MAY I be allowed to make further comment on Richard Dawkins and his ways and works?

His Blind Watchmaker is his apologia – he seeks to legitimate his version of the origin and development of life against all corners.

Books of this stamp usually begin with semantics – words, their given meanings and use, defining ones terms.

On page one of the Watchmaker he says: "Words are our servants and not our masters!"

In this, he echoes Humpty Dumpty of Alice and the Looking Glass fame.

Says Humpty: "When I use words they mean just what I want them to mean. no more, no less." And: "It all depends on who is master."

Humpty is, of course, the great high priest of what I will call semantic turpitude – a man whose ideas are to be avoided like the plague by all sensible people.

Page one: he claims that a machine is a biological object, His reason is that it was made by a biological object that we call an inventor and presumably acquires honorary biological status.

He waffles on about this, but the most significant thing that he says is that he disapproves of dropping live lobsters in to boiling water -–bully for him!

Page two: "Machines will be firmly treated as if they are biological objects."

I have yet to find a dictionary which supports his contention – things are biological when referring to living organisms, not mechanical contraptions.

Page three: he writes "Each of us is a machine – like an airliner, only much more complicated!"

But the question arises: what does he mean by 'like'? It seems ambiguous.

If he means 'similar to,' he is quite right: organisms do resemble machines, they are similar, but they are not identical.

Similarity is partial identity, not identity!

It would appear that Dawkins cannot distinguish between objects that are similar and objects that are identical – this is sad for an empirical scientist.

If on the other hand he means ‘such as.’ we are straight into the realm of the identity of organisms and mechanical contraptions.

Now we know where Humpty Dumpty gets you!

Consider a typewriter – 25 years old – perhaps used by one of Dawkins' monkeys in an effort to show that a monkey could type one of the Bard’s sonnets.

On the other hand. consider Jessica Ennis Hill of deserving athletic fame.

Does Dawkins suggest that there is no essential difference between them?

Dawkins believes in ‘facts’ - which no rational man can believe - which are in fact not facts but things conjured up in his imagination by the use of Humpty Dumpty language in public discourse.

Cyril Govier

Stonehouse