36 Facts About Mary Midgley

Mary Midgley wrote her first book, Beast and Man, when she was in her late fifties, and went on to write over 15 more, including Animals and Why They Matter, Wickedness, The Ethical Primate, Evolution as a Religion, and Science as Salvation.

Mary Midgley was awarded honorary doctorates by Durham and Newcastle universities.

Mary Midgley wrote extensively about what she thought philosophers can learn from nature, particularly from animals.

Mary Midgley insisted that humans ought to be understood as first and foremost, a kind of animal.

Mary Midgley wrote in favour of a moral interpretation of the Gaia hypothesis.

Mary Midgley was born in London to Lesley and Tom Scrutton.

Mary Midgley's father, the son of the eminent judge Sir Thomas Edward Scrutton, was a curate in Dulwich and later chaplain of King's College, Cambridge.

Mary Midgley was raised in Cambridge, Greenford and Ealing, and educated at Downe House School in Cold Ash, Berkshire, where she developed her interest in classics and philosophy:.

Mary Midgley took the Oxford entrance exam in the autumn of 1937, gaining a place at Somerville College.

Mary Midgley left Oxford in 1942 and went into the civil service, as "the war put graduate work right out of the question".

Mary Midgley returned to Oxford in 1947 to do graduate work with Gilbert Murray.

Mary Midgley began research on Plotinus's view of the soul, which she has described as "so unfashionable and so vast that I never finished my thesis".

In retrospect Mary Midgley has written of her belief that she is "lucky" to have missed out in having a doctorate.

In 1949 Mary Midgley went to Reading University, teaching in the philosophy department there for four terms.

Mary Midgley stopped teaching for several years while she had three sons, before getting a job in the philosophy department at Newcastle, where she and her husband were both "much loved".

Mary Midgley was an honorary fellow of the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Centre at Newcastle University.

Mary Midgley died at the age of 99 in Jesmond on 10 October 2018.

Mary Midgley argued that philosophy is like plumbing, something that nobody notices until it goes wrong.

Mary Midgley argues that evil arises from aspects of human nature, not from an external force.

Mary Midgley further argues that evil is the absence of good, with good being described as the positive virtues such as generosity, courage and kindness.

Mary Midgley therefore criticizes existentialism and other schools of thought which promote the 'Rational Will' as a free agent.

Mary Midgley expressed her interest in Paul Davies' ideas on the inherent improbability of the order found in the universe.

Mary Midgley argued that "there's some sort of tendency towards the formation of order", including towards life and "perceptive life".

Mary Midgley argued that "gratitude" is an important part of the motivation for theism.

In 2001 Mary Midgley founded, along with David Mary Midgley and Tom Wakeford, the Gaia Network, and became its first Chair.

Gaia has, Mary Midgley argued, both scientific and moral importance, which involves politics.

Mary Midgley argued that human beings are more similar to animals than many social scientists then acknowledged, while animals are in many ways more sophisticated than was often accepted.

Mary Midgley criticized existentialists who argued that there was no such thing as human nature and writers such as Desmond Morris who she understood as arguing that human nature was "brutal and nasty".

Mary Midgley writes that she still believes that these theories, "have nothing to do with any reputable theory of evolution," and will not solve the real social and moral problems the world is facing, either through genetic engineering or the use of machines.

Mary Midgley argued against reductionism, or the attempt to impose any one approach to understanding the world.

Mary Midgley responded in 1979 with "Gene-Juggling", arguing that The Selfish Gene was about psychological egoism, rather than evolution.

The bad feeling between Dawkins and Mary Midgley did not diminish.

Mary Midgley wrote in a letter to The Guardian in 2005:.

The main character, who appears in Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello, is concerned with the moral status of animals, a subject Mary Midgley addressed in Animals and Why They Matter, and discusses at length the idea of sympathy as an ethical concept, a subject Mary Midgley wrote about in Beast and Man.

Coetzee and Mary Midgley additionally shared a longstanding fascination with Robinson Crusoe.

Mary Midgley agreed to sit for sculptor Jon Edgar in Newcastle during 2006, as part of the Environment Triptych, along with heads of Richard Mabey and James Lovelock.