Rating: 
Summary: BE QUIET, SIT UP STRAIGHT AND EAT YOUR DNA
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Who cares what Dawkins thinks? He's just a zoologist!
Review: According to Richard Dawkins, science has conclusively proven that the universe is a purposeless accident, that God doesn't exist, and that humans are simply animals with no particular dignity or worth. These conclusions don't set well with some people, who insist on thinking that there is meaning to life and that humans have special value. To keep the uneducated masses from rebelling against the scientific establishment - which is composed of individuals who are so brilliant that they're natural birthright is to rule over the rest of us - scientists should learn to express the amazing sheer dumb luck of evolution and existence in poetic language to satisfy the emotional yearnings of the ignorant. Dawkins is a Zoologist, but he feels to free to make authoritative comments on Psychology, Physics, Astronomy, Economics, Literature, Computer Science, Theology, and other fields that are far removed from his area of expertise. Dawkin's devoted followers will doubtlessly hail this work as the latest "God-Is-Dead" opus from the man they consider to be a uniquely gifted atheist polymath and rest assured that Dawkins has once again realized humanity's oldest dream - to kill the god(s). Unfortunately, few of Dawkins' fans realize that Dawkins is usually wrong. His field, Zoology, is a relatively soft science that has little to say about the big questions Dawkins' addresses. When Dawkins writes outside of his field, he has no idea what he's talking about. For example, Dawkins is a big booster of "evolutionary psychology" and "sociobiology," which seek to explain all of human behavior in evolutionary terms. The only problem is that most scientists regard evolutionary psychology as sophistic baloney the likes of which hasn't been seen since Freud. Susan Blackmore, Stephen Pinker, Daniel Dennet and others working in this field aren't real psychologists; they haven't even treated a case of depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder, let alone gleaned insights into how the mind evolved. They just sit around and think up stuff that sounds good on paper but has no real proof. (For example, why do men prefer Playboy bunnies to Oprah Winfrey? Because we evolved that way, of course!) Dawkins' blithe insistence that science has killed God simply shows that he doesn't know that much about modern science or the state of philosophy. To be sure, there is a definite preference for Enlightenment-era materialism; most scientists are irreligious, as well as most auto mechanics, school teachers, garbage collectors, technical writers, painters, bug exterminators, etc. (After all, only about 20 percent of the population in the "Christian Fundamentalist theocracy" of the United States are orthodox Christians, and in Europe, that ratio is much, much less.) The natural sciences, properly understood, simply aren't concerned with religious questions. But if anything, atheism has been steadily LOSING ground even among scientists. The lead scientist of the Human Genome Project, Frances Collins, is a Christian. The Physicist who discovered neutrinos, John Polkinghorne, is now an Anglican priest. Astronomers who helped flush out relativity theory, like Robert Jastrow, have proclaimed that their intellectual quest has merged seamlessly with theology. Paul Davies unabashedly wrote a book called "God and the New Physics." All of these men have greater intellectual gifts than Dawkins. If Mathematical Physicists and the geneticist charged with revolutionizing modern medicine talk about God, who cares what a mere Zoologist (Dawkins), a social scientist (Susan Blackmore), and a "philosopher of science" (Daniel Dennet) think? The militant atheists of the world are running low on qualified spokespeople, who find themselves clinging tighter and tighter to evolutionary biology as their sole intellectual resource. (Even that really doesn't provide any support for their position, when you strip away the clever word-play used by adherents.) If leading Physicists who discovered the Big Bang and Quantum reality and Geneticists who mapped the human genome are "creationists," then count me in! Dawkins' real gift is convincing psuedo-intellectuals that he's correct simply do the unbridled force of his assertions. On paper, he's a master at expressing himself with unwavering confidence, and in public he's usually able to get away with being rude and obnoxious to people who for some reason still insist on treating him with some measure of professional respect. (When asked a complex question about the conflicts between information theory and simple neo-Darwinism, Dawkins' once replied, "That doesn't interest me much," as if that brushed aside the issue!) To be sure, Dawkins chooses his opponents carefully, picking on creation scientists and other rabble. Don't expect Dawkins to debate a Princeton-educated mathematician with a cleverer wit and a superior sense of intellectual snootiness, like David Berlinski, or even a rather down-to-earth but knowledgeable biochemist, like Michael Behe.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent but...
Review: Dr Dawkins controls his anger quite well but it is clear that he dislikes religion and general other loose thinking. He is a champion of common sense and he quite rightly puts down the know-nothing media loud-mouths that so often attack science in the name of 'art' or to justify religious dogma. However, he tends to pick on soft targets such as astrologers and bible-belt crazies rather than mainstream targets such as the Roman Catholic Church.
Whilst I support every word he says (and admire the quality of his writing) I think there is something missing. Firstly, I would argue that science does not exist to be attacked or supported; it is simply an approach to understanding life rather than a credo in its own right.
There are only two approaches to life - a rational one where there is some reasoned logic and an irrational one where beliefs are held for superstitious or tribal reasons. Dawkins can be charged with assuming that his prefered methods of reasoning (current science)are the only valid ones. I would recommend people (and Dr Dawkins) to read B. Alan Wallace's 'Choosing Reality'as a well reasoned counter-view.
But this is still a great book.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining, inspiring and even politically correct!
Review: As a geology student I mainly use to read Dawkins' books out of curiosity for evolutionary biology and appreciation for his debating skills, not because they've got anything to do with my field. This one was different though, as I knew it would be about scientific thought in general, so possibly of more interest to anyone into science, no matter what their specific expertise.....
I have to say now, after reading it not once but twice, I am glad I have to disagree with nearly all the negative critics I read on this book, and there seem to have appeared lots, both on Amazon websites and on various magazines and journals. Which was, incidentally, one more reason for me to grow curious about this essay....
"Unweaving The Rainbow" is a collection of informal personal reflections on what science is all about, what it means to some of us from an emotional viewpoint, and how it fares when compared to other cultural orientations that seem to be more widespread, like arts and humanities, or (in stark contrast to science!) superstition, pseudo-science and metaphysical spiritualism. There's no technical discussion of any topics in the philosophy of science, just the knowledgeable digressions of someone with something to say. My only quibble is that the last four chapters seem to stray somewhat far out of the book's main purpose, delving deeper and more exclusively into the realm of "extended" biology, following an evolutionary thread that starts with Dawkins' typical metaphors on the role of genes in the game of life and ends with a touch of cultural anthropology and psychology.... But then again, it's just one more example of how science can be beautiful and fulfilling, though still lacking answers to some of our questions (but working on it, and you never know....) One might as well consider that the book's goal could have been just expressing the author's views on anything he wished, and there my quibble falls!
Somebody says that Dawkins takes on an extreme position, closure to anything that's not scientific, cultural intolerance and nasty undertones... Well, I haven't found any such attitude in here. In fact, I expected his firm, worked-up arguments against religion possibly to be one of the central themes, but I was wrong... His prose flows quiet and clear, humorous, never bitter to anyone. No hint of a temper, just reasoning, and wonder here and there, to remind us that he probably isn't just a scary Oxford professor, but also a human being (who'd suspect that??!!).
Sure, his words are spoken out clear, and they may sound arrogant and intolerantly confrontational when addressed at those who believe in magic, superstition, spiritualism of outlandish sorts, fake science, religious integralism, and the like. But it is my impression that such hard feelings aren't on the part of science, but of its opponents, especially when they notice their arguments can be easily dismissed when someone wants to take time and examine their claims, passing from careless, informal small-talk to "official" testing and debating (and subsequent disclosing of embarrassing truths!). Contrary to what some people believe, honest science DOESN'T harbour ANY superiority complex, as even its results are always prone to doubt and rejection under due evidence. Rather, it's nonsensical thinking that suffers from an inferiority complex. The harshness wasn't in Dawkins' words,probably just in some of his readers' hearts when they felt called out on faults in their ideas. Other critics, mainly in Italy, lamented a closure to the value literary and figurative arts and to humanities in general, as if Dawkins had stated that science is the only worthy intellectual quest. Another one, on a famous magazine, commented on the author's supposedly misleading recourse only to those poetic quotations that could sound as casting doubt onto science, whereas he would ignore so many other artists who made no bones about their admiration for scientific achievements. Again, I can't find any single example of an antiliterary position anywhere here, no hint at "the two cultures", but rather an implicit enjoyment and even praise of poetry, music and such. And more logically, if I wanted to defend science from its detractors, or from those people who seem to misunderstand its ways and purpose, I would draw examples from them to better point out what I deem to be wrong specifically in their words, I certainly wouldn't mention just anyone else at random!
This is an interesting read that hopes to make you think a little more with your own mind and to let you notice that the world, life and the universe as we know them, anything around and about us, it's all wonderful and awe-inspiring also when you try to understand with a down-to-earth, sensible approach. There seems to be no clear evidence for fairies in the woods yet (thus far!), but we can enjoy hiking just the same, all those plants with their incredible chemical life-tricks, a menagerie of funny warblers with a song for everything they want to do, rocks with ancient though somewhat silent stories to tell, and a star high above that runs big part of the show just by casting its intangible light! Well, this is beautiful enough isn't it... And if there are fairies somewhere we'll certainly find out more about them. But only just IF!
Rating:
Summary: Dogma in disguise
Review: Why can't Dawkins know intelligence when he sees it? The problem is that Dawkins keeps wearing those outdated naturalistic positivistic and antimetaphysical XIX century glasses that distort his vision, if not make him totally blind. Dawkins is the blind mythmaker. It makes a big difference the kind of glasses you are wearing, as the soldiers with "night vision glasses" know all too well. When one arbitrarily reduces the empirical observation and testing field of analisis by sticking to naturalistic assumptions, one necessarily comes to naturalistic conclusions. The problem is that evolutionary theory transforms itself in secular religion, or, we could say, as a kind of "darwinistic civil religion". This was recognized by Michael Ruse, when he said that "in the past, and I think also in the present, for many evolutionists, evolution has functioned as something with elements which are, let us say, akin to being a secular religion ... And it seems to me very clear that at some very basic level, evolution as a scientific theory makes a commitment to a kind of naturalism, namely, that at some level one is going to exclude miracles and these sorts of things come what may." And as a religion, evolutionary theory can get pretty intolerant. In a tipical inquisitorial tone, Richard Dawkins says that to deny the central thesis of Darwinism, namely common descent through selection and modification, one has to be either stupid or wicked or insane. That's Dawkins equivalent of "heretic, scismatic or apostate". As William Dembski notices, "This metaphysic is so pervasive and powerful that it not only rules alternative views out of court, but it cannot even permit itself to be criticized. The fallibilism and tentativeness that are supposed to be part and parcel of science find no place in the naturalistic metaphysic that undergirds Darwinism."
Rating:
Summary: Demonic Darwinism
Review: Actually Dawkins is quite upfront about his evil, like the villain who wears a black cowboyhat. He says that at the bottom of the universe is "blind pitiless indifference", and that this affords him his freedom to do as he likes. He may look the champion of freedom when railing against religion, but this freedom conceived in blind pitiless indifference, turns to horror when applied in the real world. So far Dawkins hasn't personally killed anyone, but it should be expected he might. Fortunately there are less oppurtunities for him to do so. Like his forebearer Konrad Lorenz who enthusiastically joined the Nazi-race office, we might expect Dawkins to go on a commission to advise about population control. You see, medicine is in a race to find cures for the genetic damage that mounts up in the human genepool. In times before, this genetic damage was filtered out by Natural Selection, so the story goes. It's just a fantasy of course, just like Dawkins saying that people are born selfish is a fantasy. Dawkins doesn't care about the complaints of peadiatricians about his modern superstition, because, is he not free to write what he likes? We should expect Darwinist parents to view their children, and all children, as selfish, and treat them accordingly. These demonic influences of Darwinism on society are much checked in the West by democratic organizations, although that would be different if there was a recession or some crisis like that. In countries such as Russia and China however, the impact of the pseudoscience of Darwinism is much unchecked. There genocide, or having Natural Selection take it's course in human society, is a popular tool of political leaders and docters alike, in making their population more healthy in an affordable way.
Currently, january 2002, former president of Bosnia, Plavsic, who holds a proffessorship in biology, stands trial for warcrimes in The Hague. Plavsic sold the policy of ethnic cleansing to the Serb population using Darwinian terminology. But don't take that as evidence of the demonic influence of Darwinism. Just pick up a dictionary or science textbook, and read the definition of Natural Selection. Then, as Dawkins encourages you to do, freely philosphise for some hours about what this theory tells you about your greed, your genoristy etc. After recognizing that your mind has turned into a sewer of pseudoscience, you may start to wonder about what your own doctor thinks about Darwinism.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing more than what I was meant to be
Review: What was I meant to be you may ask? A wonderful , loving , happy, well-centered human being! Most people think that because I am Atheist that I have no purpose, that life is bland and I just scrape my botton through it only to die! Not so . I am amazed everyday when I wake to this world, to the life within it. Dawkins explains , crosses the t's and dots the i's. A wonderful book, I say all should have it and enjoy it as much as I have.A wonderful writer with a brilliant mind.
Rating:
Summary: Unweaving the mysteries of the mind and universe
Review: After reading Dawkins' classic works on evolution and combatting creationism (_The Selfish Gene_, _The Blind Watchmaker_ and _Climbing Mount Improbable_), I was unsure as to what more our Prof. Dawkins could relate to us in his latest instalment. However, to my delight it seems that my skepticism was ill-founded. In this volume Dawkins does for Science in general what his previous books did for evolution. The book's title refers to Keat's criticism of Newton for destroying the mystery and beauty of the rainbow. Dawkins' mission in this book is to show the public that naturalistic science is just as, if not more intriguing than a poet's perspective of the natural world. Dawkins takes the reader on a journey that spans the mysteries of the rainbow, radio waves and genetics with occasional interludes in debunking the pseudo-science of astrology and other supersitions. Dawkins' writing is riddled with quotes from famous poets and the prose itself is akin to that poetry. For those lay readers that consider themselves experts in the realms of ccience, this book may seem a bit simplistic in places. At times I found myself wondering about the relevance of certain chapters in the book to the central tenet that science in its most natural form is poetic, however I enjoyed the digressions as they were interesting nonetheless. Overall, I enjoyed this book thoroughly and in paritcular I felt a warmth emanating from the prose that could only have been exuded by one of the most brilliant humanistic thinkers of our time.
Rating:
Summary: Rainbow Shredder
Review: Terrible disappointment. Mr. Dawkins begins the book with chip on his shoulder regarding the dumbing down of science to make it more accessible to the lay person. He then proceeds to dish out watered down, unorganized bits of fact and fancy riddled with "witty" observations and speculations that more often than not are left hanging in mid air. It was akin to being cornered by your crazy uncle at a holiday gathering and being forced to bear testimony to the latest developments of his "theories". I rarely if ever put down a book with such distaste, but after being able to digest less and less of each chapter, I was forced to discard it at Chapter 6. Maybe there's a silver lining to the cloud behind this rainbow, but I doubt it's worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting.
Review: This book's main focus examines the ideas of the aesthetic value of science. The concept of the book was upon the reaction of "unweaving the rainbow" which Newton did by explaining the prisms and such. It also goes into how "poetry" in science can be good or bad depending how it's used - good if helps you see the idea better and bad if it misleads you, often because of the grandeur of poetry. There are examples and explanations of various topics, and Dawkins often gives quotes and even poetry to try to prove his points. I found it entertaining and thought provoking. I recommend it.
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