Since I’m going away for a few days, I’m posting a special bonus post today. A couple of years ago I was in a waiting room ready to go into a focus group thing for the BBC. The subject was the kinds of science programmes that should be shown in BBC 2 television.

I love science programs. In 1981 there was a Horizon about the development of computer graphics that was the inspiration for an entire ten-year career in computer games. Other programs about space, computers, aviation and so on have inspired and moved me over the years. I was delighted to be there.

But I hadn’t realised that science had become old hat. Yesterday’s news. Perhaps even something sinister and dangerous. WHile we were waiting, a conversation started about horoscopes and star signs. After about five minutes I launched into my now-traditional tirade about horoscopes: there’s no scientific basis, all ‘readings’ apply to all readers, etc. etc. etc. I expected everyone to agree with me. Not a bit of it. A roomfull of intelligent-looking young people rounded on me. “What do you know about the wisdom of the ancients,” was one phrase that sticks in my mind.

The most popular programme ideas that came out of the focus group were “the science of celebrity addiction” and “inside Hugh Grant’s brain.” Really. I’ve never been to a focus group again.

So, I was delighted to read about this event - “The selfish gene - 30 years on“. Several of my friends were tutored by John Krebs and Richard Dawkins when I was at Oxford and Krebs made an amiable figure wandering around my college, Pembroke, where he was a tutor. Sadly I never met either of them. I was particularly drawn to Krebs’s citation from “River out of Eden”:

“‘Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand feet and I’ll show you a hypocrite. Airplanes are built according to scientific principals and they work. They stay aloft and they get you to a chosen destination. Airplanes built to tribal or mythological specifications such as the dummy planes of the Cargo cults in jungle clearings or the bees-waxed wings of Icaraus don’t.’ “