Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Mariner Books (2004), Edition: Reprint, 272 pages
Description
Essays. Science. Nonfiction. HTML: The first collection of essays from renowned scientist and best-selling author Richard Dawkins is an enthusiastic declaration, a testament to the power of rigorous scientific examination to reveal the wonders of the world. In these essays Dawkins revisits the meme, the unit of cultural information that he named and wrote about in his groundbreaking work The Selfish Gene. Here also are moving tributes to friends and colleagues, including a eulogy for novelist Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; correspondence with the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould; and visits with the famed paleoanthropologists Richard and Maeve Leakey at their African wildlife preserve. The collection ends with a vivid note to Dawkins's ten-year-old daughter, reminding her to remain curious, to ask questions, and to live the examined life..… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member JollyContrarian
I really wanted to like this book. Richard Dawkins has contributed some terrific ideas to the field of biology, evolution and the philosophy of mind and is a well-known advocate for a number of very sensible and sadly unsung positions in an age of new-age hooey and post-modernist balderdash. In
While many of Dawkins' conclusions are laudable, his means of getting to some of them are not. Great physical scientists often make bad philosophers (witness Roger Penrose's embarrassing ramblings on the AI debate) and on the strength of these collected works, Dawkins falls squarely into this camp.
Dawkins has a bee in his bonnet about two things: post-modernism/relativism and religion. As intellectual positions, relativist and religious thought tend not to have much in common, yet Dawkins is wholeheartedly agin them both. Make note of that irony, because irony is the order of the day.
It is certainly easy enough to find examples of post-modernism to laugh at, and Dawkins indulges in some healthy banter of this sort. But the underlying premise on which relativism is based is sound: There *is* no such thing as "truth": our perception of the world *is* coloured by cultural and linguistic filters which mean that the same set of circumstances can present different "realities" to different observers. Whether Dawkins likes it or not, this isn't new age hooey.
Curiously, Dawkins actually makes this very point in the context of a discussion on crystals intended to undermine the relativist cause: the atoms in a crystalline structure, he tells us, are relatively huge distances from each other, so by volume most of a crystalline structure is composed of nothing. Yet, thanks to evolution, we don't see it that way: "You might think that out sense organs would be shaped to give us a 'true' picture of the world as it 'really' is. It is safer to assume that they have been shaped to give us a *useful* picture of the world, to help us survive." This inability to see the true picture, in Dawkins' very own example, has profound and (for a moral objectivist like Dawkins) unsettling implications for our world view.
It doesn't undermine science, however; it simply converts science from a process which purports to provide indubitable truths about the universe to one which claims only to provide the best explanation for the data we have to hand. Again, in philosophical circles this is hardly controversial - it's a consequence of the inductive nature of empirical reasoning. As Dawkins himself notes, the practical difference between these two positions ("objective truth" vs. "best explanation we've got for the time being") is not always great, but as a perspective it distinguishes science from dogma. It may be vanishingly unlikely, as Dawkins claims, that anyone will falsify the tenets of cell biology - but they probably said that about Newton's laws of motion until fairly recently too.
In rejecting all relativism, Dawkins comes across as extremely dogmatic. Given his views on religion, this is no small irony. Worse, it opens him - and, as its self-appointed spokesperson, science - to the now familiar criticism that science is just another religion, competing with creationism, and is no more defendable.
That's a bad mistake. Even on a relativist reading, evolution is far more defendable (there's not any evidence which flatly contradicts evolution, whereas there's not much evidence that *doesn't* flatly contradict creationism) and, because thanks to his profile Dawkins is frequently read as a proxy for "the scientific community" he is doing his community a big disservice.
As he is a committed atheist and evolutionist, I was surprised to read recently that Dawkins intended to vote Liberal Democrat (a left-of-centre political party in the UK) at the last election. I would have thought, of all people, Richard Dawkins would appreciate the elegance and efficiency of laissez-faire politics: it is laissez-faire biology, after all, which has provided us with this staggering universe; by contrast, Dawkins labels the creationist view "petty, small minded, parochial, unimaginative, unpoetic and downright boring compared to the staggering, mind expanding truth". Now a centrally planned economy, you would think, would tend to be similarly "parochial and small-minded" compared with an economy free to continually rejuvenate itself at the well-spring of supply and demand (and so, many economists would say, has been proven repeatedly in the last 90 years). But Dawkins cautions that to smell such an inconsistency or even contradiction would be a mistake: "there is no inconsistency in favouring Darwinism as an academic scientist while opposing it as a human being".
Well, I'm not so sure about that. And I'm not so sure that Richard Dawkins' isn't a little too defensive about some of his other cherished beliefs, either.
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times such as ours it is all the more important for people who speak common sense to be heard, and there are few common sense speakers with a higher profile than Richard Dawkins. While many of Dawkins' conclusions are laudable, his means of getting to some of them are not. Great physical scientists often make bad philosophers (witness Roger Penrose's embarrassing ramblings on the AI debate) and on the strength of these collected works, Dawkins falls squarely into this camp.
Dawkins has a bee in his bonnet about two things: post-modernism/relativism and religion. As intellectual positions, relativist and religious thought tend not to have much in common, yet Dawkins is wholeheartedly agin them both. Make note of that irony, because irony is the order of the day.
It is certainly easy enough to find examples of post-modernism to laugh at, and Dawkins indulges in some healthy banter of this sort. But the underlying premise on which relativism is based is sound: There *is* no such thing as "truth": our perception of the world *is* coloured by cultural and linguistic filters which mean that the same set of circumstances can present different "realities" to different observers. Whether Dawkins likes it or not, this isn't new age hooey.
Curiously, Dawkins actually makes this very point in the context of a discussion on crystals intended to undermine the relativist cause: the atoms in a crystalline structure, he tells us, are relatively huge distances from each other, so by volume most of a crystalline structure is composed of nothing. Yet, thanks to evolution, we don't see it that way: "You might think that out sense organs would be shaped to give us a 'true' picture of the world as it 'really' is. It is safer to assume that they have been shaped to give us a *useful* picture of the world, to help us survive." This inability to see the true picture, in Dawkins' very own example, has profound and (for a moral objectivist like Dawkins) unsettling implications for our world view.
It doesn't undermine science, however; it simply converts science from a process which purports to provide indubitable truths about the universe to one which claims only to provide the best explanation for the data we have to hand. Again, in philosophical circles this is hardly controversial - it's a consequence of the inductive nature of empirical reasoning. As Dawkins himself notes, the practical difference between these two positions ("objective truth" vs. "best explanation we've got for the time being") is not always great, but as a perspective it distinguishes science from dogma. It may be vanishingly unlikely, as Dawkins claims, that anyone will falsify the tenets of cell biology - but they probably said that about Newton's laws of motion until fairly recently too.
In rejecting all relativism, Dawkins comes across as extremely dogmatic. Given his views on religion, this is no small irony. Worse, it opens him - and, as its self-appointed spokesperson, science - to the now familiar criticism that science is just another religion, competing with creationism, and is no more defendable.
That's a bad mistake. Even on a relativist reading, evolution is far more defendable (there's not any evidence which flatly contradicts evolution, whereas there's not much evidence that *doesn't* flatly contradict creationism) and, because thanks to his profile Dawkins is frequently read as a proxy for "the scientific community" he is doing his community a big disservice.
As he is a committed atheist and evolutionist, I was surprised to read recently that Dawkins intended to vote Liberal Democrat (a left-of-centre political party in the UK) at the last election. I would have thought, of all people, Richard Dawkins would appreciate the elegance and efficiency of laissez-faire politics: it is laissez-faire biology, after all, which has provided us with this staggering universe; by contrast, Dawkins labels the creationist view "petty, small minded, parochial, unimaginative, unpoetic and downright boring compared to the staggering, mind expanding truth". Now a centrally planned economy, you would think, would tend to be similarly "parochial and small-minded" compared with an economy free to continually rejuvenate itself at the well-spring of supply and demand (and so, many economists would say, has been proven repeatedly in the last 90 years). But Dawkins cautions that to smell such an inconsistency or even contradiction would be a mistake: "there is no inconsistency in favouring Darwinism as an academic scientist while opposing it as a human being".
Well, I'm not so sure about that. And I'm not so sure that Richard Dawkins' isn't a little too defensive about some of his other cherished beliefs, either.
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LibraryThing member satyridae
It would no doubt discomfit Dawkins to know that I revere the words he writes with an almost religious zeal. I love his belligerence, I love his conviction, I love his passion. And I believe he's correct in his science. The closing essay is a letter to his daughter about how to decide what to
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believe, and it's brilliant. I liked learning more about the alleged feud between Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. I found myself taking notes about books mentioned in passing. A delightful book which reinforces all my prejudices. Show Less
LibraryThing member _Greg
I read everthing Richard Dawkins writes which is accessible to non-specialists. This is my favorite of his essay collections. The topics revolve around rationalism and evolutionary biology (as if there's any other kind). A brilliant collection of short pieces: essays, forwards, reviews and
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eulogies. Insightful and delightful. Show Less
LibraryThing member bduguid
Compared to Dawkins' major science books (Selfish Gene, Blind Watchmaker etc), this is definitely a somewhat lightweight read. Many of the individual pieces collected here are stronger on rhetoric than they are on logic, with some great invective unleashed against the postmodernists, religious and
Having said that, there are some entertaining and interesting pieces. Several articles on the writing of Stephen Jay Gould are a high point, with strong and pointed criticisms of the American author's work. A piece attacking the fundamentalist motivation of the 9/11 terrorists is also particularly striking, as are a couple of lengthier pieces which deal with memes as mind viruses, again particularly considering religion.
Disappointing compared to Dawkins' major works, but a good read if taken in small doses.
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other disciples of untruth, but this is rarely matched by depth of argument.Having said that, there are some entertaining and interesting pieces. Several articles on the writing of Stephen Jay Gould are a high point, with strong and pointed criticisms of the American author's work. A piece attacking the fundamentalist motivation of the 9/11 terrorists is also particularly striking, as are a couple of lengthier pieces which deal with memes as mind viruses, again particularly considering religion.
Disappointing compared to Dawkins' major works, but a good read if taken in small doses.
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LibraryThing member fpagan
Collection of the no-nonsense rationalist's essays, some new and some not-so-new. It's not every book that includes satisfyingly irrefutable denunciations of (all) religion. Dawkins is one of the very best.
LibraryThing member Amtep
Some of the essays are interesting, but much of the book is about other books, and I would prefer to read those books themselves. This book does give some insight into Richard Dawkins as a person, and that will probably appeal to people who enjoy reading biographies.
LibraryThing member drsnowdon
An excellent review of Dawkins' thoughts on a variety of subjects. Topics of religion and education join his thoughts on biology to make an interesting read that will engage debate and provoke thought. If you haven't read Richard Dawkins before, this is an excellent starting point.
LibraryThing member ErlangerFactionless
An enjoyable collection of essays, letters, book reviews, and eulogies. Dawkins occasionally strays out of his depth, but this book reminded me that he is a brilliant biologist who has made many important contributions to the field. Some of the essays are a bit technical, but the best of them can
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be enjoyed by everyone, such as the moving story of his return to the Africa of his childhood. Show Less
LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
Delightfully stimulating essays about a good variety of topics. Some (justified!) distrust of relativism and pseudoscience, but also tender loving parts and waxing philosophical about science, his friends, and family.
LibraryThing member Michael_Rose
It can be best thought of as a collection of essays on Richard Dawkins' preferred subjects — with a good humored title, of course.
LibraryThing member Sandydog1
Classic Dawkins and as such, a bit redundant, but never an easy read. Stick with it.
LibraryThing member themulhern
A collection of essays, some quite short. Individual reviews:
1.1 A Devil's Chaplain
The basic message of this essay is that you should be tough, face the fact of evolution, and then act correctly. No need to say: I must act according to the dictates of evolution, and no need to say that evolution is
1.2 What is True?
A diatribe against post-modernism. I agree entirely. What's sad is that the essay was written in the year 2000, and the situation has only gotten worse since then. Some good references, though.
1.1 A Devil's Chaplain
The basic message of this essay is that you should be tough, face the fact of evolution, and then act correctly. No need to say: I must act according to the dictates of evolution, and no need to say that evolution is
Show More
cruel, so I need to not believe in it. Obvious, but well said.1.2 What is True?
A diatribe against post-modernism. I agree entirely. What's sad is that the essay was written in the year 2000, and the situation has only gotten worse since then. Some good references, though.
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Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2003
Physical description
272 p.; 5.5 inches
ISBN
0618485392 / 9780618485390
UPC
046442485395