- This article is about the writer. For the early-twentieth century Olympic swimmer, see John Derbyshire .
John Derbyshire (born 3 June, 1945) is a British-born author who lives in the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 2002. He is a columnist for the conservative magazine National Review Online. Derbyshire writes on a broad range of topics, including immigration, China, history, mathematics, culture, and politics [1]. Derbyshire graduated from University College London, where he studied mathematics. His wife is Chinese and he has two children.
Derbyshire has sometimes differed from his fellow writers at National Review on important subjects. For example, Derbyshire is skeptical of intelligent design [2], supported Michael Schiavo's position in the Terri Schiavo case, and was critical of Pope John Paul II.
Important issues
Mathematics
Derbyshire's most recent book, Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics was first published in hardcover in 2003 and then paperback in 2004. It focuses on The Riemann Hypothesis, one of The Millennium Problems. The book is aimed, as Derbyshire puts it in his prologue, "at the intelligent and curious but nonmathematical reader... I think I have pitched my book to the level of a person who finished high school math satisfactorily and perhaps went on to a couple of college courses...."
Prime Obsession explores such topics as complex numbers, field theory, the prime number theorem, the zeta function, the harmonic series, and others. The biographical sections give relevant information about the lives of some relevant mathematicians including Euler, Gauss, Dirichlet, Lobachevsky, Chebyshev, Poussin, Hadamard, as well as Riemann himself.
Intelligent design
Derbyshire wrote that Intelligent Design is:
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not just lousy science, but lousy religion. I dislike it, in fact, for the same reasons... that I dislike the "Left Behind" books & movies, and unbelievers telling me that natural disasters like the recent tsunami "prove" the non-existence of God.
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All that kind of thinking trivializes God... [According to proponents of intelligent design]] God is a sort of scientist himself, sticking his finger in to make things work when natural laws -- His laws! -- can't do the job... I am certain... that we are not the children of some celestial lab technician.[3]
He described the criticism he received after writing a critical article in National Review magazine as a conflict "worse than the bloody Middle East."[4]
China
In August 1986, John Derbyshire married a Chinese woman in Changchun City , Northeast China. He described the process in an article for The Spectator[5]. In 2005, he provided his opinion on the possibility of war between the U.S. and China:
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I have no doubt that Chinese servicemen and U.S. servicemen will be shooting at each other some day soon; but I doubt it will come to a full-blown, city-flattening, carrier-sinking, massed-tank-battles kind of war, because I am unable to imagine any casus belli that would persuade Americans of the necessity for that. The Chinese are another matter; but it takes two to tango, and in the current state of our culture, with self-loathing anti-Americanism a required course at our elite universities, I am sure we would back down in any Sino-American conflict that did not have our own territory at stake. (Yes, including a conflict over Taiwan. Bye-bye, Taiwan.) But this is all guesswork. Of course nobody really knows whether there will be a war... perhaps my opinion is colored by wishful thinking.[6]
Derbyshire opposes the current government of China: "China needs democracy. China needs democracy. The twentieth century taught us, via an ocean of blood and a mountain of corpses, that nothing else will do. Without democracy, a country — any country — is on a slope to disaster." He wrote in the same article that China in its current state can best be described as the "sick man of Asia," borrowing "the phrase applied by fascist Japan to the chaotic warlord China of the 1920s."[7]
Sullivan-Derbyshire Dispute
Andrew Sullivan has vigorously criticized Derbyshire, mostly over social issues involving homosexuality and feminism. Sullivan describes Derbyshire as a "paleo-conservative." Lately Derbyshire has been criticized by Sullivan regarding the use of coercive force on prisioners in Iraq by U.S. troops. [8] Sullivan, while a supporter of the U.S. intervention in Iraq, has been a vocal critic against the use of coercive force and torture on detainees. Sullivan posted the following quotes from John Derbyshire on the subject (along with Sullivan's own commentary):
- JUST FOR THE RECORD: "I remain opposed to torture, as I understand the term, and as I believe the common understanding of the term has been in Anglo-Saxon democracies this past 100 years or so." — John Derbyshire, today (08 January 2005).
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"My mental state these past few days: 1. The Abu Ghraib 'scandal': Good. Kick one for me. But bad discipline in the military (taking the pictures, I mean). Let's have a couple of courts martial for appearance's sake. Maximum sentence: 30 days CB." — John Derbyshire, May 9, (2004) rejoicing in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Up to 90 percent of the inmates at Abu Ghraib, who were by any definition protected by the Geneva Conventions, were innocent.[9]
Sullivan also has a "Derbyshire Award" on his blog: "Nominees are solicited for statements by public figures or writers that amount to right-wing hyperbole, hate-speech or manic paranoia. The award is in honor of one John Derbyshire, a paleo-conservative contributor to National Review Online, and provocative commentator on all things gay, black, female or sexual." [10]
Sullivan and Derbyshire, however, have been in agreement over the legacy of Pope John Paul II. Both criticize the Pope for loosing support for the Roman Catholic Church in the West, especially Southern Europe and Ireland. [11] Sullivan and Derbyshire were also in agreement over allowing local government to determine when the feeding tube should be removed from Terri Schiavo.
At least one of Sullivan's readers has come to Derbyshire's defense, arguing that, while he finds some of Derbyshire's positions (especially on homosexuality) "appalling,"
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he's willing to admit inconvenient facts that don't support his worldview, as in his piece on why he believes that homosexuality is inborn... he's one of the few writers at NRO who has no use for talking points .[12]
External Links
Derbyshire's Other Works
As of 2004, Derbyshire's latest book is Prime Obsession, detailing the history of the Riemann Hypothesis for a popular audience.
Last updated: 09-12-2005 02:39:13
