Talk:dawkins fleas

Dawkins coined the term here:

Reposted from Letters to the Editor The Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/debate/letters/article1368831.ece (link is no longer active)

''Sir, Alister McGrath (Faith, Feb 10) has now published two books with my name in the title. If I seem "grumpy", could it be because a professor of theology is building a career riding on my back? It is tempting to quote Yeats ("Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?") and leave it at that. I will, however, dignify his article with a brief reply.''


 * from- http://richarddawkins.net/article,634,My-critics-are-wrong-to-call-me-dogmatic,Richard-Dawkins
 * dated feb 2007

It has become a common term at: http://richarddawkins.net with at least 40 occurrences including a regular column, This Week's Flea.

As those familiar with the term use it, usually on their on blogs, it becomes a way to easily group opponents. ''2/20/2008 Dissecting Dawkins' Fleas Over the past year or so, a new niche in the book market has appeared: books written by authors who attempt a riposte of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. They have become known as Dawkins' Fleas (an allusion to a statement made by the poet W. B. Yeats about his imitators).''
 * from- http://gcoupe.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!6AA39937A982345B!4798.entry

even being used as a category to tie together a number of entries-
 * http://www.uncrediblehallq.net/category/reviews/collecting-fleas/
 * a list of reviews of books he considers Dawkins fleas.

Dawkin's has used the metaphor of critics as fleas, even quoting Yeats on page 192 of A devil's chaplain in reference to critics of Stephen J. Gould. Another metaphor that Dawkin's is referring to is quoted in The Ancestor's Tale, page 534 great fleas have little fleas to bite them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_infinitum

Using such a term helps minimize the critics and supplies a useful group label.


 * I'm sorry, but not one of your links is using this term. We are a dictionary; we document specific, existent terms. Additionally, almost none of your links is durably archived (the exception being the letter to the Times, assuming it appeared in the print edition), so even if they were using the term, it wouldn't count for our purposes. Please see Criteria for inclusion. —Ruakh TALK 12:30, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Request for verification
—Ruakh TALK 19:23, 11 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The famous polemecist Richard Dawkins has started calling his critics "fleas". "Dawkins' fleas" might be how an ally of his might refer to them in plural. However, I have not seen any actual evidence of use of the collocation and the references don't have it AFAICT. DCDuring TALK 20:17, 11 June 2009 (UTC)


 * While I've not found any durably archived references, I've heard the term on CBC radio (during an interview with one of the said 'fleas') and it is reasonably common online (2k hits.) - Amgine/talk 01:51, 20 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Deleted. Equinox ◑ 01:52, 5 October 2009 (UTC)