction. I don't recognize any of the other board members as being
representative of the scientific, anti-Darwinian-fundamentalist views.
People like Niles Eldredge, Steven and Hilary Rose, Anne Fausto-Sterling and
Brian Ferguson. Your advisory board should reflect a variety of Darwinian
thought.

Nancy McClernan

 

  _____  

From: David Harris [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Monday, December 27, 2004 10:28 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: refund my money or send the book please

Dear Nancy,

I forwarded your message to Amanda Chesworth, editor, publisher, and
distributor of the book.  Let me know if she does not handle the matter
suitably.

We are currently focussed on developing a Web site with a science education
focus and the ability to correspond with large numbers of people using
automated methods.  We believe we'll do more good trying to help a
significant part of the population understand basic evolution, rather than
fine tune the presentation now.  But can you send a URL or citation of the
Gould article that would let us read it?

Hoping your book order can be straightened out (or just refunded as you
requested),

  - David Harris, Chief Outreach Officer

Nancy G. McClernan wrote:

Dear Darwin Day people,

I sent you $25 via Paypal on August 15, 2004 for The Darwin Day Collection
you once offered on your web site. I never received the publication.

I would just forget about it and consider it a donation, except that you
have too many evolutionary psychologists (aka Darwinian fundamentalists) on
your board for me to want to do that, especially the obnoxious,
wrong-headed, feminist-bashing Helena Cronin. Have you read Stephen Jay
Gould's expert evisceration of The Ant and the Peacock in the NYTimes Review
of Books? If you haven't, you really should. You won't be able to take
Cronin seriously on the topic of evolution ever again.

Please refund my money.

Nancy McClernan

2 Twelfth Street

#1013

Hoboken, NJ 07030

 <mailto:[email-masked]> [email-masked]

 <mailto:[email-masked]> [email-masked]