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After decades of producing scientific papers, molecular biologist John Hewitt ventured into book publishing with The Architecture of Thought: A New Look at Human Evolution (Holmhurst House Ltd, 2002).
"...I started looking at evolutionary epistemology - I wanted a "scientific" way of justifying Popper's logic; in effect, I wanted to justify Popper using evolutionary theory and I developed the evolutionary hierarchy to do that. When I read Foucault on sexuality I realized I could apply the same evolutionary approach to the problem of sexuality, which is how 'Sex and Philosophy' came about. I
then became very keen on this work...I think it is the best work I have ever done, in or out of academia. It seems to have a good fundamental foundation, giving it legs, and a wide audience of interest. For a scientific don Quixote such as myself, it seemed like a lance big enough to use on windmills. Later still I found I could study the origins of humor using a similar, though more elegant, approach."
Hewitt acquired his Ph.D. from U.K.'s Trinity College working with Nobel prizewinner, Max Perutz in the United Kingdom, and returned to the United Kingdom as Cambridge faculty after years of research at Cornell and Stanford Universities.
Ties to Ehrenfels
According to the author's web site, Dr. Hewitt grew into "a fierce critic of the academic community, in particular of the scientific establishment, which (Perutz not included) he often found to be corrupt, unwilling to engage in rational debate, censorious of criticism and dissent and, at times, deliberately deceitful." In his own words: "The conflict between scientific deceit, which is actually quite common, and science's claims of rationality, led to Dr. Hewitt's interest in scientific method and philosophy. In its turn, this interest led to his learning about the application of evolutionary theory to epistemology, the theory of knowledge, and hence to the generalized evolutionary theory described in The Architecture of Thought. That book's aim is to describe and develop that generalized evolutionary theory and specifically apply it to human evolution."
Ehrenfels negotiated an agreement for Hewitt's standing in his author alliance based on what Ehrenfels noted as Hewitt's "aesthetically and conceptually splendid application of evolutionary principles to epistemologies," an effort which parallels Ehrenfels's own application of natural selection to departments of psychology. Crossing paths on a pseudoscience listserv, Hewitt supported Ehrenfels's critique of institutionalized psychology. "While I agree many psychology professors are very bright...psychology is not a 'hard' science and I suspect it is easier
to be dumb in psychology than in some other fields," to which Ehrenfels responded "(if you) add that it is easier to be dumb in psychology than smart in psychology, and you'll have captured the essence of my position."
"A Habit of Lies"
A precursor to The Architecture of Thought, Hewitt authored the disciplined and diligent A Habit of Lies, a web-based publication, calling for a third force in cell biology based on his surface wave theory of cell motility. But he paid for it with his career. "My work in cell biology was clearly correct but the lying I describe in A Habit of Lies, and which centres on Cambridge, destroyed my career some twenty years ago," recounts Hewitt. "I have spent a considerable time looking for ways past the censorship of science to get the facts of that field out."
While targeting biological falsehoods (e.g. lipid flow hypothesis; cytoskeletal model), A Habit of Lies addresses a general scientific audience with such chapters as The Psychology of Science and The Sociology of Science. "The history of this field demonstrates, if further proof were needed," contends Hewitt, "that in science, as elsewhere, falsehoods can acquire as much momentum as truth - a scientific liar needs only the means and position needed to lie loud and often. Meanwhile, I assert that today's students in biology and related disciplines are being taught falsehoods as facts." Hewitt believes microbiology to be mired in a contest of two equally inadequate theories and can be faulted for neglecting a third alternative for which "no plausible refutation...has been given." While reputable journals have invited exchanges between proponents of the two competing models, Hewitt has been denied a seat at the table. "I consider this state of affairs to be disgraceful," reviles Hewitt. "It seems to me a level of scientific incompetence so flagrant it can only be deliberate and a violation of recognised standards of scientific practice and the ethics of dialectic - the 'Habit of Truth' that science publicly claims to follow. Neither, can I make this charge solely against individual scientists, it is clear that their behaviour is sanctioned by the journals in which they publish and institutes in which they work. It amounts, in short, to nothing more than 'A Habit of Lies.'"
