Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 352 pages
• Published by: Mariner Books April 5, 2000
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0618056734
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0618056736
• Book Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 12.8 ounces

Product Review
Why do poets and artists so often disparage science in their work? For that matter, why does so much scientific literature compare poorly with, say, the phone book? After struggling with questions like these for years, biologist Richard Dawkins has taken a wide-ranging view of the subjects of meaning and beauty in Unweaving the Rainbow, a deeply humanistic examination of science, mysticism, and human nature. Notably strong-willed in a profession of bet-hedgers and wait-and-seers, Dawkins carries the reader along on a romp through the natural and cultural worlds, determined that "science, at its best, should leave room for poetry."

Inspired by the frequently asked question, "Why do you bother getting up in the morning?" following publication of his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins set out determined to show that understanding nature's mechanics need not sap one's zest for life. Alternately enlightening and maddening, Unweaving the Rainbow will appeal to all thoughtful readers, whether wild-eyed technophiles or grumpy, cabin-dwelling Luddites. Excoriations of newspaper astrology columns follow quotes from Blake and Shakespeare, which are sandwiched between sparkling, easy-to-follow discussions of probability, behavior, and evolution. In Dawkins's world (and, he hopes, in ours), science is poetry; he ends his journey by referring to his title's author and subject, maintaining that "A Keats and a Newton, listening to each other, might hear the galaxies sing." --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Keats complained that Newton's experiments with prisms had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow. Not so, says Oxford biologist Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) who, in an eloquent if prickly defense of the scientific enterprise, calls on the "two cultures" of science and poetry to learn from each other. Yet Dawkins cautions against "bad poetic science," i.e., seductive but misleading metaphors, and cites as an example " 'Gaia': the overrated romantic fancy of the whole world as an organism," a hypothesis proposed by atmospheric scientist James Lovelock and bacteriologist Lynn Margulis. Dawkins (continuing a celebrated battle that has been raging in the New York Review of Books) also lambastes paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould for "bad poetry," rejecting Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium, which holds that new species emerge during relatively short bursts of evolutionary advance. In these conversational, discursive essays, Dawkins is, as always, an elegant, witty popularizer, whether he is offering a crash course in DNA fingerprinting, explaining the origins of "mad cow disease" in weird proteins that spread like self-replicating viruses or discussing male birdsong as an auditory aphrodisiac for female birds. However, in venturing into realms beyond the immediate purview of science, he reveals his own biases, launching into a predictable, rather superficial assault on paranormal research, UFO reports, astrology and psychic phenomena, all of which he dismisses as products of fraud, illusion, sloppy observation or an exploitation of our natural appetite for wonder. Dawkins is most interesting when he theorizes that our brains have partly taken over from DNA the role of recording the environment, resulting in "virtual worlds" that alter the terrain in which our genes undergo natural selection. Agent, John Brockman. 50,000 first printing; first serial to the Sciences.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
Dawkins the old Master is at his best and worst in this book. The premise of the bookis arranged around the idea that Poetry and Art are sometimes in fundemental opposition to science. But why should they be Dawkins asks? It is a fair question and one must make allowances for some bad scientific allegories as well as plain bad poetry. Dawkins has started out with a wonderful idea and he develops it very nicely for about half of the book. Then the book begins to degenerate into something of a jumbled criticism of Steven J. Gould (nothing new there) and the wanderings and adapted characteristics of hedge sparrows and --- no surprise --- a defence of the selfish-gene theory. In final analysis Dawkins starts out with one of the those cosmic-wonder-of-science books, and then it degenerates into borderline pedantry, with interesting bits of science thrown in around the sides. Dawkins is not the populariser that is Carl Sagan and his writing in this book shows it. Dawkins is at his best when he has a specific point to prove in an area that he knows well. "The Blind Watchmaker" and "The Extended Phenotype" and the "Selfish Gene" are all par excellance when it comes to him arguing from a first premise in his area of expertise. Dawkins is also an old crusty Oxbridge lecturer and it comes across in this book. I like that a lot! I think that some readers may be a little bit perturbed to be told what to think. But let's get it straight here. This man has one of the greatest minds in Modern Zoology -- it behooves us to listen to him. We have a lot to learn from him. His tone is also old-fashioned and may strike people as slightly pedantic, but there is no substitute for clear teaching techniques: Dawkins does not assume we are all geniuses and I really like how when he uses a word that is not all that common he encloses a meaning for it inside parentheses. It reminds me of those good scientific primers from the 1960s that one used to read, you read them to learn something about the world and you expect to be told what to think. Dawkins gives you the scientific, intellectual and vocabulary tools and he expects you to do the rest. He brooks no dummies. Some (American?) readers, raised with an insistence on "respect for other's opinions" -- however silly, may find Dawkins a little hard to stomach at times. We must remember that he comes from a long line of English intellectual thought; I see him as similar to Lord Whitehead, and Betrand Russel in that respect. Both were more than a little [ ] up on certain topics and both were extremely opinionated -- but they wrote well and the whole history of western thinking has benefited from the enormous ideas they espoused and the span of history and scientific thought that they have been exposed to --- Dawkins is from that same English intellectual stream, now frightfully close to being dried up. In final analysis this is not the best of Dawkins' work. It does have very good vignettes of Science, from Newton's unweaving of the rainbow to those hedge sparrows, and it is obvious that Dawkins is also a connosieur of the romantics, particularly Keats and Shelly. That is also the mark of a well rounded human being, but the poetry and the science of this book could be better maintained, developed and connected.