Interview with Freeman Dyson
Before I start: My comment is not about the person, I don&#x27;t know anything about him, only about one specific section in the linked article. Also, I&#x27;m making this a question rather than a strong opinionated statement, because I am in no position to provide the latter. That means I&#x27;m ready to stand corrected and post my observation for discussion.<p>I skipped to where I thought I see something about something &quot;sciency&quot;, and I found the section when you skip to<p>&gt; <i>Just to clarify here for our readers, obviously, you’re poking holes in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution but you’re saying it only tells the story up to a certain point...</i><p>I don&#x27;t understand what he is talking about. I mean, where is that &quot;controversy&quot;? I can only see what&#x27;s in that article, I don&#x27;t know what else he may have said or written elsewhere. I only took biology classes on edX the last few years (the most important one was [0]), and nothing he says in that section is &quot;controversial&quot;. Genetic drift and small populations are part of the teaching, if you go to edX&#x27;s course &quot;Nature, in Code: Biology in JavaScript&quot; [1] you even get to simulate just that numerically, population bottlenecks, genetic drift, and more. I recognize everything he said from the courses I took, or from lecture videos on Youtube (by biologists and geneticists, specifically, e.g. this one: [2] - very funny guy too).<p>Going <i>only</i> by what I see in that article, in that section, I can only assume he is making a mistake in declaring some imagined and made-up &quot;controversy&quot; where none exists.<p>What am I missing?<p>To me his statements are like somebody trying to defend their &quot;controversial&quot; point of view that the earth is on a course around the sun, making very defensive statements because they <i>think</i>, for whatever reason, they are saying something incredibly controversial.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edx.org&#x2F;course&#x2F;introduction-biology-secret-life-mitx-7-00x-7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edx.org&#x2F;course&#x2F;introduction-biology-secret-life-...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edx.org&#x2F;course&#x2F;nature-code-biology-javascript-epflx-nic1-0x" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edx.org&#x2F;course&#x2F;nature-code-biology-javascript-ep...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gresham.ac.uk&#x2F;professors-and-speakers&#x2F;professor-steve-jones&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gresham.ac.uk&#x2F;professors-and-speakers&#x2F;professor-...</a>