Looking Out To Sea

We took out membership of the local library this afternoon, and spent half an hour browsing. I got out The Extended Phenotype, a sequel of sorts to The Selfish Gene. In the preface he states that the first chapter goes over a lot of ground from the previous book, and tries to clear up misapprehensions and answer complaints from critics of The Selfish Gene. But I’ve never seen such a back-handed compliment as this:

I am grateful to my critics for forcing me to think again about how to express difficult matters more clearly.

See the kerfuffle behind Mary Midgley’s review for an example of the critics who just didn’t get it, no matter how simply it was worded.

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