First time tuning in and this was a very fascinating and interesting conversation. You got yourself a subscriber. It was very interesting to see how Prof quickly dismissed you when you brought up Dawkins and his assertion that the genetic code is a description of ancient environments but it'll probably take me months to digest this wonderful conversation 💯
I’m sure I’ve heard Dawkins say this somewhere. If not, it must have been in the book “The Greatest Show on Earth”. Thank you for watching and for your subscription!
@@theidealisticman he absolutely said something like that and he once said he was working on a book called "The Genetic Book Of the Dead" or something like that in which he explains in detail how the organism is a model of the environment in which it lives. I remember liking that idea. This was a wonderful conversation
Great! In any case, I don’t think this idea is ridiculous. It makes sense to me. It may be the case that the reconstructed model of the environment based on the genetic code may be very low resolution, but I think it would model the organism’s environment in a non-arbitrarily way nonetheless.
I just found Dawkins' Genetic Book of the Dead! The blurb at the back reads: In this groundbreaking new approach to the evolution of all life, Richard Dawkins shows how the body, behaviour, and genes of every living creature can be read as a book - an archive of the worlds of its ancestors. A perfectly camouflaged desert lizard has a desiccated landscape of sand and stones 'painted' on its back. Its skin can be read as a description of ancient deserts in which its ancestors survived - and, before that, of the worlds of its more remote ancestors: a genetic book of the dead. But such descriptions are more than skin-deep. The fine chisels of Darwinian natural selection carve their way through the very warp and woof of the body, into every biochemical nook and corner, into every cell of every living creature. A zoologist of the future, presented with a hitherto-unknown animal, will be able to reconstruct the worlds that shaped its ancestors, to read its unique 'book of the dead'.
Four months later, in an interesting turn of events, Dawkins is going on his last world tour and is launching his book, with the title we talked about above! I’m delighted that I’ll be at one of his events and will get a signed copy of the book!
@11:56 Would have been interesting if Prof Ellis did address in more detail the question of existence of a God especially if he regards that for things to exist they need to be created. I agree with him though when he says science can’t provide evidence for or against the existence of God but I then wonder if that is sufficient reason for humans specifically to have a belief in the existence of a ‘God’.
That would have been a good place to branch off and dig deeper into his views. For what it’s worth, I get the sense that he wouldn’t have the kind of answer me and you would be looking for. Refer to the part where he says it’s faith, faith is believing without evidence. I appreciate believers who admit this. And where he says it’s something you experience. It’s not something that someone can tell you.
Ellis is one of the great deep thinkers
Indeed. Thanks for watching.
Prof is clearly a very smart man who cares and thinks deeply about the propositions that he makes😂. Great conversation. I enjoyed the interview.
First time tuning in and this was a very fascinating and interesting conversation. You got yourself a subscriber.
It was very interesting to see how Prof quickly dismissed you when you brought up Dawkins and his assertion that the genetic code is a description of ancient environments but it'll probably take me months to digest this wonderful conversation 💯
I’m sure I’ve heard Dawkins say this somewhere. If not, it must have been in the book “The Greatest Show on Earth”. Thank you for watching and for your subscription!
@@theidealisticman he absolutely said something like that and he once said he was working on a book called "The Genetic Book Of the Dead" or something like that in which he explains in detail how the organism is a model of the environment in which it lives. I remember liking that idea. This was a wonderful conversation
Great! In any case, I don’t think this idea is ridiculous. It makes sense to me. It may be the case that the reconstructed model of the environment based on the genetic code may be very low resolution, but I think it would model the organism’s environment in a non-arbitrarily way nonetheless.
I just found Dawkins' Genetic Book of the Dead! The blurb at the back reads:
In this groundbreaking new approach to the evolution of all life, Richard Dawkins shows how the body, behaviour, and genes of every living creature can be read as a book - an archive of the worlds of its ancestors.
A perfectly camouflaged desert lizard has a desiccated landscape of sand and stones 'painted' on its back. Its skin can be read as a description of ancient deserts in which its ancestors survived - and, before that, of the
worlds of its more remote ancestors: a genetic book of the dead.
But such descriptions are more than skin-deep. The fine chisels of Darwinian natural selection carve their way through the very warp and woof of the body, into every biochemical nook and corner, into every cell of every living creature. A zoologist of the future, presented with a hitherto-unknown animal, will be able to reconstruct the worlds that shaped its ancestors, to read its unique 'book of the dead'.
Four months later, in an interesting turn of events, Dawkins is going on his last world tour and is launching his book, with the title we talked about above! I’m delighted that I’ll be at one of his events and will get a signed copy of the book!
@11:56 Would have been interesting if Prof Ellis did address in more detail the question of existence of a God especially if he regards that for things to exist they need to be created. I agree with him though when he says science can’t provide evidence for or against the existence of God but I then wonder if that is sufficient reason for humans specifically to have a belief in the existence of a ‘God’.
That would have been a good place to branch off and dig deeper into his views. For what it’s worth, I get the sense that he wouldn’t have the kind of answer me and you would be looking for. Refer to the part where he says it’s faith, faith is believing without evidence. I appreciate believers who admit this. And where he says it’s something you experience. It’s not something that someone can tell you.