Did Thomas Kuhn Reject Mob Psychology in Science?

 

Many people know that the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn was often accused of encouraging “mob psychology” in science. (This accusation dates back to the words of Imre Lakatos.) Kuhn was said to have rejected objectivity and rationality in science too. In this essay, it’s shown that the philosopher of science Ian Hacking defended Kuhn from these accusations. However, he might have been guilty of going too far in the opposite direction.

Kuhn on Incommensurability

According to the philosopher and historian of science Ian Hacking, Thomas Kuhn believed that “[y]ou don’t have two theories in mind and compare them point by point — they are too different for that”. So if they’re too different to compare, then what happens? Perhaps what happens is what has already happened. A scientist has already placed his bet on one of the rival theories. But why did he do so in the first place? Kuhn believed that he “gradually convert[ed], and that shows itself by moving into a new language community”. Then such a scientist “begin[s] to speak the language like a native”, yet no “choice has occurred”.

The way all the above is put makes it seem as if the process is almost purely sociological in nature. So it’s not that two theories are compared point by point. A scientist moves into a new language community, and only then does he choose a theory. And the theory he chooses is expressed in the language of the new community. Other rival theories are expressed in the languages of other communities. It may not even be the case that a scientist chooses the language community, let alone which scientific theory to adopt or endorse.

Again, this process seems entirely sociological (as well as psychological) in nature.

What begins as a sociological process becomes a historical process in retrospect. And that’s another lesson from Kuhn. Hacking put it bluntly:

“The discourse of the philosophy of science has been transformed since the time Kuhn wrote. No longer shall we, as Nietzsche put it, show our respect for science by dehistoricizing it.”

Hacking provides the example of Larry Lauden, who “draws his conclusion ‘from the existing historical evidence’”.

Note that the first quote states that “philosophy of science has been transformed since the time Kuhn wrote”. It doesn’t say that the philosophy of science was transformed by what Kuhn wrote… at least he wasn’t the only man in the team. According to Hacking, “When his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions came out in 1962, similar themes were being expressed by a number of voices.” Indeed, in 1962 and just before, “a new discipline, the history of science, was forming itself”. Moreover, “[y]oung Kuhn, training as a physicist, was attracted to history just at the moment when many other people were looking that way”.

The point about scientific rationality is that it’s linked, or can be linked, to the subject of incommensurability. Hacker supplies some basic historical details about this term’s use:

“The new philosophical use of the word ‘incommensurable’ is the product of conversations between Paul Feryerabend and Thomas Kuhn on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue around 1960.”

So what does the word “incommensurable” mean?

“It has an exact sense in Greek mathematics. It means ‘no common measure’. [ ] Not all lengths are commensurable.”

More relevantly:

“Philosophers have nothing so precise in mind when they use the metaphor of incommensurability. They are thinking of comparing scientific theories, but of course there could be no *exact* measure for that purpose.”

The word “incommensurable” certainly sounds forceful. Moreover, that word has led to many philosophical and political consequences. Yet, in Greek mathematics the term was precise. Not so in philosophy. Hacking says the word is a “metaphor”. Yes, it’s a metaphor that’s done a hell of a lot of good or bad work.

When used to describe scientific theories, Hacking concedes that “there could be no exact measure for that purpose”. From how Hacking phrases it both here and elsewhere, this isn’t a monumental fact about scientific theories. Instead, it’s rather mundane. Think about it, both in the abstract and in concreto, what form would such a measure take? Even if there were such a measure, would it apply to all aspects of all theories when measured one-to-one or one-to-many?

Precisely because the philosophical word “incommensurable” is both a metaphor and imprecise, it’s no surprise that the (possible) anecdote that Kuhn used the word in 21 different ways (in his well-known book) did the rounds so often. (See here.)

So we can respect science and scientists and still place them within their historical contexts.

Was Kuhn Against Scientific Rationality?

Many commentators took Kuhn to have questioned scientific rationality. Some commentators even believed that was his main aim. Perhaps relevantly, they questioned why he used the strong word “revolution” (as in “scientific revolution”).

According to Hacking, Kuhn was “taken aback by the way in which his work (and that of others) produced a crisis of rationality”. Of course, even if Kuhn was taken aback, that doesn’t mean that his work didn’t produce a crisis of rationality. Perhaps he simply didn’t think through the consequences of his own theories, and how they may be interpreted.

The following description of what Kuhn believed is an attempt to show that he didn’t reject rationality:

“He subsequently wrote that he never intended to deny the customary virtues of scientific theories. Theories should be accurate, that is, by and large fit existing data. They should be both internally consistent and consistent with other accepted theories. They should be broad in scope and rich in consequences. They should be simple in structure, organising facts in an intelligible way. They should be fruitful, disclosing new events, new techniques, new relationships.”

That paragraph almost reads like something you’d come across in an introductory book on the philosophy of science. In fact, at first sight, the words “consistent with other accepted theories” seem to go against Kuhn’s known views.

All the above now needs to be placed in the context that Kuhn believed that “his five values and others of the same sort are never sufficient to be decisive among competing theories” too. So what, in addition to Kuhn’s five values, would make a theory win out?

The biologist and parapsychology researcher Rupert Sheldrake, who mentions and quotes Kuhn a few times, makes much of the fact that “scientists are people”. Yet science itself isn’t a person. Perhaps we can see science as being made up of people. However, even if we take science as a combination of people, that collective is still not a single person.

Hacking also says that “scientific societies are societies”. One would assume, then, that if sociology is the study of society, then it must study scientific societies too. Does that mean it should study science itself? Does that question tie into the earlier one about science being made up of people?

Conclusion

Kuhn is known for using the case of Aristotle to get his point across. According to Hacker’s Kuhn, the latter tells us that

“Aristotle’s physics relies on ideas of motion that are dissociated from ours, and one can understand him only by recognising the network of his words”.

This passage isn’t that clear, especially the use of the words “dissociated from ours”. However, the words “the network of his words” can be tied to the earlier use of “language community”. In basic terms, Aristotle belonged to his own language community, not ours. Kuhn had much more to say about stepping into Aristotle’s world in order to understand him. (Historians often say something very similar about historical characters, ideas and events.) Thus, Hacker concluded:

“Kuhn is one of many historians to teach the need to rethink the words of our predecessors in their own way, not ours.”

Writing in 2026, it seems remarkable that any philosopher, scientist or political activist could ever have thought otherwise. That said, present-day presentism has never been so rife. Of course, rethinking Aristotle or anyone else doesn’t mean that we should accept his own way. Indeed, we should neither accept nor reject it (at least not judgementally or even morally). Instead, we can, or should, learn from it. Kuhn himself learned that the words and theories of scientists are historically and contextually bound. Yet even if that is acknowledged, some philosophers of science believe that the matters of truth and correctness are still relevant, and even important. As earlier, just as science being carried out by flesh-and-blood scientists doesn’t make science itself suspect, so the words and theories of scientists being historically, sociologically and contextually bound doesn’t automatically make such words and theories suspect or false. It is up to philosophers of science, scientists (less so) and others to sort the wheat from the chaff.

How Rupert Sheldrake Uses Kuhn and Latour to Attack Scientists

 

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Much has been made of the fact that many critics have used the work of the American historian and philosopher Thomas Kuhn to attack both science and scientists. The English biologist, parapsychology researcher and writer Rupert Sheldrake fits this pattern perfectly. He brings on board the French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour too. This is odd really because they are coming at this issue from very different angles to Sheldrake’s own. Still, there’s nothing to stop Sheldrake — and others — using the work of Kuhn to attack science and scientists. Indeed, even some philosophers, scientists, etc. who weren’t critical of Kuhn picked up on the fact that many of the critics of science and scientists (some religious people, postmodernists, post-structuralists, political activists, etc.) would use his work. And they did!

Photo of Stephen Hawking from Wiki Commons. Source here.

“Science became a view from nowhere. The minds of scientists were somehow disembodied. This is why Stephen Hawking is such an iconic figure in the popular imagination. Through the misfortune of his illness, he is as close to a disembodied mind as a human can be.”

— Rupert Sheldrake (from The Science Delusion)

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Photo of Rupert Sheldrake from Wiki Commons. Source here.

Sheldrake on Science and Scientists

Many philosophers and others would say that a strong distinction can and should be made between science and scientists. Sheldrake doesn’t accept this distinction at all. Neither do the sociologists, postmodernists, etc. he relies upon. Take this passage:

“Sciences are human activities. The assumption that the sciences are uniquely objective not only distorts the public perception of scientists, but affects scientists’ perception of themselves. The illusion of objectivity makes scientists prone to deception and self-deception. It works against the noble ideal of seeking truth.”

It can be supposed that the words “the sciences” aren’t identical to “science”. Still, Sheldrake is talking about science. Basically, this is his argument:

i) Scientists are human persons.

ii) The sciences are human activities.

iii) Therefore, scientists are not objective.

Sheldrake then warns his readers about the “illusion of objectivity”. Yet how does it follow that because scientists are human persons, that science is not objective? Of course, it may depend on what Sheldrake meant by the word “objective”. However, is there an alternative to science being carried out by human persons? Should science be carried out by AI or by Sheldrakian mystics instead?

In any case, Sheldrake is keen to tell his readers that he believes that “seeking truth” is a “noble ideal”. It’s just that some, many, most or all mainstream scientists are not seekers of truth. Sheldrake, on the other hand, is a seeker of truth.

Despite Sheldrake’s many negative generalisations about scientists, he does state the following:

“Among the many scientists I have known, some are ruthlessly ambitious, others kind and generous; some boringly pedantic, others excitingly speculative; some narrow-minded, others visionary. [ ] They vary, just as other kinds of people vary.”

Now that seems to go against everything else Sheldrake writes about scientists. (For example: “Scientists constitute a priesthood superior to the priesthoods of religions, which maintain their prestige and power by playing on human ignorance and fear.”) He’d probably argue that I’ve missed the sophistication of his position. Yet, apart from this passage, that’s not at all clear. Indeed, if Sheldrake admits that some — even only some — scientists are “excitingly speculative”, “visionary”, “brave”, “honest”, “original”, etc., then his general position collapses. Unless, that is, all these noble scientists are out of the mainstream of science. In other words, unless they’re all scientists just like Sheldrake himself.

The whole point of the passage above is to tell readers that “scientists are indeed like other people”. So, again, if some scientists are excitingly speculative, visionary, brave, honest, original, etc., then do these scientists maintain their prestige and power by playing on human ignorance and fear too?

Sheldrake on the Scientific Priesthood

Even though there’s an element of truth in what Sheldrake says about scientists, what he does say is still monumentally rhetorical and over the top. Take this paragraph for starters:

“Scientists constitute a priesthood superior to the priesthoods of religions, which maintain their prestige and power by playing on human ignorance and fear.”

This is so hyperbolic it’s difficult to know where to start.

When Sheldrake says that “[s]cientists constitute a priesthood superior to the priesthoods of religions”, this hints at the possibility (or likelihood) that he isn’t against priesthoods per se: he’s against the scientific priesthood. In fact, in the very same book from which this passage is taken (i.e., The Science Delusion), he says very positive things about religious priesthoods of both the past and today.

Is there a scientific priesthood?

If there is, then it’s only a metaphorical one. In history and in many cultures, priesthoods had literal power over many aspects of life, and the publics were well aware of this. In contrast, Sheldrake says that “human ignorance” means that most publics today aren’t aware of the scientific priesthood.

Is there really much human ignorance of the scientific priesthood?

Some laypeople may be ignorant of scientists and scientific institutions. Other laypeople aren’t. In fact, many scientists and scientific institutions face much scrutiny from laypeople, far much so than historical religious priesthoods. Of course, laypeople don’t know as much about scientists, scientific institutions and science than scientists. But how could it ever be otherwise? Indeed, if ever Sheldrake’s central hypothesis of morphic resonance ever became mainstream, and enforced by a new priesthood, then laypeople would be equally ignorant of that too.

Sheldrake on Scientific Objectivity

Image of Thomas Kuhn from Wiki Commons. Source here.

Here’s another passage against scientists from the very same paragraph:

“For those who idealise science, scientists are the epitome of objectivity, rising above the sectarian divisions and illusions that afflict the rest of humanity. Scientific minds are freed from the normal limitations of bodies, emotions and social obligations, and can travel beyond the earth-bound realm of the senses to see all nature as if from outside, stripped of subjective qualities.”

It’s clear that Sheldrake has drank the cool aid of Thomas Kuhn, Bruno Latour, postmodernists, sociologists, etc. (Kuhn wrote a paper on scientific objectivity called ‘Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice’.) Such people have been at pains to tell their own readers that “scientists are people” too.

Photo of Bruno Latour from Wiki Commons. Source here.

There are some interesting parts of the passage above that need commenting upon. Take the clause that scientists “can travel beyond the earth-bound realm of the senses to see all nature as if from the outside, stripped of subjective qualities”. Sheldrake explicitly connects this position to Plato. Yet even this take isn’t original to him. It’s a picture which he directly takes from Latour. For example, Sheldrake quotes Latour:

“‘Although the world of truth differs absolutely, not relatively, from the social world, the Scientist can go back and forth from one world to the other no matter what… In the original myth [i.e., Plato’s Cave], as we know, the Philosopher managed only with the greatest difficulty to break the chains that attached him to the shadowy world…’”

What about the clause “[s]cientific minds are freed from the normal limitations of bodies, emotions and social obligations”? This picture is taken from Descartes. And here too Sheldrake has borrowed from others. Descartes has been a favourite bogeyman of many postmodernists, post-structuralists, sociologists, political activists, etc. Sheldrake himself (elsewhere) tells us why that’s so.

Many scientists have not believed that they should be free of social obligations, and have openly expressed that view. What’s more, many political activists have demanded that they shouldn’t be free of social and political obligations. Indeed, a small number of scientists, and numerous academics and activists, have said that scientists should always be aware of the political implications of their work and their social status… Unless, that is, Sheldrake is fixated on scientists as they existed in Descartes’ time and, say, up to the 19th century. Yet even then, he would be guilty of generalising. That said, Sheldrake is talking about the scientists of today.

Sheldrake gives a concrete example of his idea that scientists supposedly see themselves as (Cartesian) disembodied minds: Stephen Hawking. He says that “[s]cience became a view from nowhere”, and that “the minds of scientists were somehow disembodied”. Then comes the conclusion:

“Through the misfortune of [Stephen Hawking’s] illness, he is a close to a disembodied mind as a human can be.”

The philosopher Thomas Nagel did say that science does attempt to capture “the view from nowhere”. But he said that positively, unlike Sheldrake. For example:

“If there is a way things really are, which explains their diverse appearances to differently constituted and situated observers, then it is most accurately apprehended by methods not specific to particular types of observers. That is why scientific measurement interposes between us and the world instruments whose interactions with the world are of a kind that could be detected by a creature not sharing the human senses.”

It’s very possible that Sheldrake won’t be impressed with this passage from Nagel. (Sheldrake does quote Nagel, as with Kuhn and Latour, positively elsewhere.) After all, scientific measurements are carried out, and instruments are used, by scientists who are human persons.

That said, Nagel did say that science fails, or at least it’s problematic, when it comes to the nature of subjectivity. Sheldrake, on the other hand, believes that science fails in multiple respects. Thus, a Sheldrakian revolution, not unlike a Kuhnian revolution, needs to occur in science in order to rectify such failings.

Iain McGilchrist Is a Mystical and Wise Man With a Hammer

 

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The British psychiatrist, neuroscientist and mystic Iain McGilchrist ties almost every political, religious and philosophical issue to his left-and-right-sides-of-the- brain research. In almost every interview, McGilchrist brings this subject up. Is this a classic case of someone seeing the world through the lens of his own personal specialisation?

Iain McGilchrist. Image at Wiki Commons. Source here.

This essay focuses on an interview with Iain McGilchrist carried out by Unherd’s Freddie Sayers. (It can be found on YouTube under the title ‘Iain McGilchrist: How to escape left-brain thinking’.) So rather than introduce McGilchrist myself, I’ll let Sayers do so instead:

“McGilchrist is one of our favorite thinkers here at Unherd. He’s a neuroscientist, a philosopher, a writer. Unherd itself tells us about McGilchrist’s ‘central theory of the bihemispheric brain, the divided brain’, and how each of the two parts of our brain thinks differently about the world, and how if we understand that, we can better understand how humans think. And now Iain is one of the biggest names both on the internet and on the lecture circuit and all around the world.”

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McGilchrist Is a Man With a Hammer

Arguably, all McGilchrist has done is add some science to various mystical traditions. More concretely, he adds talk about the right and left hemispheres of the brain into the mystical melting pot.

Is this an attempt to naturalise mysticism?

No one would deny that there is solid neuroscience on hemispheric differences. However, when McGilchrist talks about civilisation being “left-hemisphere dominated”, he’s no longer doing neuroscience or any form of science. Perhaps he would admit this.

It’s clear that McGilchrist has a hammer because he’s spent decades developing and using it. His hammer is now part of his intellectual identity.

As for the phrase “a man with a hammer” itself. These five words come from the psychologist (ironically) Abraham Maslow, who wrote: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

Like the reductionist Donald Hoffman reducing everything down to conscious agents (or, more broadly, to consciousness itself), McGilchrist reduces everything down to the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Of course, both will say that they aren’t doing that at all, or that it ain’t that simple. But those they class as “reductionist” or “materialist” can justifiably claim something similar too!

Taking on Left-Brained Pinker and Dawkins

Let’s not play down what McGilchrist is attempting to do. Take his words here:

“I’m prepared to stick my neck out and say that if enough people, and it might only be 2% of the population, started to think like this and talk like this, that we could see things turn around in a matter of a decade. And maybe we haven’t got a decade, but I’m hoping that we have that in a decade’s time, there would be distinct differences in the way public discourse went on, a sophistication of the way that people talk about what we are, what we’re doing here, what the world is, way beyond the Pinker and the Dawkinsian bankrupt vision of simply random movement of meaningless matter.”

That’s rhetoric. McGilchrist may say it’s literally true. But let me rewrite it:

I’m prepared to stick my neck out and say that if enough people, and it might only be 2% of the population, started to think like I think and talk like I talk, that we could see things turn around in a matter of a decade.

This reads like a political manifesto. McGilchrist has even done some calculations and come to the conclusion that if only 2% of the population came to think and talk as he does… then what, exactly, will follow?

McGilchrist’s mystical and religious trajectory was set early in his life, at least according to himself. He states the following in the interview:

“When I was in my teens, I imagined that after a spell at Oxford [University], I would go into a monastery because it seemed so important to me to devote myself to understanding these truths that seem to me the most profound truths [ ].”

Personally, I become suspicious when people use the word “profound”, “deep”, etc. This is especially the case when they’re talking about what they themselves are doing. In basic terms, McGilchrist is saying that it is he who is offering people profound truths.

In any case, it doesn’t take long for McGilchrist to wield his hammer in the interview:

“The left hemisphere on its own is prone to delusion. And I don’t just mean in the popular parliament’s idea of a delusion. I mean technically whatever you think of a civilization when it collapses all kinds of unbelievable evils will follow.”

Mystical Right-Brained Apophatic Thinking

McGilchrist focusses a lot on apophatic thinking. This is him explaining what that is:

“Now that idea of a process that is getting nearer and of clearing away things that are untrue [ ]. It is apophatic. I mean people like Pinker and Dawkins would throw a wobbly if I said that because they don’t understand what’s meant by the apophatic path towards the divine. In other words, the clearing away of what is not true in order to allow what is there to shine forth.”

I’m not entirely sure what the words “a process that is getting nearer and clearing away things that are untrue” mean. Or, rather, I am, but I don’t understand why they are profound. I certainly don’t understand why they have anything to do with Pinker and Dawkins.

Do they understand apophatic thinking? I have no idea. Should they understand it?

Myths Are False But Holy

McGilchrist talks about myths in the following:

“I think this tells us about the nature of myths that are really important elements that cannot be looked at in that dissecting denotative frame of mind, [and] that we need to be clear about this. In other words, Dawkins’s frame of mind that ‘let’s get the facts right’. ‘Was there really this person?’, and so on.”

That’s supposedly Richard Dawkins’ position. This is McGilchrist’s own position:

“It doesn’t matter whether there really was this person because this story is completely independent of that. [ ] I saw a clip of Dawkins talking to Jordan Peterson. It was most unenlightening because Dawkins kept saying, ‘Well, you know, did the Virgin Mary actually lie with a man or was this actually a virgin birth?’ And Peterson didn’t want to say yes or no really. And I understand why because he was staying on a vision of what is true that didn’t depend on the facts of the case.”

Most Catholics do believe in the Virgin Birth. It’s not a myth to them. It is a myth to Iain McGilchrist.

It’s very evident that a story has an existence and role regardless of whether the characters and events in it existed and occurred. Again, why would Dawkins deny this? Surely, Dawkins’ point is that many people actually believe that these people existed and that the claims are true. They haven’t always got the deep and profound minds of people like McGilchrist. In addition, why would Dawkins need to deny that a story may still have a message without it being about real people and real events?

In detail, McGilchrist resurrects the Noble Lie in the following passage:

“[I]ncluding things that were literally or factually untrue and still end up in some closer to truth than someone who rejected the whole story outright. And [Dawkins] completely just didn’t come with me on that concept.”

Okay. Let’s be clear here. Even if a belief in “things that were literally or factually untrue” can have positive consequences, why would Dawkins deny that? He probably doesn’t. But McGilchrist must be honest here. He must state something like the following:

Many of the things that religious and other people deem to be true are not true. However, it is beneficial to believe in these things.

This stance goes back to Plato’s Noble Lie, Marx’s “the point isn’t to interpret the world but to change it”, and even to the pragmatism of William James.

William James and John Searle

Take William James’s popular book, Varieties of Religious Experience. It can be said that James was a kind of early language-games theorist. Indeed, James was well known for his idea of “the will to believe” too. This doctrine — according to certain commentators at least — states (to put it simply, though accurately) that if a myth or religious belief works for you (or works for a community as a whole), then why not adopt it? It doesn’t matter if one’s beliefs are true or whether they correspond to anything outside the actual language game. What matters are the pragmatic effects of myths and religious beliefs. In fact, according to James’s liberal pragmatism (unlike, say, C. S. Peirce’s), a belief is actually made true if and when it works. (I strongly suspect that many experts on James will see this as a simplification of James’s position.)

Now for John Searle’s views on these same matters.

The American philosopher John Searle believed that the majority of people within religious language games won’t — or even couldn’t — accept the nonrealist attitude of people like McGilchrist. Searle writes:

“[W]hether or not there is a God listening to their prayer isn’t itself part of the language game. The reason people play the language game of religion is because they think there is something outside the language game that gives it a point.”

Of course, we can ask here (in a Searlian spirit) whether the very concept of (realist) truth has any real purchase in some (or all) of these disparate language games.

Searle’s point, however, is that Wittgenstein’s liberalism (if that’s what it was) towards religious language games may not, in actual fact, have been much appreciated by the actual religious participants in these language games. That is, if they ever came to know that McGilchrist believes that such games are completely autonomous creations (or constructions), then they might not have accepted that their own particular religious practices are in fact language games at all.

Unherd Defends Pinker and Dawkins

It was up to Unherd’s Freddie Sayers to put Dawkins’ and Pinker’s views. That’s because McGilchrist didn’t even try to do so. Sayers states the following:

“To be fair, both Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker are people who can talk lyrically about music, love and the kind of non-logical aspects of life. It’s not like they are blind to them, but I think their anxiety if they were listening to this conversation, and from the kind of worldview you have, might be that the gains of the enlightenment, the advances we have made from our emphasis on rationality and logic, are in danger at the moment anyway by a kind of regression of science, an increase of dangerous superstition, and people like Iain McGilchrist going off on YouTube telling people that it’s okay to believe myths even if they’re not really literally true is only encouraging this dangerous tendency and they probably quite anxious about it. What would you say back to them?”

McGilchrist responded:

“Well, I would say gosh, as I find myself saying almost in everything that I have to talk about, truths are not of the kind that you think 100% it’s this. There are a number of different truths and they need to be in order to be have an intelligent understanding let alone to approach wisdom one needs to be able to hold them and not lose one because you hold to another. [ ] Extolling these as very important ways of arriving at an understanding of the world but not on their own. They need supplementation by two other paths intuition and imagination.”

Most of that I don’t understand. And what I do understand has been said many times before in various mystical traditions. McGilchrist’s emphasis on intuition is very rationalist, and can also be very dangerous (think of the Nazis and Heidegger). The passage above also includes an indirect reference to McGilchrist’s hammer again. After all, it’s the right hemisphere that’s the domain of intuition and imagination.

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Note:

Here are two other mentions of Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins by Iain McGilchrist in the same interview:

“The trouble with Pinker and Dawkins is that they are biologists, and biologists until recently have been very much mechanists. Thank God that is now passing.”

And:

“[W]hen we’re not aware of things, and I’m afraid Dawkins and Pinker and Co. appear not to be aware of certain things, then you tend to adopt positions that are only partially true. [they] think of us as lumbering robots doing the bidding of our genes.”