Product Description

Did Newton "unweave the rainbow" by reducing it to its prismatic colors, as Keats contended? Did he, in other words, diminish beauty? Far from it, says acclaimed scientist Richard Dawkins; Newton's unweaving is the key to much of modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern cosmology. Mysteries don't lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution often is more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering deeper mysteries.
With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made him a best-selling author, Dawkins takes up the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, combining them in a landmark statement of the human appetite for wonder.
This is the book Richard Dawkins was meant to write: a brilliant assessment of what science is (and isn't), a tribute to science not because it is useful but because it is uplifting.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18469 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.com 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

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.

From Library Journal
In this discussion of scientific methodology, Dawkins quotes liberallyAnot fellow scientists, but poets like Keats, Coleridge, and Dickinson. The message is clear: scientific thinking may be structured and rigorous, but it never lacks a fundamental sense of beauty and wonder.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

The Poetry of Atheism
This book anticipates the storm that followed Richard Dawkins' best seller, "The God Delusion", which told us bluntly that there is no cosmic security, that there is some kind of a future in our DNA, that we are doomed to oblivion, so why not have good time while we're at it."

Apparently his idea of a good time is hope in Darwinism(his version, of course), a dose of random selection, a round or two of bottled atheism, and "let's all sing in the dark, because we are all doomed anyway.

He actually thinks that his Gospel of the Absence of God is something that will cheer people up. Who is he talking to, anyway? What kind of logic is behind the simple statement that "God does not exist because I say so"?

We have to begin by dissolving the imaginary iceberg that he has placed between human reason and the existence of God. He has not shown in any believeable, cogent and reasoned way that his version of Darwinian evolution disproves the existence of God. He has simply created a massive smokescreen asking people to believe on his word alone.

That is the crux of the question: can you demonstrate God's non-existence from evolutionary biology? In this book, written some years before "The God Delusion", but obviously anticipating it, he pulls out all stops, and there is one solid truth behind this wealth of words: atheists can be as moral, as upright, as in love with beauty and as concerned about their neighbors as anyone else. That is not the issue. The issue is: Does Darwinian evolution disprove the existence of God and the foundation of religion? The answer is No. This book anticipates "The God Delusion" by attempting to turn his roaring lion into a pussycat.

"The Selfish Gene" was a masterpiece of evolutionary biology - except for the End Notes, and this book is something of an extended End Note on his brand of evolutionary biology. There are golden threads throughout the book, as there are in the End Notes. But most are actually moral and ethical principles hanging on the thread of their own weight, with no intellectual or reasoned foundation, their only authority: Richard Dawkins himself.

The best refutation I have found of the thesis of this book is Joyce Kilmer's "Rouge Bouquet". It is poetry and so is "Unweaving the Rainbow". But Richard Dawkins poetry does not blot out the stinging and sterile prose of "The GOd Delusion". If Richard Dawkins cannot make sense out of life, he certainly cannot make sense out of death. This book is a feeble attempt to do so.

Inspiring
Unweaving The Rainbow is not only a great science book for a casual reader, but it is also very inspiring because Dawkins' writing shows science and the natural world in a light that fills the reader with awe and wonder. Very well done and pleasant to read.

What an author! What a book!
I was first drawn to Dawkin through his book God Delusion. He was very good author there and he is a very good author here. You will be enlightened.