Mary Midgley
|
|
 |
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Born
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Mary Scrutton
London
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Died
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10 October
2018 (aged 99)
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Residence
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Newcastle,
UK
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Alma mater
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Notable work
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Beast and Man (1978), Animals and Why They
Matter (1983), Evolution as a Religion (1985), Science
as Salvation (1992)
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Spouse(s)
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Geoffrey Midgley (m.
1950, d. 1997)
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Awards
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Honorary D. Litt (1995), Durham University;
Honorary DCL(2008), Newcastle University
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Era
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|
Region
|
|
Main interests
|
|
Notable ideas
|
Humans as ethical
primates
|
Influences[show]
|
|
Mary
Beatrice Midgley (née Scrutton; 13 September 1919 – 10
October 2018[1]) was a British
philosopher.
She
was a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle
University and was known for her work on science, ethics
and animal rights.
She
wrote her first book, Beast And Man (1978), when she was in
her fifties.
She
has since written over 15 other books, including Animals and Why They
Matter (1983), Wickedness (1984), The Ethical
Primate (1994), Evolution as a Religion (1985),
and Science as Salvation (1992).
Her
autobiography, The Owl of Minerva, was published in 2005.
Midgley
strongly opposed reductionism and scientism, and any attempts to make science a
substitute for the humanities—a role for which it is, she argued, wholly
inadequate.
She
wrote extensively about what philosophers can learn from nature, particularly
from animals.
A
number of her books and articles discussed philosophical ideas appearing in
popular science, including those of Richard Dawkins.
She
also wrote in favour of a moral interpretation of the Gaia hypothesis.
The
Guardian described
her as a fiercely combative philosopher and the UK's "foremost scourge of
'scientific pretension.'"[3]
Contents
·
2Career
·
3Awards
·
4Death
·
8Notes
Her
father, the son of the eminent judge Sir Thomas Edward
Scrutton, was a curate in Dulwich and
later chaplain of King's
College, Cambridge.
She
was raised in Cambridge, Greenford and Ealing, and educated at Downe House School in Cold Ash, Berkshire,
where she developed her interest in classics and philosophy:
Midgley's father was a King's College chaplain.
[A] new and vigorous
Classics teacher offered to teach a few of us Greek, and that too was somehow slotted into
our timetables.
We loved this and worked
madly at it, which meant that with considerable efforts on all sides, it was
just possible for us to go to college on Classics …
I had decided to read
Classics rather than English – which was the first choice that occurred to me –
because my English teacher, bless her, pointed out that English literature is
something that you read in any case, so it is better to study something that
you otherwise wouldn't.
Someone also told me
that, if you did Classics at Oxford, you could do Philosophy as well.
Midgley read Greats at
Oxford, going up to Somerville in
1938.
She
took the Oxford entrance exam in the autumn of 1937, gaining a place at Somerville.
During
the year before starting university, it was arranged that she would live
in Austria for three months to learn German, but she had to leave after a month
because of the worsening political situation.
At
Somerville she studied Mods and Greats alongside Iris Murdoch, graduating with first-class
honours.
Several
of her lasting friendships that began at Oxford were with scientists, and she
credited them with having educated her in a number of scientific disciplines.[5]
After
a split in the Labour club at Oxford over the Soviet Union's actions, she was
on the committee of the newly formed Democratic Socialist Club alongside Tony Crosland and Roy Jenkins.
She
writes that her career in philosophy may have been affected by women having a
greater voice in discussion at the time, because many male undergraduates left
after a year to fight in the Second World War:
"I
think myself that this experience has something to do with the fact that Elizabeth [Anscombe]
and I and Iris [Murdoch]
and Philippa Foot and Mary Warnock have all made our names in
philosophy..."
"I
do think that in normal times a lot of good female thinking is wasted because
it simply doesn't get heard."[6]
Midgley
left Oxford in 1942 and went into the civil service, as "the war put graduate
work right out of the question".
Instead,
she "spent the rest of the war doing various kinds of work that were held
to be of national importance".[7]
During
this time she was also a teacher at Downe School and Bedford School.
She
returned to Oxford in 1947 to do graduate work with Gilbert Murray.
She
began research on Plotinus's view of the
soul, which she has described as "so unfashionable and so vast that I
never finished my thesis".[7]
In
retrospect Midgley has written of her belief that she is "lucky" to
have missed out in having a doctorate, or D. Phil.
She
argues that one of the main flaws in doctoral training is that, while it
"shows you how to deal with difficult arguments", it does not
"help you to grasp the big questions that provide its context – the
background issues out of which the small problems arose."[7]
In
1949 Midgley went to Reading,
teaching in the philosophy department there for four terms.
They
moved to Newcastle,
where Geoff Midgley got a job in the philosophy department of Newcastle University.[9]
Midgley
gave up teaching for several years while she had three sons (Tom, David and
Martin),[3] before also getting
a job in the philosophy department at Newcastle, where she and her husband were
both "much loved".[9]
During
her time at Newcastle, she began studying ethology and this led to her first
book, Beast and Man (1978), published when she was 59.
"I
wrote no books until I was a good 50, and I'm jolly glad because I didn't know
what I thought before then."[3]
Midgley
was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by Durham University in 1995[11] and an
honorary Doctor of Civil Law by Newcastle University in
2008.[10]
She
was an honorary fellow of the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Centre
at Newcastle University.[10]
Midgley
argued that philosophy is like plumbing, something that nobody notices until
it goes wrong.
"Then
suddenly we become aware of some bad smells, and we have to take up the
floorboards and look at the concepts of even the most ordinary piece of
thinking. The great philosophers ... noticed how badly things were going wrong,
and made suggestions about how they could be dealt with."[14]
Despite
her upbringing, she did not embrace Christianity herself, because, she says,
"I couldn't make it work. I would try to pray and it didn't seem to get me
anywhere so I stopped after a while. But I think it's a perfectly sensible
world view."[9]
She
also argues that the world's religions should not simply be ignored: "It
turns out that the evils which have infested religion are not confined to it,
but are ones that can accompany any successful human institution. Nor is it
even clear that religion itself is something that the human race either can or
should be cured of."[15]
Midgley's
book Wickedness has been described as coming "closest to
addressing a theological theme: the problem of evil."[16]
But,
Midgley argues that we need to understand the human capacity for wickedness,
rather than blaming God for it. Midgley argues that evil arises from aspects of
human nature, not from an external force. She further argues that evil is the
absence of good, with good being described as the positive virtues such as
generosity, courage and kindness. Therefore, evil is the absence of these
characteristics, leading to selfishness, cowardice and similar. She therefore
criticises existentialism and other schools of thought which promote the
'Rational Will' as a free agent. She also criticises the tendency to demonise
those deemed 'wicked', by failing to acknowledge that they also display some
measure of some of the virtues.[16]
Midgley
also expressed her interest in Paul Davies' ideas on the inherent
improbability of the order found in the universe.
She
argued that "there's some sort of tendency towards the formation of
order", including towards life and "perceptive life".[9] The best way, she
argued, of talking about this is using the concept of "a life force",
although she acknowledged that this is "vague".[9] She also argued
that "gratitude" is an important part of the motivation for theism. "You go out on a day like this
and you're really grateful. I don't know who to."[9]
This
understanding also links with Midgley's argument that the concept of Gaia has "both a scientific and a
religious aspect."[17] She argued that
people find this hard to grasp because our views on both science and religion
have been narrowed so much that the connections between them are now obscured.[17] This is not,
however, about belief in a personal God, but instead about responding to the
system of life, as revealed by Gaia, with "wonder, awe and gratitude"[18]
Midgley
was supportive of James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis.
This
was part of her "principal passion" of "reviving our reverence
for the earth".[10] Midgley also
described Gaia as a "breakthrough", as it was "the first time a
theory derived from scientific measurements has carried with it an implicit
moral imperative – the need to act in the interests of this living system on
which we all depend.[19]
In
2001 Midgley founded, along with David Midgley and Tom Wakeford, the Gaia
Network, and became its first Chair.[20][21]
Their
regular meetings on the implications of Gaia led to the 2007 book Earthy
realism edited by Midgley, which sought to bring together the
scientific and spiritual aspects of Gaia theory.[21]
Midgley's
2001 pamphlet for Demos Gaia:
The next big idea argues for the importance of the idea of Gaia as a
"powerful tool" in science, morality, psychology and politics, to
gain a more holistic understanding of the world.[22] Instead, Midgley
argued that we "must learn how to value various aspects of our
environment, how to structure social relationships and institutions so that we
value social and spiritual life, as well as the natural world, alongside
commercial and economic aspects.[22]
Her
book Science and Poetry also includes a discussion on the idea
of Gaia, which she argued "is not a gratuitous, semi-mystical
fantasy", but instead is "a useful idea, a cure for distortions that
spoil our current world-view."[23] It is useful both
in finding practical solutions to environmental problems and also in giving us
"a more realistic view of ourselves".[23]
Gaia
has, Midgely argued, both scientific and moral importance, which also involves
politics.[24] There is also a
religious angle to Gaia.[25]
Beast
and Man was
an examination of human nature and a reaction against the reductionism of sociobiology, and the relativism and behaviorism she saw as prevalent in much
of social science. She argued that human beings are more similar to animals
than many social scientists then acknowledged, while animals are in many ways
more sophisticated than was often accepted.[9]
She
criticised existentialists who argued that there was no such thing as human
nature and writers such as Desmond Morris who she understood as
arguing that human nature was "brutal and nasty".[9]
Instead,
she argued that human beings and their relationship with animals could be
better understood by using the qualitative methods
of ethology and comparative
psychology, and that this approach showed that "we do have a
nature and it's much more in the middle.[9]
Writing
in the 2002 introduction to the reprint of Evolution as a Religion (1985),
Midgley reported that she wrote both this book, and the later Science
as Salvation (1992) to counter the "quasi-scientific
speculation"[26] of "certain
remarkable prophetic and metaphysical passages that appeared
suddenly in scientific books, often in their last chapters."[27]
Evolution
as a Religion dealt
with the theories of evolutionary biologists, including Dawkins, while Science as Salvation dealt
with the theories of physicists and artificial
intelligence researchers. Midgley writes that she still
believes that these theories, "have nothing to do with any reputable
theory of evolution,"[28] and will not solve
the real social and moral problems the world is facing, either through genetic engineering or
the use of machines. She concludes: "These schemes still seem to me to be
just displacement activities proposed in order to avoid facing our real
difficulties."[28]
"[I]n
exposing these rhetorical attempts to turn science into a comprehensive
ideology," she wrote in The myths we live by, "I am not
attacking science but defending it against dangerous misconstructions."[29]
Midgley
argued against reductionism, or the attempt to impose any one approach to
understanding the world. She suggests that there are "many maps, many
windows," arguing that "we need scientific pluralism—the
recognition that there are many independent forms and sources of
knowledge—rather than reductivism, the conviction that one fundamental form
underlies them all and settles everything." She writes that it is helpful
to think of the world as "a huge aquarium. We cannot see it as a whole
from above, so we peer in at it through a number of small windows ... We can
eventually make quite a lot of sense of this habitat if we patiently put
together the data from different angles. But if we insist that our own window
is the only one worth looking through, we shall not get very far."[30]
She
argued that, "acknowledging matter as somehow akin to and penetrated by
mind is not adding a new ... assumption ... it is becoming aware of something
we are doing already." She suggested that "this topic is essentially
the one which caused Einstein often to remark that the really surprising thing
about science is that it works at all ... the simple observation that the laws
of thought turn out to be the laws of things."[31]
Midgley
wrote her 2014 book, Are you an illusion? as a response
to Francis Crick's
argument in his book The Astonishing Hypothesis that a
person's sense of personal identity and free will is no more than the behaviour
of nerve cells. She attacks the understanding inherent in this argument that
everything, including a sense of self, can be understood through its physical
properties.[9] Instead, she argues
that there are different levels of explanation, which need to be studied using
different methods. This means that thoughts and memories are an integral part
of reality for both humans and animals and need to be studied as such.[32]
In
volume 53 (1978) of Philosophy, the journal of the Royal
Institute of Philosophy, J. L. Mackie published an article
entitled The Law of the Jungle: Moral Alternatives and Principles of
Evolution, praising Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, and discussing how its
ideas might be applied to moral philosophy.[33]
Midgley
responded in volume 54 (1979) with "Gene-Juggling," arguing
that The Selfish Gene was about psychological egoism,
rather than evolution.[34] The paper
criticised Dawkins' concepts, but was judged by its targets to be intemperate
and personal in tone, and as having misunderstood Dawkins' ideas. Midgley
disputed this view, arguing that while Dawkins purports to be talking about
genes—that is, chemical arrangements—he nonetheless slides over to saying that
"we are born selfish" (The Selfish Gene, p. 3).
She
wrote that she had previously "not attended to Dawkins, thinking it
unnecessary to 'break
a butterfly upon a wheel'.
But
Mr Mackie's article is not the only indication I have lately met of serious
attention being paid to his fantasies."[34]
In
a rejoinder in 1981, Dawkins retorted that the comment was "hard to match,
in reputable journals, for its patronising condescension toward a fellow academic."[35]
He
wrote that she "raises the art of misunderstanding to dizzy heights. My
central point had no connection with what she alleges. I am not even very
directly interested in man, or at least not in his emotional nature."
"My
book is about the evolution of life, not the ethics of one particular, rather
aberrant, species."[35]
In
volume 58 (1983), Midgley replied again, in "Selfish Genes and Social
Darwinism":
"Apology
is due, not only for the delay but for the impatient tone of my article. One
should not lose one's temper, and doing so always makes for confused argument ...
[but my] basic objections remain."[36]
The
bad feeling between Dawkins and Midgley appeared not to diminish.
In
a note to page 55 in the 2nd edition of The Selfish Gene (1989),
Dawkins refers to her "highly intemperate and vicious paper."
Midgley
continued to criticise Dawkins' ideas.
In
her books Evolution as a Religion (2002) and The Myths
We Live By (2003), she writes about what she sees as his confused use
of language—the sleight of hand involved in using terms such as
"selfish" in different ways without alerting the reader to the change
in meaning—and some of what she regards as his rhetoric ("genes exert ultimate
power over behaviour"), which she argues is more akin to religion than
science.
She
wrote in a letter to The Guardian in 2005:
"[There is] widespread discontent with the neo-Darwinist—or Dawkinsist—orthodoxy that claims something which Darwin himself denied, namely that natural selection is the sole and exclusive cause of evolution, making the world therefore, in some important sense, entirely random. This is itself a strange faith which ought not to be taken for granted as part of science.[37]"
In
an interview with The Independent in September 2007,
she argued that Dawkins' views on evolution are ideologically driven: "The
ideology Dawkins is selling is the worship of competition. It is projecting
a Thatcherite take on economics on to
evolution. It's not an impartial scientific view; it's a political drama."[38] In April 2009
Midgley reiterated her critical interpretation of The Selfish Gene as
part of a series of articles on Hobbes in The Guardian.[39] In her 2010
book The Solitary Self: Darwin and the Selfish Gene, she argues
that "simple one-sided accounts of human motives, such as the
"selfish gene" tendency in recent neo-Darwinian thought, may be
illuminating but are always unrealistic."[40]
Midgley
is referred to in The Lives of Animals (1999),
an unusual fictional work by the South African novelist J. M. Coetzee.
The
book has been likened to a cross between a short story and a philosophical
dialogue, as Coetzee's protagonist, Elizabeth Costello, often speaks at length
about philosophical ideas. Many reviewers expressed bafflement at the text,
which has an enigmatic and riddling style. As one reviewer noted, "the
reader is not quite sure whether he is intended to spot some confusion or
contradiction or non-sequitur in [the protagonist's] arguments."[41] Other critics
however have noted many affinities between The Lives of Animals and
Midgley's philosophy, and have used Midgley's ideas to make sense of Coetzee's
famously confusing work.
The
main character, who also appears in Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello,
is concerned with the moral status of animals, a subject Midgley addressed
in Animals and Why They Matter, and discusses at length the idea of
sympathy as an ethical concept, a subject Midgley wrote about in Beast
and Man. Andy Lamey wrote that the result of these and other similarities
is that Coetzee's work "evoke[s] a particular conception of ethics, one
very similar to that of the philosopher Mary Midgley. Such a view affords a
central role to sympathy and is fundamentally opposed to a long-standing rival
view, most clearly exemplified by the social contract tradition, which
prioritizes an instrumental conception of rationality."[42]
Coetzee
and Midgley additionally shared a longstanding fascination with Robinson Crusoe. Coetzee retells the Crusoe
story in his novel Foe, while
Midgley wrote about Crusoe in her essay "Duties Concerning Islands."
Midgley's essay argued for the idea that human beings can have ethical
obligations to non-human entities such as animals and ecosystems, an idea also
found in The Lives of Animals, Foe and many other
works by Coetzee.[43]
Midgley
agreed to sit for sculptor Jon Edgar in Newcastle during 2006, as
part of the Environment Triptych,
along with heads of Richard Mabey and James Lovelock.[44] This was exhibited
at Yorkshire
Sculpture Park in 2013.[45]
Books
Animals
and Why They Matter: A Journey Around the Species Barrier. University of Georgia
Press, 1983. ISBN 0-8203-2041-2
with
Judith Hughes. Women's Choices: Philosophical Problems Facing Feminism.
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983. ISBN 0-312-88791-4
Evolution
as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears. Routledge, 1985;
reprinted with new introduction 2002. ISBN 0-415-27832-5 This is dedicated
"to the memory of Charles Darwin who never said
these things."
·
Science As Salvation: A Modern Myth and Its
Meaning.
Routledge, 1992. ISBN 0-415-10773-3 (also available here as a Gifford Lectures series)
·
Utopias, Dolphins and Computers: Problems
of Philosophical Plumbing. Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0-415-13378-5
·
editor. Earthy Realism: The Meaning
of Gaia. Imprint Academic, 2007. ISBN 1-84540-080-1
Pamphlets
·
Biological and Cultural Evolution, Institute for Cultural
Research Monograph Series, No. 20, 1984. ISBN 0-904674-08-8
Selected
articles
The
Emancipation of Women (1952) The Twentieth Century CLII, No.
901, pp. 217–25
Bishop
Butler: A Reply (1952) The Twentieth Century CLII, No. 905
Ou
Sont les Neiges de ma Tante (1959) The Twentieth Century,
pp. 168–79
The Concept of Beastliness: Philosophy,
Ethics and Animal Behaviour (1973) Philosophy 48,
No. 148, pp. 111–135 JSTOR 3749836
The
Neutrality of the Moral Philosopher (1974) Supplementary Volume of the
Aristotelian Society, pp. 211–29 JSTOR 4544857
On Trying Out One's New Sword on a Chance Wayfarer (1977) The
Listener (Reprinted in Midgley, Mary Heart and Mind (1981)
and MacKinnon, Barbara Ethics, Theory and Contemporary Issues (Third
Edition 2001))
More
about Reason, Commitment and Social Anthropology (1978) Philosophy 53,
No. 205, pp. 401–403 JSTOR 3749907
Freedom
and Heredity (1978) The Listener (Reprinted in Midgley,
Mary Heart and Mind (1981))
The
Absence of a Gap between Facts and Values (Symposium with S. R. L. Clark)
(1980) Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 54,
pp. 207–223+225-240 JSTOR 4106784
Consequentialism
and Common Sense (1980) The Hastings Center Report 10, No. 5,
pp. 43–44 doi:10.2307/3561052
Why
Knowledge Matters (1981) Animals in Research: New Perspectives in
Animal Experimentation ed. David Sperling
Towards
a New Understanding of Human Nature: The Limits of Individualism (1983) How
Humans Adapt: A Biocultural Odyssey ed. Donald J. Ortner
Duties
Concerning Islands (1983) Encounter LX (Reprinted
in People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (1986) ed. Donald
Vandeveer also in Ethics (1994) ed. Peter Singer and Environmental
Ethics (1995) ed. Robert Elliot)
De-Dramatizing
Darwin (1984) The Monist '67, No. 2
Can
Specialist Damage Your Health? (1987) International Journal of Moral
and Social Studies 2, No. 1
Keeping
Species on Ice (1987) Beyond the Bars: the Zoo Dilemma ed.Virginia
MacKenna, Will Travers and Jonathan Wray
Evolution As A Religion: A Comparison of
Prophecies (1987) Zygon 22, No.
2, pp. 179–194 doi:10.1111/j.1467-9744.1987.tb00845.x
Beasts,
Brutes and Monsters (1988) What Is An Animal? ed. Tim Ingold
Teleological
Theories of Morality (1988) An Encyclopaedia of Philosophy ed.
G.H.R. Parkinson
On
Not Being afraid of Natural Sex Differences (1988) Feminist
Perspectives in Philosophy ed. Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford
Myths
of Intellectual Isolation (1988–89) Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society LXXXIX, Part 1
The
Value of "Useless" Research: Supporting Scholarship for the Long Run
(1989) Report by the Council for Science and Society
Are
You an Animal? (1989) Animal Experimentation: The Consensus Changes ed.
Gill Langley
Why
Smartness is Not Enough (1990) Rethinking the Curriculum; Towards an
Integrated, Interdisciplinary College Education ed. Mary E. Clark and
Sandra A. Wawritko
Homunculus
Trouble, or, What is Applied Philosophy? (1990) Journal of Social
Philosophy 21, No. 1, pp. 5–15 doi:10.1111/j.1467-9833.1990.tb00262.x
The
Use and Uselessness of Learning (1990) European Journal of Education 25,
No.3, pp. 283–294 doi:10.2307/1503318
Rights-Talk
Will Not Sort Out Child-abuse; Comment on Archard on Parental Rights
(1991) Journal of Applied Philosophy 8, No. 1 doi:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00411.x
The
Origin of Ethics (1991) A Companion To Ethics ed. Peter Singer
(Available in Spanish here[permanent dead link])
Is
the Biosphere a Luxury? (1992) The Hastings Center Report 22,
No. 3, pp. 7–12 doi:10.2307/3563291
Towards
a More Humane View of the Beasts? (1992) The Environment in Question ed.
David E. Cooper and Joy A. Palmer
The
Significance of Species (1992) The Moral Life ed. Stephen Luper-Foy
and Curtis Brown (Reprinted in The Animal Rights/ Environmental Ethics
Debate, The Environmental Perspective (1992) ed. Eugene C. Hargrove)
Strange
Contest, Science versus Religion (1992) The Gospel and Contemporary
Culture ed. Hugh Montefiore
Philosophical
Plumbing (1992) The Impulse to Philosophise ed. A. Phillips Griffiths
The
idea of Salvation Through Science (1992) New Blackfriars 73,
No. 860, pp. 257–265 doi:10.1111/j.1741-2005.1992.tb07240.x
Beasts
versus the Biosphere (1992) Environmental Values 1, No. 1,
pp. 113–21
The
Four-Leggeds, The Two-Leggeds and the Wingeds (1993) Society and
Animals 1, No. 1.
Visions,
Secular and Sacred (1994) Milltown Studies 34, pp. 74–93
The
End of Anthropocentrism? (1994) Philosophy and the Natural Environment ed.
Robin Attfield and Andrew Belsey.
Darwinism
and Ethics (1994) Medicine and Moral Reasoning ed. K.W.M.
Fulford, Grant Gillett and Janet Martin Soskice
Bridge-Building
at Last (1994) Animals and Human Society ed. Aubrey Manning
and James Serpell
Zombies
and the Turing Test (1995) Journal of Consciousness Studies 2,
No. 4, pp. 351–2
Reductive
Megalomania (1995) Nature's Imagination; The Frontiers of Scientific
Vision ed. John Cornwall
Trouble
with Families? (1995) Introducing Applied Ethics ed. Brenda Almond
(Joint with Judith Hughes)
The
Challenge of Science, Limited Knowledge, or a New High Priesthood? (1995) True
to this Earth ed. Alan Race and Roger Williamson
The
Mixed Community (1995) Earth Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Animal
Rights and Practical Applications ed. James P. Serba
Visions,
Secular and Sacred (1995) The Hastings Center Report 25, No.
5, pp. 20–27 doi:10.2307/3562790
Darwin's
Central Problems (1995) Science 268, No. 5214,
pp. 1196–1198 doi:10.1126/science.268.5214.1196
The
Ethical Primate. Anthony Freeman in discussion with Mary Midgley (1995) Journal
of Consciousness Studies 2, No. 1, pp. 67–75(9) (Joint with
Anthony Freeman)
·
Sustainability and Moral Pluralism (1996) Ethics
and The Environment 1, No. 1
·
One World – But a Big One (1996) Journal of
Consciousness Studies 3, No. 5/6
·
Earth Matters; Thinking about the Environment
(1996) The Age of Anxiety ed. Sarah Dunant and Roy Porter
·
The View from Britain: What is Dissolving Families?
(1996) American Philosophical Association, Newsletter on Feminism and
Philosophy 96, No. 1 (Joint with Judith Hughes)
·
Can Education be Moral? (1996) Res Publica II,
No. 1 doi:10.1007/BF02335711 (Reprinted
in Teaching Right and Wrong, Moral Education in the Balance ed
Richard Smith and Paul Standish)
·
Science in the World (1996) Science Studies 9,
No. 2
·
The Myths We Live By (1996) The Values of Science Oxford
Amnesty Lectures ed Wes Williams
·
Visions of Embattled Science (1997) Science
Today: Problem or Crisis? ed Ralph Levinson and Jeff Thomas
·
The Soul's Successors: Philosophy and the
"Body" (1997) Religion and the Body ed Sarah Coakley
·
Putting Ourselves Together Again (1998) Consciousness
and Human Human Identity ed John Cornwall
·
Monkey business. The Origin of Species changed man's conception
of himself forever. So why, asks Mary Midgley, is Darwinism used to reinforce
the arid individualism of our age? (1999) New Statesman
·
The Problem of Humbug (1998) Media Ethics ed
Matthew Kieram
·
Descarte's prisoners (1999) New Statesman
·
Being Scientific about Our Selves (1999) Journal
of Consciousness Studies, 6 (Reprinted in Models
of the Self (1999) ed Shaun Gallagher and Jonathan Shear)
·
Towards an Ethic of Global Responsibility (1999) Human
Rights in Global Politics ed Tim Dunne and Nicholas J. Wheeler
·
The Origins of Don Giovanni (1999–2000) Philosophy
Now, p. 32
·
Alchemy Revived (2000) The Hastings Center Report 30,
No. 2, pp. 41–43 doi:10.2307/3528314
·
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Earth Song (2000) New Statesman
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Consciousness, Fatalism and Science (2000) The
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Willem B. Drees and Ulf Gorman
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Human Nature, Human Variety, Human Freedom (2000) Being
Humans: Anthropological Universality and Particularity ed Neil
Roughley
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Why Memes? (2000) Alas, Poor Darwin ed Hukary and
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The Need for Wonder (2000) God
for the 21st Century ed Russell Stannard
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What Gaia Means (2001) The
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The bankers' abstract vision of the globe is limited (2001)
The Guardian
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The Problem of Living with Wildness (2001) Wolves
and Human Communities: Biology, Politics and Ethics ed Virginia A.
Sharpe, Bryan Norton and Strachan Donelley
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Wickedness (2001) The Philosophers' Magazine pp. 23–5
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Being Objective (2001) Nature 410,
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Heaven and Earth, an Awkward History (2001–2002) Philosophy
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Reply to target article: “Inventing the Subject; the
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It's all in the mind (2002) The Guardian
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Fate by fluke (2003) The Guardian
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18. Jump up^ Midgley, Mary
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p. 24. ISBN 1-84180-075-9.
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35. ^ Jump up to:a b Dawkins 1981 Archived 1 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
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20, 2003). "Disturbing the Peace - a review of Elizabeth
Costello by J.M. Coetzee". The New York
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45. Jump up^ Jon Edgar -
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Sculpture (2013) Scott, M., Hall, P., and Pheby, H. ISBN 978-0955867514
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Guardian, 13 January 2001.
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Dawkins, Richard. "In Defence of Selfish Genes", Philosophy,
vol 56, 1981, pp. 556–573. JSTOR 3750888
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Edgar, John. Responses: Carvings
and Claywork: Jon Edgar Sculpture 2003–2008. Hesworth Press, 2008.
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Else, L. "Mary, Mary, quite contrary", New
Scientist, 3 November 2001.
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Jackson, Nick. "Against the grain: There are questions that science
cannot answer", The Independent, 3 January 2008.
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Lamey, Andy. "Sympathy and Scapegoating in J. M. Coetzee",
in Anton Leist and Peter Singer (eds.). J. M. Coetzee and Ethics:
Philosophical Perspectives on Literature. Columbia University Press, 2010.
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Lodge, David. "Disturbing the Peace," The
New York Review of Books, undated.
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Mackie, J. L. The Law of the Jungle at the Wayback Machine (archived 31 October
2005), Philosophy, vol. 53, 1978, pp. 455–464. JSTOR 3749875
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Midgley, Mary. "Hobbes's Leviathan, Part 3: What is
selfishness?", The Guardian, 20 April 2009.
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Midgley, Mary. Owl of Minerva: A
Memoir. Routledge, 2005.
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Midgley, Mary. "Designs on Darwinism", The
Guardian, 6 September 2005.
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Midgley, Mary. The Myths We Live By.
Routledge, 2003.
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Midgley, Mary. Science As
Salvation: A Modern Myth and Its Meaning. Routledge 1992.
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Midgley, Mary. Evolution as a
Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears. Routledge, 1985.
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Midgley, Mary. "Selfish Genes and Social Darwinism" at
the Wayback Machine (archived
31 October 2005), Philosophy, vol 58, 1983, pp. 365–377. JSTOR 3750771
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Midgley, Mary. "Gene Juggling" at the Wayback Machine (archived 31 October
2005), Philosophy, vol 54, no. 210, 1979, pp. 439–458. JSTOR 3751039
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Kidd, Ian James & McKinnell, Liz
(eds.). Science And The Self: Animals, Evolution and Ethics: Essays In
Honour Of Mary Midgley. Routledge, 2015. ISBN 1-138-89838-4
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Midgley, David (ed.). The Essential
Mary Midgley. Routledge, 2005. ISBN 0-415-34642-8
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Biography for her Gifford Lectures.
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Writings in The Guardian
·
"Of memes and witchcraft",
contribution to discussion on Journal of Consciousness Studies newsgroup, 1999.
·
Science and Poetry review, Kenan Malik, 2 March 2001.
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Myths We Live By review, The
Guardian, 16 August 2003.
·
Myths
We Live By review, Notre
Dame Philosophical Reviews, 6 February 2004.
·
Myths
We Live By review, New
Statesman.
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"Mary Midgley: Moral missionary", The
Guardian, 20 September 2005.
·
The Owl of Minerva review, The
Times Literary Supplement, 26 April 2006.
·
"Books by and an Interview with: Mary Midgley", Three
Monkeys Online, February 2007.
·
"Mary
Midgley on C. S. Lewis", private letters, published with
permission
·
"Interview with Mary Midgley", by
Sheila Heti in The Believer, February 2008.
·
The Genial Self, review in the Oxonian
Review
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