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Summary: Scientific wonder is one of the highest human experinces.
Review: Dawkins is a gifted explainer. When he tells us that the spirit of wonder that leads to mysticism is the same that motivates great scientists, one is inclined to believe him. He turns the anxiety of those who despair at the prospect of a brief non-eternal existence right back at them to ask how and why, given such an opportunity, would you squander it in the grip of an illusion which doesn't square with any of your practical experience. Dawkins shows clearly that the poetic nature of science is spellbinding and profound. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Could be better.
Review: Richard Dawkins is writing about a subject that is somewhat beyond his expertise. Two excellent science books are "The Elegant Universe" and "The Bible According to Einstein"
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Summary: Splendid Rendering of the Natural World!
Review: I applaud the scrupulous research and integrity that went into the making of this book, and the warmth and generosity (and righteous indignation when necessary) of its tone. "Unweaving the Rainbow" will become a classic, sections excerpted into anthologies to be taught as examples of clear, rational content and of powerful, persuasive, and effective prose.Bravely, honestly, logically, with good humor and grace, Dawkins stands up for what he believes. And he believes that the study of science is essential for helping us to understand and appreciate ourselves and others and the world around us: why we do what we do, feel the way we feel; how the laws of nature work and what that means to the way we live our lives. If I could sum up the message of twentieth-century literature (which I have taught at the university level for nearly thirty years now) in one sentence, it would be the same poignant conclusion that Dawkins reaches in this book of science: We are able to care for each other and the world more deeply when we realize we are all we've got, and our time here is brief indeed: "The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that makes life worth living and it does so, if anything, MORE effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living it is finite." [caps mine] Science can reveal why we do what we do, feel the way we feel. All of us in different countries, unlike in so many ways - Dawkins shows us a common ground, a way to touch each other's lives in communication, a way to live lives of exuberant celebration. Poetry tells the story of what it means to be human in this particular time and this particular place, universal connections between all the things in the world and all the people. So does this exhilarating book of science, which (like listening to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy") makes me happy to be alive. As a poet and teacher of creative writing (the headline above is taken from one of my Darwin poems), I find the POETRY of Unweaving to be as good as any being written anywhere today - and better than much of it. I would give anything to have described "the thread . . . by which our existence hangs" as "wincingly tenuous" ( 2). The joy of those last two words, one sound briefly kissing the other and passing gracefully on, my favorite kind of rhyme and devilishly difficult to accomplish. The diction: "A fawn's pelage is a painting of the dappled pattern of sunlight filtered through trees onto the woodland floor" (240). The metaphors and similes: "[Scientists] assist the imagination back to the hot birth of time and forward to the eternal cold . . ." (16). I have given birth, and "hot" is le mot juste. How beautifully intuitive he is: how else could a male know? A perfect analogy weds the factually accurate (literal truths) with the non-factually accurate (figurative truths). And Dawkins calls always for accuracy. That's where he departs from those who insist on holding on to an [eternal]- life preserver, the supernatural faith of their childhoods, instead of taking the trouble to build, plank by thoughtful plank, a boat that will float in real water. He understands and sympathizes with their needs - most of the book is devoted to explaining how such delusions are born of our very natural "appetite for wonder." But their needs (and all the false analogies in the world) cannot turn wishful thinking into fact, cannot unwrite the laws of nature. When I was a child, I thought as a child; as an adult, I want to put away believing that childish (irrational) things are reality, while maintaining a child-like (imaginative) sense of curiosity and awe. "Unweaving the Rainbow" helps me do both. The humor: how the skin of a squid behaves like an LED screen, and "the skinflicks it shows are spectacular" (7). "The total area of membranous structure inside one of us works out at more than 200 acres. That's a respectable farm" (9). The eloquence of Unweaving goes on and on, every page with the teeming abundance of a Burgess Shale. BUT (I can tell you as a writer) such a work can evolve only by "gradual accumulation," many drafts ending in the trash can, many excursions down dead-end streets. No "long-jump mutations." No "top- down" inspiration. Just hard work and perspiration here on the ground. A few readers might say he treads on their cherished flowers (some of these flowers being "wild" indeed); but most will thrill to the way he treads on the weeds of superstition and ignorance, plants new seeds of thought to bloom in our minds, points out new "flowers" of beauty in the natural world that we had not noticed before. Thank you, Richard Dawkins, for sharing with us your extraordinary mind, your passionate quest for honesty and accuracy, your perceptive awareness of the importance of human relationships - and most of all for this splendid rendering of the natural world.
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Summary: No intuition!
Review: This is how you see things when you're short changed with dry intelligence but with no intuitive abilities.
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Summary: You can't say it often enough!
Review: So what if we've heard it before. Dawkins is the best person around to drum home the message, and anyone who disagrees wih that message should, in my perfect world, be thrown to the lions with the christians! (And Gould)!
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Summary: A complete let-down
Review: Dawkins fans like me will be horrified by this book. Roughly speaking , it could be sub-titled 'Why Science isn't boring' but, unlike the thrilling romp of 'The Selfish Gene' or the interest of 'The Blind Watchmaker', here Dawkins bangs wearily on, often on his own hobby horses or things he evidently knows little about. He hectors us about watching the X-Files, he has a predictable go at Stephan Jay Gould, he repeats earlier work almost verbatim. His previous books demonstrated brilliantly how science can be rivetting, enlightening, enthralling and elegant. This is very sad, a little like watching a once-great dancer try his old stunts after drinking to excess. The little flashes of brilliance simply serve to remind you of what has gone.
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Summary: Pathetic Redundancy
Review: Ever since The Selfish Gene, Dawkins has continued to repeat himself over and over again. While The Blind Watchmaker contained some refreshing "newness," his latest books (River out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow) have been so completely boring they make you want to vomit. Dawkins is a good writer, but he can't seem to come do much more than mix up old ideas. He's turned Darwinism into a religion and it's getting lame. Skip this book. Skip all his books. Let him wallow in his world that he's made for himself. These books have nothing to do with science, but with a man who has set out to prove Darwinism. It's pseudoscientific, it's boring, and it's sad. Save the money and buy Steven Jay Gould's books.
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Summary: Brilliant prose, but ultimately disappointing
Review: This is brilliant prose and although it is fun to read it is ultimately disappointing. I assume that most readers of popular science have a high school knowledge of science and arithmetic. Thus, having simple spectroscopy, basic acoustics and statistics explained to you as if you were a twelve-year-old is insulting. Dawkins should stick to what he is good at, instead of "Barcodes of the Stars" or "Barcodes in the air" he could have used the same metaphor to discuss say, the resurrection of the Quagga; zebras have wonderful barcodes. His attack on astrology is weak, most astrologers admit that newspaper column astrology is a generic oversimplification. I was disappointed that Dawkins focused on them rather than the so-called "serious astrologers", the true purveyors of "bad poetic science", who are fond of Jungian terminology to interpret horoscopes. I felt that Dawkins confused the astrological and astronomical constellations: the former is imaginary, the latter are the 13 constellations bisected by the ecliptic. I was pleased to see that Dawkins thanked John Catalano in the preface. John's excellent web site has probably introduced thousands of readers (I am one) to Richard Dawkins.
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Summary: A horrible disappointment
Review: If I read either the phrase "Bad Poetic Science" (or "Good Poetic Science"), for that matter, I think I will vomit. As Geddy, Alex and Neil once lamented, "Show me, don't tell me." He should have dove right into the material which he wanted to discuss, rather than repeating his annoying catch phrases. Dawkins seems to be merely riding on his reputation to sell books anymore. And I imagine that he is only "preaching to the converted." Nobody who buys a book by Dawkins will really believe their horiscope in the daily paper will really forecast the future. And I would hope that nobody would agree that it is a good thing that the general public be ignorant of DNA evidence and what it represents. The only exception is when he takes 14 or so pages to attack Stephen Jay Gould, for better or worse. Some may or may not take exception to that. (I am not familiar with what Gould believes, so I can't comment any more than that). By the time he gets to writing about what he knows, all hopes have been pretty well lost. There is a reasonably good section on memes in the penultimate chapter; perhaps he should have stuck with that (and similar topics) rather than dragging on with weak statistical probems (weak in their painfully obvious solution), debunking astrology, and going into excruciating detail about physics (thus Unweaving the Rainbow) and astronomy. Save your money. Re-read The Selfish Gene or Climbing Mount Improbable, or even Ridley's The Origins of Virtue. Let's just hope whatever he has forthcoming is much better. I'd give Unweaving the Rainbow zero stars if I had the option.
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Summary: A non-fiction thriller!!
Review: I got into this book more any Stephen King novel. Richard Dawkins writing style is really easy to read. Dawkins presented Science in such a way that it reads like a thriller. You will be anxiously turning every page. Don't make the mistake of NOT buying this book.
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