 | Price Comparisons: Rental | | Sorry, the textbook you were looking for is not available as Rental, at any of the stores we searched. | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | With the publication of the international bestseller The Selfish Gene some thirty years ago, Richard Dawkins powerfully captured a newly emerging way of understanding evolution--a gene's eye view. Dawkins went on to publish five more bestselling books, including The Blind Watchmaker and Unweaving the Rainbow. He is one of the most high profile public intellectuals today and any attempt to understand the scientific view of the world must grapple with his ideas.
Now, in this exciting collection of original essays, some of the world's leading thinkers offer their take on how Dawkins has changed the way we think. Readers will find stimulating pieces by Daniel Dennett, the renowned philosopher of mind and author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea; Steven Pinker, the brilliant Harvard linguist who wrote The Language Instinct and The Blank Slate; Matt Ridley, author of the bestselling Genome; and James Watson, who with Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, arguably the greatest scientific discovery of the last century. Dawkins' widely admired literary style forms the subject of several pieces, including one from novelist Philip Pullman (author of the bestselling His Dark Materials trilogy). As one of the world's best known rationalists, Dawkins' stance on religion is another theme in this collection, explored by Simon Blackburn, Michael Ruse, Michael Shermer, and the Bishop of Oxford. Numbering twenty in all, these articles are not simply rosy tributes, but explore how Dawkins' ideas have shaped thinking and public debate, and include elements of criticism as well as thoughtful praise.
Richard Dawkins' work has had the rare distinction of generating as much excitement outside the scientific community as within it. This stimulating volume is a superb summation of the depth and range of his influence. |
Average Customer Rating:   Regarding Science-Ejected Vitalism, 2007: I particularly applaud Ruse's statement -- contrary to the position of such nonsensical alternative medicine systems as 'naturopathy' -- that vitalism is profoundly nonscientific, per:
"vital forces really have no place in science [p.157]."
-r.c. Very disappointing, quite useless, ego driven I can't help but feel that the reviews thus far for this book have only been favorable due to the contributions that Dawkins himself has made to the field of evolutionary biology.
What was most troubling about this book was the contradictions which the editors themselves (Grafen and Ridley) managed to incorporate. They say that Dawkins uses "impeccable logic" and yet they also claim that he's "often misunderstood". Grafen claims that The Selfish Gene caused an "immediate revolution in biology". Yet, Andrew Read, one of the contributors, said he didn't encounter the book until after he completed his four year zoology degree (and yes, it had been published before that time). One also gets to read about, from the accounts of several scientists, how The Selfish Gene "taught me to think" (from Read's essay, but this is only an example). Grafen then tells us that it is noteworthy that Dawkins was elected to the Royal Society for his "contributions to the public understanding of science, not for his contribution to science itself."
The Selfish Gene is a masterful book and it's certainly worthy of praise, but 283 pages of praise with intercalary superfluous biographic accounts by the authors makes this book one for the trash bin.
It is nothing but an academic circle jerk. Very disappointing. Dawkins appreciation If you have read Richard's books over the years, you will enjoy reading some other prominent peoples' opinions. I am now re-reading "The selfish gene" Misplaced tributes The subtitle, after the title naming the subject of the tributes, says: "HOW A SCIENTIST CHANGED THE WAY WE THINK". Who is "WE"? Certainly not anyone. Rather, it may apply to the contributors to the book, and more widely to Darwinians. My drift is that if that scientist, Richard Dawkins, indeed changed the way someone thinks, it concerns those who accept Darwinism as axiomatic, the change concerning how they think Darwinism can be detailed.
To me this is like thinking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Despite the authors' absolute certainty that Darwinism is true, it is, as I have tried to show elsewhere, not only a theory, but a false one. Its refutation is in fact quite simple, but it resides in what has been a blind spot on both sides of the dispute for or against the theory.
One of the authors in the book quotes Dawkins in matters that highlight the essence of the dispute (p.233): "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." (As an aside: What about spiritually, emotionally, fulfilled?) And "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference."
Ironically, the just spoken "blind" indicates the blind spot mentioned above. The dire views expressed in the preceding quotations are belied by an overwhelming phenomenon completely overlooked. It is the activities characterizing every live organism. Their directions toward its preservation display the opposite of "blind pitiless indifference", of "no good", of "no purpose".
I shall not go further here into the questions of theism or atheism; it should, however, be clear from the aforesaid that the presence of directedness in nature, contrary to the claim of its absence, is, in the functionings of organisms, very much part of science, as exemplified by medicine.
It is instead Darwinian aimlessness which contradicts these observations. In this respect one may take a look at a prevalent theme in the reviewed book, regarding what "changed the way we think". Dawkins proposed (p.55) that the gene, "defined as any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection", must be recognized as "the fundamental unit of natural selection, and therefore the fundamental unit of self-interest."
This has to do with the microscopic unit transmitting hereditary characters and which Dawkins for the preceding reason called "the selfish gene". Of interest now is of course that the gene or anything else in organisms is called without hesitation a unit of, aimless, "natural selection". As seen above, organismic parts do act with aims and are correspondingly replicated through generations with aims.
Dawkins called the gene "the fundamental unit of self-interest" because it is so replicated, and as known, "natural selection" is to favor that which survives, and the gene appears to survive longer than other units of organisms. But in the organism's activities aimed at its survival the genes are merely instruments by which organisms propagate for that survival. In other words, genes do not act in self-interest but in the interest of organisms.
More importantly, as here again called attention to, the living do not adapt as a result of undirected effects of natural selection, but as a result of their directed activities toward self-preservation.
Scientists give Dawkins a rave notice Richard Dawkins is brilliant. Because he writes so clearly, his colleagues and students learn from him with ease; because he writes so entertainingly, they thoroughly enjoy the learning process. In Grafen and Ridley's compendium, other scientists who have benefited from Dawkins' brilliance build on his work, and provide important commentary and instruction on how to think and reason. |  |
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