Blog #3 - What makes an authority on a topic?

“Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity” –Aristotle
Education is the key to knowledge, it is the great sword of empowerment that once earned and attained can be wielded with force if need be or to coax and educate others. To be an authority on any given topic it must take a well disciplined and yet open mind, to absorb like a sponge what is learned from even more educated and respectable peers in their field and in the process to leave their own unproven beliefs at the door.


One can claim to know what they are talking about yet if asked for their educational background most would fall short to prove they are knowledgeable at all on the given topic at hand. Take for instance the Theory of Evolution, sadly in this country there are still a vast majority that do not agree with it, for mere personal reasons which mostly include religious ideals and concepts. Be that as it may, one’s beliefs fall short of what is fact. It’s a hard pill to swallow and most avoid the pill by simply stating reasons why they do not take evolution as fact, these reasons are usually nothing more than emotional blurbs of disillusioned rhetoric.


Richard Dawkins the notable English scholar has spent his life on the very subject. He is British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and a well respected science author of several books, most recently: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (2009). He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, tutored by Nobel Prize winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, he then graduated in 1962. He attended Oxford University graduating with an M.A and Ph.D. He was also an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California Berkeley from 1967 to 1969. He is best known for his gene centered view of evolution and introduced the concept of memes. He won the zoological Society Silver medal in 1989, the Faraday Award and the Kistler Prize and is also a fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society in Literature, and many other numerous awards in science to date. He is a well know critic of creationism and intelligent design, the idea that a supernatural being created the human species, he is continually debunking this pseudo-scientific approach to evolution.


This person is obviously a very intelligent and well educated person and without a doubt an expert in his field of science. There are still many that contest what Mr.Dawkins proves about where the human species came from, though many without his degree of knowledge. To become such an authority on any topic as one can see here it must take an enormous commitment to pursue and learn the intricacies of the particular field in which one is interested.

Ad Astra
-Joe DeSalme