Dawkins and Krauss

Here's an excellent discussion between Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss at Stanford University titled "Against Ignorance". It's available in various formats at richarddawkins.net, as well as free on iTunes.

Among the things the biologist and physicist discuss is whether Darwin or Einstein was able to make the more fundamental intuitive leap in human understanding. Interestingly, the biologist expresses admiration for the achievements of Einstein, and the physicist for Darwin, both stating how difficult their respective intellectual leaps were; perhaps reflecting that through years of experience their own disciplines seem overly simple, or through unfamiliarity the other discipline seems overly difficult.

Dawkins very enjoyably ponders why it took so long for science to get its Darwin; the fact of evolution should have been evident as far back as Aristotle, or even for as long as humanity has been breeding plants and animals. Again, someone open-minded enough to violate the fundamental assumptions needed to make that simple leap took thousands of years to come along--much longer than the 30 years needed for an Einstein--indicating, perhaps, that the assumptions in question were that much more deeply ingrained, and perhaps explaining why the simple and easily-observable theory is still so gut-level controversial today.

It will be interesting to see, if a Unified Field Theory ever comes along, what basic assumptive stumbling blocks might have been in place that prevented its development for so long.