Andrew Denton interviews Richard Dawkins on ‘Elders’ ABC TV. It will remain available for just another 8 days so be sure to check it out soon! Richard Dawkins’ reluctance, indeed refusal, to respond to personal questions is quite remarkable, as is his body language. Thanks to Ross for the link. See Elders with Andrew Denton: Series 2: Episode 6: interview with Richard Dawkins.
The interview commences:
ANDREW DENTON V/O: Richard Dawkins is the essence of scientific reason. An evolutionary biologist. A best-selling author. And, strident atheist. He’s been declared one of the most influential – and provocative – thinkers of our time.
ANDREW DENTON: Richard, thanks very much for inviting us to your house. You’ve described being moved to tears by the natural world. When has that happened? Why does it move you to tears?
RICHARD DAWKINS: I think we are social animals. We have deep emotions, we have the emotions of empathy and sympathy and sadness and love and happiness and I think it’s part of being human, part of being a social animal to have these intense emotions and I don’t find it that surprising to be moved by the natural world. But that includes things like looking up at the Milky Way and looking up at the sheer number of stars, being overwhelmed by the scale of the universe. And that to me gives a sort of overwhelming feeling of being, it’s a feeling of exultation in that case.
Richard Dawkins’ initial emotional language ‘we have deep emotions’, depicts a man capable of emotional engagement. Puzzlingly, this contrasts sharply with his inability to enagage at a personal level with Andrew Denton’s questions as the interview unfolds. Why Dawkins’ avoidance of and discomfort at the personal? Quite extraordinary. By way of example, and be sure to note his body language, the interview concludes,
RICHARD DAWKINS: I have nothing to add to the dictionary definition of a word like wisdom…
ANDREW DENTON: It’s interesting though because, and again I really am not trying to trap you here, as I said the operative word was “you”. What I’m interested in is what you draw from it, but your way of responding to that is to say, no, you’re after a dictionary definition.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Okay, well, I doubt myself enough to feel that that why should anybody be interested in… I mean I should expect people perhaps to be interested in what I can tell them about evolution, which I’ve spent a lifetime talking about, but I don’t feel I’ve got anything very wise, I suppose, to say about wisdom.
ANDREW DENTON: What do you see when you look in the mirror?
RICHARD DAWKINS: [Pause] Ah…I don’t have an interesting answer to that. I mean I see myself. No, cut that one. I guess I’ve probably dodged all the questions that you’ve been told to put to everybody.
ANDREW DENTON: No, not that I’ve been told, that I’ve chosen to. No, not all of them, but many, yes. Most of the personal ones. But that is your choice.
RICHARD DAWKINS: My choice is that I don’t think people should be interested in me, but I hope I may have something interesting to say about the world.
ANDREW DENTON: Indeed you do, and I guess it’s that, as I said when I first met you, that rigour, the way you have so rigorously approached the way you’ve examined the world, that does make you interesting.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Well that’s nice, I’m glad you think that. But perhaps let it stand at that rather than ask me to say it myself and to define anything about myself.
ANDREW DENTON: I do have one final question, having read some of your work, having looked at a lot of your work, I’m curious, what star sign are you?
RICHARD DAWKINS: [Pause] …You serious?
ANDREW DENTON: No, I just wanted to see your response! [Laughter] And it was worth it! Richard, thank you very much.
