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Summary: Of Science, Poetic Vision, and our Sense of Wonder
Review: This book needed to be written. Using the motif, from Keats, of unweaving the rainbow, Dawkins draws out threads of our understanding of the universe, of the evolution of life, and the evolution of our minds, gleaned from the evidence of the patterns and codes that surround us. He shows that, far from diminishing the strength of our experience, as reflected in Keats' fear of the 'cold touch of philosophy', scientific insight rather deepens our sense of beauty and wonder. Unweaving the Rainbow forms a vital antidote both to the frequently shabby and vulgar efforts that go by the name of popularizing science, and to the false and gaudy glitter of pseudoscience. Dawkins illustrates that great science and poetic vision can be, and indeed have often been, mutually enhancing. Shot through with warmth and humanity, and sparkling with extracts from some of poetry's finest gems, the message of the book resonates with those of us who have been drawn to science through our sense of wonder at the world around us. Science reveals the astonishing richness of that world, and makes us want to look again and again in awe. So who needs magic?
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Summary: Fact vs. Fiction
Review: A fabulous book on a fabulous subject, in this book Richard Dawkins continues his understandable explanations of natural selection and evolution while at the same time championing the cause of science in a society obsessed with aesthetics and poetry.The general scientific topics he explores I felt made the book a LITTLE less reachable than his other works. Chapters 3-5 particularly go into scientific areas one feels that Dawkins himself doesn't wholely understand and therefore you feel as if you're trusting him that he's getting the explanation right. However he does his best and his best is better than most! Also he should be forgiven for delving deep into a variety of subjects considering his applaudable goal of showing without-a-doubt the poetic and aesthetic brilliance that can and SHOULD be found in science of all kinds. While I feel that the book was sadly lacking in his wonderful writing on the topics of religion and theology (most of the time he touches on these topics only to make the point that statistics and mathematics are more reliable) it still accomplishes his point of showcasing the wonders of sciences often assumed to be dull and lifeless. A wonderful read for anybody looking for the pizazze in science and fact that is generally believed only to be found in fairy tales and illusions.
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Summary: Who is afraid of good science destroying aesthetics?
Review: As someone who enjoyed this book in particular, and who enjoys books on science in general, I am bewildered by some of its very negative reviews. I am however conscious of some of its limitations. One reason might be that this otherwise wonderful book covers so many different ideas, and often unevenly. I could see why it would be easy to have unmet expectations. So it is helpful first to be clear about some of the topics this book is NOT fundamentally about: a systematic exposition of the scientific method; the history of science; the mind-body debate; evolutionary biology (not particularly, even though this is the author?s specialty); and how poets and artists might do a better job in their works of representing science. Even if the somewhat meandering manner of the book does not upset you, you might be upset by Dawkins? rhetorical style (I was not) . You might prefer more subtlety to his no-holds-barred approach to labeling some of the enemies of good science. The catalogue includes: ?pseudo-scientists?.populist dumbing down?hostility from academics sophisticated in fashionable disciplines?purveyors of cultural relativism?few vocal fifth columnists within science?.? He has no compunction in bemoaning a lack of either understanding or appreciation of science from many of the titans of the world of arts and poetry including Coleridge, Keats, and Ruskin, among others. So, why is this a worthy read? I believe it is because Dawkins tackles a subject which is fundamental to what it means to be human. It is also a subject which few writers, scientists or non-scientists, handle well: why good science can (and should) be a pleasurable and passionate pursuit, for both scientists and non-scientists. Dawkins would like to think that enjoying science could be like enjoying music even if one does not play an instrument ? a view I find very encouraging. This book is a spirited attempt to rescue us from the misplaced view that science is at odds with aesthetics. Dawkins makes no apologies for clearly distinguishing how scientists can view the world differently from poets, without losing an appreciation of beauty. QUOTE The mystic is content to bask in the wonder and revel in a mystery that we were not meant to understand. The scientist feels the same wonder but is restless, not content; recognizes the mystery as profound, then adds, ?But we?re working on it.? UNQUOTE Even if poets and scientists may view mystery and beauty differently, Dawkins holds that ?the spirit of wonder which led Blake to Christian mysticism, Keats to Arcadian myth and Yeats to Fenians and fairies is the very same that moves great scientists..? I can sympathize with Dawkins? lament with the distortions of science we can find in poetry, because he demonstrates the scientists? appreciation of artistic endeavor in an ability to reconstruct poetic passages completely in scientific terms. I was moved by one stanza he quotes which I reproduce here: To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand.
And eternity in an hour When he wrote the above four lines, William Blake could not have been expected in 1803 to anticipate new concepts of space and time and discoveries of quantum physics. And cosmology in twentieth century science. Yet, we can today marvel at his stanza and cherish these lines while understanding them completely in terms of modern science, which stikes me as a remarkable product of human artistic and scientific achievement. The title of the book refers to Keats' lament of Sir Issac Newton's use of prisms to decompose the components of white light, supposedly because this experiment destroyed a sense of beauty and wonder related to observing the rainbow. It is clearly emblematic of how such poetic lament is at odds with the sheer wonder that scientific discoveries such as Neton's can evoke. It was this discovery, together with those of later scientists, which have led us to understand in the twentieth century how we are part of a much larger universe than humans previously imagined, which is expanding, and which is made up of the same common material everywhere, and has revealed to us even greater mysteries that we could not have previously imagined. For adults who may have acquired a distaste of science from unfortunate early school experiences, this book may restore a sense of wonder and beauty to this endeavor. Or, by offering some wonderful imagery to convey some simple but important scientific idea, this book may help adults and children dialogue about science in an accessible way. For example, the author compares the time scale of biological evolution to the span between the fingertips of left and right hands when both arms are outstretched in a gesture of open embrace. The epoch when simple celled organisms and bacteria were the only form of life forms the large bulk of this span, with dinosaurs only appearing at the point in the upper part of the right palm, and human beings appear only at the very fingertips! This book reminds us of that unfortunate chasm in our culture between poetic or artistic expression and scientific endeavor. I confess that as an advocate of greater scientific literacy among the general public, I would be happy to see more of this genre.
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Summary: Truth is stranger (and more beautiful) than fiction
Review: For thousands of years, rainbows were beautiful, mysterious things, often associated with the supernatural, and universally looked upon with awe. Then along came Newton, who, with a small chunk of glass, discovered that it's possible to make an artificial rainbow. His experiments showed that what we call white light is really a mixture of all the colors of the rainbow, and that raindrops, suspended in the air, act like tiny prisms. It isn't magic. It isn't supernatural. Poets have repined over Newton's discovery, feeling that something was lost by his unweaving the rainbow and giving a scientific explanation for something that was, for so long, a thing of mystical beauty. Dawkins, though, takes issue with this point of view. His thesis is that understanding the universe does not destroy its beauty and wonder, nor should it dampen our artistic appreciation. One of the arguments he makes is that science has been too timid in just accepting, without argument, the poet's complaint. To make his point, Dawkins shows how almost unimaginable knowledge has come to us as a result of understanding light - which began with Newton unweaving the rainbow - and how the universe is infinitely more incredible now, than it was when we saw stars as simple points of light in the night sky. In the process, Dawkins provides some interesting insights into a wide array of physical phenomena. He describes how we see color, in the first place. This is fascinating reading. Then he explains how the ultimate unweaving of light - understanding it at the roots of its quantum nature - has led to understanding the chemical makeup of stars that are billions of light years away. Furthermore, the nature of this ancient light tells us how space is changing - expanding - and how this knowledge helps us understand the origins of the universe itself, and ultimately it's future fate. So, when Newton told us how rainbows work, he did not make them any less beautiful. Instead, he opened up broad vistas of insight that led to unimaginable new knowledge about a universe that is vastly more complicated, rich, and wonderful than the simplistic views it displaced. While encouraging appreciation for the truly wonderful and amazing things in nature, Dawkins is quick to point out that "we have an appetite for wonder, a poetic appetite, which real science ought to be feeding but which is being hijacked, often for monetary gain, by purveyors of superstition, the paranormal and astrology." He devotes a fair amount of this book to discussions about these superstitions, how they are inconsistent with logic and scientific facts, and how they actually demean the truly amazing universe in which we live. One of the most interesting chapters describes how animals are actually predisposed by evolutionary pressure to make false statistical associations. Dawkins describes experiments that show this effect in birds. The basic approach of these experiments is to teach the animal some behavior (pecking at a special spot in the cage, for example) by rewarding it regularly with food. Then, the experiments went on to show that if the food is rewarded on a random basis, the birds accidentally pick up and focus on some random behavior that they incorrectly associate with getting food. In a word, they learn to be superstitious. In one particular example, Dawkins explains how a researcher "set up the apparatus to 'reward' the pigeon from time to time no matter what the bird did. Now all that the bird actually needed to do was sit back and wait for the reward. But in fact, this is not what they did. Instead, in six out of eight cases, they built up - exactly as though they were learning a reward habit - what Skinner called 'superstitious' behavior. ... One bird spun itself round like a top two or three turns anticlockwise between 'rewards.' Another bird repeatedly thrust its head towards one particular upper corner of the box. A third bird showed "tossing" behavior, as if lifting an invisible curtain with its head." [see pages 163-164]. The point of all this is that animals (and not just birds) have a tendency to make false associations of causality, and this is largely our basis for belief in many things, including the supernatural. It's something to think about next time you find yourself hesitating about stepping on a crack, walking under a ladder, accepting a room on the 13'th floor, or watching someone getting "healed" by the laying on of hands. Dawkins argues that scientists should learn to be a little more poetic, but that trying to teach science with poetry can cause problems. In particular, he takes Stephen Jay Gould to task for using what he calls "bad poetry" in which the scientific meaning gets lost, or seriously distorted. Personally, I enjoy poetry, but think it has no place in scientific explanations - and I agree that when it gets carried away, the ambiguous and metaphorical nature of poetry can cause some real hang ups when trying to understand scientific principles. It's been a complaint of mine, before, that I don't think scientist should describe fundamental particles as "dancing," "kissing," etc., though some do. Dawkins also includes some interesting stuff on the genetic view of survival in which the "environment" is the sea of other genes - both cooperative types and enemies - that from it's immediate environment. This part of the book provides some really interesting insights and an interesting point of view for evolution. The book has a good index, and is very well written. Dawkins is an excellent writer, but just the same, I think a few illustrations would have added to this book (there are none). Still, this is an excellent book. I highly recommend it for anyone with a general interest in science
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Summary: Brilliant
Review: Countless reviewers have said it before, but I must repeat the observation: Richard Dawkins is unmatched in his ability to explain science to people who aren't trained in the sciences. Unweaving the Rainbow is no exception. And his ability to tease insights from his deep understanding of natural selection inspires awe. I don't share what I infer to be Dawkins's left-ish political views. So on those rare occasions when he inserts a politically inspired remark, I wince a bit. But these infrequent instances aside, my mind and spirits soar when I read his work. Dawkins has both the courage and, more importantly, the intellectual mettle to distinguish unfailingly between a scientific argument and a foolish or baseless argument. Such courage and mettle are distressingly rare, even among many celebrated thinkers. If you want to be inspired by the power of the human mind, and the beauty of arguments well-crafted, read this book -- and then treat yourself to his other works.
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Summary: The Darwinisation of the "Cambrian Explosion"
Review: Let's assume that Gould is right in his observation that the Burgess Shell is a testimony to an incredibly hectic period diversification, on a different time scale from what we experience now. The high rate of change in life forms (new phyla "bursting") in the period leading to the Cambrian and through its early stages surely doesn't have to mean large evolutionary "jumps", but rather a different "natural frequency" of the standard, gradual evolution process by the tried and true Darwinian mechanism. What has to be explained is the causes of the different rate. It is quite safe to postulate that this rate is determined by the feedback between different parts of the Darwinian mechanism, just as is the case for other cyclic phenomena. The cycle in this instant is the generation and elimination of life forms. It seems that the current rate is "optimize" to populate every possible ecological niche, but that does not mean it's the one and only possible rates. On the contrary. Different ecological situation surely must influence this rate. For example, in a resource-rich and under-populated environment, such as a "virgin" island, mutations that normally would be considered "unfit", will survive. This is the conventional rationalization behind the "Explosion" metaphor, if you don't take it to mean "instantaneous", just incredibly fast. So it boils down to the question the speed of the evolutionary process and what controls it. We know the engine of change and mechanism of "Quality Control" by which most of the changes are rejected. Those two work as a superbly coordinated team' at least as far as the end result is concerned. Evolution might be a blind watchmaker, but also a very successful one. Creationists may even ask who created the watchmaker! In other words, how come that the parameters of the evolutionary process have the values that actually produce evolution? We surly reject the "Intelligent Design" type of answers, but that does not free us from the need to provide a satisfactory scientific answer. Which brings me to speculate, that the apparent correspondence between the different parts of the evolutionary equation is too well fine-tuned to escape the conclusion that the evolutionary mechanism itself evolved in a similar process. The blind watchmaker was fine-tuned by a blind watchmaker - and it's not a meaningless recursion. We all know the essential ingredients of the formula used to tune natural evolution:
1. The conservative force of genetic inheritance, operating like gravity on pendulum
2. The erratic drive of mutation, generating the required perturbations from stasis, pushing the pendulum in every possible way
3. The environment enhancing the successful "modes of oscillation" to be conserved, as in a resonant mechanism, and rejecting the non-resonant modes. (The clockwork metaphor is intentional, but should not be take to imply one-to-one correspondence between the two mechanisms. It's just "poetics"' hopefully a good one.) In the Pre-Cambrian environment, the initial survival rate of new mutant was presumably higher, but not for a long time. Soon enough, the available resources must have been fully utilized and the Darwinian competition begun. The conventional rationalization about overly abundant environment can't be justified in geological time-scale. However, the mutation rate and the conservative constrains of the genetic mechanism could be quite different than what we see now. Actually, even today we do see a great variation in mutation (successful ones too!) rate between different life forms. For example, certain microbes mutate before out eyes almost day to day. With a much higher rate of evolution than we experience today in multi-cellular life forms, it would seems that phyla were "invented" during the Pre-Cambrian in a very short geological time span, requiring large successful "jumps", while actually the great many steps required to accomplish the transition just happened very quickly. But the environment is the "negative" aspect of the Darwinian process, culling the unfit, not the "positive" force blindly experimenting in new life forms. To understand the "explosion" we must allow for a different equilibrium of checks-and-balances between the conservative and the mutating forces in the genetic mechanism itself, namely the copying of DNA. Of the many "exotic" life forms populating the Pre-Cambrian world, few survived. The new environmental condition narrowed the criteria for passing the survival test, a change that was mirrored in the optimal balance between conservation and change in the selection formula for the genetic material (DNA, RNA, what have you) and its associated molecular mechanism. Gone were the days when sloppy copying was tolerated - even encouraged - by the QA department. The fast mutating life forms lost to the ones based on a very pedantic DNA copy machine. The conservatives won the day and the wild variation of gene-inheritance alternatives dwindled to one. Only phyla that adapted this mechanism survived. This mechanism is so biased towards conservatism, that no new phyla could arise since it came to dominate file. The explosion deserves its name only if you assume that the current mechanism is what always was - an idea as absurd as assuming that the species themselves are what they always were. In other words, we have to apply the Darwinian adaptation mechanism to the molecular infrastructure underlying the genes, as we do to the genes themselves, in order to understand the fine-tuning of the evolutionary rate we see today. In the early stages of the evolution of multi-cellular life form, before low mutation rate was selected (frequency-locked) by natural selection, the appearance of radically new life forms took just millions of years, rather than hundreds of millions. The natural selection of gene conservation mechanism was affected, probably, by selecting the very stable and predictable DNA/RNA one over alternatives (for example "horizontal" transfer of genes, as in bacteria) and all the other parts of the fine molecular dance of the genes. You may think of this as the mirror process to the one leading to the selection of sexual strategy. The later was selected to enrich the variation after the first fixed the rate at a too low value relative to environmental changes. To summarize, what I'm trying to propose is that the same logical thinking that make Classic Darwinian evolution inhabitable apply also to the evolution of the genetic mechanism underlying the Darwinian process. It couldn't be as good as we experience it now if it didn't undergo a multi-staged fine-tuning under selective forces. Once this postulate is accepted, the "Cambrian Explosion" becomes a legitimate part of evolutionary orthodoxy.
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Summary: Every book helps
Review: The last review by Ryan answers the question posed by the previous review by Kevin, as many times as a book is published that goes over these same grounds there will be those who fail, deliberately or otherwise, to understand the points being made. To those who complain that Dawkins is reducing humans to a collection of synapses the answer if you read anything that Dawkins has ever written is that yes we are such a collection and we are also just meat and bones but what's your point? I can live, love, laugh, cry etc just as much as you can but I also have a clearer appreciation of how these thing have come to be than you with your mysticism. The evidence is all with Dawkins, the complainants never really advance anything more than wishful thinking and mere assertion, 'we are not just...' 'there has to be something more....', no there doesn't, what we have is inspiring and beautiful enough and that is what this book (all of it)is about.
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Summary: Another splendid work for his followers
Review: Richard Dawkins is a gifted writer, and has a wonderful sense of creative writing designed to appeal to those who follow his religion. On this I applaud his efforts, and admire his consistent ability to restate the same theme in different contexts. Truly, he is skilled and adept at leading his followers where they want to go. The only problem with his most current book, is that it contains the same flaws as his other works: namely, Richard is so preoccupied with trying to conince himself and his followers of his own theories of philosophy that nearly all his work is designed to suit his base assumptions, and he never is really open to any other ideas except to refute them. There are those who find his prose exceptional, his passion encouraging and his views comforting, but therein lies the problem. Richard Dawkins is wrong. No, his writing is not intentionally false, but rather he has simply made a career of piling more and more weight on a cracked and flawed foundation. To anyone who has ever experienced meaning beyond instincts, his base philosophy of pure naturalism is exposed for what it is: a fantasy which requires more faith to believe than the spirituality he tries so hard to prove doesn't exist. I liken his work to that of the moral relativist who states boldly: "there are no absolute truths". Well, except for the simpleton whose worldview requires everyday justification, the self refuting nature of the statement is obvious. If there are no absolute truths, then the statement itself must not be an absolute truth and therefore is false. If however, there are absolute truths then the statement is also false. Either way, it is self refuting and false. The same can be said for the base philosophy of Richard Dawkins. If you really want to believe (note it requires the word "believe") that all of life is merely the result natural and deterministic causes, then you are a follower of Dawkins and will love this book. In fact, I highly recommend it. If however, you believe that there is more to life than the firing of synapses and the evolution of physical beings, then you will find his work, including this book, to be just the pathetically desparate rant of someone who wants more than anything to be right, yet is afraid deep down that they are not. Your call.
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Summary: A one stop shop, not a specialty store!
Review: Richard Dawkins was the thinker that introduced me to evolutionary biology. His books give everything one could want - enthusiasm, wit, engagement, substance and splendor. I can't tink of many others I would want writing a book for the laity on the wonder of science. There are a few problems - the first may be relevant to everyone and the second, to those who've read Dawkins before. The first criticism is that this book starts off with a stated goal. I, Richard Dawkins, do solemnly swear to explain that science is not stuffy, a killjoy, or a myth (as postmodernism would have it.) The problem is that from the title, we suspect the first goal to occupy the bulk of the book but #3 takes up the entire second half, where Dawkins rails against the religious and the superstitious. Of course, I can hardly blame him but this was not the book to do it in because the title would be horribly misleading if it was. The second problem (applicable mostly to those who've read Dawkins before) is that most of this has been written before - not literally but figuratively. Most of these thing have been explained to us before, either by him, or by Carl Sagan, Isac Asimov or (second half of the book)James Randi and Michael Shermer. If you want a one stop shop, where you can get a broad overview of science in all its mystery and wonder, than get this and/or Sagan's "Science as a Candle in the Dark". Otherwise, if you'd like to focus on one piece or aspect of science more indepth, look elsewhere.
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Summary: BAD POETIC SCIENCE?
Review: Dawkins lamented the poet Keats negative response to Newton's analysis of colored light using a prism. He feels that scientific metaphor can be made to be poetic. I think Dawkin's thesis is that just as the rainbow is an illusion produced by light waves in the human eye, so all that man sees of the solid world is a virtual representation created by the brain. Entranced with the computer metaphor for the working of the brain, Dawkins sees the neurons as hardware and the sensory input as software. Thus Dawkins unweaves the solid, physical world as but waves passing through the prism of man's brain. What is really presented to man is a simulated, virtual reality world assembled by the machinery of his brain. Thus one is asked to view the end result as a computer graphics picture such as an artist would create for special effects in a movie. While human DNA presents a hard wired, general picture of the past environment (say whether the animal lived on land or under the sea) the memory of the brain must react to the current, detailed environment. Dawkins asks what caused the evolutionary inflation or ballooning of the human brain's size, contrasted with other animals. His speculations include maps, metaphors, representational language and drawing, memes and what not. Isn't it fun to throw one's two cents unto the pile? I have to give the book a horizontal thumb. He threw in responses to critics of his past books, for example, turning his selfish genes into selfish cooperators. He also included mini reviews and comments on books he has read but I don't think he got his lasso around the horns of this steer.
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