Sociobiologists and neuroscientists.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

SIR: Since Brian Coman started the "Quadrant debate over sociobiology" (Letters, November 2007) in the September edition and now compares it to the Iraq war, should one assume that he now regrets something which, like the Iraq war, was begun without adequate intelligence, attention to detail, imagination, or knowledge of the important subject matter, and has now turned out to be a disaster? Or maybe just that his cute title "The Origin of the Specious" has been noted by Google to have been used on 568 previous occasions.

Now Dr Coman is more than a little riled by my piece in the October edition which I had tentatively titled "Self-Indulgence as Scientific Criticism" but appeared as "Sociobiological Hobgoblins". As it was only my first draft, intended as a long letter, and my extended version was lost by a conspiracy of computers, I should perhaps be content that it was described on Counterpoint, by one who objected to that program's indulgence of Dr Coman, as having demolished his article. Let me take the opportunity nonetheless to offer the full version to anyone who writes to me at jvcgnest@vicnet. net.au. I will also send the URLs for David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson's "Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology" in the latest issue of the Quarterly Review of Biology and some explanation of the maths, because Dr Coman's version of sociobiology seems to be stuck in the "Selfish Gene" era before the recent resurrection of group selection.

Allow me also to go a little way beyond his patronising rudeness ("I would advise him to stick to legal matters, where opinions are adequate"), unoriginal insults ("Dawkins' chihuahua"), boastful implication that only he is learned enough to write in German--as to which I suggest he attend to Wittgenstein's "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss man schweigen", which words need very little adaptation--and his reckless indifference to troth ("Mr Guest prefers to attack me for being a Christian, and therefore, by definition, an obscurantist" when my attack was clearly personal--on his obscurantism and worse, obfuscation).

Consider ...