Практика Shadowing: "Richard Dawkins & Sean Faircloth in Conversation" - Изучайте разговорный английский по видео
Создание урока...
1
Because he's someone who, shall we say, is noteworthy in the media,
2
it is sometimes forgotten his heritage as a pure scientist.
3
I have an acquaintance at the University of Texas, a very prominent scientist in their own right,
4
and they were doing some research before introducing our next guest, and he said that when he did research,
5
he found that there was no other living scientist cited as much as Professor Richard Dawkins.
6
So in addition to being a great explainer of science to citizens throughout the world, he is a true stellar scientist himself.
7
So for our conversation, we welcome, without further ado, Professor Richard Dawkins.
8
Thank you.
9
I think I'm...
10
Is this mic working okay?
11
Folks in the back and above can hear me with this.
12
So we're going to do a few minutes of questions between Professor Dawkins and myself, and then we're going to, after that's over, turn it over to audience questions,
13
And then, as I mentioned, afterwards, we'll have the reception.
14
So thank you, Professor Dawkins, for coming, first of all.
15
Really, I personally appreciate it, and I know the people here do.
16
I wanted to talk to you about a few things about science and about your book, your most recent book, or at least the first question has to do with your most recent book,
17
Appetite for Wonder.
18
And in that book, there was something, especially from the viewpoint of education in America, I was curious about.
19
And you said, and I'm going to quote, you're talking about your education.
20
You said, it was really only the tutorial system that educated me.
21
And I must say, that was remarkable, given that you've had, I guess, a little bit of success in science.
22
I want to know, you know, what was this mechanism?
23
What was it about?
24
I mean, I come from, I'm a lawyer, and from that background, we have the Socratic method, where the professor says, you know, Mr. Faircloth, what about the torts rule of what have you?
25
And you have to be ready, stand ready to answer
26
but I wasn't quite as familiar with the tutorial process and I'm curious,
27
one, how that's different from other methods of education in the British system
28
but then also you have a lot of experience both teaching
29
and visiting here in America and how you'd compare and contrast
30
that with American and maybe are there ways we might be able to institute something similar here.
31
First, is this microphone working?
32
Well, first of all, can I compliment you on that speech, Sean?
33
I mean, that was absolutely a fabulous speech.
34
And I just want to say how fully I support this initiative.
35
I'm not American, but I love this country,
36
and I think that everything that this campaign is working for is entirely what we should be, what the rest of the world,
37
actually, will look to America to do.
38
The constitution of this country is admired and envied envied around the world, and it is a secular constitution.
39
And somehow, in recent years, it's gone astray from that, from the vision of the founding fathers.
40
Quite recently, because as Sean said, even Barry Goldwater was a staunch,
41
stout defender of the separation of church and state, and it's a very recent phenomenon, this getting astray from that.
42
Now, the tutorial system, it's a very expensive, extravagant system.
43
You have one student and one teacher for an hour together.
44
It's now slightly becoming more like two students or even three.
45
When I did it, it was nearly always just one -to -one.
46
And it suited me hugely.
47
I had the discipline of going into the library for a week with a reading list
48
that I was given the previous week and learning up a subject,
49
looking at the original research literature in the library and becoming, in effect, at the age of 19,
50
whatever I was, a world authority on this extremely narrow...
51
And so are my colleagues at the same time because we were the people who had most recently read up
52
this whatever subject it was, and often very, very narrow subjects.
53
It suited me very very well.
54
I don't think it suits everybody.
55
I don't want to advocate necessarily that you should adopt the system here.
56
It's much too expensive anyway.
57
Although you could make it cheaper by having graduate students who are actually very good because they have the enthusiasm of youth.
58
But this is my autobiography and so I said what was good for me.
59
And yeah, okay, that's probably enough on that.
60
I know, when I heard that, I thought about the one -to -one that Mayor County and Senator McCoy are probably thinking, well, that sounds a little bit expensive.
61
Well, another question I want to ask you is I saw you tweet recently where you said
62
that for non -specialists my favorite book of yours
63
that you've written is Climbing Mount Improbable and I believe you said that might have been the least selling of your books.
64
Yes, I was rather annoyed about this because, I mean, some of my books have actually sold rather well and this particular one,
65
Climbing Mount Improbable, I think has sold the least of all my books
66
and I think it might be my favorite of my books.
67
It's about natural selection, and it's an attempt to explain to people why natural selection is not a theory of chance,
68
not a theory of random chance.
69
You would be amazed how many people say something like, well, nobody's going to persuade me that I'm a random accident.
70
Well, of course you're not a random accident, that's the whole point of natural selection.
71
Natural selection is the most non -random process you could imagine.
72
That's the whole point of it.
73
That was what Darwin did.
74
Darwin showed the only known alternative to random chance that we have,
75
because creation is not really an alternative to random chance, because you've still got a great big random god that you've got to explain in the first place.
76
There's never been any other theory to get away from random chance as the explanation for complicated illusion of design
77
which living creatures show.
78
Now, some of my other books do the same thing, but I think this one, Climbing Mount Improbable, is the one that does that most clearly.
79
Okay, and then when you said for the, I think your phrase was for the non -specialist, that implied to me perhaps that there was another book for specialists that was particularly your favorite.
80
Yes, my second book is called The Extended Phenotype, and that is designed for specialist biologists.
81
I actually like to think it can be read by others as well, and some people have been good enough to say that it is,
82
but that's why I had to qualify that, yes.
83
Okay.
84
Now, something I hear when we travel, we went on several speaking tours together, is I would hear the controversy come up about group selection,
85
kin selection, and how this might relate to your explanation of altruistic behavior.
86
And I want to, for the layperson, understand what is that debate, and who's on which side, and then maybe explain why I imagine your side is correct.
87
Do you really want a tutorial?
88
I mean, well, if that's what you want, I can do it.
89
Yeah, well, I know if you can do it within the kind of time frame available here.
90
Okay.
91
There has been a controversy in biology about where altruism comes from.
92
I wrote a book called The Selfish Gene.
93
And The Selfish Gene is not actually much about selfishness.
94
It's mostly about altruism.
95
It's about how natural selection, working at the level of the gene, natural selection favors those genes which are best at surviving.
96
Genes survive potentially through hundreds of millions of years or tens of millions of years.
97
Genes which are good at surviving are the ones that we still see in the world.
98
So every living creature around contains the genes of an unbroken line of successful ancestors where success means
99
that not a single one of them died young you can look back at your ancestors
100
and make the proud claim not a single one of my
101
ancestors ever died young not a single one of my ancestors
102
failed to achieve at least one heterosexual copulation plenty of other plenty of their contemporaries failed in both those respects
103
but we all of us contain the genes for success in surviving
104
and reproduction the genes that made our ancestors successful were the genes that were selfish at the level of the gene.
105
Any gene that works for the survival of a rival gene is not going to be around for very long.
106
However, a gene that makes it the individual bodies in
107
which it finds itself work for the survival of other individual bodies can survive,
108
for example, if those other bodies contain copies of the genes kin.
109
So kinship is an enormously important mechanism for the evolution of altruism.
110
Kinship is what explains everything about the social insects,
111
ants, bees, wasps, termites, where you have sterile workers who have no hope of reproducing themselves.
112
Instead, genes that make sterile workers care for their reproductive sisters
113
or nieces or nephews or brothers Those genes survive because copies of the genes in the sterile worker are in the reproductives.
114
And therefore, these genes are selfish genes looking after the reproduction of themselves, copies of themselves in other individuals.
115
That's called kin selection.
116
Now, the rival to kin selection historically was group selection.
117
And group selection said that those groups of animals
118
that contained altruistic individuals were more likely to survive and propagate themselves than rival groups which contained selfish individuals.
119
And that's the wrong way up.
120
That's the wrong way to look at it.
121
That departs from the explanatory principle of gene survival.
122
It's only genes that survive through countless generations.
123
So group selection will only work if you can make it work at the genetic level.
124
And I don't really think I'd want to, in this audience where we're supposed to be talking about secularism,
125
get into quite the detail that it would require to say that.
126
But you asked who's involved.
127
Unfortunately, the great E .O.
128
Wilson, who is by far the leading authority on social insects in the world,
129
has just recently been seduced into talking about group selection and abandoning his earlier espousal of kin selection.
130
And I think he's just not...
131
I mustn't libel.
132
Well, I like to hear you talk about science.
133
I enjoy it, because that's where I learn it.
134
Well, I love talking about science, but...
135
Yes.
136
Well, let me get to, because it's something, as people might have gathered from my remarks,
137
and it really energized me returning here to the United States, was this tour in Turkey.
138
And I promised folks in Turkey I would convey a message to you, so I'll just do it here in front of several hundred people.
139
But in Turkey, for those of you who don't know, and I didn't know that much, I studied foreign policy and international relations in college, and I knew Turkey and some basic events.
140
But I wasn't as familiar with the founding of the Turkish Republic.
141
This is a country that's bigger in population than Great Britain, bigger in population than France.
142
And the founder, a man named Ataturk, he wrote about evolution and required it in school.
143
And this is coming from a nation that's 98%, 99 % Muslim
144
and because he was such a successful military leader he had huge almost George Washington level sway over his society
145
and he said we're going to mandate science, education and all forms of education we're going to separate religion from government we're going to let women,
146
they elected women to public office earlier than many European nations
147
so this was the founding of the Turkish Republic now under
148
threat by this kind of Muslim extremist that's moved into the prime ministership But those people, they set out a plea,
149
and admittedly, some of that plea is directly to you, because I was talking to scientists in Turkey,
150
was they want help from the international community and the scientific community, because they feel like, unlike some of the more so -called Western nations,
151
they are neglected in our media, and their struggles are kind of unknown.
152
And I know that you've spoken often of issues of Islam, but is there a message I could carry back?
153
I know the message they want is that you'll go to Turkey. But about
154
that we can carry back to folks who are in these Muslim nations who are really looking for civil liberties
155
and feel under stress.
156
I am aware that Kamal Ataturk was a great secularist and founded the modern state of Turkey on secular principles, famously did so.
157
I wasn't aware that he was such an enthusiast for evolution, and I'm very glad to hear that.
158
Modern Turkey has a problem with a particular remarkably prolific and successful author.
159
I'm not going to mention his name.
160
I don't want to advertise it.
161
But he has produced a series of books, creationist books...
162
which are translated into goodness knows how many languages, and they're given away free to biology teachers all over the world in all sorts of different languages.
163
You walk into any biology department, you walk into the office of any biology teacher,
164
and you will find these thumping great books from Turkey.
165
They're picture books, they're beautifully illustrated.
166
By the way, I rather wonder whether the illustrations are violating copyright.
167
And I know that copyright law is quite stringent on illustrations.
168
So if there's any lawyer here who would like to look into this question, you could ruin this man,
169
which would do the world a hell of a lot of good.
170
The way the books are arranged is that there's beautiful, lavish colors.
171
On the left -hand side, you have a fossil, and on the right -hand side, you have a modern animal.
172
And in all cases, it says, look at this fossil, look at this modern animal, see, they're the same, therefore evolution hasn't happened.
173
Page after page after page, you turn the pages.
174
When you actually look at what these animals are, they're preposterous.
175
For example, on one of these double pages, the fossil is an eel, the modern animal is a snake.
176
In another case, the fossil animal is a caddis fly in amber.
177
You know that insects can be very beautifully preserved in amber.
178
However, the modern animal is a tidefly for catching trout made of feathers.
179
It has a steel hook sticking out of its back end.
180
Page after page of this lavishly,
181
expensively produced book, distributed free to biology teachers around the world is filled not only with these preposterous mistakes,
182
but the more general mistake of creationism.
183
Now this is something that should resonate with American biology teachers, because in too many places in this country,
184
the teaching of biology, the teaching of science, is being subverted by the interference of religion into science education.
185
And this is not, I think, a thing that's been much mentioned by any of today's speakers.
186
They've mentioned all sorts of other respects in which the interference of church into interstate is very important, and I agree with that.
187
But my own field is education, science education.
188
And I am deeply troubled by the stories that I get over
189
and over and over again from American teachers whose science lessons are subverted by often parents,
190
often school boards, often local politicians.
191
When I was in America a few months ago,
192
I met a teacher in Florida who told me that she was a biology teacher and she was teaching evolution.
193
and one of her pupils complained to his parents that he was being taught evolution, which he didn't want to believe in.
194
The parents went to the head teacher and complained.
195
The head teacher summoned the biology teacher and instead of telling the biology teacher, good for you, keep doing it,
196
reprimanded the biology teacher and forbade her from teaching evolution anymore,
197
all on the strength of one parent complaining, which is a scandal.
198
I mean, what it meant was that all the other pupils in the class were being deprived of a proper scientific education.
199
However, this biology teacher was a woman of some initiative.
200
She knew she wasn't allowed to teach evolution because the headteacher had told her not to.
201
She went to the local university and asked a professor to come to her class, And he taught the time.
202
I'm going to sneak in another science question, then I'll ask a secular one.
203
Since the selfish gene, what do you consider to be the greatest advance in evolutionary science?
204
We say that's major progress, really something new that's been revealed or a new way of looking at things advancing.
205
Well, I think it really started quite a bit before The Self -Esteem, actually, because The Self -Esteem was published in 1976.
206
The really, really big step was taken in 1953
207
when Watson and Crick solved the structure of DNA and showed that DNA has exactly the properties necessary
208
to be the genetic molecule and showed also, and this has now become a growing trend throughout biology ever since,
209
modern genetics, modern molecular genetics is digital.
210
I think with hindsight, we could say that it had to be digital.
211
It wasn't understood at the time.
212
If you look back into pre -Watson and Crick literature, you'll find all sorts of speculations about how genetics worked,
213
which I think with hindsight, we now know that not only did they not work, they couldn't have worked.
214
Modern genetics is digital.
215
It's just like computer science.
216
It's a branch of computer science.
217
It's a branch of information technology.
218
And it sort of had to be, because otherwise genes, genetic replication,
219
would not have had the necessary high fidelity to mediate the evolutionary process.
220
Now, ever since Watson and Crick, the molecular genetics revolution has been gathering pace.
221
So, as you know, the Human Genome Project took about 10 years to sequence the complete human genome.
222
It can now be done in a few weeks.
223
There's an astonishing speed -up in progress in doing this kind of work, this kind of digital sequencing.
224
The equivalent to the Chimpanzee Genome Project,
225
the Dog Genome Project, all sorts of genome projects are now underway they're greatly speeded up by previous ones,
226
because you can build on the experience of the past, greatly speeded up by modern computer technology.
227
But in the field of evolution, what this means is that whereas Darwin, when doing his comparative anatomy,
228
was limited to looking at bones and things like that, and comparing animals, comparing the hand of a man with the hand of a bat,
229
and the hand of a dolphin, for example, and seeing, showing that they're all mammals, that they all have a common ancestor with a similar hand.
230
Nowadays you can do that with literally billions of bits of information, nucleotides.
231
Literally, it's like comparing two texts from the Bible, two texts of the book of Isaiah, where you actually compare letter by letter by letter.
232
And that means that in principle it will be possible to work out the complete family tree of all life.
233
It can't be done yet.
234
There are lots of pitfalls and lots of difficulties.
235
But this cornucopia of information, which was not available to Darwin, Darwin would have absolutely loved it.
236
This is the most important thing that's been happening ever since 1953, and it's been happening ever faster,
237
long after The Selfish Gene was published.
238
Oddly enough, nothing in the molecular genetics revolution, I think, would cause me to revise the fundamental principle of the selfish gene.
239
That's still true, although we now know hugely more about what genes are and how they work.
240
Nevertheless, the principle I was talking about earlier of the immortal gene
241
going on through generation after generation as the unit of natural selection, that actually remains intact.
242
In a way, I'm slightly sorry to say that
243
because scientists get kudos if they say they were wrong and change their mind, but in this particular case, I can't do it.
244
Well, I'm going to ask one secular question, and I know there's many people who would like to ask questions at the microphone, and we'll do that.
245
Just to reiterate the schedule from here is after I'll ask this question, then we'll turn to audience questions
246
and then we're going to have I believe a book signing afterwards
247
which if I'm correct is going to be upstairs
248
and people can also purchase books if they wish
249
while they're in the book signing line but they'll also
250
if you filled out your form be able to attend the
251
reception where I hope everyone will take a leadership role and that
252
that leads me to my last question last time we saw
253
each other I just made a presentation about the Secularity USA project
254
and you sent me a nice email saying to break open the champagne about this project
255
and I must say since then I've invested actually I must
256
in order to get us where we are now several thousands of my own dollars in hopes
257
that this can really be something where the folks here more
258
so than than me take leadership in this project and I hope maybe as a closing message before the audience questions
259
You might kind of tell them why you think this is a champagne opening worthy project
260
and what its real potential is with Secularity USA.
261
Well, as I said before, I think that the secular constitution of this country is the envy of the world.
262
It's certainly the envy of Britain, where insofar as we have a constitution at all, we don't really have a written constitution, but insofar as we have a constitution, it is very far from secular.
263
I mean, there are bishops in the House of Lords.
264
There are non -elected people in Parliament who are there purely because they are religious leaders.
265
So church interferes with state all the time.
266
And I think that places like Britain do envy the United States Constitution
267
and are sorry to see this departure from it that I mentioned earlier.
268
I was very persuaded by what you said about Iowa serving as a kind of megaphone
269
for anybody who comes here when the world's press is here.
270
That seemed to me to be a politically, tactically very sound thing to do.
271
And it was done by Jimmy Carter, as you said.
272
It was done by Barack Obama, I think, as well.
273
So it looks to me as though Iowa is the happening place.
274
And so I...
275
I can congratulate Sean and Alan and their team, and I hope that the team will grow bigger and
276
that people will come flooding into Iowa to help with your local organizing committee
277
and that you will achieve this really noble goal.
278
Thank you very much, and I think will we switch to lights where people can go to the microphone for questions?
279
What can I, as a student, do to make sure that I receive an adequate science education?
280
What can you, as a student, do to see that you receive an adequate scientific education?
281
I'm sorry if it's necessary for you to take the steps that your teachers ought to be taking to do that.
282
If you've got good teachers, then you're fine
283
if you've got teachers who are refusing to teach science properly
284
then I suppose what you do is complain to you do exactly what
285
that Florida child did in fact in the other the other way you yeah that's difficult for you
286
because at you're at your age I think that that would
287
that would be very difficult be open -minded be critical think for yourself ask yourself
288
when you're taught anything is this the kind of thing
289
which is probably known because of real evidence
290
or is this the kind of thing that you're just being told
291
because of authority something like that so
292
if somebody tells you something about the real world you could
293
ask yourself the question what kind of evidence would lead to this belief about about the about the real world
294
and try to do a little bit of research ask around
295
ask your parents find out whether there's real evidence for the thing
296
that you're being told and mistrust it if it turns out that there isn't any evidence,
297
but that this is just something which you're being told from authority.
298
What would be a discovery that you would find fascinating, you would like to see discovered by science coming forward, or what particular advancement in science excites you?
299
You're not asking me to actually say what that discovery would be, because if I could do that.
300
Well, the origin of life would be very nice.
301
I was saying earlier that the immortal gene is the key to natural selection.
302
Natural selection can only get going when the immortal gene was born.
303
So the origin of life had to be the origin of the very first self -replicating molecule, something like DNA,
304
but it probably wasn't DNA because DNA requires too sophisticated an infrastructure in order to do its job of self -replicating.
305
DNA needs protein in order to do its job of self -replicating, and protein needs DNA, so we have a catch -22.
306
So the original self -replicating molecule probably wasn't DNA what it was nobody knows we may never know because it's
307
shrouded in the past however the best hope would be if somebody produces a model a theory
308
which is so good so elegant
309
that everybody says yes of course it has to be
310
that way because that's such an elegant theory that's the sort of thing physicists do all the time
311
biologists usually don't have that that luxury um
312
so i i have good hope that
313
that may happen in my lifetime perhaps an even wilder hope
314
would be to solve the problem of what is subjective consciousness
315
and that's a much philosophically much more difficult there was a book
316
that was published in I think it was Australia I won't advertise it
317
but it pretty much said not only to kids
318
but to their parents hey don't go get vaccinated for anything
319
it was you know we've always had Christian scientists who are always completely against vaccinations and even seeing the doctor.
320
So could you elaborate, I suppose, a bit on what we should, and what steps we should take to make sure
321
that children don't die from not getting vaccinated and not from seeing the doctor?
322
This is very serious because it's not just that if you don't vaccinate, if enough people don't vaccinate,
323
then you don't push the herd above the threshold that's necessary to stop epidemics forming.
324
The mathematical models of epidemiology have shown that if there are enough, there's a high enough percentage,
325
and the percentage varies with different diseases, but whatever the critical percentage is, as long as that percentage is reached of people who are immune to the disease,
326
you won't get an epidemic epidemic.
327
If you drop below that critical percentage, then you're going to get an epidemic of measles or whooping cough or whatever it is.
328
So, there's a social welfare aspect to this as well as just a private one.
329
It's not just a private matter of, do I get vaccinated myself or do I vaccinate my children myself?
330
You're actually damaging society as a whole if you don't vaccinate.
331
And one can say with confidence that vaccination works.
332
The evidence in favor of vaccination is overwhelming.
333
And so it is a benighted view that you shouldn't have been...
334
That every now and again scare stories arise that vaccinating a particular vaccine causes autism, whatever it might be.
335
It's very understandable why parents would be scared of that.
336
And I think part of the reason for that is that to vaccinate a child is to take a positive step.
337
You actually pay a doctor to stick a needle in them.
338
So that if you believe the story that it causes autism or causes something else, then the parent has a feeling of blame,
339
self -blame, which is, so to speak, a sin of commission whereas if you fail to vaccinate
340
and then the child gets the disease and maybe even dies,
341
somehow in our psychology it doesn't feel like the same deed that you've done.
342
Even I, when there was one of these scares, I think it was about whooping cough,
343
and I was worried about whether to get my daughter vaccinated, went to my doctor and said,
344
is it true that you can get bad side effects from whooping cough vaccine?
345
And he got up and selected a book from his bookshelf and he said, well, it is true, but the danger from whooping cough itself is 3 ,000 times greater.
346
So I said, right.
347
Thank you.
348
What was it like to meet someone like Bill O 'Reilly, especially someone in your field and intelligence?
349
I've done Bill O 'Reilly three times now.
350
I've been able to see two.
351
The first time, he treated me with a certain measure of respect, I think.
352
We had a moderately okay conversation.
353
I think the second time was when I get, the tide goes in, the tide goes out,
354
the tide isn't it and I lost respect for him
355
and I think the third time
356
that was down the line I wasn't actually in the studio
357
and he was shouting at me so much
358
that I eventually said will you stop shouting at me and listen and he did
359
I slightly suspect from having met him Outside the studio before the microphones were switched on.
360
He's not quite as stupid as he pretends to be He's playing to his audience Hi,
361
um, whilst researching in Bristol this summer, whenever I met British students and they found out I was American
362
One of the first things they would say
363
and the professors as well was oh it must be awful to be a paleontologist in America
364
It must be awful to be learning about evolutionary biology in America.
365
And so that's obviously concerning.
366
But I was wondering if you see that perspective in your colleagues as well and whether you think that could be damaging.
367
I hear what you're saying.
368
I don't, actually.
369
I mean, I've traveled a lot in America, and I've always been, whenever I visited schools, visited universities, is,
370
I think Liberty University is the only place I've ever visited where I've thought this place should really be closed down.
371
But in general, I have been impressed.
372
It may be that my hosts have been selective in who they take me to.
373
I read the statistics.
374
I'm aware that there is massive opposition to the teaching of our subject you're an evolutionist as well, yeah.
375
There is massive opposition.
376
I'm aware of this from opinion polls.
377
I'm aware that Gallup polls suggest that 45 percent or
378
so of the American population believes the world is less than 10 ,000 years old, which is, by the way, as I've often said before,
379
equivalent to believing that the width of North America is eight yards
380
but but I I never I met I never meet these people
381
and and and I don't really quite I can't marry it up to the the fact
382
that you use the word perception I mean I I have a perception I think
383
that I think the world has a perception
384
that this country United States of America is is beyond compare the leading scientific power in the world,
385
the leading scientific nation ever.
386
And so, in a way, it's all the more credit to those scientists like yourself who are doing proper science,
387
despite being held back by that 45%.
388
Just think what you could do if you didn't have that 45%.
389
Good evening, Doctor.
390
My question is kind of a different tack.
391
What in your definition is a species?
392
Okay.
393
Where you have sexual reproduction, and you do have sexual reproduction in most of the animals that we're familiar with.
394
A species is defined as a group of animals which can interbreed with each other under natural conditions.
395
Species that have drifted apart from each other so that they can no longer interbreed with each other have become separate species.
396
So the origin of species, to quote Darwin's title, is the moment when a species divides into two
397
and divides sufficiently far apart from each other that
398
if they meet again they can't interbreed it's a very very
399
important process there are there have been on this earth literally
400
billions of separate species they're all descended from a single common ancestor
401
so this process of branching so -called speciation branching
402
and then being sufficiently far apart
403
that they can no longer interbreed is what it's about it's a remarkable fact
404
which nobody can deny that if you follow your ancestry back sufficiently far
405
and you follow the ancestry back of any other animal you
406
like to mention let's take a snail you will eventually hit a common ancestor in the case of humans
407
and snails that common ancestor lived more than a billion years ago
408
but there was a time
409
when some ancestral species we don't know what it was was
410
accidentally probably accidentally split into two perhaps by some geographical barrier and
411
one side went off eventually to become vertebrates including us the
412
other side went off eventually to become most of the invertebrates including including snails
413
but there was a time when two siblings brother and sister sister sister
414
one of them was destined to give rise to us
415
and the other was destined to give rise to snails plus of course lots of other things Isn't that a wonderful thought?
416
Thank you, Mr. Dawkins, for taking my question.
417
In my friendly talks with the religious right,
418
some of them have been just simply dismissive of humanism as just a modern form of religion.
419
Would you remark on that?
420
Well, humanism is in one respect a kind of religion
421
because it aspires to take the place of religion with respect to things like ideals,
422
morals, principles to live by,
423
maybe meetings that you hold to foster some sense of solidarity.
424
So, quite a lot of the things that religion does can be done by humanists.
425
Humanists can be trained to conduct funerals, conduct weddings, and they do many of the things that clergy people do.
426
However, the word religion has come to be associated with a belief in something supernatural.
427
And that's the one thing that humanists, at least in the sense that I think you're meaning it, don't believe.
428
So it is a kind of atheistic way of living.
429
I don't always call myself a humanist.
430
I sometimes do.
431
But I think humanism is kind of the religious wing of atheism.
432
I am an artist at the Iowa State University
433
and I'm a big believer that the importance of evaluating the origin
434
or resource of an image or piece of work just as much as any scientific document
435
or literary work so I was wondering
436
if you had any words to say in regard to visual
437
literacy in society with regard to what sorry visual literacy visual literacy literacy visual literacy gosh
438
but most of the questions I got I've had before but
439
that one is totally new to me
440
which is wonderful I am not very visually literate I'm not the best person to answer
441
that question I have a bit of a blind spot where where art is concerned
442
so I don't think I I have to come back to
443
that I don't have an immediate answer to
444
that I'm sorry it's your subject
445
not mine I
446
spent my
447
life breeding plants for drought tolerance, and so I'm keenly aware of the dire implications of climate change.
448
And so as an evolutionary biologist, do you take a fated perspective that in the sense that most species become extinct,
449
and that's our fate, or do these selfish genes give us hope for the future?
450
It's true that most species have gone extinct, and therefore, statistically, we might fear
451
that the same will happen to us I think there are reasons to think
452
that we might be an exception to the rule we are exceptions in
453
so many ways we are a very very remarkable species we
454
are in this magnificent theater it's totally totally different environment from the environment
455
that our wild ancestors would have felt felt at home
456
and they would have been utterly bewildered by clothes by cars by computers by planes by refrigerators
457
and so I think that the kind of catastrophe
458
which leads to the extinction
459
which has historically led to the extinction of 99 % of all species
460
that have ever lived we have a very good chance
461
because of our technology of overcoming maybe even if the
462
if the worst fears of of of climate change profits come true
463
that will be a disaster for the world as a whole
464
and it'll be disaster for the great majority of humans
465
but I don't think it's necessarily true that we will go extinct
466
because we you could imagine
467
that humans would have technological ways of preserving even even something as disastrous as the one
468
that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, when a meteorite hit the Earth with a force greater than
469
all the hydrogen bombs in the world put together hundreds of times over.
470
We might even survive that.
471
We might, by the way, be starting to think about ways of deflecting the next one that comes along, because there will be one.
📺 Тот же канал
✨ Рекомендуемое видео
C166
66 предложений
What science can’t answer, according to physicist Jim Al-Khalili | Big Think
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1625 предложений
Harvard Law Library Book Talk | Supremacy: How Rule by the Court Replaced Government by the People
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepCambridge Exam Prep
C12
233 предложений
Are we WRONG about most FAMOUS LINGUISTICS experiment??
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepCambridge Exam Prep
C19
193 предложений
Amartya Sen interview (1999)
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1552 предложений
The Professor Who Taught People How To Think (1962)
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
623 предложений
How evolution works, in 54 minutes | Sean B. Carroll: Full Interview
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
33 предложений
TOEFL 2026 Listening Practice: Listen to 2 Academic Talks
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1537 предложений
The next 50 years: humanity, AI, power | Yuval Noah Harari
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C15
29 предложений
NT Wright on Jordan Peterson: "I have never met him, but..."
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
395 предложений
What is the purpose of education? | Future Learning | Nobel Prize Dialogue Seoul 2023
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
28 предложений
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Isaac Newton is #1
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
Лексика и советы по произношению к этому уроку
Этот урок разговорной практики уровня C1 построен на видео «"Richard Dawkins & Sean Faircloth in Conversation"». В этом видео 471 предложений и 6337 слов для шедоуинга. Речь длится 45:16. Говорящий держит ровный темп — около 140 слов в минуту, удобный для шедоуинга. 82% слов входят в 3000 самых частых слов английского языка; остальные стоит разобрать перед занятием.
Ключевая лексика этого видео
Самые сложные слова из видео (15), с произношением и значением:
| Слово | Произношение | Значение |
|---|---|---|
| ancestor существительное | /ˈæn.sɛs.tɚ/ | пре́док, прароди́тель |
| vaccinate глагол | /ˈvæksɪneɪt/ | вакцини́ровать, де́лать приви́вку |
| genetics существительное | /dʒəˈnɛt.ɪks/ | гене́тика |
| secular прилагательное | /ˈsɛkjʊlə/ | све́тский, мирско́й |
| genome существительное | /ˈd͡ʒiː.noʊm/ | гено́м |
| envy существительное | /ˈɛnvi/ | за́висть |
| literacy существительное | /ˈlɪtəɹəsi/ | гра́мотность |
| whoop существительное | /wuːp/ | во́зглас, вы́крик |
| reproduction существительное | /ˌɹiːpɹəˈdʌkʃən/ | размноже́ние |
| tutorial существительное | /ˌtjuːˈtɔːɹɪəl/ | посо́бие, уче́бник |
| evolutionary прилагательное | /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/ | эволюцио́нный |
| fossil существительное | /ˈfɑsl̩/ | ископа́емое, окамене́лость |
| altruism существительное | /ˈæl.tɹu.ɪz.əm/ | альтруи́зм |
| humanism существительное | /ˈhjumənɪz(ə)m/ | гумани́зм |
| humanist существительное | /ˈhjuːmənɪst/ | гумани́ст |
Фразовые глаголы, которые вы услышите
| Слово | Произношение | Значение |
|---|---|---|
| find out глагол | узнава́ть, узна́ть | |
| go off глагол | взрыва́ться, взорва́ться | |
| speed up глагол | /spiːdˈʌp/ | ускоря́ться, уско́риться |
| come along глагол | сопровожда́ть, составля́ть компа́нию | |
| fill out глагол | /fɪl ˈaʊt/ | заполня́ть, запо́лнить |
| get over глагол | преодолева́ть, преодоле́ть | |
| get up глагол | поднима́ться, подня́ться | |
| go out глагол | выходи́ть, вы́йти |
Фразы, которые стоит повторять
Короткие законченные фразы из видео, которые пригодятся в повседневном разговоре:
- I want to know, you know, what was this mechanism?
- Faircloth, what about the torts rule of what have you?
- Do you really want a tutorial?
- What in your definition is a species?
- Would you remark on that?
Грамматика в этом видео
Конструкции, которые говорящий использует чаще всего, с точными словами из видео:
| Конструкция | В видео |
|---|---|
| Present Perfect have/has + причастие прошедшего времени — прошлое действие, важное сейчас | you've written · have actually sold · has sold |
| Пассивный залог be + причастие прошедшего времени — важно, что происходит, а не кто это делает | is sometimes forgotten · is admired · was given |
| Придаточные определительные who / which + предложение — уточнение о человеке или предмете | people who had · students who are · genes which are |
Произношение, на которое стоит обратить внимание
Говорящий использует 128 сокращённых и редуцированных форм, например don't, I'm, you're. Произносите их коротко, так, как слышите.
- Звуки «sh» и «zh»: reproduction /ˌɹiːpɹəˈdʌkʃən/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, sufficiently /səˈfɪʃəntli/, kinship /ˈkɪnʃɪp/, vaccination /ˌvæk.sɪˈneɪ.ʃən/
- Длинные слова — следите за ударением: literacy /ˈlɪtəɹəsi/, reproduction /ˌɹiːpɹəˈdʌkʃən/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, altruism /ˈæl.tɹu.ɪz.əm/, humanism /ˈhjumənɪz(ə)m/
Как заниматься с этим видео
- Прослушайте всё видео один раз молча и выпишите незнакомые слова.
- Повторяйте предложение за предложением на обычной скорости, пока ваш ритм не совпадёт с ритмом говорящего.
- Запишите себя и сравните с оригиналом, обращая внимание на такие слова, как ancestor, vaccinate, genetics.
Что такое техника Shadowing?
Shadowing — это научно обоснованная техника изучения языка, изначально разработанная для подготовки профессиональных переводчиков и популяризированная полиглотом доктором Александром Аргуэльесом. Метод прост, но эффективен: вы слушаете аудио на английском от носителей языка и немедленно повторяете вслух — как тень, следующая за говорящим с задержкой в 1–2 секунды. В отличие от пассивного прослушивания или грамматических упражнений, Shadowing заставляет мозг и мышцы рта одновременно обрабатывать и воспроизводить реальные речевые паттерны. Исследования показывают, что это значительно улучшает точность произношения, интонацию, ритм, связную речь, понимание на слух и беглость речи — что делает его одним из самых эффективных методов для подготовки к IELTS Speaking и реального общения на английском.