Dawkins Disease

    A virulent form of cognitive megalomania characterised by an absence of self-doubt, and a conviction that one’s own ideas, thoughts, and opinions provide the most complete and irrefutable picture known to mankind of the issues to which they are addressed. Named after Professor Richard Dawkins first holder (1995) of the absurdly-named Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University¹ . In the United States where a generalised xenophobia discourages the use of foreign neologisms, the illness is known as Dennett’s Disease after Daniel C. Dennett, who went by the equally portentous rubric of Distinguished Arts and Sciences Professor and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, Massachusetts.
         Usually dormant even among those genetically disposed to self-aggrandisement, the DDs seldom manifests itself without collegiate encouragement between potential sufferers. Dawkins and Dennett may, therefore, have caught the syndrome from each other, the two men’s mutual backslapping, their admiring references to each other in books and lectures, having set it off by loosening their grip on what the rest of us like to call reality.
        Such tends to be the first stage of a sickness which, once contracted, spreads rapidly to much of the nervous system, closing down self-critical faculties and provoking delusional heuristic raptures. Searching for the truth then ceases to have the least importance for an affected individual. Instead he or she² focuses ever more intently on eternal verities of their own devising. Rousseau spotted the symptoms long before the illness had been diagnosed and named:
        “Were philosophers ever confronted with the truth, who among them would be in the least interested? They know their system is no better than the others; but it has at least the advantage of being theirs! Even if they were able to distinguish between fact and fantasy, every last one of them would prefer his own dross to someone else’s truth.”³
        Dawkins became known for his mantric insistence on blaming the world’s ills on  the selfishness of genes, whose unspeakable behaviour made life entirely meaningless. While Dennet became convinced that it was only a matter of time before a monkey came up with the works of Shakespeare, neatly typed and with a dedication by Ben Jonson - a theory he expounded in an especially pompous book.⁴   These absurd propositions survived for many years despite being unfit to do so, in a post-Darwinian reversal that may be a sign of our having reached a paradigm boundary between the advance and decline of the human species.  Time will no doubt tell.
        Many historical notables are believed to have been DDs sufferers, among them Napoleon, Idi Amin, Nietzsche, Wagner and controversially Wittgenstein⁵  - though the latter considered his achievements modest, whereas typical DDs sufferers take delight in exaggerating theirs.

¹  Charles Simonyi made his money at Microsoft Corporation.
²  The use of masculine and feminine pronouns here is purely ritualistic. DD infections are exceptionally rare in women - a fact the medical profession prefers not to mention in order to avoid attacks from feminist groups, many of whom insist that  women have exactly the same susceptibilities to disease as men.
³  Rousseau, Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard [ Emile ou de L’Education, Bk IV]
⁴  Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, New York, 1995
⁵  The truth of the thoughts expressed here seems to me unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems.” wrote Wittgenstein in the preface to his celebrated Tracatus Logico-Philosophicus (Vienna 1918).  However, he went on, "...if I am not mistaken in this belief, then the second thing in which the value of this work consists is that it shows how little is achieved when these problems are resolved."