books by Richard Dawkins, goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1194.Richard_Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14743.The_God_Delusion">
 
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14743.The_God_Delusion">
 <span>The God Delusion</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 3.90 avg rating — 268,178 ratings</span>
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 2006
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/3044365-the-god-delusion">155 editions</a>
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61535.The_Selfish_Gene">
 
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61535.The_Selfish_Gene">
 <span>The Selfish Gene</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.15 avg rating — 178,443 ratings</span>
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 1976
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/1746717-the-selfish-gene">181 editions</a>
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6117055-the-greatest-show-on-earth">
 
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6117055-the-greatest-show-on-earth">
 <span>The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution</span>
</a> <br/>
 <span>by</span>
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1194.Richard_Dawkins"><span>Richard Dawkins</span></a> <span>(Goodreads Author)</span>, 
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3118961.Well_illustrated"><span>Well-illustrated</span></a> <span>(Illustrator)</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.16 avg rating — 53,859 ratings</span>
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 2009
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/6295163-the-greatest-show-on-earth-the-evidence-for-evolution">78 editions</a>
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117047.The_Blind_Watchmaker">
 
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117047.The_Blind_Watchmaker">
 <span>The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.09 avg rating — 39,559 ratings</span>
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 1986
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/112713-the-blind-watchmaker-why-the-evidence-of-evolution-reveals-a-universe-w">61 editions</a>
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17977.The_Ancestor_s_Tale">
 
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17977.The_Ancestor_s_Tale">
 <span>The Ancestor&#39;s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.14 avg rating — 27,667 ratings</span>
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 2004
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/3135643-the-ancestor-s-tale-a-pilgrimage-to-the-dawn-of-evolution">67 editions</a>
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11256979-the-magic-of-reality">
 
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11256979-the-magic-of-reality">
 <span>The Magic of Reality: How We Know What&#39;s Really True</span>
</a> <br/>
 <span>by</span>
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1194.Richard_Dawkins"><span>Richard Dawkins</span></a> <span>(Goodreads Author)</span>, 
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10365.Dave_McKean"><span>Dave McKean</span></a> <span>(Illustrator)</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.05 avg rating — 26,060 ratings</span>
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 2011
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/16183684-the-magic-of-reality">77 editions</a>
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31487.Unweaving_the_Rainbow">
 
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31487.Unweaving_the_Rainbow">
 <span>Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.01 avg rating — 11,208 ratings</span>
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 2000
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/3323916-unweaving-the-rainbow-science-delusion-and-the-appetite-for-wonder">4 editions</a>
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/248764.Climbing_Mount_Improbable">
 
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/248764.Climbing_Mount_Improbable">
 <span>Climbing Mount Improbable</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.11 avg rating — 9,575 ratings</span>
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 1996
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61538.The_Extended_Phenotype">
 
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61538.The_Extended_Phenotype">
 <span>The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.11 avg rating — 9,233 ratings</span>
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 1982
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/59848-the-extended-phenotype-the-gene-as-the-unit-of-selection">32 editions</a>
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32275.River_Out_of_Eden">
 
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32275.River_Out_of_Eden">
 <span>River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 3.98 avg rating — 8,425 ratings</span>
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 1995
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/1121858-river-out-of-eden-a-darwinian-view-of-life">70 editions</a>
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/1194.Richard_Dawkins">More books by Richard Dawkins…</a>
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 <div><div><h2>Related News</h2></div><div><div>
 
For more than a decade, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the world-renowned astrophysicist and host of the popular radio and Emmy-nominated...</div><div><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/1747-astrophysicist-neil-degrasse-tyson-shares-his-reading-recommendations?ref=author-show"></a></div></div><div>The renowned evolutionary biologist and vocal atheist reflects on his life in science in Brief Candle in the Dark, his latest memoir and follow-up...</div><div>His Favorite Life-Changing Books: The scientist charts his intellectual growth in the new memoir An Appetite for Wonder and shares five...</div></div>
 
 
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 	<div>
 <div>
 “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
 <br/>
 ―
 <span>
 Richard Dawkins,
 </span>
 <span>
 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3044365">The God Delusion</a>
 </span>
</div>
 
 <br/>
</div>
	<div>
 <div>
 “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
 <br/>
 ―
 <span>
 Richard Dawkins,
 </span>
 <span>
 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3044365">The God Delusion</a>
 </span>
</div>
 
 <br/>
</div>
	<div>
 <div>
 “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
 <br/>
 ―
 <span>
 Richard Dawkins,
 </span>
 <span>
 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3323916">Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder</a>
 </span>
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 The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
 
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 The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
 
 
 
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 The Ancestor&#39;s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
 
 
 
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 The Magic of Reality: How We Know What&#39;s Really True
 
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 2011
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 Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
 
 
 
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 2000
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 Climbing Mount Improbable
 
 
 
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 1996
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 The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene
 
 
 
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 River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
 
 
 
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 More books by Richard Dawkins…
 
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For more than a decade, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the world-renowned astrophysicist and host of the popular radio and Emmy-nominated...      The renowned evolutionary biologist and vocal atheist reflects on his life in science in Brief Candle in the Dark, his latest memoir and follow-up... His Favorite Life-Changing Books: The scientist charts his intellectual growth in the new memoir An Appetite for Wonder and shares five... 
 
 
  
 
 
 	
 
 “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
 
 ―
 
 Richard Dawkins,
 
 
 The God Delusion
 
 
 
	
 
 “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
 
 ―
 
 Richard Dawkins,
 
 
 The God Delusion
 
 
 
	
 
 “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
 
 ―
 
 Richard Dawkins,
 
 
 Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
 
 
 
 
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Richard Dawkins
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1194.Richard_Dawkins
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61535.The_Selfish_Gene
The Selfish Gene
2015-03-06
Author
<div><div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1713956-manny"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>28 books13.4k followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/38373546">September 25, 2014</a></section><div><p>- What some people seem to find hard to understand is that there's a part of you, in fact the most important part, that's immaterial and immortal. Your body is really no more than a temporary shell for the immortal part, and houses it for a little while until it dies. <p><b>The rest of this review is available elsewhere (the location cannot be given for Goodreads policy reasons)</b></p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1713956?shelf=pooh-dante">pooh-dante</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1713956?shelf=science">science</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1713956?shelf=strongly-recommended">strongly-recommended</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/368200-nathan"></a></section><section><p>233 reviews185 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7197272">October 3, 2007</a></section><div><p>Didactic, patronizing, condescending and arguably neo-intellectual twaddle. I do not believe in a God, certainly not any God that's been conceived by man, but I also believe Richard Dawkins is a self-satisfied thought-Nazi who is as fundamental in his view of religion as any right-wing minister. Fundamentalists of all faiths scare me, and atheism is just as much a faith as any religion. The existence or non-existence of a God cannot be proven, nor can the existence or non-existence of a soul, and faith is an abstract experience with implications that are fundamentally unresponsive to study. As such, pursuits like Dawkins' often boil down to one type of faith (in "reason") vs. another type of faith (in a "God"). Many people love Dawkins. He is certainly intelligent, and writes as such, but he lacks wisdom and imagination. To me, that's the flaw in all of his work, from The Selfish Gene to The God Delusion. The idea that one human being can know enough about the nature of the universe to make the sweeping declarations Dawkins' makes is preposterous to me, and no more credible than the sweeping declarations of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.<p>NC</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/368200?shelf=books-i-hope-die">books-i-hope-die</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/368200?shelf=science">science</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/368200?shelf=science-social-theory-etc">science-social-theory-etc</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1237196-petra-x-played-the-long-game---and-won"></a></section><section><p>2,383 reviews33.9k followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1288416476">December 24, 2022</a></section><div><p>If you are bored look up the Community Reviews, sort by 1-star. They are very entertaining. One of them as a uni professor advising a student to burn down the book store where they bought this book. Then we have the creationists, then the person who thinks it is all a capitalist manifesto. There are those who think he is arrogant, depraved, uses philistine language (!) ... <p>How can anyone be a creationist and not believe in dinosaurs and such? Do they believe that the earth is flat? Are they the sort of people who pay astrologers money to cast their charts because of course your fate is determined by the stars at the moment of your birth? Jesus wept. Or he would have. I'm reading Josephus at the moment, it seems that the only mention of Jesus at the time he was living was in Josephus but that it might have been added later... That's a whole other story, and one which Dawkins might have liked, but these one-star creationists certainly won't.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1237196?shelf=2015-reviews">2015-reviews</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1237196?shelf=dnf-or-never-read">dnf-or-never-read</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1237196?shelf=medicine-science">medicine-science</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7878381"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>8 books15.9k followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1700924739">February 22, 2019</a></section><div><p><b><br />نحن لسنا إلا مركبات تنتقل الجينات عبرها من جيل إلى جيل<br />تشهد تطور الخليقة منذ بدئها وحتى اندثارها<br />وترتبط أهميتنا بما نستطيع تقديمه لتلك الجينات كي تنتشر وتظل موجودة <br />وكلما كانت هذه الجينات "أنانية" بقت واستمرت وانتشرت<br /> يتصرف الجين عموما بطريقة تعزز فرص نجاته <br />على حساب الجينات الأخرى المنافسة<p>فهل هذا ما يود دوكينز أن يؤكده لنا؟<br />أهو يدعو للداروينية الإجتماعية؟<br />إنه لا يدعو لأي شيء في الواقع سوى محبة العلم وتصديقه<br />إنها الحقيقة لا غير<br />وهو مجرد ناقل لها ...</p><p>ألا تصدقني<br />فكر للحظة في ردة فعل أغلبية من حولك لو أخبرتهم بأنك لا تريد انجاب أطفال<br />فكر في تعبير الصدمة على وجوههم وأنت تقول أنك لا تريد لجيناتك البقاء<br />وستفهم مقصدي</p><p>مؤلم أن نفكر أن من يعمل لصالح نفسه منا -ولو على حساب غيره- هو من يعمر هذا الكوكب<br />تأملوا البشر من حولكم وفكروا<br />على أي شاكلة يكون الخالدين<br />من خاضوا الحروب وكذبوا وخانوا وقتلوا وزوروا<br />هم الأكثر احتمالية في البقاء<br />وتوريث جيناتهم تلك لذرياتهم التي سرعان ما تحذو حذوهم<br />إنهم الأكثرية للأسف<br />وهذه هي الحقيقة العارية....</p><p>ولكن ما فائدة إخبارنا بهذه الحقيقة في كتاب علمي؟<br />أهناك غرض آخر لهذا الذي قرأنا؟<br />هذا الكتاب بجانب معلوماته المذهلة يذكرنا كم نحن محظوظين ومميزين<br />نحن نحظى بالقدرة على أن نرفض ما نحن -أو بالأحرى جيناتنا- مبرمجون عليه<br />نحن نبغض واقعنا هذا ونغيره<br />نحن نثور ضده رغم الصعاب الكثيرة التي تواجهنا أحيانا</p><p>ومنذ بدء الخليقة وجد المصلحون والطيبون وخادمو الإنسانية<br />من قدموا لنا خلاصة الأخلاق وأمتعونا بالفن والأدب<br />وتعمقوا في بحور العلم<br />ليخبرونا بحقيقة أنفسنا والكون من حولنا</p><p>هذا التنوع منعنا من الانقراض<br />نحن محظوظون فعلا بالانتقاء الطبيعي برغم قسوته<br />لأننا لم نستسلم كلية له<br />وهذا ما يصنع كل الفارق<br />...</p></b></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7878381?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1148633-brian-hodges"></a></section><section><p>212 reviews52 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21851991">June 3, 2015</a></section><div><p>Although I consider myself a Jesus-loving, god-fearing, creationist, I simply LOVE reading about evolution. I'm not sure what it is, but I find the whole concept, when explained by a lucid and accessible author, fascinating. And Dawkins is nothing if not lucid and accessible. He presents the topic and various questions and scientific controversies in a way that anybody with a willingness to pay attention can follow it. Some of the chapters were a bit more of a slog as Dawkins has to resort to scary scary math and numbers to prove some of his points and set up for even more mindblowing stuff in future chapters. But most of the time, this book is chock full of insanely interesting examples and user-friendly analogies. Dawkins sure knows his way around language too. One of my favorite lines is: "Sex: that bizarre perversion of straightforward replication."<p>On the science of it all, as I said, I'm a creationist, but I like to read up on the other side and at least understand, if not appreciate, what their take on the matter is. And to read Dawkins is to realize, yes, this does sound like a very solid theory. My one stumbling block to getting onto the evolution train one hundred percent is time. Perhaps my comprehension of just how long hundred million years is is faulty, but I just can't wrap my mind around how all of these ACCIDENTAL mutations, with no conscious will on the part of the group, individual or gene itself, could possibly result in the complexity of life as we see it now. There is an adage that if you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time, they would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. To believe evolution is to believe that you now have a FINITE amount of monkeys and a FINITE amount of time and yet they STILL manage to produce the complete works of Shakespeare... and they do it OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. Just doesn't seem plausible. But perhaps further reading will sway me at a later date.</p><p>EDIT 6/3/15<br />I can't believe this review is still getting attention after all this time! And I love the thread that has developed in the comments. I should let you all know though that as of 2008 I have been living on the side of reason and rationality. I became an atheist after a LOT of reading and contemplating of the Bible (the link to my "de-conversion" story is down in the comments as well). I try these days to, as much as possible, follow the evidence wherever it leads. Additionally Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale" was one of THE most beautiful books I've ever read. Check out my review if you're interested.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1148633?shelf=bloody-brilliant">bloody-brilliant</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1148633?shelf=life-changing">life-changing</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1148633?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/155663-david-rubenstein"></a></section><section><p>801 reviews2,502 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32844919">June 19, 2014</a></section><div><p>I read the 30th anniversary edition of this book--it is a true "classic". I note that there are over 48,000 ratings and 1,400 reviews of this book on Goodreads! Richard Dawkins put an entirely original slant on Darwin's theory of natural selection. The book has turned people around, to the understanding that the gene plays the single most central role in natural selection, rather than the individual organism. Over the course of generations, evolution plays a role to ensure the survival of the genes, not the individual or "the species".<p>Although the book is 30 years old, it has stood the test of time. There are a few passages--primarily about computers--that are 30 years out of date. But the vast majority of the book seems to have held up quite well.</p><p>Dawkins' prose is very approachable by the layman. There is a bare minimum of technical jargon--quite different from most other books about genetics that I've been reading in recent years. Dawkins takes the time to explain things, often with appropriate metaphors. There are very few diagrams in the book--additional figures could help clarify some points, in my opinion.</p><p>Much of the book is really about the role of game theory, in understanding genetics. Dawkins devotes several chapters to describe how various traits controlled by genes are held in an ESS-- "Evolutionarily Stable Strategy"--a term that Dawkins uses quite often, that I think is a synonym for the game theory term "stable equilibrium". Dawkins shows how an ESS is approached over the course of "iterations" of a game, that is to same, over many generations. These chapters were especially interesting to me, as I recently took an online course on the subject of game theory.</p><p>It is in this book that Dawkins coined the now-famous term "meme". The meme is a cultural analog of the biological gene. A meme seeks to self-perpetuate, and mutates if that aids its self-preservation. Dawkins devotes an entire fascinating chapter to his concept of the meme.</p><p>Throughout the book, Dawkins deals with the dichotomy between the "selfishness" required for survival, and the "altruism" of human behavior. How do we explain altruism? Dawkins explores this dilemma over and over again, showing in virtually every case how the selfishness of genes can help to explain apparent altruistic behavior of the individual. </p><p>This is an absolutely fascinating book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in genetics, evolution, or sociology.</p><p></p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/155663?shelf=biology">biology</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/155663?shelf=evolution">evolution</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/155663?shelf=nonfiction">nonfiction</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/15385951-mohammed-makram"></a></section><section><p>1,388 reviews2,737 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1911395096">October 15, 2022</a></section><div><p><b><br />لم أر أكثر أنانية من عبدالباسط حموده الذى بدأ أغنية أنا مش عارفنى قائلا<p><a href="http://imgur.com/aBryDt9"></a></p><blockquote>
<br />أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا <br />أنا مش عارفنى أنا تهت منى أنا مش أنا</blockquote>ما كفاية أنا واحده يا أستاذ عبدالباسط بلاش الإسراف ده<p>من منا لا يحب نفسه<br /><a href="http://imgur.com/KcG5h0Q"></a><br />هل حب النفس هو أنانية أم أن الأنانية هي الميل إلى عدم التعاون مع الغير</p><p>في الواقع الكتاب يمكن اعتباره عن نفى الإيثار و حياة التعاون أكثر من اثباته لصفة الأنانية<br /><a href="http://imgur.com/3Jkx1kN"></a></p><p>من الصعب جدا القراءة لهذا الرجل و هذا سبب النجمات الثلاث و الا فإن الكتاب جدير بنجمة أخرى</p><p>طيب ندخل في الموضوع و ��جيب من الآخر?</p><p>لماذا عاش العالم ثلاثة بلايين سنة لا يعنيه شيئا من أمر العمل الجينى الجماعى و كانت السيادة فقط للبكتريا<br />ان كنا قد عشنا في هذه الصورة البسيطة فلما بدأت الكائنات الأكبر في التكون بعد ذلك<br />ان كان هذا قد حدث لضرورة فلم بقيت البكتريا حتى الأن و لم تتطور لكائنات أرقى و أكبر<br />ما االغرض أصلا من تعدد الكائنات و ما هو هدفها في الحياة</p><p><a href="http://imgur.com/ZlfdIFx"></a></p><p>فكرة الكتاب هي أنه في الأصل كانت الجينات<br />فما هي الجينات <br />الجينات هي عبارة عن شفرة لصنع نوع أو أكثر من البروتين و من ثم يقوم هذا البروتين ببناء شيء معين أو تحفيز أشياء أخرى لتفاعل ما يخدم مصلحة الجين الذى أطلقه</p><p>هل يوجد هذا الجين منفردا؟ لا بل هو جزء من الحمض النووي الريبوزى ناقص الأكسجين المعروف بالدى ان ايه<br />هل له إدراك أو إرادة و وعى؟ مجازا يبدو ذلك و لكن حقيقة لا أحد يعلم حتى الأن</p><p><a href="http://imgur.com/MbGaa2i"></a></p><p>يعتد دواكنز نظرية أن الحمض النووي مكون في الأساس من مجموعة من الجينات التي اتحدت معا بطريقة ما لتكوين الحمض النووي نفسه لأنها تقوم بعمل جماعى يخدم مجموعة الجينات معا</p><p>الخطوة التالية كانت تكوين غشاء الخلية الواحدة لحماية وجود هذا الحمض النووي و من ثم عملية انقسامه و تضاعفه مع ما يشمله ذلك من تغذيته<br />تعقدت العملية بعد ذلك لتصبح للخلية نواة ثم نشأت الكائنات عديدة الخلايا و باقى النظرية الداروينية المعروفة</p><p>الجديد هو أنه بدلا من نفى الوعى عن البكتريا و الكائنات التي لا تمتلك جهاز عصبى متطور أرجع هذا الوعى للجينات نفسها و منحها شرف القيادة و لم يعتبرها مجرد شفرة لإرادة عليا أخرى تستغلها و رغم ذلك لم ينف الوعى عن المخ في الكائنات الأرقى أو الجهاز العصبى ككل. و لذلك حكاية أظنها طريفة:</p><p><a href="http://imgur.com/NX0oFk5"></a></p><p>في مكان بعيد في فضاء الكون كانت مجرة أندروميدا التي تبعد عن الأرض مائتان سنة ضوئية و كان بها حضارة متطورة جدا أرادت السيطرة على العالم و لكن بعد المسافة بينها و بين الكواكب الأخرى حال دون ذلك إذ يحتاج غزو الأرض مثلا لمئات السنين للسيطرة عليها و هذا يتعدى عمر أي فرد على الكوكب فما العمل.</p><p>تفتق ذهنهم الذكى على بث شفرة في أرجاء الكون بحيث تكون سهلة لأى كائن ذكى فيستطيع حلها و تضمنت هذه الشفرة رسالة للتواصل مع حضارتهم مع وعود بالرخاء و التنمية و تضمنت أيضا طريقة صنع كمبيوتر ضخم و متطور لإتمام هذا الإتصال</p><p>بعد مائتى سنة وصلت الرسالة للأرض و عمت الأفراح و الليالى الملاح أرجاء المعمورة و من ثم بدأت وكالات العلوم تصنيع هذا الكمبيوتر الضخم و ما ان اتموه حتى فقدو السيطرة عليه و أصبح هو من يتحكم في كل شيء و يوجهه لمصلحته و مصلحة صانعيه الأصليين في أندروميدا<br />السؤال الأن .. هل عرف سكان أندروميدا بما حدث؟ بالطبع لا فالمعلومة ستصلهم بعد مائتى سنة أخرى. هل يسيطرون على الكمبيوتر؟ لا أيضا و إنما هو يسيطر على نفسه بالبرنامج الذى وضعوه له و راعوا فيه أن يصلح لأى بيئة و يتعامل مع أي حدث بتعليمات عامة و ذكية مع إمكانية تطوير نفسه و تعلمه من الأحداث بشرط الإلتزام بالعمل لصالحهم.</p><p><a href="http://imgur.com/gLJlHyH"></a></p><p>هذا ما يخصنا من الحكاية و لكن وجب أن أقول لكم كيف انتهت أحداث القصة بأن استطاع الأرضيون تحطيم الكمبيوتر و استعادة سيطرتهم على الكوكب الأزرق الضائع في الفضاء</p><p>و لكن حكايتنا نحن لم تنته بعد<br />الجينات هي السيد الأول و هي لا تستطيع التواصل مع العالم الخارجي<br />هي فقط جمعية من الأصدقاء الأنانيين اللذين لا يهمهم الا التضاعف و التكاثر و الخلود</p><p><a href="http://imgur.com/2hRfA84"></a></p><p>في البداية تجمعوا معا ثم اتخذو الغشاء الخلوى و من ثم تحصنوا بالنواة و بدأوا في تكوين آلات ضخمة للبقاء على هيئة نباتات و حيوانات وصولا للإنسان و لا فرق لديهم بين هذا و ذاك و لكن العبرة بتمرير تلك الجينات من جيل إلى جيل بهدف البقاء و الخلود فقط</p><p>كما قال كفار قريش من قبل: إن هي إلا أرحام تدفع و أرض تبلع</p><p>من موقعها المحصن تصنع الجينات البروتين الذى يحافظ على وجود الجسم و من ضمنه الجهاز العصبى و المخ الذى يتواصل مع العالم الخارجي</p><p>هل تسيطر الجينات على المخ؟ لا<br />هل يسيطر المخ على الجينات؟ لا<br />إنها كقصة أنروميدا</p><p>الجينات هي السيد الفضائى و المخ هو الكمبيوتر العملاق و أرض المعركة هي الجسم أو آلة البقاء كما يقول داوكنز</p><p>قدر الإمكان اختصرت و حاولت توضيح الفكرة غلا أن الكتاب مرهق و به أجزاء شيقة جدا و ممتعة و تفتح المجال للخيال الخصب و أجزاء أخرى مملة و ثقيلة تجلب النوم في ثوان معدودة</p><p>بعد أن أنهيت الكتاب فتحت التلفاز لأجد فتاة تتلوى و تغنى هذه الأغنية و كأن جيناتها هي من ت��حكم فيها و تبث لنا رسالة</p><blockquote>روح ع الأشرافية ولأصحابك أشكي <br />قول أني نكدية وشو ما بدك أحكي <br />قول عني أنانية قول مش رومانسية<br />    فش كل خلقك فيي <br />أنا بعرف إنك مقهور وقلبك راح يفقع .!!<p> شوف حالك عليي تكبر لا تشبع <br />أزرع كل حقدك فيا فل وما ترجع</p></blockquote></b></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/15385951?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4213258-bradley"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>5 books3,845 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1956330450">April 2, 2017</a></section><div><p>Color me very impressed. I can now see why this is considered to be one of those hugely popular science books I keep hearing about and the reason why Dawkins has become so widely known and/or respected with or without his notoriety.<p>Indeed, the pure science bits were pretty much awesome. We, or at least I, have heard of this theory in other contexts before and none of it really comes as much surprise to see that genes, themselves, have evolved strategies that are exactly the same as Game Theory in order to find the best possible outcome for continued replication. Hence: the selfish gene.</p><p>Enormous simple computers running through the prisoner's dilemma with each other, rival genes, and especially within whole organisms which could just be seen as gigantic living spacecraft giving the genes an evolutionary advantage of finding new and more prosperous adaptations. </p><p>Yup! That's us!</p><p>I honestly don't see the problem. I love the idea that we are just galaxies of little robots running complicated Game Theories that eventually turn into a great cooperative machine where everyone (mostly) benefits, with plenty of complicated moves going way beyond hawks and doves and straight into the horribly complicated multi-defectors, forgivers, and other evolutionary styles that depend on the events that have gone before and the pre-knowledge (or lack of) a set end-date for the entire experiment... in other words, our deaths, whether pre-planned or simply the entire mass of genes just coming to realize that it's no longer in their best interest to keep pushing this jalopy around any longer if they're not getting anything out of it... like further replication. :)</p><p>Even when it's not precisely sex, it's still all about sex. :)</p><p>Of course, what I've just mentioned isn't the entire book, because, as a matter of fact, the book walks us through so many stages of thought, previous research, developments, mistakes, and upgraded theories and surprising conclusions based on soooooo much observable data that any of us might be rightfully confounded with the weight of it unless we were in the heart of the research, ourselves.</p><p>It's science, baby.</p><p>Make sure you don't make the data conform to your theory. Build your theory from observable data. Improve upon it as the building blocks are proved or disproved, keep going until it is so damn robust until nothing but a true miracle could topple it, and then keep asking new questions.</p><p>The fact is, this theory has nothing (or everything) to do with our lives. We play Game Theory, too, in exactly the same way every gene everywhere does, but we just happen to be able to make models on top of the situations and we're able to choose whether to see through the lies, the hawk strategies, or when to stop cooperating if the advantages work out much better for us if we did. We, like our genes, can choose long-term cooperative strategies or play everything like a Bear market. :)</p><p>Even this book says that it's very likely that Nice Guys can win, but just like our lives, the gene lives keep discovering ever more complicated strategies and all eventual strategies become more and more situational. </p><p>Isn't that us, to a tea? I wonder if most complaints about this book stem from complaints about Game Theory rather than the perceived conclusion (much better spelled out, not in this book, but in later books)... that atheism rules the day. It really isn't evident here. Instead, we have a macrocosm mimicking the microcosm and no one wants to challenge their comfortable world view. </p><p>Things aren't simple. All choices to betray or cooperate are then met with situation and memory and ever complex meta-contexts, the difference between us and genes being that we're self-aware and the genes are not.</p><p>Yes, yes, I see where the arguments can start coming out of the closet about self-determination and such, but that's not really the point of this book at all. The point is that it's a successful model that accurately describes reality. It has nothing at all to do with the macro-world except obliquely, and makes no value judgments on our art, our beliefs, or how we think about ourselves except in our uniquely stubborn and self-delusional ways that love to take things out of context and apply misunderstood concepts to our general lives and wonder why everything gets so screwed up. :)</p><p>But then, maybe I'm just applying my own incomplete models to yet another and we lousy humans still lack WAY TOO MUCH data to build a really impressively improved model. :) </p><p>Come on, Deep Thought. Where are you? :)</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4213258?shelf=2017-shelf">2017-shelf</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4213258?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4213258?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3144945-alex"></a></section><section><p>1,419 reviews4,280 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/961353795">May 2, 2022</a></section><div><p>Richard Dawkins shot to celebrity in 1976 with this rabble-rousing book, which change the game by inventing the word "meme" and basically nothing else, the rest of his ideas range from "ehhh not exactly" to "yeah but so what." Fun to read though! The gist is that the essential unit of life is the gene; our bodies are just big fleshy protection robots for the gene. Dawkins says I'm a tool. Right? High five!<p>And you might be like "Okay, so who cares?" What difference does that make, right? Well, first of all I'm gonna go have some pie because fuck you, genes, you're not the boss of me. Woohoo! Other than that, no, no difference, carry on. It makes a difference to scientists, because when you look at it this way all kinds of behaviors make more sense, or make sense in a different way. Dawkins' particular focus is on behaviors we call "altruistic", like when an antelope warns his herd about an approaching lion. Dawkins would like to go through every altruistic behavior he can think of, which is a lot, and show you why it's actually not at all altruistic. </p><p>(The antelope is an easy one: he warns the herd by jumping up and down, which doubles as a sign to the lion that he is super bouncy and the lion should go chase someone less bouncy.)</p><p>So, no big surprise to those of us who know Dawkins in his latest incarnation as The World's Dickishest Atheist:* Dawkins does a lot of party pooping in this book. Did you think you were a nice guy? You are not. Your genes command you to behave nicely on occasion because in the end it will benefit you. (See: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma">Prisoner's Dilemma;</a> also game theory. Or read this book, which will explain both to you.)</p><p><i>* which is more annoying to religious people, but also annoying to those of us who are atheists but don't feel the need to yell about it all the time</i></p><p>But Dawkins is a tremendously engaging writer. He's good at explaining technical concepts clearly. And he's funny! This book is fun to read. And it's full of the kind of fascinating tidbits that make you turn to your spouse and say "Holy moley, did you know saddleback birds on an island in New Zealand make up new songs that then spread through the population like a Pharrell Williams single until everyone's singing them?" And she's like "Sounds boring! I'm reading Jezebel, did you know Justin Bieber was racist when he was fourteen?" and then the two of you look at each other like who even <i>are</i> you? And your genes are like who cares, you two should make out.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3144945?shelf=2014">2014</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3144945?shelf=rth-lifetime">rth-lifetime</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3144945?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/42133960-peiman-e-iran"></a></section><section><p>1,394 reviews674 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1559265564">May 25, 2017</a></section><div><p>دوستانِ گرانقدر این کتاب از 500 صفحه و 13 فصل تشکیل شده است<br />عزیزانم، به ژنی در انتخابِ طبیعی برتری داده میشود که تجمعِ همتاهایِ آن در خزانۀ ژنی رو به افزایش باشد.توجهِ ما به ژن هایی است که به نظر میرسد رویِ رفتارِ اجتماعیِ دارندگانش اثر میگذارد، پس بیایید برایِ ژن ها تا حدی هوش و آزادی قائل شویم تا این نوشته و ریویو برایتان ملموس تر باشد<br />دوستانِ گرامی، ژنِ خودخواه، فقط یک قطعۀ کوچک از دی اِن اِی نیست. بلکه همۀ نسخه هایِ قطعۀ خاصی از «دی اِن اِی» منتشر شده در سراسرِ جهان است و هدفش این است که تعدادِ خود را در خزانۀ ژنی افزایش دهد و این کار را با برنامه ریزی برایِ بقا و تولیدِ مثلِ بدن هایی که در آن است، انجام میدهد<br />همۀ ما موجودات، ماشینِ بقا هستیم، برایِ یک نوع همتاساز که آن را «دی اِن اِی» مینامیم... این همتاسازها برایِ بقایِ خود ماشینهایِ مختلفی را ساخته اند... به عنوانِ مثال، میمون ماشینی است که ژن ها را در بالایِ درخت حفظ میکند.. ماهی ماشینی است که ژن را در آب نگه میدارد... و کرم دستگاهی است که ژن را در زیرِ خاک با ... نگه میدارد... پس دوستانِ من، دی اِن اِی عملکردِ اسرارآمیزی دارد<br />بدنِ ما انسانها و موجوداتِ دیگر، ماشینی است که برایِ ژنهایش از هیچ کوششی فروگذار نمیکند.. ژن در هر بدن برایِ بقا از بهترین فرصت ها استفاده میکند، این فرصت ها بسته به آنکه بدن نر باشد یا ماده، با هم فرق دارند<br />خوب دوستانِ خوبم، برای اینکه این ریویو خسته کننده و تخصصی نباشد.. سعی میکنم مثال هایِ جالب و نکته هایِ مهم در این کتاب و همۀ فصل هایش، در موردِ ژن را برایِ شما دوست دارانِ دانش و خرد، در زیر بنویسم<br />--------------------------------------------<br />عزیزان، ژن هایِ خودخواه، گاهی با روشِ ایثارگری در بین همنوعان، سعی به بقایِ خود میکنند: مثلاً برخی از بابون ها ژنی وجود دارد، به نامِ « اگر یک نرِ بالغ هستی، از گروه در مقابلِ پلنگ دفاع کن» ... به این ترتیب بابونِ بالغ جانِ خود را برایِ دفاع از سایرین به خطر می اندازد<br />--------------------------------------------<br />گاهی اوقات در طبیعت، بر خلافِ خواستۀ ژنِ خودخواه، عمل میشود<br />مثلاً دیده شده که یک میمونِ مادر که داغ دار است و بچۀ خود را از دست داده، به جایِ تولیدِ مثل و تلاش برایِ بقایِ ژن هایِ خود، بچۀ میمونِ دیگری را از او میدزد و بزرگ میکند... با اینکار نه تنها به بقایِ ژنِ خود کمکی نکرده، بلکه این شانس را به رقیبِ ژنیِ خود داده تا تولیدِ مثلِ دوباره داشته باشد<br />یا اینکه برخی از ماده ها وجود دارند که بچۀ یتیمی را بزرگ میکنند... در صورتیکه طبقِ قواعدِ ژنِ خودخواه، باید بچۀ یتیم از گرسنگی بمیرد<br />--------------------------------------------<br />گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه با تقلب به بقایِ خود کمک میکند<br />به عنوانِ مثال، فاخته ها سعی میکنند تخم هایِ خود را به لانه هایِ پرندگانِ دیگر برده، تا آنها رویِ تخم بنشینند... حال اگر پرندۀ دیگر از تخمهایش شناخت داشته باشد، با پا تخمِ اضافه را به پایین می اندازد... اما برخی از پرندگان مانندِ کاکایی ها، به تخمی که رویِ آن نشسته اند، توجه نکرده، و فریب میخورند<br />حال در گروه هایِ گوناگون ژنِ راستگو و ژنِ ایثارگر، متفاوت است<br />ایثارگران، وقتی متوجه میشوند یکی از تخم ها مالِ خودشان نیست، بازهم آن را بزرگ میکنند، با اینکار باعث میشوند تا ژنِ تقلب در گروه پخش شود.. زیرا آن پرندۀ متقلب تند تند تخم گذاری میکند و اینکار را انجام میدهد<br />--------------------------------------------<br />گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به خیانت رو می آورد<br />مثلاً وقتی ماده ای میبیند که جفتش در نبرد با نرِ دیگر مغلوب شده، سریع به سمتِ نرِ پیروز رفته و با او جفت گیری میکند تا ژنِ برتر حاصل شود<br />گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه با دروغ به بقایِ خود کمک میکند<br />در پرندگان، وقتی مادر برایِ بچه ها کرم یا حشره می آورد، بچه ها دهانِ خود را باز میکنند و مادر به میزانِ صدا دقت کرده و به آنها خوراک میدهد، هر کدام گرسنه تر باشد بیشتر صدا میزند.... حال ممکن است ژنِ خودخواه در یکی از جوجه ها بیشتر باشد، در نتیجه جوجه تقلب کرده و وقتی سیر شده دوباره صدایِ بلند میدهد، هم مادر را گول میزند و هم به خواهر و برادرانش خیانت میکند و خواهر و برادرانش از گشنگی میمیرنند<br />--------------------------------------------<br />گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به تهدید رو می آورد<br />مثلاً در پرندگان دو حالت دارد، یکی از جوجه ها که بزرگتر و قوی تر است، با صدایِ جیک جیکِ زیاد توجه شکارچیان را به آنها جلب میکند و میگوید: روباه، روباه بیا ما را بخور... لذا مادرش مجبور است دهانش را ببند و او راضی نگه دارد<br />اما زمانی میرسد که جوجۀ ضعیفتر، ژنِ هوشمندی دارد، وقتی میبیند به او خوراک نمیرسد، شکارچی را صدا میکند، تا مادر فرار کرده، روباه بیاید و آن جوجۀ بزرگتر و زورگو را بخورد<br />--------------------------------------------<br />گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به دستور رو می آورد<br />مثلاً اگر توله ای یا جوجه ای به دنیا بیاید و از خواهران و برادرانِ دیگرش کوچکتر و ضعیف تر و نحیف تر باشد، ژنی به او دستور میدهد که: « بدن، اگر از آنهایی که باهم زاده شده اید، خیلی کوچکتر هستی، تقلا نکن و بمیر»... و حتی بهتر است خوراکِ توله هایِ دیگر شود...به این ترتیب بیشترین سود را نصیبِ ژن هایش میکند<br />--------------------------------------------<br />گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به کشتن و قتل رو می آورد<br />مثلاً پرندۀ «راهنمایِ کندویِ عسل»، مثلِ فاخته ها متقلب است و تخمِ خود را در لانۀ پرندگانِ دیگر میگذارد... این نوع پرنده، نوکِ تیز و خمیده ای دارد... وقتی از تخم بیرون می آید.. سریع جوجه هایِ دیگر را سوراخ سوراخ کرده و میکشد، تا برایِ گرفتنِ خوراک از دهانِ مادرِ ناتنیِ خود، با او رقابت نکنند<br />یا نوعی پرستو، تخمِ خود را در لانۀ زاغ میگذارد... جوجه زودتر سر از تخم درآورده. و تخمِ زاغ را میانِ برجستگی هایِ بالش گذاشته و آن را به پایین پرت میکند<br />--------------------------------------------<br />گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به انتخاب رو می آورد<br />مثلاً اگر ببیند تعداد نرها زیاد شده اند... نمیگذارد تخمدان ها اسپرمِ نرساز را دریافت کنند... در حالتِ عادی، ژنِ خودخواه ترجیه میدهد،والد، ماده به دنیا بیاورد<br />--------------------------------------------<br />گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به برده داری رو می آورد<br />مثلاً گونه ای از مورچه ها هستند که به مورچه هایِ دیگر حمله کرده و سربازان را میکشند، و تخمهایِ ملکه را دزدیده و به لانۀ خود می آورند... وقتی بچه ها به دنیا می آیند، از آنها به عنوانِ برده استفاده میکنند<br />--------------------------------------------<br />گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به همزیستی رو می آورد<br />مثلاً گونه ای از مورچه ها وجود دارند که از شته ها به عنوانِ حیوانِ خانگی استفاده میکنند، یعنی شته ها شیرۀ گیاهان را میمکند، سپس مورچه ها شته ها را میدوشند و این شیره را از پشتشان در می آورند... در ازایِ آن مورچه ها از خانۀ شته ها همچون سربازان محافظت میکنند<br />ما انسان ها، در سلول هایمان چیزهایِ ریزی وجود دارد به نامِ «میتوکندری»... «میتوکندری» کارخانه هایِ شیمیاییِ کوچکی هستند که وظیفۀ تولیدِ انرژی را دارند... «میتوکندری» ها در اصل باکتری هایِ همزیستی هستند که از ابتدایِ تکامل با سلول هایِ ما پیوند یافته اند و داد و ستد میکنند<br />--------------------------------------------<br />گاهی اوقات یک ژن بی جهت ژن هایِ دیگر را از بین میبرد... این ژنها دستگاه را بهم میریزند... مانندِ «ژنِ تی»... مثلاً در موش ها اگر موشی در کودکی دو ژنِ تی داشته باشد، در کودکی میمیرد<br />--------------------------------------------<br />دوستانِ عزیزم، تنها چیزی که ژن ها به طورِ مستقیم میتوانند آن را تحتِ تأثیر قرار دهند، ترکیبِ پروتئین است<p>امیدوارم این مطالب برایِ شما دوستدارانِ دانش، مفید بوده باشه<br />«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/42133960?shelf=%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%85-%D9%88-%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%B4">علم-و-دانش</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/42133960?shelf=%D9%81%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%81%D9%87">فلسفه</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/57810023-guille"></a></section><section><p>728 reviews1,348 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2480859520">March 17, 2022</a></section><div><p><br /><blockquote>
 <i> “Una gallina es solo la forma en que un huevo hace otro huevo“ (Samuel Butler 1835-1902) </i>
</blockquote>La evolución es un hecho que solo un fanático religioso puede negar: antes había animales que ahora no existen y ahora existen animales que antes no. Aunque esto era conocido ya antes de Darwin, él tuvo la genialidad de idear un mecanismo que explicara cómo se producía esa evolución: la selección natural. Su explicación ha sido modificada con posterioridad de forma sustancial en base a los nuevos conocimientos sobre genética, mecanismos de la herencia, registros fósiles, etc. hasta dejar de ser una teoría, una hipótesis, para convertirse en una ley científica al mismo nivel de credibilidad que cualquier otra ley establecida por la ciencia. <p>La interesante y fructífera tesis que plantea Dawkins en este libro es establecer como unidad de este mecanismo de selección, no a la especie ni al grupo ni al individuo, sino al gen. </p><blockquote>
 <i> “Un cuerpo es el medio empleado por los genes para preservar los genes inalterados.” </i>
</blockquote>Tomar al gen como unidad de selección explicaría, por ejemplo, el altruismo, esto es, cómo es posible que un individuo quiera aumentar el bienestar de otro ser semejante a expensas de su propio bienestar. La respuesta es que los genes “pueden alcanzar mejor sus objetivos egoístas fomentando una forma limitad del altruismo a nivel de los animales individuales.” El libro expone muchos ejemplos en el que comportamientos que en principio pueden parecernos altruistas pueden ser interpretados como una forma de egoísmo tanto a nivel del individuo como a un nivel más profundo y realmente inquietante, el del gen. <p>Otra aportación interesantísima de Dawkins en este libro es la idea de <b>meme</b>, la unidad mínima de información que se puede transmitir, que actuaría como un replicador a nivel cerebral de forma semejante a un gen. Ejemplos de memes que da el propio autor son: “tonadas o sones, ideas, consignas, modas en cuanto a vestimenta, formas de fabricar vasijas o de construir arcos”. </p><blockquote>
 <i> “Los memes se propagan en el acervo de memes al saltar de un cerebro a otro mediante un proceso que… puede llamarse imitación... Si los memes de los cerebros son análogos a los genes, deben ser estructuras cerebrales autorreplicadoras, patrones reales de conexión neuronal que se reconstruyen a sí mismos en un cerebro después de otro.” </i>
</blockquote>Así, también los memes están expuestos a un mecanismo de selección, de tal forma que serán favorecidos aquellos que “explotan su medio cultural para su propia ventaja”, siendo su medio cultural el acervo de memes existentes en cada momento. <p>Un libro sugerente y explicado de esa forma tan didáctica que siempre exhibe Dawkins.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/100264072-swrp"></a></section><section><p>561 reviews86 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2906291217">October 22, 2020</a></section><div><p>This book is pretty good! Professor <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/1194.Richard_Dawkins">Richard Dawkins</a> has narrated this topic on life and evolution in a very interesting way.<p>A must read - all about The Immortal Gene and The Immortal Replicator!</p><p><i>"Death, of course, is not a failure. Death is normal. Death may be the enemy, but it is also the natural order of things."</i></p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6237864-nandakishore-mridula"></a></section><section><p>1,238 reviews2,207 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/218686853">September 11, 2018</a></section><div><p>On 27 December 1831, a young naturalist by the name of Charles Robert Darwin set upon a voyage of discovery on the <i>HMS Beagle</i> which was to last five years and take him all over the globe. He came back with a lot of specimens, copious scientific notes and an explosive theory which was to rock the world of ideas: the theory of evolution by natural selection. Suddenly, God became an unnecessary and unlikely hypothesis: man was pulled down from his high throne as the master of creation: and existence became a cacophony of chance events rather than a carefully co-ordinated orchestra. Naturally, the religious establishment rebelled. But like all ideas whose time had come, evolution hung on with great tenacity to become the widely accepted idea it is today.<p>I have been fascinated with the idea ever since I was introduced to it in high school. As far as I am concerned, the very argument that theists put forward against evolution is its greatest strength; viz. the complexity of the natural world. According to the believer, such a complex and “perfect” (whatever that means!) system has to have an architect behind it. But the fact is that it is not “perfect” – nature is dynamic. What we perceive as stability is homeostasis, a seething mass of life, eating one another and being eaten; and as nature shifts her stance, so does life, whole species dying out (like the dinosaurs) to make way for others.</p><p>But wait! Humans are different, aren’t we? We compete, true: but we also show altruism. People lay down their life to protect their progeny, their brothers and sisters, their countrymen… if we were selfish survival machines, why would we do this? It means we have the spark of divinity within us, doesn’t it?</p><p>Well… not exactly, according to Richard Dawkins. It only means we have the “Selfish Gene” within us.</p><p><i>The Selfish Gene</i> needs no introduction. This is one of those iconic “pop” science books which everyone seems to have read, like The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris. I was a bit late (well, about 37 years!) in getting to it. However, the book has lost none of the charm, and the idea any of its power, due to the ravages of time: if at all, it has become stronger.</p><p><b>What is a gene?</b></p><p>Dawkins confesses that there is no universally agreed definition of ‘gene’. We now know that the blueprint for building of each human being is coded in 23 pairs of chromosomes, one of every pair being inherited from each parent. The code inside the chromosome is written in DNA molecules, the famous ‘Double Helix’ that Dawkins terms the ‘Immortal Coils’.</p><p></p><p>The DNA molecules are replicators. They replicate themselves; they also manufacture proteins, the basic building block of life as we know it. These DNA molecules (some version of them) were the original “life” in the “primeval soup”: they reproduced themselves and competed with one another to survive. Natural selection defined which lasted and which died away.</p><p>Dawkins defines a gene (a definition borrowed from G. C. Williams) as “any part of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection”. In other words, a gene is a copier with high “copying-fidelity”: that is, it ensures that it copies itself without mistakes so that longevity in the form of copies is ensured.</p><p>So in the primeval soup, these genes went on happily competing with each other, evolving newer and newer ways of surviving in an environment which got increasingly complex. As part of survival technology, the genes built a lot of machines, bunching together to form gene complexes in the context. The machines got more and more complex, from the single-cell amoeba to the human being.</p><p>Dawkins starts the book with the question “Why are people?” This is his answer – so that the gene can survive and replicate. We are nothing but vehicles for the genes, who exist to ensure their survival.</p><p>Pretty disillusioning, isn’t it? But Dawkins is far from done. After pulling down humanity from its pedestal as the “pinnacle of creation”, he proceeds to explain all the lofty sentiments such as love, altruism, sacrifice etc. as the result of strategies for gene survival – extremely selfish strategies at that. It is very difficult to stomach for a generation which has been trained to behold human beings as somehow special, and the above sentiments as the proof of their exclusivity which separate them from the “lower” animals. As one disgusted poster said in one of the fora where this book was discussed: “So altruism is like going to the potty? Oh dear!”</p><p>But even though disheartening at first, as Dawkins begins to back up his arguments with solid scientific reasoning, it is difficult to dispute him, and difficult not to get excited when he presents his theory with mathematical precision.</p><p><b>Aggression and Stability</b></p><p>One of the most common arguments put forward against evolution is that an uncontrolled state of aggression will lead to a free-for-all and the “stable” environment we see cannot exist. Dawkins explains this with the concept of an ESS (Evolutionary Stable Strategy), which leads to a dynamic equilibrium or homeostasis: he posits a theoretical society populated by pure aggressors (“hawks”) and pure pacifists (“doves”), and proves logically that over a period of time, the number of hawks and doves will stabilise in roughly equal proportion. This is because it is not the survival machines which are having the final say on who will win: it is the genes. This concept is further expanded with fine variations on the behavior – ultimately, every time, a dynamically stable configuration results.</p><p>In Chapter 12, ‘Nice Guys Finish First’ (added as part of the second edition), Dawkins takes this theory further and presents a varying set of evolutionary strategies, modelled on Game Theory. It describes in detail various evolutionary stratagems he tried out on his computer (with contributions from a lot of scientists) and the outcomes. This is a fascinating analysis and in my opinion, the most interesting part of the book – but that may just be the engineer in me, who loves anything mathematical!</p><p><b>Altruism</b></p><p>Oh yes. The old stumbling block. The favourite saw of the creationists. If we are all selfish, how does altruism come into the picture? Why do parents sacrifice themselves for their children, why do siblings do the same for each other, why do we co-operate at all? Should we not be at each other’s throats, all the time?</p><p>No, according to Dawkins. If we look at it from the gene’s point of view, it all makes perfect sense.</p><p>When we are talking of genes, we are talking of gene pools here: a group of genes working together so that the survival of each is maximised. Dawkins makes a brilliant analogy to a rowing team. If a coach is choosing a team, he would over a period end up with a group who can pull in such a way that the winning chance is maximised – an individual rower, however brilliant he is, would find no place in the team if he did not contribute to the group effort. In the case of genes, natural selection plays the role of the coach. Those genes which could not co-operate simply get discarded in the evolutionary race over a period of time.</p><p>Also, one should bear in mind that a gene is not a single physical bit of DNA; it is all replicas of a particular bit of DNA, distributed throughout the world. A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this could be the origin of altruism. Dawkins calls it ‘genesmanship’. He spends four chapters explaining how it applies to siblings, offspring, lovers and apparent strangers. In the last chapter (‘The Long Reach of the Gene’), Dawkins extrapolates the above argument to how the gene in one species can extend its reach to another species, possibly to the detriment of the latter, to explain parasitism.</p><p>One may take it or leave it, but the arguments are well thought-out and presented with great clarity; with cold, scientific logic. There are no opinions here. It makes fascinating reading, even though the mathematical analysis may put some off!</p><p><b>Memes</b></p><p>The concept of the ‘meme’ is possibly the most revolutionary one expressed in this book. Dawkins defines a meme as a unit of cultural transmission, a basic idea which gets replicated in human brains, in the ‘primeval soup’ of human culture; which, according to him, is in the same state as the biological ‘soup’ was at the dawn of life on earth. To quote the author himself:</p><p>Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.</p><p>According Dawkins, all prevalent ideas (including the idea of God!) is a meme: the meme survives because it has a survival value in the meme pool. If we subscribe to this idea, the whole intellectual arena is nothing but a group of memes grappling for survival – not a very edifying thought. It seems Dawkins appreciates this, because he ends the chapter on memes with the speculation that man has the capacity for genuine, disinterested, true altruism. He says “We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.”</p><p>I, as a fan of the Jungian idea of the Collective Unconscious, could not help speculating on whether the meme could be embedded way down in the gene itself? Maybe the Collective Unconscious is nothing but little bits of consciousness, embedded inside the DNA, which guided the process of survival? If so, it could be case for Intelligent Design – or rather, Intelligent Evolution.</p><p>This is one of those ‘pop-science’ books which are enlightening and enjoyable at the same time. A must-read. </p><p>Read the review also on my </p><a href="http://nandakishorevarma.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/a-review-of-the-selfish-gene-by-richard-dawkins">
 <u>BLOG</u>
</a>.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/6237864?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/109780851-infinite-jen"></a></section><section><p>77 reviews179 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3178380597">July 27, 2022</a></section><div><p>Last night, while watching a fusillade of pyrotechnic spermatozoa ejaculated from gaudy tubes of erectile aspect, I saw the whole of human desire captured in Incarusian defiance. With shells striving to pierce the black ovum of space, but having their motility sapped by the deformational geometries which encircle our terrestrial biosphere. Disclosing their metal salts and iron filings with violent punctuations of barometric pressure and visual amplitude, only to be completely consumed, mere seconds later, by silence and darkness. A stranger, perhaps sensing the melancholy which had gripped me by the haunches, innocently inquired, “Is something bothering you, sweetie?” To which I hissed, “I sometimes fantasize about blasting a champagne cork into someone’s mouth, mid sentence, then impaling them with the bill of sword fish.” I then turned back to the show, shaking my head, “You didn’t deserve that. I’m just thinking about the relationship between senescence and antagonistic pleiotropy and how you can’t make sense of certain biological realities unless your conceptual efforts proceed from the optimal level of granularity. For instance, when I, as a little girl, had the distinct terror of being chased by a Somali ostrich, and was subsequently trampled by said flightless bird, with my large strawberry milkshake pinned beneath me and exploding all over my white dress like a bazooka bubblegum claymore, (which appeared to onlookers as my ever loving guts being mashed out of my tiny body), it did not behoove me to attempt to understand its behavior at the level of quantum physics. I’m sure the whole dreary affair transgressed no physical laws, up to and including my mother screaming; “Saints be with us! The little idiot has finally done herself in!” I’m not saying that. But it was a far better use of attentional resources to focus on my behavior prior to the incident, wherein I was strangely compelled to harangue the temperamental bird about the dimorphic condition of its tiny head relative to its large body.” Laughing and turning to ask the man for a light, I realized that he had fled silently back into the crowd.<p>Not to be thwarted in mid rant, I singled out an attractive woman and stormed towards her, gesturing wildly as if the Cesar of my ego was experiencing bloody death curtesy of white hot senatorial stabbings administered by psychedelics. Shouting, “In precisely this way, it is difficult to make much sense of our ephemeral existence without the concept of antagonistic pleiotropy.” Drawing painfully close and smelling her hair. “Are you single? Don’t answer that! First, observe, at the proper level of magnification, the center of evolution’s dramas, not the individual, but the gene. Now, if we are going to attempt to understand death, this inability of ours to achieve the escape velocity of our mortality, like those mortars which currently spunk the night sky with their rainbow smithereens. To understand this spectral Bukkake, we must cudgel the knees of our tired frameworks and streak madly into the arms of lusty new paradigms. Observe! If we were going to ask the obvious question; why do we perish amongst abundance? Why must we bust a fat, prismatic nut, and never be heard again? If we have food sufficient to meet our caloric needs, should we not be able to repair the damage we incur indefinitely? I say unto you; Let us suppose that there was a gene, in our ancestral past, which controlled for more than one phenotypic trait (i.e the protein expression of the genotype under influence of environment factors). One of these traits was quite beneficial early in life and ensured that the humans who possessed it were more likely to take it to pound town, but the same gene was also responsible for one or more defects which would manifest outside of prime reproductive years. You would end up with a proliferation of these genes irregardless of their ultimate cost, (i.e the eventual demise of the screaming mortar as it goes ungently into that good night) because reproduction is key. The mystery of senescence now seems tractable, doesn’t it?” </p><p>Silently she takes my hand and leads me away from the crowd. Once we’ve made it to the top of a small hill overlooking the celebration, she turns to me and says;</p><p>"Sì, abbiamo un'anima. Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot.”</p><p>This book is an account of one of the most successful science metaphors ever created, of how immortal genes are winnowed through the game theoretic calculus of natural selection into evolutionary stable states. About how the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators can produce all the various strategies which enable the carriers of this encoded information to survive and send it into the future. The Selfish Gene is one of the best books on evolution ever written. It profoundly communicates just what evolution is all about: the replication of genetic units of information, by whatever means possible. Viruses, retroviruses, parasitic insects, gut bacteria, mitochondria, the grotesque nuptial gifts of scorpion flies, and motorcycle accidents caused by toxoplasmosis - they are all successful cases of genes replicating in varied "survival machines," giving zero shits about how quaint their respective venues appear. It's an amazing, well-proved idea, wonderfully communicated by a passionate writer. It requires no advanced training or technical background to understand, and will reward your attention by permanently enriching your understanding of the natural world.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/614778-ahmad-sharabiani"></a></section><section><p>9,568 reviews55.6k followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4269081589">October 4, 2021</a></section><div><p><b>The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins</b><p>The gene-centred view of evolution that Dawkins championed and crystallized is now central both to evolutionary theorizing and to lay commentaries on natural history such as wildlife documentaries. </p><p>A bird or a bee risks its life and health to bring its offspring into the world not to help itself, and certainly not to help its species — the prevailing, lazy thinking of the 1960's, even among luminaries of evolution such as Julian Huxley and Konrad Lorenz — but (unconsciously) so that its genes go on. </p><p>Genes that cause birds and bees to breed survive at the expense of other genes. </p><p>تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز سوم ماه اکتبر سال 2011میلادی</p><p>عنوان: ژن خودخواه؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داوکینز؛ مترجم نرگس رستمی‌گوران؛ تهران، نشر چشمه، 1389؛ در 481ص؛ شابک9789643629946؛ موضوع تکامل و زیست شناسی از نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده 20م</p><p>عنوان: ژن خودخواه؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داکینز؛ مترجم جلال سلطانی؛ تهران، مازیار، 1396؛ در 432ص؛ شابک9786006043760؛ چاپ سوم سال1397؛ چاپ پنجم و ششم 1399؛</p><p>عنوان: ژن خودخواه؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داکینز؛ مترجم شهلا باقری؛ تهران، پژواک، 1399؛ در 581ص؛ شابک9789649309064؛ </p><p>ریچارد داوکینز زیست‌شناس تکامل‌گرا، کتاب «ژن خودخواه» را در سال 1976میلادی منتشر کردند؛ بنیان بحث «داوکینز» در این کتاب در حوزه ی تکامل طبیعی، و علم ژنتیک است، ایشان ژنتیک را مبتنی بر نگرشی ژن‌محور شرح می‌دهند، و همچنین، رویکرد ایشان در زیست‌شناسی، متکی بر نظریه‌ ی «داروین» است؛ ایشان بر پایه نظریه ی «داروین» می‌پذیرند که تکامل طبیعی، از راه گزینش طبیعی کار می‌کند، و گزینش طبیعی به‌ معنی بقای شایسته‌ترین‌ها است؛ «داوکینز» نگرش ژن‌ مرکزی خود را در علم ژنتیک، با نظریه ی تکاملی «داروین» پیوند می‌زنند، و به این نتیجه ی پایه‌ ای می‌رسند که: «ژن»، عنصر اصلی گزینش طبیعی است؛ از نظر ایشان، هر چند رقابت مبتنی بر خودخواهی عنصر اصلی ژن برای بقاست، اما خودخواهی، صرفاً رفتار فردی ژن است؛ در عین حال، اولاً برآوردن خودخواهی ژن‌ها از اساس متکی بر همتاسازی، یا تکثیر شوندگی است، و ثانیاً این رفتار فردی در اوضاع و احوال ویژه ای روی می‌دهد، که امکان رویدادن اهداف خودخواهانه ژن را، به‌ منظور پایداری آن فراهم می‌آورد؛ در این اوضاع و احوال است که ژن خودخواه با دیگر ژن‌ها، که آنها نیز خودخواه‌ هستند، روبرو می‌شود و می‌خواهد رقابتی را با آنها پیش ببرد، که هدف آن نگهداری و بقای زندگی ارگانیسم، در کل، است؛ از دیدگاه «داوکینز» ارگانیسم موجود زنده، محیطی است، که رقابت خودخواهانه ژن را بر زمینه ی رقابت دیگرخواهانه‌ ای قرار می‌دهد، که بقای خود ارگانیسم زنده را می‌پذیرد؛ پس چشم همچشمی خودخواهانه ژن‌های خودخواه، در ارگانیسم به تعادل ژنتیکی، و بنابراین به بقای ارگانیسم می‌انجامد؛ «داوکینز» انتخاب یا همان گزینش طبیعی را، بازی بزرگ رقابت می‌داند، که در آن بازیگران یا رقابت‌ کنندگان اصلی، ژن‌های خودخواه‌ هستند؛ اما از آنجا که رقابت برای بقای ارگانیسم زنده انجام می‌شود، پس این رقابتی نه برای نابودی، که برای بقا یعنی تداوم زندگی است؛ از این رو «داوکینز» می‌کوشد در کتاب خود، تاریخ طبیعی را از دیدگاه علم تبیین کند؛ نخستین انتقاد مهم بر کتاب ژن خودخواه به همین نگرش به تاریخ طبیعی از منظر علم ــ علم ژنتیک ــ تا آن جایگاه است که می‌توان آن را با علم‌گرایی نویسنده توضیح داد؛ زیرا سنجش این موضوع یعنی حیات و تحول آن، موضوعی نیست که صرفاً از منظر علمی، و نظریه ژنتیک، به آن پرداخته شده باشد، بلکه باید از منظرهای دیگری نیز، به این نگره پرداخت، که نویسنده دیدگاههای دیگر را فراموش کرده است؛ مشخص است که از آن جمله هستند نگرش‌ه��ی دینی ــ در کنار نگرش علمی ــ برای این موضوع پاسخ‌های با قدمت بسیار وجود دارند که هنوز هم از سوی مردمان بسیاری در سراسر جهان پذیرفتی هستند و از این رو نباید چنین پاسخ‌هایی را نادیده گرفت؛ اما نکته‌ ی بسیار مهم این است که کتاب «ژن خودخواه» صرفاً درباره‌ ی علم ژنتیک، و ارائه‌ ی تبیین نوینی از نظریه‌ ی تکامل «داروین» نیست؛ اگر ژنتیک، در مجموع، به علم زیست‌شناسی مربوط می‌شود، اما «ریچارد داوکینز» فراتر از علم ژنتیک، به اتکای همان نگرش ژن‌محورانه، به دیگر قلمروهای زندگی اجتماعی انسان ــ مثلاً فرهنگ و تحولات فرهنگی ــ می‌پردازند؛ ایشان می‌کوشند قانون تکامل را در حوزه تحولات فرهنگی نیز تبیین کنند، و به اتکای آن، بقا یا زوال فرهنگ‌ها را به خوانشگر بنمایانند؛ «داوکینز» با تأکید بر تشابه تکامل فرهنگی با تکامل ژنتیکی، عامل تکامل فرهنگی را مِم ــ شبیه ژن ــ معرفی می‌کنند؛ ایشان با جعل مفاهیم «مم» و «ممتیک» می‌کوشند تکامل فرهنگی را در تشابه با تکامل ژنتیکی از طریق ژن و ژنتیک توضیح دهند؛ از نظر او «مم‌ها» ــ همچون آهنگ‌ها، ایده‌ها و شعارها و لباس، مد و...؛ ــ از راه تقلید، همتا سازی و تکثیر می‌شوند، و تحول و تکامل فرهنگی را ممکن می‌کنند؛ اگر در نظر او «ژن» واحد زیستی است، «مم» واحد اطلاعاتی است؛ در واقع «مم» آن هستیِ ذهنی است که «داوکینز» با جعل آن از حوزه ژنتیک (حوزه عمل خودخواهانه ژن) به حوزه فرهنگ عبور می‌کنند، و می‌کوشند تکامل و تحول فرهنگ را به خوانشگران بنمایانند؛ در عین حال، ایشان از همان مفاهیم رقابت، همتاسازی، خودخواهی و دیگرخواهی، در حوزه تحرک «مم‌ها» و انتقال و همتاسازی یا تکثیر آنها استفاده می‌کنند؛ دومین انتقاد مهم از «داوکینز» ناشی از همین تلاش ایشان برای یکسان‌سازی تحول ژنتیکی و تحول فرهنگی است؛ ایشان در این یکسان‌سازی تا آنجا پیش می‌روند که دین ــ وجهی از فرهنگ ــ را با همین الگوی نظری‌ خویش توضیح می‌دهند؛ برای نمونه، ایشان «ایمان» را، یک «مم» در حوزه‌ ی دین می‌شناسند که از راه تقلید، همتاسازی و تکثیر می‌شود؛ از اینجا می‌توان دریافت که در آرای «داوکینز» پیوند تکامل ژنتیکی، با تحول فرهنگی بسیار خیال‌پردازانه باز نموده می‌شود؛ این پاسخی نادرست نسبت به باورهای مذهبی است و به همین دلیل نمی‌تواند توضیح قانع‌ کننده‌ای از تداوم اندیشه‌های دینی در جهان ارائه کند؛ «داوکینز» می‌کوشند تحول فرهنگ را با نگرشی صرفاً علمی توضیح دهند؛ همین مسئله است که با انتقادات بسیاری مواجه شده است؛ «داوکینز» با یکسان دانستن تحول طبیعی و تحول فرهنگی، به تقابل علم و دین می‌رسند؛ در حالی که این دو شیوه‌ ی تبیین جهان، در همزیستی با هم قرار دارند و یکدیگر را نفی نمی‌کنند؛ «ریچارد داوکینز» از سال 1995میلادی تا سال2008میلادی استاد کرسی «چارلز سیمونی» برای ترویج علم، در «دانشگاه آکسفورد» بودند؛ ایشان از پدر و مادر بریتانیایی در «نایروبی» به دنیا آمده اند، در «آکسفورد» درس خوانده، و رساله ی دکتری خود را زیر نظر «نیکو تیبرگن» رفتارشناس برنده جایزه «نوبل» به سرانجام رسانده اند؛ ایشان از سال1967میلادی تا 1969میلادی در «دانشگاه کالیفرنیا» در «برکلی» استادیار بودند؛ سپس به‌ عنوان دانشیار و بعد استاد به بخش جانورشناسی «نیوکالج در آکسفورد» بازگشتند تا آنکه در سال 1995میلادی، به‌ عنوان نخستین استاد کرسی «سیمونی» منصوب شد؛ ایشان اکنون عضو ممتاز «نیوکالج» هستند؛</p><p>تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/614778?shelf=20th-century">20th-century</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/614778?shelf=biology">biology</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/614778?shelf=british">british</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1021333-jono-davis"></a></section><section><p>2 reviews9 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20511788">April 21, 2008</a></section><div><p>One of the most important things I took from <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/61535.The_Selfish_Gene"> The Selfish Gene</a> is an idea that I find a bit difficult to put into words. <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/1194.Richard_Dawkins"> Richard Dawkins</a> is really good at crafting metaphors to describe scientific principles that on their own may be not be so interesting, or may be stubbornly inaccessible. While his rhetoric may make concepts more accessible and convenient to discuss, he openly warns that no metaphor is completely accurate. Understanding that the metaphors must be viewed skeptically, he offers this,<p><i>"If we allow ourselves the license of talking about genes as if they had conscious aims, always reassuring ourselves that we could translate our sloppy language back into repectable terms if we wanted to, we can ask the question, what is a single selfish gene trying to do?"</i></p><p>All things being even, genes that are long-lasting or that replicate quickly, and genes that can replicate with high fidelity are going to outnumber those that are slow or erroneous in replication. Dawkins calls this the “selfish” nature of genetic replication. He chooses his words carefully though, and applies metaphors of self-interest only to genes that are, or are not, selected for by indifferent and unthinking mechanisms.</p><p>Where this metaphor breaks down, as Dawkins admits, is when the idea of “selfishness” is brought up from genetics to the level of individuals within a group, or groups within a species. He criticizes such concepts in sociobiology, where claims are made that an individual’s actions are inherently selfish in order to serve their genes in themselves, or in other related individuals.</p><p>While genes may be “selfish” in order to be selected, this doesn’t necessitate that individuals (“survival machines” as he so affectionately calls us) must as well act only in self-interest. In this video introduction to the book, Dawkins suggests that,</p><p><i>"…if you have “selfish” genes, which only means that natural selection works at the level of the gene, if you have “selfish” genes, then, you may have altruistic individuals."</i></p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/52763346-farhana"></a></section><section><p>297 reviews163 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2382767223">April 17, 2021</a></section><div><p>Reading this book was like meeting with a person about whom you have heard a lot, who has some kind of legendary status, and overall so well-acclaimed that you cannot resist the temptation to meet the person. <p>Another thing you have heard is that the person is so simple, down to earth that he would take the trouble to talk to any layman, to make these biological terms easier, more comprehensible and comfortable to deal with. And you think talking to you won't cause him much trouble because you are well aware of some technical biological jargons. </p><p>So, when Mr. Dawkins finally meets you through his legendary <i>The Selfish Gene</i>, you eagerly wait to hear a few more intricate complex terms - similar to the stature of the book and the writer. The chapters in the beginning (2 &amp; 3) bore a little bit with their roundabout words. But if you can keep a little bit patience up to Chapter 5, then as the chapters go on you begin to realize why this book is a <b>Classic</b> after all!</p><p>I must agree that it's one of the finest books I have read. Chapter 1 is adorable with its nice philosophical leaps. The best chapters are <b>Battle of the Generations</b> and <b>Battle of the Sexes</b>. The chapter on memes sounds like the movie Inception. Overall the book is the best reward for its readers.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/52763346?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/82566-rachelm"></a></section><section><p>102 reviews2 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6098339">October 2, 2007</a></section><div><p>Writing lucidly about science for a lay audience while remaining scientifically rigorous is not easy, and Dawkins does a tremendous job as he examines evolution from the point of view of the gene rather than the organism. <p>I found this book to contain a number of "aha" moments -- for example, that rather than pose the question "Why is DNA an efficient mechanism for an individual organism to reproduce itself?", we should ask instead "How did a giant, complicated lumbering robot such as myself become a good mechanism for the reproduction of the self-replicating entities I call my genes? Why did biological matter floating around in the primordial stew originally clump together into larger organisms?" </p><p>Dawkins answers these questions and more in an engaging fashion, applying the theory of the selfish gene to aggression, altruism, sexual and familial relationships, and to the transmission of ideas in human societies. </p><p>And he makes a point of leaving us with the optimistic thought that we as humans should be informed by our biological history, but need not be bound by it.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/82566?shelf=nonfiction">nonfiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/695116-jim"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>6 books2,015 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2366925559">January 16, 2022</a></section><div><p><b>Review 2022</b><p>This was somewhat repetitious since I've read quite a few books on evolution since I last read this in April 2018 &amp; Dawkins takes pains in this, the 30th anniversary edition, to correct mistakes he made, updates others have made, &amp; to answer some of his critics. Some of the explanations seem needlessly pedantic until I realized just how subtle &amp; powerful his theory is. Even if it doesn't hold up in all circumstances (I'm not sure that it doesn't.) it has changed the field considerably by turning the point of view that preceded it on its collective head (group selection) &amp; influenced many other fields. </p><p>So, it has become clear to me that this one is even more influential than I knew at the time. I keep finding references (usually for, but occasionally against) the idea of the selfish gene. I'm interested in reading more by <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/31624.Edward_O__Wilson">Edward O. Wilson</a> who is one of those who disagrees with the idea. Wilson was also eminent in the field &amp; the finer points of their arguments are beyond me. This article takes a middling ground.<br /><a href="https://thisviewoflife.com/richard-dawkins-edward-o-wilson-and-the-consensus-of-the-many/">https://thisviewoflife.com/richard-da...</a></p><p>I've also just read a discussion of memes by <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/6952980.Daniel_C__Dennett">Daniel C. Dennett</a> in <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/35167699.From_Bacteria_to_Bach_and_Back_The_Evolution_of_Minds">From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds</a>. It's not an area I'm terribly interested in, but I'd like to read Dawkins' take on it again. I think Dennett also codified his ideas of competence without comprehension, at least in part, from this work.</p><p>Highly recommended to all. While I found the audiobook delightful, it's nice to have a text copy available to better grasp some of the more subtle points.</p><p>-----------------<br /><b>April 2018 Review</b> This is the thirty year anniversary edition of the book (2006 rather than 1976) so it contains a lot of clarifications where he found there were misunderstandings. It also contains some corrections where he decided that he was either wrong or off target. He also mentions areas where other discoveries &amp; papers took his work even further. I think I found these the most enjoyable. It's great to see science in progress. He also added a few extra chapters that were fantastic.</p><p>Of course, the main reason to read this book is to read the origin of the word <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme">"Meme"</a> which Dawkins created &amp; loosed on the world in this book. I love origin stories.</p><p>This is the third book that I've read written &amp; narrated by Dawkins. I liked it better than his autobiography, but not quite as much as <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/14743.The_God_Delusion">The God Delusion</a>. I'm not an evolutionary biologist, so some of it went into more depth than I appreciated. It was always interesting &amp; easy to understand, though. That he could make such complex topics so easily digested by a layman says a lot about both his ability as a writer &amp; his knowledge of the subject.</p><p>His primary point is that evolution is about gene survival. We &amp; other living beings are just the vehicles that the genes build to perpetuate themselves. He makes it very clear throughout the book that when he ascribes words such as 'selfish' to behavior that he is putting the behavior in human terms for ease of communication. When he didn't, he used math to show his point, but he didn't do a lot of that &amp; it was always easy to follow even when the points were counter-intuitive. There were a fair few of those.</p><p>One example is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma">Prisoner's Dilemma</a> problem &amp; how it relates to selfishness. He spent quite a bit of time on this &amp; even provided the results of several computer simulations done later by colleagues that prove out &amp; explain the differences in iterated games versus single games. Wow. It really explains a lot about symbiosis, herd/group, &amp; even cuckoos' behavior.</p><p>I'm just plain impressed by this man &amp; his thought processes, but I'm not sure if I'll read any more of his books. He mentions where he goes into more detail in other books &amp; papers throughout this edition of this book, but he covers enough of <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/61538.The_Extended_Phenotype_The_Long_Reach_of_the_Gene">The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene</a> for me here, I think. Maybe not. It's an intriguing subject. Perhaps if I come across the audio version I'll succumb to temptation. He &amp; Lalla Ward do a great job of narrating &amp; the ideas are fascinating. </p><p>It's amazing just how complex processes can arise out of such simple objects working in groups. Of course, there's been a LOT of time &amp; trial &amp; error. Statistically it makes sense. Dawkins has seen to that. Using his thoughts as a baseline for alien life is even more fascinating. I hope I live to see if his theories are born out.</p><p>Of course, I recommend this highly. Definitely get this edition, if you can. If you've only read the first edition, get &amp; read this one. It's worth it.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/695116?shelf=1audio">1audio</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/695116?shelf=2non-fiction">2non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/695116?shelf=3classics">3classics</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4975021-ali"></a></section><section><p>35 reviews19 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/148007838">June 9, 2012</a></section><div><p>Finally, and after an excessive period of time, the main cause of which was college overwhelming demands, I managed to read and finish, from cover to cover, the book that launched the fame of the most distinguished evolutionary biologist in the world (Richard Dawkins): The Selfish Gene.<p>Dawkins is often characterized as the World's Most Outspoken Atheist. This may be true, but it's concerned with a relatively recent development in his character. I think such reduction is misleading and unfair, quite frankly. Dawkins is an intelligent evolutionary biologist and he has contributed a lot to the field over the past three or four decades. He is very passionate about Darwinian Evolution that I'm surprised that he's not been referred to as "Darwin's pitbull" as much as Sir Huxley was known as "Darwin's Bulldog"!</p><p>The book is an attempt by Dawkins to offer a meticulous explanation of organisms' behavior, especially animals. Animal behavior is such an intriguing subject, indeed!. Dawkins tries to explore this phenomenal world through the lens of what he calls, "The Selfish Gene Theory".</p><p>The Selfish Gene Theory establishes that organisms evolve by Natural Selection, but the unit of selection is, surprisingly and against all common knowledge and conventions, the gene. It's not the species, as I used to firmly hold, not even the individual, but the gene, the selfish gene. Genes were here first long before us the multi-cellular organisms. In addition, they are "the replicators" who will live on, unlike us the mortals. They are the immortal units of selection, and we merely are "survival machines" as Dawkins affirms throughout the whole book. This, to me, has a very profound implication. It seems to me to negate the "hypothesis" of morality being also a product of our evolution because if the Selfish Gene Theory is true, then I don't see how the "survival of the species" would have mattered from the first place. However, Dawkins makes the case that selfish genes might "program" survival machines to adopt some forms of "altruistic" behaviors to meet their "selfish" ends.</p><p>Dawkins' language is that of a "reductionist" which doesn't surprise me as a student of biology familiar with the scientific doctrine of "Occam's Razor". However, I understand how his language might disturb some readers. Dawkins reduces all forms of relationships and attributes them to "genetic" factors including those among family members. Altruistic behavior vs. selfish behavior can all be calculated mathematically. Your mother cares about you because you contain half of her genes! Forget love, affection, and all of that emotional talk. We're merely survival machines designed by our selfish genes to propagate them. Pretty disturbing, huh?</p><p>Yet, this also has a crucial implication. Dawkins affirms in the beginning of the book that it's one of "biology", not "ethics". He states that we are "selfish by nature", but we can teach our children to be altruistic. To me, this raises a very important question: doesn't that assert that we, indeed, possess free will? This is a profound implication that I believe Dawkins was not aware of when first writing this book. He attempts to briefly discuss this matter in the endnotes by rejecting it, but I think he didn't succeed.There's some form of dualism that the theory suggests in our case: the conscious Homo sapiens.It's very evident and prevalent.</p><p>One chapter of the book is devoted to what Dawkins call, "memes". It's such a great idea and it shows Dawkins' skill as a "philosopher". Simply, a meme is a "replicating idea" as Daniel Dennett defines it. It makes so much sense to me that memes are replicators just like genes floating from one mind to another and manipulating subjects to insure their survival. It seems to me that religion is an example of a meme that replicates itself (from followers to followers) and struggle for survival through consistent "adaptation" (modification)! Dawkins' animosity towards religion is probably as old as this book is, but he offers a very mild criticism of it which makes sense given that it's not really the center focus of this book.</p><p>The Selfish Gene Theory is a revolutionary idea. However, even more revolutionary is the concept of "The Extended Phenotype" which illustrates the "long reach of the gene". Dawkins dedicates a whole book to this idea, and devotes the last chapter to it. The notion simply suggests that selfish genes influence very "indirect" behaviors such as, building nests in birds. I must read his book "The Extended Phenotype" since Dawkins explores the idea much more deeply and thoroughly.</p><p>To conclude, the Selfish Gene Theory (or should I say hypothesis?) is indeed a profound seductive idea as an explanation of organisms' innate behavior. I don't know, though, how much of it is predicated upon scientific evidence and how much is mere speculation, but I do know that the book is a must-read for anyone interested in animal behavior. The book brilliantly offers answers to puzzling phenomenons, but it also raises a lot of profound questions.</p><p>"The only kind of entity that has to exists in order for life to arise, anywhere in the universe, is the immortal replicator." - R. Dawkins</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2181940-priscila-jord-o"></a></section><section><p>40 reviews32 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/600752873">December 8, 2014</a></section><div><p>Although a lot has changed in social biology and ethology since this book was originally published in 1976, “The Selfish Gene” brought me numerous insights which made my respect for Dawkins grow immensely. I’ll explain why.<p>The book can be considered today almost out of date, I think, and there’s much in it to be criticized. Dawkins language is particularly reductionist as he explains various types of animal behaviors mathematically while attributing them solely to genetic factors. </p><p>He says, for instance, that an animal has 1/8 of chance of saving one of his cousins from drowning because there is a chance of 1 in 8 that he and his cousin have genes in common. Or that a mother cares about her babies just because their body is transporting half of her genes. </p><p>I’m not questioning it because I found the theory insensitive or cruel (especially when it comes to human beings). We all know very well how important are genes determining behavior. But today we also know how deeply are another factors involved in this process. They are certainly relevant in different measures between animals and humans, but I’m inclined to believe that even in animals they do not exert this kind of dictatorship. And even if they did, it would be almost impossible to use mathematics to calculate things like the probability of an animal saving his cousin's life.</p><p>In chapter 11 Dawkins introduces the notion of “memes” and makes an exception to the sovereignty of genes: he mentions briefly that culture may change what was genetically “predetermined” to happen and, surprisingly, that it can be considered another type of evolution. However, most of the book doesn’t take this possibility into account, which is one of the reasons why I find it out of date.</p><p>Conversely, Dawkins brings up some really interesting ideas that had never come to my mind in other ways. One of them is mentioned in the second chapter, in which he explains the origins of replicant molecules (DNAs) and is confronted with the inevitable and very contemporary question: when does life begins? He solves the problem masterfully in my opinion: “Should we then call the original replicators ‘living’? Who cares? (…) Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use. The mere presence in the dictionary of a word like ‘living’ does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world”.</p><p>Another of my favorite parts is the one where the talks about the evolution of the capability of simulation in animals. His theory is that conscience emerged because the simulation that brains do to calculate probabilities and risks associated to everyday tasks became so complex at one point of the evolution that it was inevitable to start including the “self” in it. </p><p>I was also positively impressed by how Dawkins describes adaptation as the predominance of evolutionary stable strategies in opposition to unstable ones. It is an interesting approach to Darwin’s theory that he would probably have agreed with. The descriptions of various behaviors to exemplify his theory are also very engaging.</p><p>Finally, the already mentioned chapter about memes is a good surprise at the end of the book, and reveals some of Dawkins’ skills as philosopher (as someone mentioned in a review below).</p><p>For all these reasons, and although I was bored at many moments because of its reductionism, I found “The Selfish Gene” worth of reading. It certainly deserves its fame as a classic.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2181940?shelf=brit%C3%A2nica">britânica</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/58882300-valliya-rennell"></a></section><section><p>339 reviews231 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3606443263">December 2, 2020</a></section><div><p>3 stars<p><br />and in this book, this concept is explained through the perspective of genes. Dawkins manages to present complicated topics like cell division, probability, and animal behaviours<b> through the "eyes" of the gene which will use its survival machine (the organism) to survive. </b></p><p>It was fascinating to to learn about relationships and customs that I took for granted, and to now get more understanding on why they occur as they do (especially mutualism and parasitism). Since I learn a lot about this in school, though separately, here <b>I was able to draw connections with Mr. Dawkins' guidance that really enriched my prior knowledge</b>. That being said, Dawkins writes in a simple writing style that <b>may sometimes sound contemptuous of the reader, but I don't think that was the intent</b>: he obviously knows much more about the topic, why would he talk to us as an equal in the field? I also <b>found some of his remarks quite funny or satirical</b> and found they helped lift the mood from just the nitty-gritty science facts. </p><p>There are a few 1 star reviews that tie a lot to religion and how Dawkins is overly dismissive of this. In my opinion, <b>I don't exactly understand why this forced people to rate the book so low, since religion is mentioned maybe 2 or 3 times in the book, and in passing.</b> Is Dawkins a bit dismissive of it? Well yes, but he isn't rude about it, he just states that some aspects of religions don't line up with what can be deduced through science... <b>then again maybe I'm not the best person to speak on this, as I too am atheist.</b> I don't know. I sure have read a lot of books that presented religion in a ruder manner, so I thought that Dawkins went about this in a respectful way. </p><p>Overall, I thought this book was<b> really insightful, and will definitely be picking up more titles from this author. </b></p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/58882300?shelf=a-3-stars">a-3-stars</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/58882300?shelf=b-adult">b-adult</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/58882300?shelf=c-non-fiction">c-non-fiction</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/58296635-sidharth-vardhan"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>23 books681 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1723760869">September 3, 2016</a></section><div><p><blockquote>
 <i>“ There are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the galaxy.”</i>
 <br />
</blockquote><br />Sometimes science books can become unintentionally funny:<br /><blockquote>
 <br />
 <i> “What is the good of sex? This is an extremely difficult question for the evolutionist to answer. Most serious attempts to answer it involve sophisticated mathematical reasoning.”</i>
 <br />
</blockquote><p>Okay!</p><p>One of stupidest criticism here on Goodreads of Adam Smith’s Theory of Wealth of Nations’ was that he made the human selfishness as basis of his theory. It was stupid as Smith didn’t invented that ‘selfishness’ he merely showed us how our economy was already based on selfishness of individuals.</p><p>It is same here. In fact, in this case ‘selfishness’ is apparent selfish behaviour of genes (‘apparent’ because genes do not make conscious choices, selfless-by-default ones just won’t survive) and any effects on the individuals are unconscious. Dawkins shows how selfishness of genes can actually bring out what, at first, may look like altruistic behaviour among animals. </p><p>Also, we need not be slave to our genes. In fact, we <i>do</i> resist behaviour imposed on us by genes. The best examples are people who remain without children all their life, contraceptives, welfare state etc.</p><blockquote>
 <br />
 <i>“Contraception is sometimes attacked as 'unnatural'. So it is, very unnatural. The trouble is, so is the welfare state. I think that most of us believe the welfare state is highly desirable. But you cannot have an unnatural welfare state, unless you also have unnatural birth- control, otherwise the end result will be misery even greater than that which obtains in nature.”</i>
 <br />
</blockquote><br />There are theories in here describing how first life must have started on planet. There is also a theory (theory, not law) that tries to explain why should people die of old age. Any explanations are better than 'God did it'. One of my favorite parts were those discussing Game theory involved in biology. <p>Above all, there are all those fascinating aspects how some animals behave. There are some insects who can be like Chinese-boxes:</p><blockquote>
 <br />
 <i> Female greenflies can bear live, fatherless, female offspring, each one containing all the genes of its mother. (Incidentally, an embryo in her mother's 'womb' may have an even smaller embryo inside her own womb. So a greenfly female may give birth to a daughter and a grand- daughter simultaneously, both of them being equivalent to her own identical twins.)</i>
 <br />
</blockquote><br />And...do you remember that romantic dialogue, 'I'll die for you'? Ladies among matinses take it too literally:<br /><blockquote>
 <br />
 <i>“Mantises … When they mate, the male cautiously creeps up on the female, mounts her, and copulates. If the female gets th e chance, she will eat him, beginning by biting his head off, either as the male is approaching, or immediately after he mounts, or after they separate.” </i>
 <br />
</blockquote><br />Isn’t that lovely? <p>Than there are the friendly fights (mostly to get girls):</p><blockquote>
 <br />
 <i> "the notable thing about animal fights is that they are formal tournaments, played according to rules like those of boxing or fencing. Animals fight with gloved fists and blunted foils. Threat and bluff take the place of deadly earnest. Gestures of surrender are recognized by victors, who then refrain from dealing the killing blow or bite that our naive theory might predict.”</i>
 <br />
</blockquote><br />Dawkins also points out how most of Darwin’s oringal theory was wrong. Yet, you won’t find any Darwin-fundamentalists fighting against evolutionists. Several of Dawkins' own postulates must have been already proved wrong - it was written 40 years ago, that is like stone age to scientists. I don't think he would mind either.<p>Creationists, well, they are a different breed. I guess given the condition the world is in, with all those stupid wars and ozone holes; any ideas of <i>intelligent</i> design can be easily trashed. And have you ever heard of that *stops to search for a word*thing called 'Donald Trump' - what is so intelligent about his existence? If I had my way, I would also have humanity consider whether we aren’t too liberal with the word when we call ourselves an 'intelligent' race. And even assuming there <i>was</i> a creator -than what about his/her aesthetic sense? Why should he give us bad body order? What is so intelligent about that?</p><p>Coming back to creationists, well, I think Christian church was a little stupid (no offence) when it picked a head-on fight against evolutionists. All they needed to do was to manipulate the meaning of phrases in Bible and tell the world that evolution was embodied in Bible, it was just that they weren't interpreting it right. Hinduism and Islam are far cleverer in this regard. </p><p>For example, as India’s respected prime minister will tell you Hindu gods had already invented <i>plastic</i> surgeries long before lesser mortals discovered Iron. Atom bombs, flying vehicles etc – you name it, we already had them ages ago. Read this <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1420032296">review</a> for more details. Whatever you may do, we did it in ancient times and were clever enough to forget about it.</p><p>Also, one of most popular (pseudo) scholars on religion, Dr. Zakir Naik, tells us that truths like Big bang, evolution, Copernican solar system, existence of plasma state of matter, the growth of embryo etc. were all already explained by none other than God himself in Quran. There are many other scientific truths to be found in Quran that he has found using his </p><s>far-fetched</s> sophisticated reasoning, you can listen to him <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5h6CNhtVls">here</a></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/58296635?shelf=1-africa">1-africa</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/58296635?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6951391-alexander-mcnabb"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>9 books49 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/256080592">January 4, 2012</a></section><div><p>I asked Twitter for reading recommendations just before Christmas and one of them was this book. It's so outside my comfort zone (a book about genetics? Are you MAD?), I just went for it. And I am very glad I did.<p>That's the great thing about Kindles. You can do mad stuff in seconds flat.</p><p>Skip the forewords and introductions, they're sententious verbiage. Just start reading the book - by the time you've done, you'll actually WANT to go back to the forewords and revision notes. Because this book is seriously fun.</p><p>Honestly. It's highly readable, thought-provoking and never less than entertaining. Imagine reading a TV series like Coast or a Robert Winston documentary - the mixture of powerful images, connections to the everyday and down to earth presentation actually make the subject matter of the book relevant, alive and, well, splendid.</p><p>Richipoos takes the odd diversion to indulge in some academic spattery, (one reason, perhaps, this was dubbed a 'young book' - it was written 30 and more years ago) but generally is on the side of the reader, which is why his ideas come across so clearly. The book explores the role of the 'eternal gene', the miraculous and self-replicating bunch of amino-acids that is US and how we are effectively a co-operative of chemical conveniences. Starting with the primeval soup and ending with why mums and dads do what they do, it's a roller-coaster ride. I'm serious - like I said, this would normally tick all my ohnoimnotreadingthatshit buttons. I was grinning through most of it and rare was the day when I didn't share a thought or insight the book had triggered or opened up with my long-suffering wife Sarah.</p><p>I had the time of my life reading this. I wish I could say the same about my my current struggle with Umberto Eco's somewhat turgid latest, but that - as they say - is another story...</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5015851-ms-pegasus"></a></section><section><p>687 reviews130 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3261761515">April 4, 2020</a></section><div><p>Any reader of fiction understands the importance of narrative point of view. Influential evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins adopts that idea here. The point of view is that of the gene. His “selfish gene” is a metaphor, an anthropomorphic representation of a replicating sequence of genetic code.<p>He clarifies this idea with an astonishing admission: <i> “There is no universally agreed definition of a gene.”</i>(p.36) Starting with this blank slate frees him to create parameters that suit his own purposes: <i> “A gene is defined as any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection....[A] gene is a replicator with high copying fidelity.”</i> (p. 35) In one analogy he compares a gene to a cooperative team of rowers. The individual is merely a vehicle for the focused efforts of this team. Instead of quibbling about the physical entity of the gene, Dawkins focuses his attention on salient properties: copying errors, fecundity (the rate of replication), chromosomal rearrangement, and chemical “rivalry.” These in turn govern observable properties of the organism: viscosity (<i> “...any tendency for individuals to continue living to the place where they were born.”</i>) and memory (p.282)</p><p>His arena is a multi-generational dynamic of ephemeral winners and losers, quantitative dominance in the gene pool. He proposes various strategies for achieving that dominance, and asserts that the results are mathematically predictable through game theory. A step-wise picture of evolution emerges: <i> “Progressive evolution may be not so much a steady upward climb as a series of discrete steps from stable plateau to stable plateau.”</i> (p.113) Each plateau signals the achievement of an </p><u>Evolutionary Stable Strategy</u> (ESS).<p>This revolutionary book was published in 1976. Dawkins cites two important influences. William Donald Hamilton (1936-2000) developed the idea of “kin selection” – the basis for the principle that <i> “...a gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies....”</i> (p.114) In a chapter titled “Genesmanship", Dawkins provides a simplified version of a formula for calculating the odds that two individuals share a particular gene.</p><p>George C. Williams (1926-2010) contributed the idea of pleioptropy – multiple effects of a single gene. An example is the activation of a gene when the chemical properties of aging accumulate. I mention these antecedents because I often felt I had fallen into a time warp. Dawkins' ideas are a far cry from the Mendelian genetics I learned in school. Readers familiar with these earlier evolutionary pioneers will have a much easier time navigating this book than I had. </p><p>I read the 40th anniversary edition, published in 2016. Extensive explanatory footnotes, often running on for pages, have been added and need to be read in conjunction with the text. This is expedited by the formatting of the Kindle edition. </p><p>Fortunately, this book is leavened with surprising behavioral examples. We learn that a whale song can continue for eight minutes without repetition. (p.68) We learn that a strain of worker bee has the “hygenic” behavior of detecting and culling grubs infected by a particular disease. The culling requires two steps: uncapping the wax cell of the larva and evicting the larva from the hive. (p.78) A strain of mice exhibit the “Bruce effect.” The male mouse exudes a chemical that causes a female impregnated by a different male to abort. (p.191) Vampire bats will regurgitate and share excess blood harvested during the night with unsuccessful bats. (p.298) Dawkins examines and explains these behaviors through the lens of his “selfish gene.”</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5015851?shelf=ecosystems-nature">ecosystems-nature</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5015851?shelf=history">history</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5015851?shelf=nonfiction">nonfiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/388643-m-d"></a></section><section><p>81 reviews7 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7136613">October 2, 2007</a></section><div><p>I read this book when I was a student and studying genetics at the time. This helped a lot, it made an awful lot more sense than what I was learning and I have Professor Dawkins to thank for making me look like a genius in a lecture and completely getting my head round an essay.<p>I am a big fan of Richard Dawkins, and this is his genius. I admire his ability to argue something so comprehensively and convincingly. I first discovered him in a book of essays where he wrote a letter to his daughter Juliet (who was ten at the time) explaining how you must always look for evidence. That, I believe, is one of the most important things to learn in life and the way he presents it to a child is impressive.</p><p>(The book, incidentally, is called How Things Work. I must see if I can add it)</p><p>However, despite being in awe of Professor Dawkins, I find him a little cruel in the way he removes the potential for all the nice things in life. If he is correct, we may as well all be selfish and thoughtless at all times because to do otherwise is simply irrational. I like to retain a little naivete in my convictions, it makes life more palatable.</p><p>Apparently "The Blind Watchmaker" is his best book, but I have completely read very few of his books and prefer to listen to him talk.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/14475342-abubakar-mehdi"></a></section><section><p>158 reviews215 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1436773656">November 29, 2015</a></section><div><p>I love reading books that challenge my worldview and compel me to change it. This book is an excellent work on Evolutionary biology, Genes, Behavioral biology and Natural selection, among many other fascinating topics. Dawkins is succinct, eloquent and a very intelligent tutor. He uses examples and metaphors to illustrate his point and to coalesce them all to form one unifying picture, of a universe, not in perfect harmony, but in tumult and constant change. The chapter on “Memes” blew me off absolutely; I would want my friends to read just that chapter even if they don’t read the whole book. His ideas are fascinating and logical, but his way of expressing and putting them in words is even better. What a shame that he got into the new atheist movement and all the bad publicity that came with it. As a scientist, I found him at the top of his game.<p>This is a very readable, entertaining and beautifully written book that I would recommend to any one who, like me, bunked their biology lectures back in school. There is a lot to learn from this book. The 30th anniversary edition is annotated and made up to date with additional chapters, so the older edition should be avoided.<br /> Read it, let is rinse your brain, and repeat.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2589613-poria-da"></a></section><section><p>114 reviews13 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2152650573">March 10, 2019</a></section><div><p>قسمت‌هایی از این کتاب این پتانسیل را دارد تا در مدارس در کنار ریاضی و دیگر علوم تدریس شود!<br />دید انسان قرن 21 به تکامل داروینی و نقش ژن بسیار محدود است و تلاش‌هایی ازجمله این کتاب و چند کتاب دیگر از داوکینز مثل ساعت‌ساز نابینا در این راستا ستودنی است.<br />اما کتاب ژن خودخواه، یک جنبه ترسناک نیز دارد، کتاب نشان می‌دهد که ما (و تمام موجودات زنده) ماشین‌هایی هستیم برای ژن‌ها و وظیفه‌مان انتقال این ژن‌ها به نسل‌های بعدی است، خودخواهی‌های ما، دروغ‌گویی‌های ما و... همه نتیجه تکامل و نیاز به بقا برای ��ین ماشین بقا است، اما در کنار آنها، نیاز ما به یک دیگر، همکاری‌های اجتماعی و روابط خانوادگی هم نتیجه همین نیاز به بقاست، و یک نتیجه‌گیری جالب نیز داوکینز از این قسمت کتاب دارد: ایثارگری را باید به بچه آموزش داد زیرا این‌طور نیست که جزئی از سرشت ذاتی باشد.<br />در کنار بحث تکامل ژن، در این کتاب به‌صورت خلاصه با مفهوم "میم" و تکامل فرهنگی نیز آشنا می���شویم، بخش خاصی از تکامل که فقط شامل انسان‌ها است.<br />و در پایان هم به‌صورت خلاصه با مفهوم فنوتیپ (رخنمون) گسترش‌یافته و اثری که تمام موجودات زنده بر زندگی یک دیگر دارند آشنا می‌شویم.<br />مفاهیمی که بسیار عجیب است که با این حجم پیشرفت تکنولوژی، باید در یک کتاب بخوانیم به‌جای اینکه در تمامی مجاری آموزشی با آنها آشنا شویم.<br /></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5293536-melki"></a></section><section><p>5,581 reviews2,310 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/408638798">February 22, 2013</a></section><div><p>I didn't find this one nearly as interesting or as fun as <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/14743.The_God_Delusion">The God Delusion</a>. At times, reading it felt like a homework assignment, but for that I will have to fault my own intellectual shortcomings, and NOT Dawkins' logic or writing ability. <p>After all, I'm not about to criticize a man who manages to mention lawyers AND vampire bats in the same sentence.. </p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5293536?shelf=sciency-stuff">sciency-stuff</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8079403-max"></a></section><section><p>337 reviews288 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1623411878">May 9, 2016</a></section><div><p><i>The Selfish Gene</i> is still widely read 40 years after publication, remarkable for a science book, and it continues to cause controversy. In straightforward language Dawkins offers theories for the beginning of life, evolution, sexual differentiation and altruism in human behavior. He takes literary license and uses anthropomorphic language to describe genetic attributes best described by mathematics. This technique makes the book accessible to the lay reader but also makes it read like our genes are consciously plotting their destiny. Dawkins inserts many disclaimers that this is not his intent. Detractors also assert that he is reducing human behavior and morals to nothing more than chemistry thus denying fundamental human value. Dawkins also goes to great length to deny this interpretation. I believe Dawkins succeeds. While very readable, Dawkins challenges our minds, requiring deep thought to reap equally deep rewards. My notes follow.<p>How did life start? Dawkins proposes replicators. Think of chains of amino acids, abundant on the early earth, forming protein like molecules that can change the structure of other amino acid chains to look just like them. Dawkins doesn’t mention prions, but replicators sound very similar to me and today we find prions in ever more places and responsible for a host of diseases from mad cow to Alzheimer’s. Eventually the replicators run out of raw material and start consuming each other. Mutations occur: some develop defenses such as prototypical cell walls, then others develop ways to penetrate the walls and evolution is underway at some point crossing the threshold into what we would call living. The replicators themselves become genes, the dictators of the individual organism’s attributes and behaviors. The organism is the survival machine the genes have constructed and with over 3.5 billion years to work in, these machines can become very complicated, even human. </p><p>How did this evolution take place? Natural selection operates at the level of the gene. Individual organisms are the vehicles for the gene. The gene operates its vehicle through phenotypic effects. If that effect promotes individual survival and reproduction the gene spreads. Eventually all the genes in a population plateau at an Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS). Mutant genes will come and go but the rare positive one will disrupt the status quo until a new ESS is achieved. Dawkins key point is that natural selection operates not on what is best for the species or individual but what is best for the gene. This may seem like a truism, but this is where notes fall short. You have to read the book. </p><p>How did individual organisms become male and female? First were the isogametes which are produced by meiosis just like sperms and eggs. But unlike sperms and eggs isogametes are indistinguishable from each other. Thus any individual can mate with any other. Eventually sperms and eggs evolved as some gametes found it advantageous to be prolific and mobile (sperms) while others benefited by providing large and nutrient rich targets (eggs). The owners of the large and nutrient rich gametes invested more resources in their production. In animal evolution this led to females nurturing and caring for their offspring. Females adopted strategies to get help in the task including strategies to determine male faithfulness. Thus courtship is widely practiced among many species. If all males were faithful courtship would not be necessary. A readily compliant female would immediately attract a faithful companion and her genes would prosper. But too many easy females lead to philandering males who gain advantage for their genes propagating them widely. But a preponderance of philandering males in turn results in more females demanding evidence of commitment provided by courtship. Eventually the proportion of coy to easy female behavior and faithful to philandering male behavior balances out to an Evolutionary Stable Strategy. Keep in mind Dawkins presents this from the gene’s point of view. The genes are working to maximize their own numbers not the individual organism’s although that too may result.</p><p>Similar to the idea of an ESS that balances animal courtship behavior is the ESS of aggressive behavior. In general aggressive behaviors will occupy a proportion of individual behaviors that equalize overall payback. If all members were aggressive, too many would get hurt. If none were, one aberrant aggressor would run amok spreading genes until too many aggressors reduced the payback below that of the non-aggressors. Eventually the proportion of aggressors and/or the range of aggressive behaviors of individuals will come to a balance, an ESS. What is good for the genes as expressed through the individual not the species dictates behavior. Lions don’t try to eat other lions to preserve the species but because it is far safer for the individual lion to attack an antelope for a meal than another lion. </p><p>Dawkins elaborates on the Prisoner’s Dilemma game showing it to be similar to the way ESS’s develop when the game is played continuously for an unknown indeterminate length of time. This version is called Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. It’s too complex to explain here, but nice guys don’t finish last in this explanation of how reciprocal altruism develops in animal and plant societies. He fascinatingly uses his examples to explain the “live and let live policy” between the German soldiers and the British soldiers facing each other in the trenches of WWI in the first two years of the war. This was of course not a great strategy for the generals who had to win the war but it worked quite well for the soldiers. For those interested in game theory and evolution this chapter is a must read.</p><p>The genes that affect the individual’s fate are not only its own. Gene’s operate inside and outside the body of an organism. Dawkins gives the example of the snail and the parasitic fluke that preys on it. The fluke’s genes change the thickness of the snail’s shell which may not help the snail. Dawkins doesn’t mention the microbiome which has drawn so much attention lately. We now realize that most genes in and on the human body are not human but belong to the countless bacteria and microorganisms that populate our guts, mouths, skin, etc. The huge impact these foreign genes have on human wellbeing and behavior is just beginning to be understood. </p><p>In a presentation that otherwise seems to marginalize individual value in favor of the genes, Dawkins does acknowledge the power of human consciousness and culture to override genetic imperatives. Dawkins is famous for introducing the term meme in the <i>The Selfish Gene</i>. Derived from a Greek root to rhyme with the word gene, Dawkins christened meme the unit of transmission for the evolution of culture. It is the element of knowledge handed down generation to generation, be it language, song, fashion or ideas. The meme uses the human brain as its vehicle to propagate itself as it is transferred from person to person. Dawkins points to the concept of God as a particularly successful meme of great longevity and ubiquity and one that evolves just as genes do. </p><p>Even if you are uncomfortable with Dawkins thinking or his presentation style and even if some of the material is a bit dated, there is just way too much food for thought here to ignore. My notes are just a small taste of what this book provides. Five stars all the way. If you haven’t read it, please treat yourself. I hope it leaves your mind racing just as it did mine.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/8079403?shelf=biology">biology</a></ul></section></section></article></div></div>||||I|||| * Home
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 The Selfish Gene

 Richard Dawkins

 4.15
 167,901 ratings 4,503 reviews
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 "The Selfish Gene" caused a wave of excitement among biologists and the general public when it was first published in 1976. Its vivid rendering of a gene's eye view of life, in lucid prose, gathered together the strands of thought about the nature of natural selection into a conceptual framework with far-reaching implications for our understanding of evolution. Time has confirmed its significance. Intellectually rigorous, yet written in non-technical language, "The Selfish Gene" is widely regarded as a masterpiece of science writing, and its insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published.
 Genres Science Nonfiction Biology Evolution Philosophy Psychology Popular Science
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 360 pages, Paperback

 First published January 1, 1976

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 Richard Dawkins

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 4.15
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 Manny
 Author 28 books 13.4k followers
 September 25, 2014
 - What some people seem to find hard to understand is that there's a part of you, in fact the most important part, that's immaterial and immortal. Your body is really no more than a temporary shell for the immortal part, and houses it for a little while until it dies.

 The rest of this review is available elsewhere (the location cannot be given for Goodreads policy reasons)
 pooh-dante science strongly-recommended
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 Nathan
 233 reviews 185 followers
 October 3, 2007
 Didactic, patronizing, condescending and arguably neo-intellectual twaddle. I do not believe in a God, certainly not any God that's been conceived by man, but I also believe Richard Dawkins is a self-satisfied thought-Nazi who is as fundamental in his view of religion as any right-wing minister. Fundamentalists of all faiths scare me, and atheism is just as much a faith as any religion. The existence or non-existence of a God cannot be proven, nor can the existence or non-existence of a soul, and faith is an abstract experience with implications that are fundamentally unresponsive to study. As such, pursuits like Dawkins' often boil down to one type of faith (in "reason") vs. another type of faith (in a "God"). Many people love Dawkins. He is certainly intelligent, and writes as such, but he lacks wisdom and imagination. To me, that's the flaw in all of his work, from The Selfish Gene to The God Delusion. The idea that one human being can know enough about the nature of the universe to make the sweeping declarations Dawkins' makes is preposterous to me, and no more credible than the sweeping declarations of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.

 NC
 books-i-hope-die science science-social-theory-etc
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 Petra X played the long game - and won
 2,383 reviews 33.9k followers
 December 24, 2022
 If you are bored look up the Community Reviews, sort by 1-star. They are very entertaining. One of them as a uni professor advising a student to burn down the book store where they bought this book. Then we have the creationists, then the person who thinks it is all a capitalist manifesto. There are those who think he is arrogant, depraved, uses philistine language (!) ...

 How can anyone be a creationist and not believe in dinosaurs and such? Do they believe that the earth is flat? Are they the sort of people who pay astrologers money to cast their charts because of course your fate is determined by the stars at the moment of your birth? Jesus wept. Or he would have. I'm reading Josephus at the moment, it seems that the only mention of Jesus at the time he was living was in Josephus but that it might have been added later... That's a whole other story, and one which Dawkins might have liked, but these one-star creationists certainly won't.
 2015-reviews dnf-or-never-read medicine-science
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 هدى يحيى
 Author 8 books 15.9k followers
 February 22, 2019

 نحن لسنا إلا مركبات تنتقل الجينات عبرها من جيل إلى جيل
 تشهد تطور الخليقة منذ بدئها وحتى اندثارها
 وترتبط أهميتنا بما نستطيع تقديمه لتلك الجينات كي تنتشر وتظل موجودة
 وكلما كانت هذه الجينات "أنانية" بقت واستمرت وانتشرت
 يتصرف الجين عموما بطريقة تعزز فرص نجاته
 على حساب الجينات الأخرى المنافسة

 فهل هذا ما يود دوكينز أن يؤكده لنا؟
 أهو يدعو للداروينية الإجتماعية؟
 إنه لا يدعو لأي شيء في الواقع سوى محبة العلم وتصديقه
 إنها الحقيقة لا غير
 وهو مجرد ناقل لها ...

 ألا تصدقني
 فكر للحظة في ردة فعل أغلبية من حولك لو أخبرتهم بأنك لا تريد انجاب أطفال
 فكر في تعبير الصدمة على وجوههم وأنت تقول أنك لا تريد لجيناتك البقاء
 وستفهم مقصدي

 مؤلم أن نفكر أن من يعمل لصالح نفسه منا -ولو على حساب غيره- هو من يعمر هذا الكوكب
 تأملوا البشر من حولكم وفكروا
 على أي شاكلة يكون الخالدين
 من خاضوا الحروب وكذبوا وخانوا وقتلوا وزوروا
 هم الأكثر احتمالية في البقاء
 وتوريث جيناتهم تلك لذرياتهم التي سرعان ما تحذو حذوهم
 إنهم الأكثرية للأسف
 وهذه هي الحقيقة العارية....

 ولكن ما فائدة إخبارنا بهذه الحقيقة في كتاب علمي؟
 أهناك غرض آخر لهذا الذي قرأنا؟
 هذا الكتاب بجانب معلوماته المذهلة يذكرنا كم نحن محظوظين ومميزين
 نحن نحظى بالقدرة على أن نرفض ما نحن -أو بالأحرى جيناتنا- مبرمجون عليه
 نحن نبغض واقعنا هذا ونغيره
 نحن نثور ضده رغم الصعاب الكثيرة التي تواجهنا أحيانا

 ومنذ بدء الخليقة وجد المصلحون والطيبون وخادمو الإنسانية
 من قدموا لنا خلاصة الأخلاق وأمتعونا بالفن والأدب
 وتعمقوا في بحور العلم
 ليخبرونا بحقيقة أنفسنا والكون من حولنا

 هذا التنوع منعنا من الانقراض
 نحن محظوظون فعلا بالانتقاء الطبيعي برغم قسوته
 لأننا لم نستسلم كلية له
 وهذا ما يصنع كل الفارق
 ...
 science
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 Brian Hodges
 212 reviews 52 followers
 June 3, 2015
 Although I consider myself a Jesus-loving, god-fearing, creationist, I simply LOVE reading about evolution. I'm not sure what it is, but I find the whole concept, when explained by a lucid and accessible author, fascinating. And Dawkins is nothing if not lucid and accessible. He presents the topic and various questions and scientific controversies in a way that anybody with a willingness to pay attention can follow it. Some of the chapters were a bit more of a slog as Dawkins has to resort to scary scary math and numbers to prove some of his points and set up for even more mindblowing stuff in future chapters. But most of the time, this book is chock full of insanely interesting examples and user-friendly analogies. Dawkins sure knows his way around language too. One of my favorite lines is: "Sex: that bizarre perversion of straightforward replication."

 On the science of it all, as I said, I'm a creationist, but I like to read up on the other side and at least understand, if not appreciate, what their take on the matter is. And to read Dawkins is to realize, yes, this does sound like a very solid theory. My one stumbling block to getting onto the evolution train one hundred percent is time. Perhaps my comprehension of just how long hundred million years is is faulty, but I just can't wrap my mind around how all of these ACCIDENTAL mutations, with no conscious will on the part of the group, individual or gene itself, could possibly result in the complexity of life as we see it now. There is an adage that if you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time, they would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. To believe evolution is to believe that you now have a FINITE amount of monkeys and a FINITE amount of time and yet they STILL manage to produce the complete works of Shakespeare... and they do it OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. Just doesn't seem plausible. But perhaps further reading will sway me at a later date.


 EDIT 6/3/15
 I can't believe this review is still getting attention after all this time! And I love the thread that has developed in the comments. I should let you all know though that as of 2008 I have been living on the side of reason and rationality. I became an atheist after a LOT of reading and contemplating of the Bible (the link to my "de-conversion" story is down in the comments as well). I try these days to, as much as possible, follow the evidence wherever it leads. Additionally Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale" was one of THE most beautiful books I've ever read. Check out my review if you're interested.
 bloody-brilliant life-changing non-fiction
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 David Rubenstein
 801 reviews 2,502 followers
 June 19, 2014
 I read the 30th anniversary edition of this book--it is a true "classic". I note that there are over 48,000 ratings and 1,400 reviews of this book on Goodreads! Richard Dawkins put an entirely original slant on Darwin's theory of natural selection. The book has turned people around, to the understanding that the gene plays the single most central role in natural selection, rather than the individual organism. Over the course of generations, evolution plays a role to ensure the survival of the genes, not the individual or "the species".

 Although the book is 30 years old, it has stood the test of time. There are a few passages--primarily about computers--that are 30 years out of date. But the vast majority of the book seems to have held up quite well.

 Dawkins' prose is very approachable by the layman. There is a bare minimum of technical jargon--quite different from most other books about genetics that I've been reading in recent years. Dawkins takes the time to explain things, often with appropriate metaphors. There are very few diagrams in the book--additional figures could help clarify some points, in my opinion.

 Much of the book is really about the role of game theory, in understanding genetics. Dawkins devotes several chapters to describe how various traits controlled by genes are held in an ESS-- "Evolutionarily Stable Strategy"--a term that Dawkins uses quite often, that I think is a synonym for the game theory term "stable equilibrium". Dawkins shows how an ESS is approached over the course of "iterations" of a game, that is to same, over many generations. These chapters were especially interesting to me, as I recently took an online course on the subject of game theory.

 It is in this book that Dawkins coined the now-famous term "meme". The meme is a cultural analog of the biological gene. A meme seeks to self-perpetuate, and mutates if that aids its self-preservation. Dawkins devotes an entire fascinating chapter to his concept of the meme.

 Throughout the book, Dawkins deals with the dichotomy between the "selfishness" required for survival, and the "altruism" of human behavior. How do we explain altruism? Dawkins explores this dilemma over and over again, showing in virtually every case how the selfishness of genes can help to explain apparent altruistic behavior of the individual.

 This is an absolutely fascinating book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in genetics, evolution, or sociology.

 biology evolution nonfiction
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 Mohammed-Makram
 1,388 reviews 2,737 followers
 October 15, 2022

 لم أر أكثر أنانية من عبدالباسط حموده الذى بدأ أغنية أنا مش عارفنى قائلا



 أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا
 أنا مش عارفنى أنا تهت منى أنا مش أنا
 ما كفاية أنا واحده يا أستاذ عبدالباسط بلاش الإسراف ده

 من منا لا يحب نفسه

 هل حب النفس هو أنانية أم أن الأنانية هي الميل إلى عدم التعاون مع الغير

 في الواقع الكتاب يمكن اعتباره عن نفى الإيثار و حياة التعاون أكثر من اثباته لصفة الأنانية


 من الصعب جدا القراءة لهذا الرجل و هذا سبب النجمات الثلاث و الا فإن الكتاب جدير بنجمة أخرى

 طيب ندخل في الموضوع و ��جيب من الآخر?

 لماذا عاش العالم ثلاثة بلايين سنة لا يعنيه شيئا من أمر العمل الجينى الجماعى و كانت السيادة فقط للبكتريا
 ان كنا قد عشنا في هذه الصورة البسيطة فلما بدأت الكائنات الأكبر في التكون بعد ذلك
 ان كان هذا قد حدث لضرورة فلم بقيت البكتريا حتى الأن و لم تتطور لكائنات أرقى و أكبر
 ما االغرض أصلا من تعدد الكائنات و ما هو هدفها في الحياة



 فكرة الكتاب هي أنه في الأصل كانت الجينات
 فما هي الجينات
 الجينات هي عبارة عن شفرة لصنع نوع أو أكثر من البروتين و من ثم يقوم هذا البروتين ببناء شيء معين أو تحفيز أشياء أخرى لتفاعل ما يخدم مصلحة الجين الذى أطلقه

 هل يوجد هذا الجين منفردا؟ لا بل هو جزء من الحمض النووي الريبوزى ناقص الأكسجين المعروف بالدى ان ايه
 هل له إدراك أو إرادة و وعى؟ مجازا يبدو ذلك و لكن حقيقة لا أحد يعلم حتى الأن



 يعتد دواكنز نظرية أن الحمض النووي مكون في الأساس من مجموعة من الجينات التي اتحدت معا بطريقة ما لتكوين الحمض النووي نفسه لأنها تقوم بعمل جماعى يخدم مجموعة الجينات معا

 الخطوة التالية كانت تكوين غشاء الخلية الواحدة لحماية وجود هذا الحمض النووي و من ثم عملية انقسامه و تضاعفه مع ما يشمله ذلك من تغذيته
 تعقدت العملية بعد ذلك لتصبح للخلية نواة ثم نشأت الكائنات عديدة الخلايا و باقى النظرية الداروينية المعروفة

 الجديد هو أنه بدلا من نفى الوعى عن البكتريا و الكائنات التي لا تمتلك جهاز عصبى متطور أرجع هذا الوعى للجينات نفسها و منحها شرف القيادة و لم يعتبرها مجرد شفرة لإرادة عليا أخرى تستغلها و رغم ذلك لم ينف الوعى عن المخ في الكائنات الأرقى أو الجهاز العصبى ككل. و لذلك حكاية أظنها طريفة:



 في مكان بعيد في فضاء الكون كانت مجرة أندروميدا التي تبعد عن الأرض مائتان سنة ضوئية و كان بها حضارة متطورة جدا أرادت السيطرة على العالم و لكن بعد المسافة بينها و بين الكواكب الأخرى حال دون ذلك إذ يحتاج غزو الأرض مثلا لمئات السنين للسيطرة عليها و هذا يتعدى عمر أي فرد على الكوكب فما العمل.

 تفتق ذهنهم الذكى على بث شفرة في أرجاء الكون بحيث تكون سهلة لأى كائن ذكى فيستطيع حلها و تضمنت هذه الشفرة رسالة للتواصل مع حضارتهم مع وعود بالرخاء و التنمية و تضمنت أيضا طريقة صنع كمبيوتر ضخم و متطور لإتمام هذا الإتصال

 بعد مائتى سنة وصلت الرسالة للأرض و عمت الأفراح و الليالى الملاح أرجاء المعمورة و من ثم بدأت وكالات العلوم تصنيع هذا الكمبيوتر الضخم و ما ان اتموه حتى فقدو السيطرة عليه و أصبح هو من يتحكم في كل شيء و يوجهه لمصلحته و مصلحة صانعيه الأصليين في أندروميدا
 السؤال الأن .. هل عرف سكان أندروميدا بما حدث؟ بالطبع لا فالمعلومة ستصلهم بعد مائتى سنة أخرى. هل يسيطرون على الكمبيوتر؟ لا أيضا و إنما هو يسيطر على نفسه بالبرنامج الذى وضعوه له و راعوا فيه أن يصلح لأى بيئة و يتعامل مع أي حدث بتعليمات عامة و ذكية مع إمكانية تطوير نفسه و تعلمه من الأحداث بشرط الإلتزام بالعمل لصالحهم.



 هذا ما يخصنا من الحكاية و لكن وجب أن أقول لكم كيف انتهت أحداث القصة بأن استطاع الأرضيون تحطيم الكمبيوتر و استعادة سيطرتهم على الكوكب الأزرق الضائع في الفضاء

 و لكن حكايتنا نحن لم تنته بعد
 الجينات هي السيد الأول و هي لا تستطيع التواصل مع العالم الخارجي
 هي فقط جمعية من الأصدقاء الأنانيين اللذين لا يهمهم الا التضاعف و التكاثر و الخلود



 في البداية تجمعوا معا ثم اتخذو الغشاء الخلوى و من ثم تحصنوا بالنواة و بدأوا في تكوين آلات ضخمة للبقاء على هيئة نباتات و حيوانات وصولا للإنسان و لا فرق لديهم بين هذا و ذاك و لكن العبرة بتمرير تلك الجينات من جيل إلى جيل بهدف البقاء و الخلود فقط

 كما قال كفار قريش من قبل: إن هي إلا أرحام تدفع و أرض تبلع

 من موقعها المحصن تصنع الجينات البروتين الذى يحافظ على وجود الجسم و من ضمنه الجهاز العصبى و المخ الذى يتواصل مع العالم الخارجي

 هل تسيطر الجينات على المخ؟ لا
 هل يسيطر المخ على الجينات؟ لا
 إنها كقصة أنروميدا

 الجينات هي السيد الفضائى و المخ هو الكمبيوتر العملاق و أرض المعركة هي الجسم أو آلة البقاء كما يقول داوكنز

 قدر الإمكان اختصرت و حاولت توضيح الفكرة غلا أن الكتاب مرهق و به أجزاء شيقة جدا و ممتعة و تفتح المجال للخيال الخصب و أجزاء أخرى مملة و ثقيلة تجلب النوم في ثوان معدودة

 بعد أن أنهيت الكتاب فتحت التلفاز لأجد فتاة تتلوى و تغنى هذه الأغنية و كأن جيناتها هي من ت��حكم فيها و تبث لنا رسالة
 روح ع الأشرافية ولأصحابك أشكي
 قول أني نكدية وشو ما بدك أحكي
 قول عني أنانية قول مش رومانسية
 فش كل خلقك فيي
 أنا بعرف إنك مقهور وقلبك راح يفقع .!!

 شوف حالك عليي تكبر لا تشبع
 أزرع كل حقدك فيا فل وما ترجع
 science
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 Bradley
 Author 5 books 3,845 followers
 April 2, 2017
 Color me very impressed. I can now see why this is considered to be one of those hugely popular science books I keep hearing about and the reason why Dawkins has become so widely known and/or respected with or without his notoriety.

 Indeed, the pure science bits were pretty much awesome. We, or at least I, have heard of this theory in other contexts before and none of it really comes as much surprise to see that genes, themselves, have evolved strategies that are exactly the same as Game Theory in order to find the best possible outcome for continued replication. Hence: the selfish gene.

 Enormous simple computers running through the prisoner's dilemma with each other, rival genes, and especially within whole organisms which could just be seen as gigantic living spacecraft giving the genes an evolutionary advantage of finding new and more prosperous adaptations.

 Yup! That's us!

 I honestly don't see the problem. I love the idea that we are just galaxies of little robots running complicated Game Theories that eventually turn into a great cooperative machine where everyone (mostly) benefits, with plenty of complicated moves going way beyond hawks and doves and straight into the horribly complicated multi-defectors, forgivers, and other evolutionary styles that depend on the events that have gone before and the pre-knowledge (or lack of) a set end-date for the entire experiment... in other words, our deaths, whether pre-planned or simply the entire mass of genes just coming to realize that it's no longer in their best interest to keep pushing this jalopy around any longer if they're not getting anything out of it... like further replication. :)

 Even when it's not precisely sex, it's still all about sex. :)

 Of course, what I've just mentioned isn't the entire book, because, as a matter of fact, the book walks us through so many stages of thought, previous research, developments, mistakes, and upgraded theories and surprising conclusions based on soooooo much observable data that any of us might be rightfully confounded with the weight of it unless we were in the heart of the research, ourselves.

 It's science, baby.

 Make sure you don't make the data conform to your theory. Build your theory from observable data. Improve upon it as the building blocks are proved or disproved, keep going until it is so damn robust until nothing but a true miracle could topple it, and then keep asking new questions.

 The fact is, this theory has nothing (or everything) to do with our lives. We play Game Theory, too, in exactly the same way every gene everywhere does, but we just happen to be able to make models on top of the situations and we're able to choose whether to see through the lies, the hawk strategies, or when to stop cooperating if the advantages work out much better for us if we did. We, like our genes, can choose long-term cooperative strategies or play everything like a Bear market. :)

 Even this book says that it's very likely that Nice Guys can win, but just like our lives, the gene lives keep discovering ever more complicated strategies and all eventual strategies become more and more situational.

 Isn't that us, to a tea? I wonder if most complaints about this book stem from complaints about Game Theory rather than the perceived conclusion (much better spelled out, not in this book, but in later books)... that atheism rules the day. It really isn't evident here. Instead, we have a macrocosm mimicking the microcosm and no one wants to challenge their comfortable world view.

 Things aren't simple. All choices to betray or cooperate are then met with situation and memory and ever complex meta-contexts, the difference between us and genes being that we're self-aware and the genes are not.

 Yes, yes, I see where the arguments can start coming out of the closet about self-determination and such, but that's not really the point of this book at all. The point is that it's a successful model that accurately describes reality. It has nothing at all to do with the macro-world except obliquely, and makes no value judgments on our art, our beliefs, or how we think about ourselves except in our uniquely stubborn and self-delusional ways that love to take things out of context and apply misunderstood concepts to our general lives and wonder why everything gets so screwed up. :)

 But then, maybe I'm just applying my own incomplete models to yet another and we lousy humans still lack WAY TOO MUCH data to build a really impressively improved model. :)

 Come on, Deep Thought. Where are you? :)
 2017-shelf non-fiction science
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 Alex
 1,419 reviews 4,280 followers
 May 2, 2022
 Richard Dawkins shot to celebrity in 1976 with this rabble-rousing book, which change the game by inventing the word "meme" and basically nothing else, the rest of his ideas range from "ehhh not exactly" to "yeah but so what." Fun to read though! The gist is that the essential unit of life is the gene; our bodies are just big fleshy protection robots for the gene. Dawkins says I'm a tool. Right? High five!

 And you might be like "Okay, so who cares?" What difference does that make, right? Well, first of all I'm gonna go have some pie because fuck you, genes, you're not the boss of me. Woohoo! Other than that, no, no difference, carry on. It makes a difference to scientists, because when you look at it this way all kinds of behaviors make more sense, or make sense in a different way. Dawkins' particular focus is on behaviors we call "altruistic", like when an antelope warns his herd about an approaching lion. Dawkins would like to go through every altruistic behavior he can think of, which is a lot, and show you why it's actually not at all altruistic.

 (The antelope is an easy one: he warns the herd by jumping up and down, which doubles as a sign to the lion that he is super bouncy and the lion should go chase someone less bouncy.)

 So, no big surprise to those of us who know Dawkins in his latest incarnation as The World's Dickishest Atheist:* Dawkins does a lot of party pooping in this book. Did you think you were a nice guy? You are not. Your genes command you to behave nicely on occasion because in the end it will benefit you. (See: the Prisoner's Dilemma; also game theory. Or read this book, which will explain both to you.)

 * which is more annoying to religious people, but also annoying to those of us who are atheists but don't feel the need to yell about it all the time

 But Dawkins is a tremendously engaging writer. He's good at explaining technical concepts clearly. And he's funny! This book is fun to read. And it's full of the kind of fascinating tidbits that make you turn to your spouse and say "Holy moley, did you know saddleback birds on an island in New Zealand make up new songs that then spread through the population like a Pharrell Williams single until everyone's singing them?" And she's like "Sounds boring! I'm reading Jezebel, did you know Justin Bieber was racist when he was fourteen?" and then the two of you look at each other like who even are you? And your genes are like who cares, you two should make out.
 2014 rth-lifetime science
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 Peiman E iran
 1,394 reviews 674 followers
 May 25, 2017
 دوستانِ گرانقدر این کتاب از 500 صفحه و 13 فصل تشکیل شده است
 عزیزانم، به ژنی در انتخابِ طبیعی برتری داده میشود که تجمعِ همتاهایِ آن در خزانۀ ژنی رو به افزایش باشد.توجهِ ما به ژن هایی است که به نظر میرسد رویِ رفتارِ اجتماعیِ دارندگانش اثر میگذارد، پس بیایید برایِ ژن ها تا حدی هوش و آزادی قائل شویم تا این نوشته و ریویو برایتان ملموس تر باشد
 دوستانِ گرامی، ژنِ خودخواه، فقط یک قطعۀ کوچک از دی اِن اِی نیست. بلکه همۀ نسخه هایِ قطعۀ خاصی از «دی اِن اِی» منتشر شده در سراسرِ جهان است و هدفش این است که تعدادِ خود را در خزانۀ ژنی افزایش دهد و این کار را با برنامه ریزی برایِ بقا و تولیدِ مثلِ بدن هایی که در آن است، انجام میدهد
 همۀ ما موجودات، ماشینِ بقا هستیم، برایِ یک نوع همتاساز که آن را «دی اِن اِی» مینامیم... این همتاسازها برایِ بقایِ خود ماشینهایِ مختلفی را ساخته اند... به عنوانِ مثال، میمون ماشینی است که ژن ها را در بالایِ درخت حفظ میکند.. ماهی ماشینی است که ژن را در آب نگه میدارد... و کرم دستگاهی است که ژن را در زیرِ خاک با ... نگه میدارد... پس دوستانِ من، دی اِن اِی عملکردِ اسرارآمیزی دارد
 بدنِ ما انسانها و موجوداتِ دیگر، ماشینی است که برایِ ژنهایش از هیچ کوششی فروگذار نمیکند.. ژن در هر بدن برایِ بقا از بهترین فرصت ها استفاده میکند، این فرصت ها بسته به آنکه بدن نر باشد یا ماده، با هم فرق دارند
 خوب دوستانِ خوبم، برای اینکه این ریویو خسته کننده و تخصصی نباشد.. سعی میکنم مثال هایِ جالب و نکته هایِ مهم در این کتاب و همۀ فصل هایش، در موردِ ژن را برایِ شما دوست دارانِ دانش و خرد، در زیر بنویسم
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 عزیزان، ژن هایِ خودخواه، گاهی با روشِ ایثارگری در بین همنوعان، سعی به بقایِ خود میکنند: مثلاً برخی از بابون ها ژنی وجود دارد، به نامِ « اگر یک نرِ بالغ هستی، از گروه در مقابلِ پلنگ دفاع کن» ... به این ترتیب بابونِ بالغ جانِ خود را برایِ دفاع از سایرین به خطر می اندازد
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 گاهی اوقات در طبیعت، بر خلافِ خواستۀ ژنِ خودخواه، عمل میشود
 مثلاً دیده شده که یک میمونِ مادر که داغ دار است و بچۀ خود را از دست داده، به جایِ تولیدِ مثل و تلاش برایِ بقایِ ژن هایِ خود، بچۀ میمونِ دیگری را از او میدزد و بزرگ میکند... با اینکار نه تنها به بقایِ ژنِ خود کمکی نکرده، بلکه این شانس را به رقیبِ ژنیِ خود داده تا تولیدِ مثلِ دوباره داشته باشد
 یا اینکه برخی از ماده ها وجود دارند که بچۀ یتیمی را بزرگ میکنند... در صورتیکه طبقِ قواعدِ ژنِ خودخواه، باید بچۀ یتیم از گرسنگی بمیرد
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 گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه با تقلب به بقایِ خود کمک میکند
 به عنوانِ مثال، فاخته ها سعی میکنند تخم هایِ خود را به لانه هایِ پرندگانِ دیگر برده، تا آنها رویِ تخم بنشینند... حال اگر پرندۀ دیگر از تخمهایش شناخت داشته باشد، با پا تخمِ اضافه را به پایین می اندازد... اما برخی از پرندگان مانندِ کاکایی ها، به تخمی که رویِ آن نشسته اند، توجه نکرده، و فریب میخورند
 حال در گروه هایِ گوناگون ژنِ راستگو و ژنِ ایثارگر، متفاوت است
 ایثارگران، وقتی متوجه میشوند یکی از تخم ها مالِ خودشان نیست، بازهم آن را بزرگ میکنند، با اینکار باعث میشوند تا ژنِ تقلب در گروه پخش شود.. زیرا آن پرندۀ متقلب تند تند تخم گذاری میکند و اینکار را انجام میدهد
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 گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به خیانت رو می آورد
 مثلاً وقتی ماده ای میبیند که جفتش در نبرد با نرِ دیگر مغلوب شده، سریع به سمتِ نرِ پیروز رفته و با او جفت گیری میکند تا ژنِ برتر حاصل شود
 گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه با دروغ به بقایِ خود کمک میکند
 در پرندگان، وقتی مادر برایِ بچه ها کرم یا حشره می آورد، بچه ها دهانِ خود را باز میکنند و مادر به میزانِ صدا دقت کرده و به آنها خوراک میدهد، هر کدام گرسنه تر باشد بیشتر صدا میزند.... حال ممکن است ژنِ خودخواه در یکی از جوجه ها بیشتر باشد، در نتیجه جوجه تقلب کرده و وقتی سیر شده دوباره صدایِ بلند میدهد، هم مادر را گول میزند و هم به خواهر و برادرانش خیانت میکند و خواهر و برادرانش از گشنگی میمیرنند
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 گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به تهدید رو می آورد
 مثلاً در پرندگان دو حالت دارد، یکی از جوجه ها که بزرگتر و قوی تر است، با صدایِ جیک جیکِ زیاد توجه شکارچیان را به آنها جلب میکند و میگوید: روباه، روباه بیا ما را بخور... لذا مادرش مجبور است دهانش را ببند و او راضی نگه دارد
 اما زمانی میرسد که جوجۀ ضعیفتر، ژنِ هوشمندی دارد، وقتی میبیند به او خوراک نمیرسد، شکارچی را صدا میکند، تا مادر فرار کرده، روباه بیاید و آن جوجۀ بزرگتر و زورگو را بخورد
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 گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به دستور رو می آورد
 مثلاً اگر توله ای یا جوجه ای به دنیا بیاید و از خواهران و برادرانِ دیگرش کوچکتر و ضعیف تر و نحیف تر باشد، ژنی به او دستور میدهد که: « بدن، اگر از آنهایی که باهم زاده شده اید، خیلی کوچکتر هستی، تقلا نکن و بمیر»... و حتی بهتر است خوراکِ توله هایِ دیگر شود...به این ترتیب بیشترین سود را نصیبِ ژن هایش میکند
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 گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به کشتن و قتل رو می آورد
 مثلاً پرندۀ «راهنمایِ کندویِ عسل»، مثلِ فاخته ها متقلب است و تخمِ خود را در لانۀ پرندگانِ دیگر میگذارد... این نوع پرنده، نوکِ تیز و خمیده ای دارد... وقتی از تخم بیرون می آید.. سریع جوجه هایِ دیگر را سوراخ سوراخ کرده و میکشد، تا برایِ گرفتنِ خوراک از دهانِ مادرِ ناتنیِ خود، با او رقابت نکنند
 یا نوعی پرستو، تخمِ خود را در لانۀ زاغ میگذارد... جوجه زودتر سر از تخم درآورده. و تخمِ زاغ را میانِ برجستگی هایِ بالش گذاشته و آن را به پایین پرت میکند
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 گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به انتخاب رو می آورد
 مثلاً اگر ببیند تعداد نرها زیاد شده اند... نمیگذارد تخمدان ها اسپرمِ نرساز را دریافت کنند... در حالتِ عادی، ژنِ خودخواه ترجیه میدهد،والد، ماده به دنیا بیاورد
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 گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به برده داری رو می آورد
 مثلاً گونه ای از مورچه ها هستند که به مورچه هایِ دیگر حمله کرده و سربازان را میکشند، و تخمهایِ ملکه را دزدیده و به لانۀ خود می آورند... وقتی بچه ها به دنیا می آیند، از آنها به عنوانِ برده استفاده میکنند
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 گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به همزیستی رو می آورد
 مثلاً گونه ای از مورچه ها وجود دارند که از شته ها به عنوانِ حیوانِ خانگی استفاده میکنند، یعنی شته ها شیرۀ گیاهان را میمکند، سپس مورچه ها شته ها را میدوشند و این شیره را از پشتشان در می آورند... در ازایِ آن مورچه ها از خانۀ شته ها همچون سربازان محافظت میکنند
 ما انسان ها، در سلول هایمان چیزهایِ ریزی وجود دارد به نامِ «میتوکندری»... «میتوکندری» کارخانه هایِ شیمیاییِ کوچکی هستند که وظیفۀ تولیدِ انرژی را دارند... «میتوکندری» ها در اصل باکتری هایِ همزیستی هستند که از ابتدایِ تکامل با سلول هایِ ما پیوند یافته اند و داد و ستد میکنند
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 گاهی اوقات یک ژن بی جهت ژن هایِ دیگر را از بین میبرد... این ژنها دستگاه را بهم میریزند... مانندِ «ژنِ تی»... مثلاً در موش ها اگر موشی در کودکی دو ژنِ تی داشته باشد، در کودکی میمیرد
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 دوستانِ عزیزم، تنها چیزی که ژن ها به طورِ مستقیم میتوانند آن را تحتِ تأثیر قرار دهند، ترکیبِ پروتئین است

 امیدوارم این مطالب برایِ شما دوستدارانِ دانش، مفید بوده باشه
 «پیروز باشید و ایرانی»
 علم-و-دانش فلسفه
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 Guille
 728 reviews 1,348 followers
 March 17, 2022

 “Una gallina es solo la forma en que un huevo hace otro huevo“ (Samuel Butler 1835-1902)
 La evolución es un hecho que solo un fanático religioso puede negar: antes había animales que ahora no existen y ahora existen animales que antes no. Aunque esto era conocido ya antes de Darwin, él tuvo la genialidad de idear un mecanismo que explicara cómo se producía esa evolución: la selección natural. Su explicación ha sido modificada con posterioridad de forma sustancial en base a los nuevos conocimientos sobre genética, mecanismos de la herencia, registros fósiles, etc. hasta dejar de ser una teoría, una hipótesis, para convertirse en una ley científica al mismo nivel de credibilidad que cualquier otra ley establecida por la ciencia.

 La interesante y fructífera tesis que plantea Dawkins en este libro es establecer como unidad de este mecanismo de selección, no a la especie ni al grupo ni al individuo, sino al gen.
 “Un cuerpo es el medio empleado por los genes para preservar los genes inalterados.”
 Tomar al gen como unidad de selección explicaría, por ejemplo, el altruismo, esto es, cómo es posible que un individuo quiera aumentar el bienestar de otro ser semejante a expensas de su propio bienestar. La respuesta es que los genes “pueden alcanzar mejor sus objetivos egoístas fomentando una forma limitad del altruismo a nivel de los animales individuales.” El libro expone muchos ejemplos en el que comportamientos que en principio pueden parecernos altruistas pueden ser interpretados como una forma de egoísmo tanto a nivel del individuo como a un nivel más profundo y realmente inquietante, el del gen.

 Otra aportación interesantísima de Dawkins en este libro es la idea de meme , la unidad mínima de información que se puede transmitir, que actuaría como un replicador a nivel cerebral de forma semejante a un gen. Ejemplos de memes que da el propio autor son: “tonadas o sones, ideas, consignas, modas en cuanto a vestimenta, formas de fabricar vasijas o de construir arcos”.
 “Los memes se propagan en el acervo de memes al saltar de un cerebro a otro mediante un proceso que… puede llamarse imitación... Si los memes de los cerebros son análogos a los genes, deben ser estructuras cerebrales autorreplicadoras, patrones reales de conexión neuronal que se reconstruyen a sí mismos en un cerebro después de otro.”
 Así, también los memes están expuestos a un mecanismo de selección, de tal forma que serán favorecidos aquellos que “explotan su medio cultural para su propia ventaja”, siendo su medio cultural el acervo de memes existentes en cada momento.

 Un libro sugerente y explicado de esa forma tan didáctica que siempre exhibe Dawkins.
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 Swrp
 561 reviews 86 followers
 October 22, 2020
 This book is pretty good! Professor Richard Dawkins has narrated this topic on life and evolution in a very interesting way.

 A must read - all about The Immortal Gene and The Immortal Replicator!

 "Death, of course, is not a failure. Death is normal. Death may be the enemy, but it is also the natural order of things."
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 Nandakishore Mridula
 1,238 reviews 2,207 followers
 September 11, 2018
 On 27 December 1831, a young naturalist by the name of Charles Robert Darwin set upon a voyage of discovery on the HMS Beagle which was to last five years and take him all over the globe. He came back with a lot of specimens, copious scientific notes and an explosive theory which was to rock the world of ideas: the theory of evolution by natural selection. Suddenly, God became an unnecessary and unlikely hypothesis: man was pulled down from his high throne as the master of creation: and existence became a cacophony of chance events rather than a carefully co-ordinated orchestra. Naturally, the religious establishment rebelled. But like all ideas whose time had come, evolution hung on with great tenacity to become the widely accepted idea it is today.

 I have been fascinated with the idea ever since I was introduced to it in high school. As far as I am concerned, the very argument that theists put forward against evolution is its greatest strength; viz. the complexity of the natural world. According to the believer, such a complex and “perfect” (whatever that means!) system has to have an architect behind it. But the fact is that it is not “perfect” – nature is dynamic. What we perceive as stability is homeostasis, a seething mass of life, eating one another and being eaten; and as nature shifts her stance, so does life, whole species dying out (like the dinosaurs) to make way for others.

 But wait! Humans are different, aren’t we? We compete, true: but we also show altruism. People lay down their life to protect their progeny, their brothers and sisters, their countrymen… if we were selfish survival machines, why would we do this? It means we have the spark of divinity within us, doesn’t it?

 Well… not exactly, according to Richard Dawkins. It only means we have the “Selfish Gene” within us.

 The Selfish Gene needs no introduction. This is one of those iconic “pop” science books which everyone seems to have read, like The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris. I was a bit late (well, about 37 years!) in getting to it. However, the book has lost none of the charm, and the idea any of its power, due to the ravages of time: if at all, it has become stronger.

 What is a gene?

 Dawkins confesses that there is no universally agreed definition of ‘gene’. We now know that the blueprint for building of each human being is coded in 23 pairs of chromosomes, one of every pair being inherited from each parent. The code inside the chromosome is written in DNA molecules, the famous ‘Double Helix’ that Dawkins terms the ‘Immortal Coils’.



 The DNA molecules are replicators. They replicate themselves; they also manufacture proteins, the basic building block of life as we know it. These DNA molecules (some version of them) were the original “life” in the “primeval soup”: they reproduced themselves and competed with one another to survive. Natural selection defined which lasted and which died away.

 Dawkins defines a gene (a definition borrowed from G. C. Williams) as “any part of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection”. In other words, a gene is a copier with high “copying-fidelity”: that is, it ensures that it copies itself without mistakes so that longevity in the form of copies is ensured.

 So in the primeval soup, these genes went on happily competing with each other, evolving newer and newer ways of surviving in an environment which got increasingly complex. As part of survival technology, the genes built a lot of machines, bunching together to form gene complexes in the context. The machines got more and more complex, from the single-cell amoeba to the human being.

 Dawkins starts the book with the question “Why are people?” This is his answer – so that the gene can survive and replicate. We are nothing but vehicles for the genes, who exist to ensure their survival.

 Pretty disillusioning, isn’t it? But Dawkins is far from done. After pulling down humanity from its pedestal as the “pinnacle of creation”, he proceeds to explain all the lofty sentiments such as love, altruism, sacrifice etc. as the result of strategies for gene survival – extremely selfish strategies at that. It is very difficult to stomach for a generation which has been trained to behold human beings as somehow special, and the above sentiments as the proof of their exclusivity which separate them from the “lower” animals. As one disgusted poster said in one of the fora where this book was discussed: “So altruism is like going to the potty? Oh dear!”

 But even though disheartening at first, as Dawkins begins to back up his arguments with solid scientific reasoning, it is difficult to dispute him, and difficult not to get excited when he presents his theory with mathematical precision.

 Aggression and Stability

 One of the most common arguments put forward against evolution is that an uncontrolled state of aggression will lead to a free-for-all and the “stable” environment we see cannot exist. Dawkins explains this with the concept of an ESS (Evolutionary Stable Strategy), which leads to a dynamic equilibrium or homeostasis: he posits a theoretical society populated by pure aggressors (“hawks”) and pure pacifists (“doves”), and proves logically that over a period of time, the number of hawks and doves will stabilise in roughly equal proportion. This is because it is not the survival machines which are having the final say on who will win: it is the genes. This concept is further expanded with fine variations on the behavior – ultimately, every time, a dynamically stable configuration results.

 In Chapter 12, ‘Nice Guys Finish First’ (added as part of the second edition), Dawkins takes this theory further and presents a varying set of evolutionary strategies, modelled on Game Theory. It describes in detail various evolutionary stratagems he tried out on his computer (with contributions from a lot of scientists) and the outcomes. This is a fascinating analysis and in my opinion, the most interesting part of the book – but that may just be the engineer in me, who loves anything mathematical!

 Altruism

 Oh yes. The old stumbling block. The favourite saw of the creationists. If we are all selfish, how does altruism come into the picture? Why do parents sacrifice themselves for their children, why do siblings do the same for each other, why do we co-operate at all? Should we not be at each other’s throats, all the time?

 No, according to Dawkins. If we look at it from the gene’s point of view, it all makes perfect sense.

 When we are talking of genes, we are talking of gene pools here: a group of genes working together so that the survival of each is maximised. Dawkins makes a brilliant analogy to a rowing team. If a coach is choosing a team, he would over a period end up with a group who can pull in such a way that the winning chance is maximised – an individual rower, however brilliant he is, would find no place in the team if he did not contribute to the group effort. In the case of genes, natural selection plays the role of the coach. Those genes which could not co-operate simply get discarded in the evolutionary race over a period of time.

 Also, one should bear in mind that a gene is not a single physical bit of DNA; it is all replicas of a particular bit of DNA, distributed throughout the world. A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this could be the origin of altruism. Dawkins calls it ‘genesmanship’. He spends four chapters explaining how it applies to siblings, offspring, lovers and apparent strangers. In the last chapter (‘The Long Reach of the Gene’), Dawkins extrapolates the above argument to how the gene in one species can extend its reach to another species, possibly to the detriment of the latter, to explain parasitism.

 One may take it or leave it, but the arguments are well thought-out and presented with great clarity; with cold, scientific logic. There are no opinions here. It makes fascinating reading, even though the mathematical analysis may put some off!

 Memes

 The concept of the ‘meme’ is possibly the most revolutionary one expressed in this book. Dawkins defines a meme as a unit of cultural transmission, a basic idea which gets replicated in human brains, in the ‘primeval soup’ of human culture; which, according to him, is in the same state as the biological ‘soup’ was at the dawn of life on earth. To quote the author himself:

 Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.

 According Dawkins, all prevalent ideas (including the idea of God!) is a meme: the meme survives because it has a survival value in the meme pool. If we subscribe to this idea, the whole intellectual arena is nothing but a group of memes grappling for survival – not a very edifying thought. It seems Dawkins appreciates this, because he ends the chapter on memes with the speculation that man has the capacity for genuine, disinterested, true altruism. He says “We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.”

 I, as a fan of the Jungian idea of the Collective Unconscious, could not help speculating on whether the meme could be embedded way down in the gene itself? Maybe the Collective Unconscious is nothing but little bits of consciousness, embedded inside the DNA, which guided the process of survival? If so, it could be case for Intelligent Design – or rather, Intelligent Evolution.

 This is one of those ‘pop-science’ books which are enlightening and enjoyable at the same time. A must-read.

 Read the review also on my BLOG .
 science
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 Infinite Jen
 77 reviews 179 followers
 July 27, 2022
 Last night, while watching a fusillade of pyrotechnic spermatozoa ejaculated from gaudy tubes of erectile aspect, I saw the whole of human desire captured in Incarusian defiance. With shells striving to pierce the black ovum of space, but having their motility sapped by the deformational geometries which encircle our terrestrial biosphere. Disclosing their metal salts and iron filings with violent punctuations of barometric pressure and visual amplitude, only to be completely consumed, mere seconds later, by silence and darkness. A stranger, perhaps sensing the melancholy which had gripped me by the haunches, innocently inquired, “Is something bothering you, sweetie?” To which I hissed, “I sometimes fantasize about blasting a champagne cork into someone’s mouth, mid sentence, then impaling them with the bill of sword fish.” I then turned back to the show, shaking my head, “You didn’t deserve that. I’m just thinking about the relationship between senescence and antagonistic pleiotropy and how you can’t make sense of certain biological realities unless your conceptual efforts proceed from the optimal level of granularity. For instance, when I, as a little girl, had the distinct terror of being chased by a Somali ostrich, and was subsequently trampled by said flightless bird, with my large strawberry milkshake pinned beneath me and exploding all over my white dress like a bazooka bubblegum claymore, (which appeared to onlookers as my ever loving guts being mashed out of my tiny body), it did not behoove me to attempt to understand its behavior at the level of quantum physics. I’m sure the whole dreary affair transgressed no physical laws, up to and including my mother screaming; “Saints be with us! The little idiot has finally done herself in!” I’m not saying that. But it was a far better use of attentional resources to focus on my behavior prior to the incident, wherein I was strangely compelled to harangue the temperamental bird about the dimorphic condition of its tiny head relative to its large body.” Laughing and turning to ask the man for a light, I realized that he had fled silently back into the crowd.

 Not to be thwarted in mid rant, I singled out an attractive woman and stormed towards her, gesturing wildly as if the Cesar of my ego was experiencing bloody death curtesy of white hot senatorial stabbings administered by psychedelics. Shouting, “In precisely this way, it is difficult to make much sense of our ephemeral existence without the concept of antagonistic pleiotropy.” Drawing painfully close and smelling her hair. “Are you single? Don’t answer that! First, observe, at the proper level of magnification, the center of evolution’s dramas, not the individual, but the gene. Now, if we are going to attempt to understand death, this inability of ours to achieve the escape velocity of our mortality, like those mortars which currently spunk the night sky with their rainbow smithereens. To understand this spectral Bukkake, we must cudgel the knees of our tired frameworks and streak madly into the arms of lusty new paradigms. Observe! If we were going to ask the obvious question; why do we perish amongst abundance? Why must we bust a fat, prismatic nut, and never be heard again? If we have food sufficient to meet our caloric needs, should we not be able to repair the damage we incur indefinitely? I say unto you; Let us suppose that there was a gene, in our ancestral past, which controlled for more than one phenotypic trait (i.e the protein expression of the genotype under influence of environment factors). One of these traits was quite beneficial early in life and ensured that the humans who possessed it were more likely to take it to pound town, but the same gene was also responsible for one or more defects which would manifest outside of prime reproductive years. You would end up with a proliferation of these genes irregardless of their ultimate cost, (i.e the eventual demise of the screaming mortar as it goes ungently into that good night) because reproduction is key. The mystery of senescence now seems tractable, doesn’t it?”

 Silently she takes my hand and leads me away from the crowd. Once we’ve made it to the top of a small hill overlooking the celebration, she turns to me and says;

 "Sì, abbiamo un'anima. Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot.”

 This book is an account of one of the most successful science metaphors ever created, of how immortal genes are winnowed through the game theoretic calculus of natural selection into evolutionary stable states. About how the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators can produce all the various strategies which enable the carriers of this encoded information to survive and send it into the future. The Selfish Gene is one of the best books on evolution ever written. It profoundly communicates just what evolution is all about: the replication of genetic units of information, by whatever means possible. Viruses, retroviruses, parasitic insects, gut bacteria, mitochondria, the grotesque nuptial gifts of scorpion flies, and motorcycle accidents caused by toxoplasmosis - they are all successful cases of genes replicating in varied "survival machines," giving zero shits about how quaint their respective venues appear. It's an amazing, well-proved idea, wonderfully communicated by a passionate writer. It requires no advanced training or technical background to understand, and will reward your attention by permanently enriching your understanding of the natural world.
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 Ahmad Sharabiani
 9,568 reviews 55.6k followers
 October 4, 2021
 The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins

 The gene-centred view of evolution that Dawkins championed and crystallized is now central both to evolutionary theorizing and to lay commentaries on natural history such as wildlife documentaries.

 A bird or a bee risks its life and health to bring its offspring into the world not to help itself, and certainly not to help its species — the prevailing, lazy thinking of the 1960's, even among luminaries of evolution such as Julian Huxley and Konrad Lorenz — but (unconsciously) so that its genes go on.

 Genes that cause birds and bees to breed survive at the expense of other genes.

 تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز سوم ماه اکتبر سال 2011میلادی

 عنوان: ژن خودخواه؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داوکینز؛ مترجم نرگس رستمی‌گوران؛ تهران، نشر چشمه، 1389؛ در 481ص؛ شابک9789643629946؛ موضوع تکامل و زیست شناسی از نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده 20م

 عنوان: ژن خودخواه؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داکینز؛ مترجم جلال سلطانی؛ تهران، مازیار، 1396؛ در 432ص؛ شابک9786006043760؛ چاپ سوم سال1397؛ چاپ پنجم و ششم 1399؛

 عنوان: ژن خودخواه؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داکینز؛ مترجم شهلا باقری؛ تهران، پژواک، 1399؛ در 581ص؛ شابک9789649309064؛

 ریچارد داوکینز زیست‌شناس تکامل‌گرا، کتاب «ژن خودخواه» را در سال 1976میلادی منتشر کردند؛ بنیان بحث «داوکینز» در این کتاب در حوزه ی تکامل طبیعی، و علم ژنتیک است، ایشان ژنتیک را مبتنی بر نگرشی ژن‌محور شرح می‌دهند، و همچنین، رویکرد ایشان در زیست‌شناسی، متکی بر نظریه‌ ی «داروین» است؛ ایشان بر پایه نظریه ی «داروین» می‌پذیرند که تکامل طبیعی، از راه گزینش طبیعی کار می‌کند، و گزینش طبیعی به‌ معنی بقای شایسته‌ترین‌ها است؛ «داوکینز» نگرش ژن‌ مرکزی خود را در علم ژنتیک، با نظریه ی تکاملی «داروین» پیوند می‌زنند، و به این نتیجه ی پایه‌ ای می‌رسند که: «ژن»، عنصر اصلی گزینش طبیعی است؛ از نظر ایشان، هر چند رقابت مبتنی بر خودخواهی عنصر اصلی ژن برای بقاست، اما خودخواهی، صرفاً رفتار فردی ژن است؛ در عین حال، اولاً برآوردن خودخواهی ژن‌ها از اساس متکی بر همتاسازی، یا تکثیر شوندگی است، و ثانیاً این رفتار فردی در اوضاع و احوال ویژه ای روی می‌دهد، که امکان رویدادن اهداف خودخواهانه ژن را، به‌ منظور پایداری آن فراهم می‌آورد؛ در این اوضاع و احوال است که ژن خودخواه با دیگر ژن‌ها، که آنها نیز خودخواه‌ هستند، روبرو می‌شود و می‌خواهد رقابتی را با آنها پیش ببرد، که هدف آن نگهداری و بقای زندگی ارگانیسم، در کل، است؛ از دیدگاه «داوکینز» ارگانیسم موجود زنده، محیطی است، که رقابت خودخواهانه ژن را بر زمینه ی رقابت دیگرخواهانه‌ ای قرار می‌دهد، که بقای خود ارگانیسم زنده را می‌پذیرد؛ پس چشم همچشمی خودخواهانه ژن‌های خودخواه، در ارگانیسم به تعادل ژنتیکی، و بنابراین به بقای ارگانیسم می‌انجامد؛ «داوکینز» انتخاب یا همان گزینش طبیعی را، بازی بزرگ رقابت می‌داند، که در آن بازیگران یا رقابت‌ کنندگان اصلی، ژن‌های خودخواه‌ هستند؛ اما از آنجا که رقابت برای بقای ارگانیسم زنده انجام می‌شود، پس این رقابتی نه برای نابودی، که برای بقا یعنی تداوم زندگی است؛ از این رو «داوکینز» می‌کوشد در کتاب خود، تاریخ طبیعی را از دیدگاه علم تبیین کند؛ نخستین انتقاد مهم بر کتاب ژن خودخواه به همین نگرش به تاریخ طبیعی از منظر علم ــ علم ژنتیک ــ تا آن جایگاه است که می‌توان آن را با علم‌گرایی نویسنده توضیح داد؛ زیرا سنجش این موضوع یعنی حیات و تحول آن، موضوعی نیست که صرفاً از منظر علمی، و نظریه ژنتیک، به آن پرداخته شده باشد، بلکه باید از منظرهای دیگری نیز، به این نگره پرداخت، که نویسنده دیدگاههای دیگر را فراموش کرده است؛ مشخص است که از آن جمله هستند نگرش‌ه��ی دینی ــ در کنار نگرش علمی ــ برای این موضوع پاسخ‌های با قدمت بسیار وجود دارند که هنوز هم از سوی مردمان بسیاری در سراسر جهان پذیرفتی هستند و از این رو نباید چنین پاسخ‌هایی را نادیده گرفت؛ اما نکته‌ ی بسیار مهم این است که کتاب «ژن خودخواه» صرفاً درباره‌ ی علم ژنتیک، و ارائه‌ ی تبیین نوینی از نظریه‌ ی تکامل «داروین» نیست؛ اگر ژنتیک، در مجموع، به علم زیست‌شناسی مربوط می‌شود، اما «ریچارد داوکینز» فراتر از علم ژنتیک، به اتکای همان نگرش ژن‌محورانه، به دیگر قلمروهای زندگی اجتماعی انسان ــ مثلاً فرهنگ و تحولات فرهنگی ــ می‌پردازند؛ ایشان می‌کوشند قانون تکامل را در حوزه تحولات فرهنگی نیز تبیین کنند، و به اتکای آن، بقا یا زوال فرهنگ‌ها را به خوانشگر بنمایانند؛ «داوکینز» با تأکید بر تشابه تکامل فرهنگی با تکامل ژنتیکی، عامل تکامل فرهنگی را مِم ــ شبیه ژن ــ معرفی می‌کنند؛ ایشان با جعل مفاهیم «مم» و «ممتیک» می‌کوشند تکامل فرهنگی را در تشابه با تکامل ژنتیکی از طریق ژن و ژنتیک توضیح دهند؛ از نظر او «مم‌ها» ــ همچون آهنگ‌ها، ایده‌ها و شعارها و لباس، مد و...؛ ــ از راه تقلید، همتا سازی و تکثیر می‌شوند، و تحول و تکامل فرهنگی را ممکن می‌کنند؛ اگر در نظر او «ژن» واحد زیستی است، «مم» واحد اطلاعاتی است؛ در واقع «مم» آن هستیِ ذهنی است که «داوکینز» با جعل آن از حوزه ژنتیک (حوزه عمل خودخواهانه ژن) به حوزه فرهنگ عبور می‌کنند، و می‌کوشند تکامل و تحول فرهنگ را به خوانشگران بنمایانند؛ در عین حال، ایشان از همان مفاهیم رقابت، همتاسازی، خودخواهی و دیگرخواهی، در حوزه تحرک «مم‌ها» و انتقال و همتاسازی یا تکثیر آنها استفاده می‌کنند؛ دومین انتقاد مهم از «داوکینز» ناشی از همین تلاش ایشان برای یکسان‌سازی تحول ژنتیکی و تحول فرهنگی است؛ ایشان در این یکسان‌سازی تا آنجا پیش می‌روند که دین ــ وجهی از فرهنگ ــ را با همین الگوی نظری‌ خویش توضیح می‌دهند؛ برای نمونه، ایشان «ایمان» را، یک «مم» در حوزه‌ ی دین می‌شناسند که از راه تقلید، همتاسازی و تکثیر می‌شود؛ از اینجا می‌توان دریافت که در آرای «داوکینز» پیوند تکامل ژنتیکی، با تحول فرهنگی بسیار خیال‌پردازانه باز نموده می‌شود؛ این پاسخی نادرست نسبت به باورهای مذهبی است و به همین دلیل نمی‌تواند توضیح قانع‌ کننده‌ای از تداوم اندیشه‌های دینی در جهان ارائه کند؛ «داوکینز» می‌کوشند تحول فرهنگ را با نگرشی صرفاً علمی توضیح دهند؛ همین مسئله است که با انتقادات بسیاری مواجه شده است؛ «داوکینز» با یکسان دانستن تحول طبیعی و تحول فرهنگی، به تقابل علم و دین می‌رسند؛ در حالی که این دو شیوه‌ ی تبیین جهان، در همزیستی با هم قرار دارند و یکدیگر را نفی نمی‌کنند؛ «ریچارد داوکینز» از سال 1995میلادی تا سال2008میلادی استاد کرسی «چارلز سیمونی» برای ترویج علم، در «دانشگاه آکسفورد» بودند؛ ایشان از پدر و مادر بریتانیایی در «نایروبی» به دنیا آمده اند، در «آکسفورد» درس خوانده، و رساله ی دکتری خود را زیر نظر «نیکو تیبرگن» رفتارشناس برنده جایزه «نوبل» به سرانجام رسانده اند؛ ایشان از سال1967میلادی تا 1969میلادی در «دانشگاه کالیفرنیا» در «برکلی» استادیار بودند؛ سپس به‌ عنوان دانشیار و بعد استاد به بخش جانورشناسی «نیوکالج در آکسفورد» بازگشتند تا آنکه در سال 1995میلادی، به‌ عنوان نخستین استاد کرسی «سیمونی» منصوب شد؛ ایشان اکنون عضو ممتاز «نیوکالج» هستند؛

 تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
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 Jono Davis
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 April 21, 2008
 One of the most important things I took from The Selfish Gene is an idea that I find a bit difficult to put into words. Richard Dawkins is really good at crafting metaphors to describe scientific principles that on their own may be not be so interesting, or may be stubbornly inaccessible. While his rhetoric may make concepts more accessible and convenient to discuss, he openly warns that no metaphor is completely accurate. Understanding that the metaphors must be viewed skeptically, he offers this,

 "If we allow ourselves the license of talking about genes as if they had conscious aims, always reassuring ourselves that we could translate our sloppy language back into repectable terms if we wanted to, we can ask the question, what is a single selfish gene trying to do?"

 All things being even, genes that are long-lasting or that replicate quickly, and genes that can replicate with high fidelity are going to outnumber those that are slow or erroneous in replication. Dawkins calls this the “selfish” nature of genetic replication. He chooses his words carefully though, and applies metaphors of self-interest only to genes that are, or are not, selected for by indifferent and unthinking mechanisms.

 Where this metaphor breaks down, as Dawkins admits, is when the idea of “selfishness” is brought up from genetics to the level of individuals within a group, or groups within a species. He criticizes such concepts in sociobiology, where claims are made that an individual’s actions are inherently selfish in order to serve their genes in themselves, or in other related individuals.

 While genes may be “selfish” in order to be selected, this doesn’t necessitate that individuals (“survival machines” as he so affectionately calls us) must as well act only in self-interest. In this video introduction to the book, Dawkins suggests that,

 "…if you have “selfish” genes, which only means that natural selection works at the level of the gene, if you have “selfish” genes, then, you may have altruistic individuals."
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 Farhana
 297 reviews 163 followers
 April 17, 2021
 Reading this book was like meeting with a person about whom you have heard a lot, who has some kind of legendary status, and overall so well-acclaimed that you cannot resist the temptation to meet the person.

 Another thing you have heard is that the person is so simple, down to earth that he would take the trouble to talk to any layman, to make these biological terms easier, more comprehensible and comfortable to deal with. And you think talking to you won't cause him much trouble because you are well aware of some technical biological jargons.

 So, when Mr. Dawkins finally meets you through his legendary The Selfish Gene , you eagerly wait to hear a few more intricate complex terms - similar to the stature of the book and the writer. The chapters in the beginning (2 & 3) bore a little bit with their roundabout words. But if you can keep a little bit patience up to Chapter 5, then as the chapters go on you begin to realize why this book is a Classic after all!

 I must agree that it's one of the finest books I have read. Chapter 1 is adorable with its nice philosophical leaps. The best chapters are Battle of the Generations and Battle of the Sexes . The chapter on memes sounds like the movie Inception. Overall the book is the best reward for its readers.
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 rachelm
 102 reviews 2 followers
 October 2, 2007
 Writing lucidly about science for a lay audience while remaining scientifically rigorous is not easy, and Dawkins does a tremendous job as he examines evolution from the point of view of the gene rather than the organism.

 I found this book to contain a number of "aha" moments -- for example, that rather than pose the question "Why is DNA an efficient mechanism for an individual organism to reproduce itself?", we should ask instead "How did a giant, complicated lumbering robot such as myself become a good mechanism for the reproduction of the self-replicating entities I call my genes? Why did biological matter floating around in the primordial stew originally clump together into larger organisms?"

 Dawkins answers these questions and more in an engaging fashion, applying the theory of the selfish gene to aggression, altruism, sexual and familial relationships, and to the transmission of ideas in human societies.

 And he makes a point of leaving us with the optimistic thought that we as humans should be informed by our biological history, but need not be bound by it.
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 Jim
 Author 6 books 2,015 followers
 January 16, 2022
 Review 2022

 This was somewhat repetitious since I've read quite a few books on evolution since I last read this in April 2018 & Dawkins takes pains in this, the 30th anniversary edition, to correct mistakes he made, updates others have made, & to answer some of his critics. Some of the explanations seem needlessly pedantic until I realized just how subtle & powerful his theory is. Even if it doesn't hold up in all circumstances (I'm not sure that it doesn't.) it has changed the field considerably by turning the point of view that preceded it on its collective head (group selection) & influenced many other fields.

 So, it has become clear to me that this one is even more influential than I knew at the time. I keep finding references (usually for, but occasionally against) the idea of the selfish gene. I'm interested in reading more by Edward O. Wilson who is one of those who disagrees with the idea. Wilson was also eminent in the field & the finer points of their arguments are beyond me. This article takes a middling ground.
 https://thisviewoflife.com/richard-da...

 I've also just read a discussion of memes by Daniel C. Dennett in From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds . It's not an area I'm terribly interested in, but I'd like to read Dawkins' take on it again. I think Dennett also codified his ideas of competence without comprehension, at least in part, from this work.

 Highly recommended to all. While I found the audiobook delightful, it's nice to have a text copy available to better grasp some of the more subtle points.

 -----------------
 April 2018 Review This is the thirty year anniversary edition of the book (2006 rather than 1976) so it contains a lot of clarifications where he found there were misunderstandings. It also contains some corrections where he decided that he was either wrong or off target. He also mentions areas where other discoveries & papers took his work even further. I think I found these the most enjoyable. It's great to see science in progress. He also added a few extra chapters that were fantastic.

 Of course, the main reason to read this book is to read the origin of the word "Meme" which Dawkins created & loosed on the world in this book. I love origin stories.

 This is the third book that I've read written & narrated by Dawkins. I liked it better than his autobiography, but not quite as much as The God Delusion . I'm not an evolutionary biologist, so some of it went into more depth than I appreciated. It was always interesting & easy to understand, though. That he could make such complex topics so easily digested by a layman says a lot about both his ability as a writer & his knowledge of the subject.

 His primary point is that evolution is about gene survival. We & other living beings are just the vehicles that the genes build to perpetuate themselves. He makes it very clear throughout the book that when he ascribes words such as 'selfish' to behavior that he is putting the behavior in human terms for ease of communication. When he didn't, he used math to show his point, but he didn't do a lot of that & it was always easy to follow even when the points were counter-intuitive. There were a fair few of those.

 One example is the Prisoner's Dilemma problem & how it relates to selfishness. He spent quite a bit of time on this & even provided the results of several computer simulations done later by colleagues that prove out & explain the differences in iterated games versus single games. Wow. It really explains a lot about symbiosis, herd/group, & even cuckoos' behavior.

 I'm just plain impressed by this man & his thought processes, but I'm not sure if I'll read any more of his books. He mentions where he goes into more detail in other books & papers throughout this edition of this book, but he covers enough of The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene for me here, I think. Maybe not. It's an intriguing subject. Perhaps if I come across the audio version I'll succumb to temptation. He & Lalla Ward do a great job of narrating & the ideas are fascinating.

 It's amazing just how complex processes can arise out of such simple objects working in groups. Of course, there's been a LOT of time & trial & error. Statistically it makes sense. Dawkins has seen to that. Using his thoughts as a baseline for alien life is even more fascinating. I hope I live to see if his theories are born out.

 Of course, I recommend this highly. Definitely get this edition, if you can. If you've only read the first edition, get & read this one. It's worth it.
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 Ali
 35 reviews 19 followers
 June 9, 2012
 Finally, and after an excessive period of time, the main cause of which was college overwhelming demands, I managed to read and finish, from cover to cover, the book that launched the fame of the most distinguished evolutionary biologist in the world (Richard Dawkins): The Selfish Gene.

 Dawkins is often characterized as the World's Most Outspoken Atheist. This may be true, but it's concerned with a relatively recent development in his character. I think such reduction is misleading and unfair, quite frankly. Dawkins is an intelligent evolutionary biologist and he has contributed a lot to the field over the past three or four decades. He is very passionate about Darwinian Evolution that I'm surprised that he's not been referred to as "Darwin's pitbull" as much as Sir Huxley was known as "Darwin's Bulldog"!

 The book is an attempt by Dawkins to offer a meticulous explanation of organisms' behavior, especially animals. Animal behavior is such an intriguing subject, indeed!. Dawkins tries to explore this phenomenal world through the lens of what he calls, "The Selfish Gene Theory".

 The Selfish Gene Theory establishes that organisms evolve by Natural Selection, but the unit of selection is, surprisingly and against all common knowledge and conventions, the gene. It's not the species, as I used to firmly hold, not even the individual, but the gene, the selfish gene. Genes were here first long before us the multi-cellular organisms. In addition, they are "the replicators" who will live on, unlike us the mortals. They are the immortal units of selection, and we merely are "survival machines" as Dawkins affirms throughout the whole book. This, to me, has a very profound implication. It seems to me to negate the "hypothesis" of morality being also a product of our evolution because if the Selfish Gene Theory is true, then I don't see how the "survival of the species" would have mattered from the first place. However, Dawkins makes the case that selfish genes might "program" survival machines to adopt some forms of "altruistic" behaviors to meet their "selfish" ends.

 Dawkins' language is that of a "reductionist" which doesn't surprise me as a student of biology familiar with the scientific doctrine of "Occam's Razor". However, I understand how his language might disturb some readers. Dawkins reduces all forms of relationships and attributes them to "genetic" factors including those among family members. Altruistic behavior vs. selfish behavior can all be calculated mathematically. Your mother cares about you because you contain half of her genes! Forget love, affection, and all of that emotional talk. We're merely survival machines designed by our selfish genes to propagate them. Pretty disturbing, huh?

 Yet, this also has a crucial implication. Dawkins affirms in the beginning of the book that it's one of "biology", not "ethics". He states that we are "selfish by nature", but we can teach our children to be altruistic. To me, this raises a very important question: doesn't that assert that we, indeed, possess free will? This is a profound implication that I believe Dawkins was not aware of when first writing this book. He attempts to briefly discuss this matter in the endnotes by rejecting it, but I think he didn't succeed.There's some form of dualism that the theory suggests in our case: the conscious Homo sapiens.It's very evident and prevalent.

 One chapter of the book is devoted to what Dawkins call, "memes". It's such a great idea and it shows Dawkins' skill as a "philosopher". Simply, a meme is a "replicating idea" as Daniel Dennett defines it. It makes so much sense to me that memes are replicators just like genes floating from one mind to another and manipulating subjects to insure their survival. It seems to me that religion is an example of a meme that replicates itself (from followers to followers) and struggle for survival through consistent "adaptation" (modification)! Dawkins' animosity towards religion is probably as old as this book is, but he offers a very mild criticism of it which makes sense given that it's not really the center focus of this book.

 The Selfish Gene Theory is a revolutionary idea. However, even more revolutionary is the concept of "The Extended Phenotype" which illustrates the "long reach of the gene". Dawkins dedicates a whole book to this idea, and devotes the last chapter to it. The notion simply suggests that selfish genes influence very "indirect" behaviors such as, building nests in birds. I must read his book "The Extended Phenotype" since Dawkins explores the idea much more deeply and thoroughly.

 To conclude, the Selfish Gene Theory (or should I say hypothesis?) is indeed a profound seductive idea as an explanation of organisms' innate behavior. I don't know, though, how much of it is predicated upon scientific evidence and how much is mere speculation, but I do know that the book is a must-read for anyone interested in animal behavior. The book brilliantly offers answers to puzzling phenomenons, but it also raises a lot of profound questions.

 "The only kind of entity that has to exists in order for life to arise, anywhere in the universe, is the immortal replicator." - R. Dawkins
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 Priscila Jordão
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 December 8, 2014
 Although a lot has changed in social biology and ethology since this book was originally published in 1976, “The Selfish Gene” brought me numerous insights which made my respect for Dawkins grow immensely. I’ll explain why.

 The book can be considered today almost out of date, I think, and there’s much in it to be criticized. Dawkins language is particularly reductionist as he explains various types of animal behaviors mathematically while attributing them solely to genetic factors.

 He says, for instance, that an animal has 1/8 of chance of saving one of his cousins from drowning because there is a chance of 1 in 8 that he and his cousin have genes in common. Or that a mother cares about her babies just because their body is transporting half of her genes.

 I’m not questioning it because I found the theory insensitive or cruel (especially when it comes to human beings). We all know very well how important are genes determining behavior. But today we also know how deeply are another factors involved in this process. They are certainly relevant in different measures between animals and humans, but I’m inclined to believe that even in animals they do not exert this kind of dictatorship. And even if they did, it would be almost impossible to use mathematics to calculate things like the probability of an animal saving his cousin's life.

 In chapter 11 Dawkins introduces the notion of “memes” and makes an exception to the sovereignty of genes: he mentions briefly that culture may change what was genetically “predetermined” to happen and, surprisingly, that it can be considered another type of evolution. However, most of the book doesn’t take this possibility into account, which is one of the reasons why I find it out of date.

 Conversely, Dawkins brings up some really interesting ideas that had never come to my mind in other ways. One of them is mentioned in the second chapter, in which he explains the origins of replicant molecules (DNAs) and is confronted with the inevitable and very contemporary question: when does life begins? He solves the problem masterfully in my opinion: “Should we then call the original replicators ‘living’? Who cares? (…) Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use. The mere presence in the dictionary of a word like ‘living’ does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world”.

 Another of my favorite parts is the one where the talks about the evolution of the capability of simulation in animals. His theory is that conscience emerged because the simulation that brains do to calculate probabilities and risks associated to everyday tasks became so complex at one point of the evolution that it was inevitable to start including the “self” in it.

 I was also positively impressed by how Dawkins describes adaptation as the predominance of evolutionary stable strategies in opposition to unstable ones. It is an interesting approach to Darwin’s theory that he would probably have agreed with. The descriptions of various behaviors to exemplify his theory are also very engaging.

 Finally, the already mentioned chapter about memes is a good surprise at the end of the book, and reveals some of Dawkins’ skills as philosopher (as someone mentioned in a review below).

 For all these reasons, and although I was bored at many moments because of its reductionism, I found “The Selfish Gene” worth of reading. It certainly deserves its fame as a classic.
 britânica
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 Valliya Rennell
 339 reviews 231 followers
 December 2, 2020
 3 stars


 and in this book, this concept is explained through the perspective of genes. Dawkins manages to present complicated topics like cell division, probability, and animal behaviours through the "eyes" of the gene which will use its survival machine (the organism) to survive.

 It was fascinating to to learn about relationships and customs that I took for granted, and to now get more understanding on why they occur as they do (especially mutualism and parasitism). Since I learn a lot about this in school, though separately, here I was able to draw connections with Mr. Dawkins' guidance that really enriched my prior knowledge . That being said, Dawkins writes in a simple writing style that may sometimes sound contemptuous of the reader, but I don't think that was the intent : he obviously knows much more about the topic, why would he talk to us as an equal in the field? I also found some of his remarks quite funny or satirical and found they helped lift the mood from just the nitty-gritty science facts.

 There are a few 1 star reviews that tie a lot to religion and how Dawkins is overly dismissive of this. In my opinion, I don't exactly understand why this forced people to rate the book so low, since religion is mentioned maybe 2 or 3 times in the book, and in passing. Is Dawkins a bit dismissive of it? Well yes, but he isn't rude about it, he just states that some aspects of religions don't line up with what can be deduced through science... then again maybe I'm not the best person to speak on this, as I too am atheist. I don't know. I sure have read a lot of books that presented religion in a ruder manner, so I thought that Dawkins went about this in a respectful way.

 Overall, I thought this book was really insightful, and will definitely be picking up more titles from this author.
 a-3-stars b-adult c-non-fiction
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 Sidharth Vardhan
 Author 23 books 681 followers
 September 3, 2016
 “ There are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the galaxy.”

 Sometimes science books can become unintentionally funny:

 “What is the good of sex? This is an extremely difficult question for the evolutionist to answer. Most serious attempts to answer it involve sophisticated mathematical reasoning.”



 Okay!

 One of stupidest criticism here on Goodreads of Adam Smith’s Theory of Wealth of Nations’ was that he made the human selfishness as basis of his theory. It was stupid as Smith didn’t invented that ‘selfishness’ he merely showed us how our economy was already based on selfishness of individuals.

 It is same here. In fact, in this case ‘selfishness’ is apparent selfish behaviour of genes (‘apparent’ because genes do not make conscious choices, selfless-by-default ones just won’t survive) and any effects on the individuals are unconscious. Dawkins shows how selfishness of genes can actually bring out what, at first, may look like altruistic behaviour among animals.

 Also, we need not be slave to our genes. In fact, we do resist behaviour imposed on us by genes. The best examples are people who remain without children all their life, contraceptives, welfare state etc.

 “Contraception is sometimes attacked as 'unnatural'. So it is, very unnatural. The trouble is, so is the welfare state. I think that most of us believe the welfare state is highly desirable. But you cannot have an unnatural welfare state, unless you also have unnatural birth- control, otherwise the end result will be misery even greater than that which obtains in nature.”

 There are theories in here describing how first life must have started on planet. There is also a theory (theory, not law) that tries to explain why should people die of old age. Any explanations are better than 'God did it'. One of my favorite parts were those discussing Game theory involved in biology.

 Above all, there are all those fascinating aspects how some animals behave. There are some insects who can be like Chinese-boxes:

 Female greenflies can bear live, fatherless, female offspring, each one containing all the genes of its mother. (Incidentally, an embryo in her mother's 'womb' may have an even smaller embryo inside her own womb. So a greenfly female may give birth to a daughter and a grand- daughter simultaneously, both of them being equivalent to her own identical twins.)

 And...do you remember that romantic dialogue, 'I'll die for you'? Ladies among matinses take it too literally:

 “Mantises … When they mate, the male cautiously creeps up on the female, mounts her, and copulates. If the female gets th e chance, she will eat him, beginning by biting his head off, either as the male is approaching, or immediately after he mounts, or after they separate.”

 Isn’t that lovely?

 Than there are the friendly fights (mostly to get girls):

 "the notable thing about animal fights is that they are formal tournaments, played according to rules like those of boxing or fencing. Animals fight with gloved fists and blunted foils. Threat and bluff take the place of deadly earnest. Gestures of surrender are recognized by victors, who then refrain from dealing the killing blow or bite that our naive theory might predict.”

 Dawkins also points out how most of Darwin’s oringal theory was wrong. Yet, you won’t find any Darwin-fundamentalists fighting against evolutionists. Several of Dawkins' own postulates must have been already proved wrong - it was written 40 years ago, that is like stone age to scientists. I don't think he would mind either.

 Creationists, well, they are a different breed. I guess given the condition the world is in, with all those stupid wars and ozone holes; any ideas of intelligent design can be easily trashed. And have you ever heard of that *stops to search for a word*thing called 'Donald Trump' - what is so intelligent about his existence? If I had my way, I would also have humanity consider whether we aren’t too liberal with the word when we call ourselves an 'intelligent' race. And even assuming there was a creator -than what about his/her aesthetic sense? Why should he give us bad body order? What is so intelligent about that?

 Coming back to creationists, well, I think Christian church was a little stupid (no offence) when it picked a head-on fight against evolutionists. All they needed to do was to manipulate the meaning of phrases in Bible and tell the world that evolution was embodied in Bible, it was just that they weren't interpreting it right. Hinduism and Islam are far cleverer in this regard.

 For example, as India’s respected prime minister will tell you Hindu gods had already invented plastic surgeries long before lesser mortals discovered Iron. Atom bombs, flying vehicles etc – you name it, we already had them ages ago. Read this review for more details. Whatever you may do, we did it in ancient times and were clever enough to forget about it.

 Also, one of most popular (pseudo) scholars on religion, Dr. Zakir Naik, tells us that truths like Big bang, evolution, Copernican solar system, existence of plasma state of matter, the growth of embryo etc. were all already explained by none other than God himself in Quran. There are many other scientific truths to be found in Quran that he has found using his far-fetched sophisticated reasoning, you can listen to him here
 1-africa non-fiction
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 Alexander McNabb
 Author 9 books 49 followers
 January 4, 2012
 I asked Twitter for reading recommendations just before Christmas and one of them was this book. It's so outside my comfort zone (a book about genetics? Are you MAD?), I just went for it. And I am very glad I did.

 That's the great thing about Kindles. You can do mad stuff in seconds flat.

 Skip the forewords and introductions, they're sententious verbiage. Just start reading the book - by the time you've done, you'll actually WANT to go back to the forewords and revision notes. Because this book is seriously fun.

 Honestly. It's highly readable, thought-provoking and never less than entertaining. Imagine reading a TV series like Coast or a Robert Winston documentary - the mixture of powerful images, connections to the everyday and down to earth presentation actually make the subject matter of the book relevant, alive and, well, splendid.

 Richipoos takes the odd diversion to indulge in some academic spattery, (one reason, perhaps, this was dubbed a 'young book' - it was written 30 and more years ago) but generally is on the side of the reader, which is why his ideas come across so clearly. The book explores the role of the 'eternal gene', the miraculous and self-replicating bunch of amino-acids that is US and how we are effectively a co-operative of chemical conveniences. Starting with the primeval soup and ending with why mums and dads do what they do, it's a roller-coaster ride. I'm serious - like I said, this would normally tick all my ohnoimnotreadingthatshit buttons. I was grinning through most of it and rare was the day when I didn't share a thought or insight the book had triggered or opened up with my long-suffering wife Sarah.

 I had the time of my life reading this. I wish I could say the same about my my current struggle with Umberto Eco's somewhat turgid latest, but that - as they say - is another story...
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 Ms.pegasus
 687 reviews 130 followers
 April 4, 2020
 Any reader of fiction understands the importance of narrative point of view. Influential evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins adopts that idea here. The point of view is that of the gene. His “selfish gene” is a metaphor, an anthropomorphic representation of a replicating sequence of genetic code.

 He clarifies this idea with an astonishing admission: “There is no universally agreed definition of a gene.” (p.36) Starting with this blank slate frees him to create parameters that suit his own purposes: “A gene is defined as any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection....[A] gene is a replicator with high copying fidelity.” (p. 35) In one analogy he compares a gene to a cooperative team of rowers. The individual is merely a vehicle for the focused efforts of this team. Instead of quibbling about the physical entity of the gene, Dawkins focuses his attention on salient properties: copying errors, fecundity (the rate of replication), chromosomal rearrangement, and chemical “rivalry.” These in turn govern observable properties of the organism: viscosity ( “...any tendency for individuals to continue living to the place where they were born.” ) and memory (p.282)

 His arena is a multi-generational dynamic of ephemeral winners and losers, quantitative dominance in the gene pool. He proposes various strategies for achieving that dominance, and asserts that the results are mathematically predictable through game theory. A step-wise picture of evolution emerges: “Progressive evolution may be not so much a steady upward climb as a series of discrete steps from stable plateau to stable plateau.” (p.113) Each plateau signals the achievement of an Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS).

 This revolutionary book was published in 1976. Dawkins cites two important influences. William Donald Hamilton (1936-2000) developed the idea of “kin selection” – the basis for the principle that “...a gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies....” (p.114) In a chapter titled “Genesmanship", Dawkins provides a simplified version of a formula for calculating the odds that two individuals share a particular gene.

 George C. Williams (1926-2010) contributed the idea of pleioptropy – multiple effects of a single gene. An example is the activation of a gene when the chemical properties of aging accumulate. I mention these antecedents because I often felt I had fallen into a time warp. Dawkins' ideas are a far cry from the Mendelian genetics I learned in school. Readers familiar with these earlier evolutionary pioneers will have a much easier time navigating this book than I had.

 I read the 40th anniversary edition, published in 2016. Extensive explanatory footnotes, often running on for pages, have been added and need to be read in conjunction with the text. This is expedited by the formatting of the Kindle edition.

 Fortunately, this book is leavened with surprising behavioral examples. We learn that a whale song can continue for eight minutes without repetition. (p.68) We learn that a strain of worker bee has the “hygenic” behavior of detecting and culling grubs infected by a particular disease. The culling requires two steps: uncapping the wax cell of the larva and evicting the larva from the hive. (p.78) A strain of mice exhibit the “Bruce effect.” The male mouse exudes a chemical that causes a female impregnated by a different male to abort. (p.191) Vampire bats will regurgitate and share excess blood harvested during the night with unsuccessful bats. (p.298) Dawkins examines and explains these behaviors through the lens of his “selfish gene.”
 ecosystems-nature history nonfiction
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 M D
 81 reviews 7 followers
 October 2, 2007
 I read this book when I was a student and studying genetics at the time. This helped a lot, it made an awful lot more sense than what I was learning and I have Professor Dawkins to thank for making me look like a genius in a lecture and completely getting my head round an essay.

 I am a big fan of Richard Dawkins, and this is his genius. I admire his ability to argue something so comprehensively and convincingly. I first discovered him in a book of essays where he wrote a letter to his daughter Juliet (who was ten at the time) explaining how you must always look for evidence. That, I believe, is one of the most important things to learn in life and the way he presents it to a child is impressive.

 (The book, incidentally, is called How Things Work. I must see if I can add it)

 However, despite being in awe of Professor Dawkins, I find him a little cruel in the way he removes the potential for all the nice things in life. If he is correct, we may as well all be selfish and thoughtless at all times because to do otherwise is simply irrational. I like to retain a little naivete in my convictions, it makes life more palatable.

 Apparently "The Blind Watchmaker" is his best book, but I have completely read very few of his books and prefer to listen to him talk.
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 Abubakar Mehdi
 158 reviews 215 followers
 November 29, 2015
 I love reading books that challenge my worldview and compel me to change it. This book is an excellent work on Evolutionary biology, Genes, Behavioral biology and Natural selection, among many other fascinating topics. Dawkins is succinct, eloquent and a very intelligent tutor. He uses examples and metaphors to illustrate his point and to coalesce them all to form one unifying picture, of a universe, not in perfect harmony, but in tumult and constant change. The chapter on “Memes” blew me off absolutely; I would want my friends to read just that chapter even if they don’t read the whole book. His ideas are fascinating and logical, but his way of expressing and putting them in words is even better. What a shame that he got into the new atheist movement and all the bad publicity that came with it. As a scientist, I found him at the top of his game.

 This is a very readable, entertaining and beautifully written book that I would recommend to any one who, like me, bunked their biology lectures back in school. There is a lot to learn from this book. The 30th anniversary edition is annotated and made up to date with additional chapters, so the older edition should be avoided.
 Read it, let is rinse your brain, and repeat.
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 Poria Da
 114 reviews 13 followers
 March 10, 2019
 قسمت‌هایی از این کتاب این پتانسیل را دارد تا در مدارس در کنار ریاضی و دیگر علوم تدریس شود!
 دید انسان قرن 21 به تکامل داروینی و نقش ژن بسیار محدود است و تلاش‌هایی ازجمله این کتاب و چند کتاب دیگر از داوکینز مثل ساعت‌ساز نابینا در این راستا ستودنی است.
 اما کتاب ژن خودخواه، یک جنبه ترسناک نیز دارد، کتاب نشان می‌دهد که ما (و تمام موجودات زنده) ماشین‌هایی هستیم برای ژن‌ها و وظیفه‌مان انتقال این ژن‌ها به نسل‌های بعدی است، خودخواهی‌های ما، دروغ‌گویی‌های ما و... همه نتیجه تکامل و نیاز به بقا برای ��ین ماشین بقا است، اما در کنار آنها، نیاز ما به یک دیگر، همکاری‌های اجتماعی و روابط خانوادگی هم نتیجه همین نیاز به بقاست، و یک نتیجه‌گیری جالب نیز داوکینز از این قسمت کتاب دارد: ایثارگری را باید به بچه آموزش داد زیرا این‌طور نیست که جزئی از سرشت ذاتی باشد.
 در کنار بحث تکامل ژن، در این کتاب به‌صورت خلاصه با مفهوم "میم" و تکامل فرهنگی نیز آشنا می���شویم، بخش خاصی از تکامل که فقط شامل انسان‌ها است.
 و در پایان هم به‌صورت خلاصه با مفهوم فنوتیپ (رخنمون) گسترش‌یافته و اثری که تمام موجودات زنده بر زندگی یک دیگر دارند آشنا می‌شویم.
 مفاهیمی که بسیار عجیب است که با این حجم پیشرفت تکنولوژی، باید در یک کتاب بخوانیم به‌جای اینکه در تمامی مجاری آموزشی با آنها آشنا شویم.
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 Melki
 5,581 reviews 2,310 followers
 February 22, 2013
 I didn't find this one nearly as interesting or as fun as The God Delusion . At times, reading it felt like a homework assignment, but for that I will have to fault my own intellectual shortcomings, and NOT Dawkins' logic or writing ability.

 After all, I'm not about to criticize a man who manages to mention lawyers AND vampire bats in the same sentence..
 sciency-stuff
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 Max
 337 reviews 288 followers
 May 9, 2016
 The Selfish Gene is still widely read 40 years after publication, remarkable for a science book, and it continues to cause controversy. In straightforward language Dawkins offers theories for the beginning of life, evolution, sexual differentiation and altruism in human behavior. He takes literary license and uses anthropomorphic language to describe genetic attributes best described by mathematics. This technique makes the book accessible to the lay reader but also makes it read like our genes are consciously plotting their destiny. Dawkins inserts many disclaimers that this is not his intent. Detractors also assert that he is reducing human behavior and morals to nothing more than chemistry thus denying fundamental human value. Dawkins also goes to great length to deny this interpretation. I believe Dawkins succeeds. While very readable, Dawkins challenges our minds, requiring deep thought to reap equally deep rewards. My notes follow.

 How did life start? Dawkins proposes replicators. Think of chains of amino acids, abundant on the early earth, forming protein like molecules that can change the structure of other amino acid chains to look just like them. Dawkins doesn’t mention prions, but replicators sound very similar to me and today we find prions in ever more places and responsible for a host of diseases from mad cow to Alzheimer’s. Eventually the replicators run out of raw material and start consuming each other. Mutations occur: some develop defenses such as prototypical cell walls, then others develop ways to penetrate the walls and evolution is underway at some point crossing the threshold into what we would call living. The replicators themselves become genes, the dictators of the individual organism’s attributes and behaviors. The organism is the survival machine the genes have constructed and with over 3.5 billion years to work in, these machines can become very complicated, even human.

 How did this evolution take place? Natural selection operates at the level of the gene. Individual organisms are the vehicles for the gene. The gene operates its vehicle through phenotypic effects. If that effect promotes individual survival and reproduction the gene spreads. Eventually all the genes in a population plateau at an Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS). Mutant genes will come and go but the rare positive one will disrupt the status quo until a new ESS is achieved. Dawkins key point is that natural selection operates not on what is best for the species or individual but what is best for the gene. This may seem like a truism, but this is where notes fall short. You have to read the book.

 How did individual organisms become male and female? First were the isogametes which are produced by meiosis just like sperms and eggs. But unlike sperms and eggs isogametes are indistinguishable from each other. Thus any individual can mate with any other. Eventually sperms and eggs evolved as some gametes found it advantageous to be prolific and mobile (sperms) while others benefited by providing large and nutrient rich targets (eggs). The owners of the large and nutrient rich gametes invested more resources in their production. In animal evolution this led to females nurturing and caring for their offspring. Females adopted strategies to get help in the task including strategies to determine male faithfulness. Thus courtship is widely practiced among many species. If all males were faithful courtship would not be necessary. A readily compliant female would immediately attract a faithful companion and her genes would prosper. But too many easy females lead to philandering males who gain advantage for their genes propagating them widely. But a preponderance of philandering males in turn results in more females demanding evidence of commitment provided by courtship. Eventually the proportion of coy to easy female behavior and faithful to philandering male behavior balances out to an Evolutionary Stable Strategy. Keep in mind Dawkins presents this from the gene’s point of view. The genes are working to maximize their own numbers not the individual organism’s although that too may result.

 Similar to the idea of an ESS that balances animal courtship behavior is the ESS of aggressive behavior. In general aggressive behaviors will occupy a proportion of individual behaviors that equalize overall payback. If all members were aggressive, too many would get hurt. If none were, one aberrant aggressor would run amok spreading genes until too many aggressors reduced the payback below that of the non-aggressors. Eventually the proportion of aggressors and/or the range of aggressive behaviors of individuals will come to a balance, an ESS. What is good for the genes as expressed through the individual not the species dictates behavior. Lions don’t try to eat other lions to preserve the species but because it is far safer for the individual lion to attack an antelope for a meal than another lion.

 Dawkins elaborates on the Prisoner’s Dilemma game showing it to be similar to the way ESS’s develop when the game is played continuously for an unknown indeterminate length of time. This version is called Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. It’s too complex to explain here, but nice guys don’t finish last in this explanation of how reciprocal altruism develops in animal and plant societies. He fascinatingly uses his examples to explain the “live and let live policy” between the German soldiers and the British soldiers facing each other in the trenches of WWI in the first two years of the war. This was of course not a great strategy for the generals who had to win the war but it worked quite well for the soldiers. For those interested in game theory and evolution this chapter is a must read.

 The genes that affect the individual’s fate are not only its own. Gene’s operate inside and outside the body of an organism. Dawkins gives the example of the snail and the parasitic fluke that preys on it. The fluke’s genes change the thickness of the snail’s shell which may not help the snail. Dawkins doesn’t mention the microbiome which has drawn so much attention lately. We now realize that most genes in and on the human body are not human but belong to the countless bacteria and microorganisms that populate our guts, mouths, skin, etc. The huge impact these foreign genes have on human wellbeing and behavior is just beginning to be understood.

 In a presentation that otherwise seems to marginalize individual value in favor of the genes, Dawkins does acknowledge the power of human consciousness and culture to override genetic imperatives. Dawkins is famous for introducing the term meme in the The Selfish Gene . Derived from a Greek root to rhyme with the word gene, Dawkins christened meme the unit of transmission for the evolution of culture. It is the element of knowledge handed down generation to generation, be it language, song, fashion or ideas. The meme uses the human brain as its vehicle to propagate itself as it is transferred from person to person. Dawkins points to the concept of God as a particularly successful meme of great longevity and ubiquity and one that evolves just as genes do.

 Even if you are uncomfortable with Dawkins thinking or his presentation style and even if some of the material is a bit dated, there is just way too much food for thought here to ignore. My notes are just a small taste of what this book provides. Five stars all the way. If you haven’t read it, please treat yourself. I hope it leaves your mind racing just as it did mine.
 biology
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Author  28 books13.4k followers     September 25, 2014   - What some people seem to find hard to understand is that there's a part of you, in fact the most important part, that's immaterial and immortal. Your body is really no more than a temporary shell for the immortal part, and houses it for a little while until it dies.  The rest of this review is available elsewhere (the location cannot be given for Goodreads policy reasons)      pooh-dante science strongly-recommended               233 reviews185 followers     October 3, 2007   Didactic, patronizing, condescending and arguably neo-intellectual twaddle. I do not believe in a God, certainly not any God that's been conceived by man, but I also believe Richard Dawkins is a self-satisfied thought-Nazi who is as fundamental in his view of religion as any right-wing minister. Fundamentalists of all faiths scare me, and atheism is just as much a faith as any religion. The existence or non-existence of a God cannot be proven, nor can the existence or non-existence of a soul, and faith is an abstract experience with implications that are fundamentally unresponsive to study. As such, pursuits like Dawkins' often boil down to one type of faith (in "reason") vs. another type of faith (in a "God"). Many people love Dawkins. He is certainly intelligent, and writes as such, but he lacks wisdom and imagination. To me, that's the flaw in all of his work, from The Selfish Gene to The God Delusion. The idea that one human being can know enough about the nature of the universe to make the sweeping declarations Dawkins' makes is preposterous to me, and no more credible than the sweeping declarations of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.NC     books-i-hope-die science science-social-theory-etc               2,383 reviews33.9k followers     December 24, 2022   If you are bored look up the Community Reviews, sort by 1-star. They are very entertaining. One of them as a uni professor advising a student to burn down the book store where they bought this book. Then we have the creationists, then the person who thinks it is all a capitalist manifesto. There are those who think he is arrogant, depraved, uses philistine language (!) ... How can anyone be a creationist and not believe in dinosaurs and such? Do they believe that the earth is flat? Are they the sort of people who pay astrologers money to cast their charts because of course your fate is determined by the stars at the moment of your birth? Jesus wept. Or he would have. I'm reading Josephus at the moment, it seems that the only mention of Jesus at the time he was living was in Josephus but that it might have been added later... That's a whole other story, and one which Dawkins might have liked, but these one-star creationists certainly won't.     2015-reviews dnf-or-never-read medicine-science               Author  8 books15.9k followers     February 22, 2019     نحن لسنا إلا مركبات تنتقل الجينات عبرها من جيل إلى جيلتشهد تطور الخليقة منذ بدئها وحتى اندثارهاوترتبط أهميتنا بما نستطيع تقديمه لتلك الجينات كي تنتشر وتظل موجودة وكلما كانت هذه الجينات "أنانية" بقت واستمرت وانتشرت يتصرف الجين عموما بطريقة تعزز فرص نجاته على حساب الجينات الأخرى المنافسةفهل هذا ما يود دوكينز أن يؤكده لنا؟أهو يدعو للداروينية الإجتماعية؟إنه لا يدعو لأي شيء في الواقع سوى محبة العلم وتصديقهإنها الحقيقة لا غيروهو مجرد ناقل لها ... ألا تصدقنيفكر للحظة في ردة فعل أغلبية من حولك لو أخبرتهم بأنك لا تريد انجاب أطفالفكر في تعبير الصدمة على وجوههم وأنت تقول أنك لا تريد لجيناتك البقاءوستفهم مقصدي مؤلم أن نفكر أن من يعمل لصالح نفسه منا -ولو على حساب غيره- هو من يعمر هذا الكوكبتأملوا البشر من حولكم وفكرواعلى أي شاكلة يكون الخالدينمن خاضوا الحروب وكذبوا وخانوا وقتلوا وزورواهم الأكثر احتمالية في البقاءوتوريث جيناتهم تلك لذرياتهم التي سرعان ما تحذو حذوهمإنهم الأكثرية للأسفوهذه هي الحقيقة العارية.... ولكن ما فائدة إخبارنا بهذه الحقيقة في كتاب علمي؟أهناك غرض آخر لهذا الذي قرأنا؟هذا الكتاب بجانب معلوماته المذهلة يذكرنا كم نحن محظوظين ومميزيننحن نحظى بالقدرة على أن نرفض ما نحن -أو بالأحرى جيناتنا- مبرمجون عليهنحن نبغض واقعنا هذا ونغيرهنحن نثور ضده رغم الصعاب الكثيرة التي تواجهنا أحيانا ومنذ بدء الخليقة وجد المصلحون والطيبون وخادمو الإنسانيةمن قدموا لنا خلاصة الأخلاق وأمتعونا بالفن والأدبوتعمقوا في بحور العلمليخبرونا بحقيقة أنفسنا والكون من حولنا هذا التنوع منعنا من الانقراضنحن محظوظون فعلا بالانتقاء الطبيعي برغم قسوتهلأننا لم نستسلم كلية لهوهذا ما يصنع كل الفارق...      science               212 reviews52 followers     June 3, 2015   Although I consider myself a Jesus-loving, god-fearing, creationist, I simply LOVE reading about evolution. I'm not sure what it is, but I find the whole concept, when explained by a lucid and accessible author, fascinating. And Dawkins is nothing if not lucid and accessible. He presents the topic and various questions and scientific controversies in a way that anybody with a willingness to pay attention can follow it. Some of the chapters were a bit more of a slog as Dawkins has to resort to scary scary math and numbers to prove some of his points and set up for even more mindblowing stuff in future chapters. But most of the time, this book is chock full of insanely interesting examples and user-friendly analogies. Dawkins sure knows his way around language too. One of my favorite lines is: "Sex: that bizarre perversion of straightforward replication."On the science of it all, as I said, I'm a creationist, but I like to read up on the other side and at least understand, if not appreciate, what their take on the matter is. And to read Dawkins is to realize, yes, this does sound like a very solid theory. My one stumbling block to getting onto the evolution train one hundred percent is time. Perhaps my comprehension of just how long hundred million years is is faulty, but I just can't wrap my mind around how all of these ACCIDENTAL mutations, with no conscious will on the part of the group, individual or gene itself, could possibly result in the complexity of life as we see it now. There is an adage that if you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time, they would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. To believe evolution is to believe that you now have a FINITE amount of monkeys and a FINITE amount of time and yet they STILL manage to produce the complete works of Shakespeare... and they do it OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. Just doesn't seem plausible. But perhaps further reading will sway me at a later date. EDIT 6/3/15I can't believe this review is still getting attention after all this time! And I love the thread that has developed in the comments. I should let you all know though that as of 2008 I have been living on the side of reason and rationality. I became an atheist after a LOT of reading and contemplating of the Bible (the link to my "de-conversion" story is down in the comments as well). I try these days to, as much as possible, follow the evidence wherever it leads. Additionally Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale" was one of THE most beautiful books I've ever read. Check out my review if you're interested.     bloody-brilliant life-changing non-fiction               801 reviews2,502 followers     June 19, 2014   I read the 30th anniversary edition of this book--it is a true "classic". I note that there are over 48,000 ratings and 1,400 reviews of this book on Goodreads! Richard Dawkins put an entirely original slant on Darwin's theory of natural selection. The book has turned people around, to the understanding that the gene plays the single most central role in natural selection, rather than the individual organism. Over the course of generations, evolution plays a role to ensure the survival of the genes, not the individual or "the species".Although the book is 30 years old, it has stood the test of time. There are a few passages--primarily about computers--that are 30 years out of date. But the vast majority of the book seems to have held up quite well. Dawkins' prose is very approachable by the layman. There is a bare minimum of technical jargon--quite different from most other books about genetics that I've been reading in recent years. Dawkins takes the time to explain things, often with appropriate metaphors. There are very few diagrams in the book--additional figures could help clarify some points, in my opinion. Much of the book is really about the role of game theory, in understanding genetics. Dawkins devotes several chapters to describe how various traits controlled by genes are held in an ESS-- "Evolutionarily Stable Strategy"--a term that Dawkins uses quite often, that I think is a synonym for the game theory term "stable equilibrium". Dawkins shows how an ESS is approached over the course of "iterations" of a game, that is to same, over many generations. These chapters were especially interesting to me, as I recently took an online course on the subject of game theory. It is in this book that Dawkins coined the now-famous term "meme". The meme is a cultural analog of the biological gene. A meme seeks to self-perpetuate, and mutates if that aids its self-preservation. Dawkins devotes an entire fascinating chapter to his concept of the meme. Throughout the book, Dawkins deals with the dichotomy between the "selfishness" required for survival, and the "altruism" of human behavior. How do we explain altruism? Dawkins explores this dilemma over and over again, showing in virtually every case how the selfishness of genes can help to explain apparent altruistic behavior of the individual.  This is an absolutely fascinating book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in genetics, evolution, or sociology.       biology evolution nonfiction               1,388 reviews2,737 followers     October 15, 2022     لم أر أكثر أنانية من عبدالباسط حموده الذى بدأ أغنية أنا مش عارفنى قائلا    
أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا أنا مش عارفنى أنا تهت منى أنا مش أناما كفاية أنا واحده يا أستاذ عبدالباسط بلاش الإسراف دهمن منا لا يحب نفسه   هل حب النفس هو أنانية أم أن الأنانية هي الميل إلى عدم التعاون مع الغير في الواقع الكتاب يمكن اعتباره عن نفى الإيثار و حياة التعاون أكثر من اثباته لصفة الأنانية    من الصعب جدا القراءة لهذا الرجل و هذا سبب النجمات الثلاث و الا فإن الكتاب جدير بنجمة أخرى طيب ندخل في الموضوع و ��جيب من الآخر? لماذا عاش العالم ثلاثة بلايين سنة لا يعنيه شيئا من أمر العمل الجينى الجماعى و كانت السيادة فقط للبكترياان كنا قد عشنا في هذه الصورة البسيطة فلما بدأت الكائنات الأكبر في التكون بعد ذلكان كان هذا قد حدث لضرورة فلم بقيت البكتريا حتى الأن و لم تتطور لكائنات أرقى و أكبرما االغرض أصلا من تعدد الكائنات و ما هو هدفها في الحياة     فكرة الكتاب هي أنه في الأصل كانت الجيناتفما هي الجينات الجينات هي عبارة عن شفرة لصنع نوع أو أكثر من البروتين و من ثم يقوم هذا البروتين ببناء شيء معين أو تحفيز أشياء أخرى لتفاعل ما يخدم مصلحة الجين الذى أطلقه هل يوجد هذا الجين منفردا؟ لا بل هو جزء من الحمض النووي الريبوزى ناقص الأكسجين المعروف بالدى ان ايههل له إدراك أو إرادة و وعى؟ مجازا يبدو ذلك و لكن حقيقة لا أحد يعلم حتى الأن     يعتد دواكنز نظرية أن الحمض النووي مكون في الأساس من مجموعة من الجينات التي اتحدت معا بطريقة ما لتكوين الحمض النووي نفسه لأنها تقوم بعمل جماعى يخدم مجموعة الجينات معا الخطوة التالية كانت تكوين غشاء الخلية الواحدة لحماية وجود هذا الحمض النووي و من ثم عملية انقسامه و تضاعفه مع ما يشمله ذلك من تغذيتهتعقدت العملية بعد ذلك لتصبح للخلية نواة ثم نشأت الكائنات عديدة الخلايا و باقى النظرية الداروينية المعروفة الجديد هو أنه بدلا من نفى الوعى عن البكتريا و الكائنات التي لا تمتلك جهاز عصبى متطور أرجع هذا الوعى للجينات نفسها و منحها شرف القيادة و لم يعتبرها مجرد شفرة لإرادة عليا أخرى تستغلها و رغم ذلك لم ينف الوعى عن المخ في الكائنات الأرقى أو الجهاز العصبى ككل. و لذلك حكاية أظنها طريفة:     في مكان بعيد في فضاء الكون كانت مجرة أندروميدا التي تبعد عن الأرض مائتان سنة ضوئية و كان بها حضارة متطورة جدا أرادت السيطرة على العالم و لكن بعد المسافة بينها و بين الكواكب الأخرى حال دون ذلك إذ يحتاج غزو الأرض مثلا لمئات السنين للسيطرة عليها و هذا يتعدى عمر أي فرد على الكوكب فما العمل. تفتق ذهنهم الذكى على بث شفرة في أرجاء الكون بحيث تكون سهلة لأى كائن ذكى فيستطيع حلها و تضمنت هذه الشفرة رسالة للتواصل مع حضارتهم مع وعود بالرخاء و التنمية و تضمنت أيضا طريقة صنع كمبيوتر ضخم و متطور لإتمام هذا الإتصال بعد مائتى سنة وصلت الرسالة للأرض و عمت الأفراح و الليالى الملاح أرجاء المعمورة و من ثم بدأت وكالات العلوم تصنيع هذا الكمبيوتر الضخم و ما ان اتموه حتى فقدو السيطرة عليه و أصبح هو من يتحكم في كل شيء و يوجهه لمصلحته و مصلحة صانعيه الأصليين في أندروميداالسؤال الأن .. هل عرف سكان أندروميدا بما حدث؟ بالطبع لا فالمعلومة ستصلهم بعد مائتى سنة أخرى. هل يسيطرون على الكمبيوتر؟ لا أيضا و إنما هو يسيطر على نفسه بالبرنامج الذى وضعوه له و راعوا فيه أن يصلح لأى بيئة و يتعامل مع أي حدث بتعليمات عامة و ذكية مع إمكانية تطوير نفسه و تعلمه من الأحداث بشرط الإلتزام بالعمل لصالحهم.     هذا ما يخصنا من الحكاية و لكن وجب أن أقول لكم كيف انتهت أحداث القصة بأن استطاع الأرضيون تحطيم الكمبيوتر و استعادة سيطرتهم على الكوكب الأزرق الضائع في الفضاء و لكن حكايتنا نحن لم تنته بعدالجينات هي السيد الأول و هي لا تستطيع التواصل مع العالم الخارجيهي فقط جمعية من الأصدقاء الأنانيين اللذين لا يهمهم الا التضاعف و التكاثر و الخلود     في البداية تجمعوا معا ثم اتخذو الغشاء الخلوى و من ثم تحصنوا بالنواة و بدأوا في تكوين آلات ضخمة للبقاء على هيئة نباتات و حيوانات وصولا للإنسان و لا فرق لديهم بين هذا و ذاك و لكن العبرة بتمرير تلك الجينات من جيل إلى جيل بهدف البقاء و الخلود فقط كما قال كفار قريش من قبل: إن هي إلا أرحام تدفع و أرض تبلع من موقعها المحصن تصنع الجينات البروتين الذى يحافظ على وجود الجسم و من ضمنه الجهاز العصبى و المخ الذى يتواصل مع العالم الخارجي هل تسيطر الجينات على المخ؟ لاهل يسيطر المخ على الجينات؟ لاإنها كقصة أنروميدا الجينات هي السيد الفضائى و المخ هو الكمبيوتر العملاق و أرض المعركة هي الجسم أو آلة البقاء كما يقول داوكنز قدر الإمكان اختصرت و حاولت توضيح الفكرة غلا أن الكتاب مرهق و به أجزاء شيقة جدا و ممتعة و تفتح المجال للخيال الخصب و أجزاء أخرى مملة و ثقيلة تجلب النوم في ثوان معدودة بعد أن أنهيت الكتاب فتحت التلفاز لأجد فتاة تتلوى و تغنى هذه الأغنية و كأن جيناتها هي من ت��حكم فيها و تبث لنا رسالة روح ع الأشرافية ولأصحابك أشكي قول أني نكدية وشو ما بدك أحكي قول عني أنانية قول مش رومانسية    فش كل خلقك فيي أنا بعرف إنك مقهور وقلبك راح يفقع .!! شوف حالك عليي تكبر لا تشبع أزرع كل حقدك فيا فل وما ترجع       science               Author  5 books3,845 followers     April 2, 2017   Color me very impressed. I can now see why this is considered to be one of those hugely popular science books I keep hearing about and the reason why Dawkins has become so widely known and/or respected with or without his notoriety.Indeed, the pure science bits were pretty much awesome. We, or at least I, have heard of this theory in other contexts before and none of it really comes as much surprise to see that genes, themselves, have evolved strategies that are exactly the same as Game Theory in order to find the best possible outcome for continued replication. Hence: the selfish gene. Enormous simple computers running through the prisoner's dilemma with each other, rival genes, and especially within whole organisms which could just be seen as gigantic living spacecraft giving the genes an evolutionary advantage of finding new and more prosperous adaptations.  Yup! That's us! I honestly don't see the problem. I love the idea that we are just galaxies of little robots running complicated Game Theories that eventually turn into a great cooperative machine where everyone (mostly) benefits, with plenty of complicated moves going way beyond hawks and doves and straight into the horribly complicated multi-defectors, forgivers, and other evolutionary styles that depend on the events that have gone before and the pre-knowledge (or lack of) a set end-date for the entire experiment... in other words, our deaths, whether pre-planned or simply the entire mass of genes just coming to realize that it's no longer in their best interest to keep pushing this jalopy around any longer if they're not getting anything out of it... like further replication. :) Even when it's not precisely sex, it's still all about sex. :) Of course, what I've just mentioned isn't the entire book, because, as a matter of fact, the book walks us through so many stages of thought, previous research, developments, mistakes, and upgraded theories and surprising conclusions based on soooooo much observable data that any of us might be rightfully confounded with the weight of it unless we were in the heart of the research, ourselves. It's science, baby. Make sure you don't make the data conform to your theory. Build your theory from observable data. Improve upon it as the building blocks are proved or disproved, keep going until it is so damn robust until nothing but a true miracle could topple it, and then keep asking new questions. The fact is, this theory has nothing (or everything) to do with our lives. We play Game Theory, too, in exactly the same way every gene everywhere does, but we just happen to be able to make models on top of the situations and we're able to choose whether to see through the lies, the hawk strategies, or when to stop cooperating if the advantages work out much better for us if we did. We, like our genes, can choose long-term cooperative strategies or play everything like a Bear market. :) Even this book says that it's very likely that Nice Guys can win, but just like our lives, the gene lives keep discovering ever more complicated strategies and all eventual strategies become more and more situational.  Isn't that us, to a tea? I wonder if most complaints about this book stem from complaints about Game Theory rather than the perceived conclusion (much better spelled out, not in this book, but in later books)... that atheism rules the day. It really isn't evident here. Instead, we have a macrocosm mimicking the microcosm and no one wants to challenge their comfortable world view.  Things aren't simple. All choices to betray or cooperate are then met with situation and memory and ever complex meta-contexts, the difference between us and genes being that we're self-aware and the genes are not. Yes, yes, I see where the arguments can start coming out of the closet about self-determination and such, but that's not really the point of this book at all. The point is that it's a successful model that accurately describes reality. It has nothing at all to do with the macro-world except obliquely, and makes no value judgments on our art, our beliefs, or how we think about ourselves except in our uniquely stubborn and self-delusional ways that love to take things out of context and apply misunderstood concepts to our general lives and wonder why everything gets so screwed up. :) But then, maybe I'm just applying my own incomplete models to yet another and we lousy humans still lack WAY TOO MUCH data to build a really impressively improved model. :)  Come on, Deep Thought. Where are you? :)     2017-shelf non-fiction science               1,419 reviews4,280 followers     May 2, 2022   Richard Dawkins shot to celebrity in 1976 with this rabble-rousing book, which change the game by inventing the word "meme" and basically nothing else, the rest of his ideas range from "ehhh not exactly" to "yeah but so what." Fun to read though! The gist is that the essential unit of life is the gene; our bodies are just big fleshy protection robots for the gene. Dawkins says I'm a tool. Right? High five!And you might be like "Okay, so who cares?" What difference does that make, right? Well, first of all I'm gonna go have some pie because fuck you, genes, you're not the boss of me. Woohoo! Other than that, no, no difference, carry on. It makes a difference to scientists, because when you look at it this way all kinds of behaviors make more sense, or make sense in a different way. Dawkins' particular focus is on behaviors we call "altruistic", like when an antelope warns his herd about an approaching lion. Dawkins would like to go through every altruistic behavior he can think of, which is a lot, and show you why it's actually not at all altruistic.  (The antelope is an easy one: he warns the herd by jumping up and down, which doubles as a sign to the lion that he is super bouncy and the lion should go chase someone less bouncy.) So, no big surprise to those of us who know Dawkins in his latest incarnation as The World's Dickishest Atheist:* Dawkins does a lot of party pooping in this book. Did you think you were a nice guy? You are not. Your genes command you to behave nicely on occasion because in the end it will benefit you. (See: the Prisoner's Dilemma; also game theory. Or read this book, which will explain both to you.)  * which is more annoying to religious people, but also annoying to those of us who are atheists but don't feel the need to yell about it all the time  But Dawkins is a tremendously engaging writer. He's good at explaining technical concepts clearly. And he's funny! This book is fun to read. And it's full of the kind of fascinating tidbits that make you turn to your spouse and say "Holy moley, did you know saddleback birds on an island in New Zealand make up new songs that then spread through the population like a Pharrell Williams single until everyone's singing them?" And she's like "Sounds boring! I'm reading Jezebel, did you know Justin Bieber was racist when he was fourteen?" and then the two of you look at each other like who even are you? And your genes are like who cares, you two should make out.     2014 rth-lifetime science               1,394 reviews674 followers     May 25, 2017   دوستانِ گرانقدر این کتاب از 500 صفحه و 13 فصل تشکیل شده استعزیزانم، به ژنی در انتخابِ طبیعی برتری داده میشود که تجمعِ همتاهایِ آن در خزانۀ ژنی رو به افزایش باشد.توجهِ ما به ژن هایی است که به نظر میرسد رویِ رفتارِ اجتماعیِ دارندگانش اثر میگذارد، پس بیایید برایِ ژن ها تا حدی هوش و آزادی قائل شویم تا این نوشته و ریویو برایتان ملموس تر باشددوستانِ گرامی، ژنِ خودخواه، فقط یک قطعۀ کوچک از دی اِن اِی نیست. بلکه همۀ نسخه هایِ قطعۀ خاصی از «دی اِن اِی» منتشر شده در سراسرِ جهان است و هدفش این است که تعدادِ خود را در خزانۀ ژنی افزایش دهد و این کار را با برنامه ریزی برایِ بقا و تولیدِ مثلِ بدن هایی که در آن است، انجام میدهدهمۀ ما موجودات، ماشینِ بقا هستیم، برایِ یک نوع همتاساز که آن را «دی اِن اِی» مینامیم... این همتاسازها برایِ بقایِ خود ماشینهایِ مختلفی را ساخته اند... به عنوانِ مثال، میمون ماشینی است که ژن ها را در بالایِ درخت حفظ میکند.. ماهی ماشینی است که ژن را در آب نگه میدارد... و کرم دستگاهی است که ژن را در زیرِ خاک با ... نگه میدارد... پس دوستانِ من، دی اِن اِی عملکردِ اسرارآمیزی داردبدنِ ما انسانها و موجوداتِ دیگر، ماشینی است که برایِ ژنهایش از هیچ کوششی فروگذار نمیکند.. ژن در هر بدن برایِ بقا از بهترین فرصت ها استفاده میکند، این فرصت ها بسته به آنکه بدن نر باشد یا ماده، با هم فرق دارندخوب دوستانِ خوبم، برای اینکه این ریویو خسته کننده و تخصصی نباشد.. سعی میکنم مثال هایِ جالب و نکته هایِ مهم در این کتاب و همۀ فصل هایش، در موردِ ژن را برایِ شما دوست دارانِ دانش و خرد، در زیر بنویسم--------------------------------------------عزیزان، ژن هایِ خودخواه، گاهی با روشِ ایثارگری در بین همنوعان، سعی به بقایِ خود میکنند: مثلاً برخی از بابون ها ژنی وجود دارد، به نامِ « اگر یک نرِ بالغ هستی، از گروه در مقابلِ پلنگ دفاع کن» ... به این ترتیب بابونِ بالغ جانِ خود را برایِ دفاع از سایرین به خطر می اندازد--------------------------------------------گاهی اوقات در طبیعت، بر خلافِ خواستۀ ژنِ خودخواه، عمل میشودمثلاً دیده شده که یک میمونِ مادر که داغ دار است و بچۀ خود را از دست داده، به جایِ تولیدِ مثل و تلاش برایِ بقایِ ژن هایِ خود، بچۀ میمونِ دیگری را از او میدزد و بزرگ میکند... با اینکار نه تنها به بقایِ ژنِ خود کمکی نکرده، بلکه این شانس را به رقیبِ ژنیِ خود داده تا تولیدِ مثلِ دوباره داشته باشدیا اینکه برخی از ماده ها وجود دارند که بچۀ یتیمی را بزرگ میکنند... در صورتیکه طبقِ قواعدِ ژنِ خودخواه، باید بچۀ یتیم از گرسنگی بمیرد--------------------------------------------گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه با تقلب به بقایِ خود کمک میکندبه عنوانِ مثال، فاخته ها سعی میکنند تخم هایِ خود را به لانه هایِ پرندگانِ دیگر برده، تا آنها رویِ تخم بنشینند... حال اگر پرندۀ دیگر از تخمهایش شناخت داشته باشد، با پا تخمِ اضافه را به پایین می اندازد... اما برخی از پرندگان مانندِ کاکایی ها، به تخمی که رویِ آن نشسته اند، توجه نکرده، و فریب میخورندحال در گروه هایِ گوناگون ژنِ راستگو و ژنِ ایثارگر، متفاوت استایثارگران، وقتی متوجه میشوند یکی از تخم ها مالِ خودشان نیست، بازهم آن را بزرگ میکنند، با اینکار باعث میشوند تا ژنِ تقلب در گروه پخش شود.. زیرا آن پرندۀ متقلب تند تند تخم گذاری میکند و اینکار را انجام میدهد--------------------------------------------گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به خیانت رو می آوردمثلاً وقتی ماده ای میبیند که جفتش در نبرد با نرِ دیگر مغلوب شده، سریع به سمتِ نرِ پیروز رفته و با او جفت گیری میکند تا ژنِ برتر حاصل شودگاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه با دروغ به بقایِ خود کمک میکنددر پرندگان، وقتی مادر برایِ بچه ها کرم یا حشره می آورد، بچه ها دهانِ خود را باز میکنند و مادر به میزانِ صدا دقت کرده و به آنها خوراک میدهد، هر کدام گرسنه تر باشد بیشتر صدا میزند.... حال ممکن است ژنِ خودخواه در یکی از جوجه ها بیشتر باشد، در نتیجه جوجه تقلب کرده و وقتی سیر شده دوباره صدایِ بلند میدهد، هم مادر را گول میزند و هم به خواهر و برادرانش خیانت میکند و خواهر و برادرانش از گشنگی میمیرنند--------------------------------------------گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به تهدید رو می آوردمثلاً در پرندگان دو حالت دارد، یکی از جوجه ها که بزرگتر و قوی تر است، با صدایِ جیک جیکِ زیاد توجه شکارچیان را به آنها جلب میکند و میگوید: روباه، روباه بیا ما را بخور... لذا مادرش مجبور است دهانش را ببند و او راضی نگه دارداما زمانی میرسد که جوجۀ ضعیفتر، ژنِ هوشمندی دارد، وقتی میبیند به او خوراک نمیرسد، شکارچی را صدا میکند، تا مادر فرار کرده، روباه بیاید و آن جوجۀ بزرگتر و زورگو را بخورد--------------------------------------------گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به دستور رو می آوردمثلاً اگر توله ای یا جوجه ای به دنیا بیاید و از خواهران و برادرانِ دیگرش کوچکتر و ضعیف تر و نحیف تر باشد، ژنی به او دستور میدهد که: « بدن، اگر از آنهایی که باهم زاده شده اید، خیلی کوچکتر هستی، تقلا نکن و بمیر»... و حتی بهتر است خوراکِ توله هایِ دیگر شود...به این ترتیب بیشترین سود را نصیبِ ژن هایش میکند--------------------------------------------گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به کشتن و قتل رو می آوردمثلاً پرندۀ «راهنمایِ کندویِ عسل»، مثلِ فاخته ها متقلب است و تخمِ خود را در لانۀ پرندگانِ دیگر میگذارد... این نوع پرنده، نوکِ تیز و خمیده ای دارد... وقتی از تخم بیرون می آید.. سریع جوجه هایِ دیگر را سوراخ سوراخ کرده و میکشد، تا برایِ گرفتنِ خوراک از دهانِ مادرِ ناتنیِ خود، با او رقابت نکنندیا نوعی پرستو، تخمِ خود را در لانۀ زاغ میگذارد... جوجه زودتر سر از تخم درآورده. و تخمِ زاغ را میانِ برجستگی هایِ بالش گذاشته و آن را به پایین پرت میکند--------------------------------------------گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به انتخاب رو می آوردمثلاً اگر ببیند تعداد نرها زیاد شده اند... نمیگذارد تخمدان ها اسپرمِ نرساز را دریافت کنند... در حالتِ عادی، ژنِ خودخواه ترجیه میدهد،والد، ماده به دنیا بیاورد--------------------------------------------گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به برده داری رو می آوردمثلاً گونه ای از مورچه ها هستند که به مورچه هایِ دیگر حمله کرده و سربازان را میکشند، و تخمهایِ ملکه را دزدیده و به لانۀ خود می آورند... وقتی بچه ها به دنیا می آیند، از آنها به عنوانِ برده استفاده میکنند--------------------------------------------گاهی اوقات ژنِ خودخواه برایِ بقا به همزیستی رو می آوردمثلاً گونه ای از مورچه ها وجود دارند که از شته ها به عنوانِ حیوانِ خانگی استفاده میکنند، یعنی شته ها شیرۀ گیاهان را میمکند، سپس مورچه ها شته ها را میدوشند و این شیره را از پشتشان در می آورند... در ازایِ آن مورچه ها از خانۀ شته ها همچون سربازان محافظت میکنندما انسان ها، در سلول هایمان چیزهایِ ریزی وجود دارد به نامِ «میتوکندری»... «میتوکندری» کارخانه هایِ شیمیاییِ کوچکی هستند که وظیفۀ تولیدِ انرژی را دارند... «میتوکندری» ها در اصل باکتری هایِ همزیستی هستند که از ابتدایِ تکامل با سلول هایِ ما پیوند یافته اند و داد و ستد میکنند--------------------------------------------گاهی اوقات یک ژن بی جهت ژن هایِ دیگر را از بین میبرد... این ژنها دستگاه را بهم میریزند... مانندِ «ژنِ تی»... مثلاً در موش ها اگر موشی در کودکی دو ژنِ تی داشته باشد، در کودکی میمیرد--------------------------------------------دوستانِ عزیزم، تنها چیزی که ژن ها به طورِ مستقیم میتوانند آن را تحتِ تأثیر قرار دهند، ترکیبِ پروتئین استامیدوارم این مطالب برایِ شما دوستدارانِ دانش، مفید بوده باشه«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»     علم-و-دانش فلسفه               728 reviews1,348 followers     March 17, 2022     
  “Una gallina es solo la forma en que un huevo hace otro huevo“ (Samuel Butler 1835-1902) 
La evolución es un hecho que solo un fanático religioso puede negar: antes había animales que ahora no existen y ahora existen animales que antes no. Aunque esto era conocido ya antes de Darwin, él tuvo la genialidad de idear un mecanismo que explicara cómo se producía esa evolución: la selección natural. Su explicación ha sido modificada con posterioridad de forma sustancial en base a los nuevos conocimientos sobre genética, mecanismos de la herencia, registros fósiles, etc. hasta dejar de ser una teoría, una hipótesis, para convertirse en una ley científica al mismo nivel de credibilidad que cualquier otra ley establecida por la ciencia. La interesante y fructífera tesis que plantea Dawkins en este libro es establecer como unidad de este mecanismo de selección, no a la especie ni al grupo ni al individuo, sino al gen.  
  “Un cuerpo es el medio empleado por los genes para preservar los genes inalterados.” 
Tomar al gen como unidad de selección explicaría, por ejemplo, el altruismo, esto es, cómo es posible que un individuo quiera aumentar el bienestar de otro ser semejante a expensas de su propio bienestar. La respuesta es que los genes “pueden alcanzar mejor sus objetivos egoístas fomentando una forma limitad del altruismo a nivel de los animales individuales.” El libro expone muchos ejemplos en el que comportamientos que en principio pueden parecernos altruistas pueden ser interpretados como una forma de egoísmo tanto a nivel del individuo como a un nivel más profundo y realmente inquietante, el del gen. Otra aportación interesantísima de Dawkins en este libro es la idea de meme, la unidad mínima de información que se puede transmitir, que actuaría como un replicador a nivel cerebral de forma semejante a un gen. Ejemplos de memes que da el propio autor son: “tonadas o sones, ideas, consignas, modas en cuanto a vestimenta, formas de fabricar vasijas o de construir arcos”.  
  “Los memes se propagan en el acervo de memes al saltar de un cerebro a otro mediante un proceso que… puede llamarse imitación... Si los memes de los cerebros son análogos a los genes, deben ser estructuras cerebrales autorreplicadoras, patrones reales de conexión neuronal que se reconstruyen a sí mismos en un cerebro después de otro.” 
Así, también los memes están expuestos a un mecanismo de selección, de tal forma que serán favorecidos aquellos que “explotan su medio cultural para su propia ventaja”, siendo su medio cultural el acervo de memes existentes en cada momento. Un libro sugerente y explicado de esa forma tan didáctica que siempre exhibe Dawkins.                   561 reviews86 followers     October 22, 2020   This book is pretty good! Professor Richard Dawkins has narrated this topic on life and evolution in a very interesting way.A must read - all about The Immortal Gene and The Immortal Replicator!  "Death, of course, is not a failure. Death is normal. Death may be the enemy, but it is also the natural order of things."                    1,238 reviews2,207 followers     September 11, 2018   On 27 December 1831, a young naturalist by the name of Charles Robert Darwin set upon a voyage of discovery on the HMS Beagle which was to last five years and take him all over the globe. He came back with a lot of specimens, copious scientific notes and an explosive theory which was to rock the world of ideas: the theory of evolution by natural selection. Suddenly, God became an unnecessary and unlikely hypothesis: man was pulled down from his high throne as the master of creation: and existence became a cacophony of chance events rather than a carefully co-ordinated orchestra. Naturally, the religious establishment rebelled. But like all ideas whose time had come, evolution hung on with great tenacity to become the widely accepted idea it is today.I have been fascinated with the idea ever since I was introduced to it in high school. As far as I am concerned, the very argument that theists put forward against evolution is its greatest strength; viz. the complexity of the natural world. According to the believer, such a complex and “perfect” (whatever that means!) system has to have an architect behind it. But the fact is that it is not “perfect” – nature is dynamic. What we perceive as stability is homeostasis, a seething mass of life, eating one another and being eaten; and as nature shifts her stance, so does life, whole species dying out (like the dinosaurs) to make way for others. But wait! Humans are different, aren’t we? We compete, true: but we also show altruism. People lay down their life to protect their progeny, their brothers and sisters, their countrymen… if we were selfish survival machines, why would we do this? It means we have the spark of divinity within us, doesn’t it? Well… not exactly, according to Richard Dawkins. It only means we have the “Selfish Gene” within us.  The Selfish Gene needs no introduction. This is one of those iconic “pop” science books which everyone seems to have read, like The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris. I was a bit late (well, about 37 years!) in getting to it. However, the book has lost none of the charm, and the idea any of its power, due to the ravages of time: if at all, it has become stronger.  What is a gene?  Dawkins confesses that there is no universally agreed definition of ‘gene’. We now know that the blueprint for building of each human being is coded in 23 pairs of chromosomes, one of every pair being inherited from each parent. The code inside the chromosome is written in DNA molecules, the famous ‘Double Helix’ that Dawkins terms the ‘Immortal Coils’.   The DNA molecules are replicators. They replicate themselves; they also manufacture proteins, the basic building block of life as we know it. These DNA molecules (some version of them) were the original “life” in the “primeval soup”: they reproduced themselves and competed with one another to survive. Natural selection defined which lasted and which died away. Dawkins defines a gene (a definition borrowed from G. C. Williams) as “any part of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection”. In other words, a gene is a copier with high “copying-fidelity”: that is, it ensures that it copies itself without mistakes so that longevity in the form of copies is ensured. So in the primeval soup, these genes went on happily competing with each other, evolving newer and newer ways of surviving in an environment which got increasingly complex. As part of survival technology, the genes built a lot of machines, bunching together to form gene complexes in the context. The machines got more and more complex, from the single-cell amoeba to the human being. Dawkins starts the book with the question “Why are people?” This is his answer – so that the gene can survive and replicate. We are nothing but vehicles for the genes, who exist to ensure their survival. Pretty disillusioning, isn’t it? But Dawkins is far from done. After pulling down humanity from its pedestal as the “pinnacle of creation”, he proceeds to explain all the lofty sentiments such as love, altruism, sacrifice etc. as the result of strategies for gene survival – extremely selfish strategies at that. It is very difficult to stomach for a generation which has been trained to behold human beings as somehow special, and the above sentiments as the proof of their exclusivity which separate them from the “lower” animals. As one disgusted poster said in one of the fora where this book was discussed: “So altruism is like going to the potty? Oh dear!” But even though disheartening at first, as Dawkins begins to back up his arguments with solid scientific reasoning, it is difficult to dispute him, and difficult not to get excited when he presents his theory with mathematical precision.  Aggression and Stability  One of the most common arguments put forward against evolution is that an uncontrolled state of aggression will lead to a free-for-all and the “stable” environment we see cannot exist. Dawkins explains this with the concept of an ESS (Evolutionary Stable Strategy), which leads to a dynamic equilibrium or homeostasis: he posits a theoretical society populated by pure aggressors (“hawks”) and pure pacifists (“doves”), and proves logically that over a period of time, the number of hawks and doves will stabilise in roughly equal proportion. This is because it is not the survival machines which are having the final say on who will win: it is the genes. This concept is further expanded with fine variations on the behavior – ultimately, every time, a dynamically stable configuration results. In Chapter 12, ‘Nice Guys Finish First’ (added as part of the second edition), Dawkins takes this theory further and presents a varying set of evolutionary strategies, modelled on Game Theory. It describes in detail various evolutionary stratagems he tried out on his computer (with contributions from a lot of scientists) and the outcomes. This is a fascinating analysis and in my opinion, the most interesting part of the book – but that may just be the engineer in me, who loves anything mathematical!  Altruism  Oh yes. The old stumbling block. The favourite saw of the creationists. If we are all selfish, how does altruism come into the picture? Why do parents sacrifice themselves for their children, why do siblings do the same for each other, why do we co-operate at all? Should we not be at each other’s throats, all the time? No, according to Dawkins. If we look at it from the gene’s point of view, it all makes perfect sense. When we are talking of genes, we are talking of gene pools here: a group of genes working together so that the survival of each is maximised. Dawkins makes a brilliant analogy to a rowing team. If a coach is choosing a team, he would over a period end up with a group who can pull in such a way that the winning chance is maximised – an individual rower, however brilliant he is, would find no place in the team if he did not contribute to the group effort. In the case of genes, natural selection plays the role of the coach. Those genes which could not co-operate simply get discarded in the evolutionary race over a period of time. Also, one should bear in mind that a gene is not a single physical bit of DNA; it is all replicas of a particular bit of DNA, distributed throughout the world. A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this could be the origin of altruism. Dawkins calls it ‘genesmanship’. He spends four chapters explaining how it applies to siblings, offspring, lovers and apparent strangers. In the last chapter (‘The Long Reach of the Gene’), Dawkins extrapolates the above argument to how the gene in one species can extend its reach to another species, possibly to the detriment of the latter, to explain parasitism. One may take it or leave it, but the arguments are well thought-out and presented with great clarity; with cold, scientific logic. There are no opinions here. It makes fascinating reading, even though the mathematical analysis may put some off!  Memes  The concept of the ‘meme’ is possibly the most revolutionary one expressed in this book. Dawkins defines a meme as a unit of cultural transmission, a basic idea which gets replicated in human brains, in the ‘primeval soup’ of human culture; which, according to him, is in the same state as the biological ‘soup’ was at the dawn of life on earth. To quote the author himself: Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. According Dawkins, all prevalent ideas (including the idea of God!) is a meme: the meme survives because it has a survival value in the meme pool. If we subscribe to this idea, the whole intellectual arena is nothing but a group of memes grappling for survival – not a very edifying thought. It seems Dawkins appreciates this, because he ends the chapter on memes with the speculation that man has the capacity for genuine, disinterested, true altruism. He says “We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.” I, as a fan of the Jungian idea of the Collective Unconscious, could not help speculating on whether the meme could be embedded way down in the gene itself? Maybe the Collective Unconscious is nothing but little bits of consciousness, embedded inside the DNA, which guided the process of survival? If so, it could be case for Intelligent Design – or rather, Intelligent Evolution. This is one of those ‘pop-science’ books which are enlightening and enjoyable at the same time. A must-read.  Read the review also on my  
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.    science               77 reviews179 followers     July 27, 2022   Last night, while watching a fusillade of pyrotechnic spermatozoa ejaculated from gaudy tubes of erectile aspect, I saw the whole of human desire captured in Incarusian defiance. With shells striving to pierce the black ovum of space, but having their motility sapped by the deformational geometries which encircle our terrestrial biosphere. Disclosing their metal salts and iron filings with violent punctuations of barometric pressure and visual amplitude, only to be completely consumed, mere seconds later, by silence and darkness. A stranger, perhaps sensing the melancholy which had gripped me by the haunches, innocently inquired, “Is something bothering you, sweetie?” To which I hissed, “I sometimes fantasize about blasting a champagne cork into someone’s mouth, mid sentence, then impaling them with the bill of sword fish.” I then turned back to the show, shaking my head, “You didn’t deserve that. I’m just thinking about the relationship between senescence and antagonistic pleiotropy and how you can’t make sense of certain biological realities unless your conceptual efforts proceed from the optimal level of granularity. For instance, when I, as a little girl, had the distinct terror of being chased by a Somali ostrich, and was subsequently trampled by said flightless bird, with my large strawberry milkshake pinned beneath me and exploding all over my white dress like a bazooka bubblegum claymore, (which appeared to onlookers as my ever loving guts being mashed out of my tiny body), it did not behoove me to attempt to understand its behavior at the level of quantum physics. I’m sure the whole dreary affair transgressed no physical laws, up to and including my mother screaming; “Saints be with us! The little idiot has finally done herself in!” I’m not saying that. But it was a far better use of attentional resources to focus on my behavior prior to the incident, wherein I was strangely compelled to harangue the temperamental bird about the dimorphic condition of its tiny head relative to its large body.” Laughing and turning to ask the man for a light, I realized that he had fled silently back into the crowd.Not to be thwarted in mid rant, I singled out an attractive woman and stormed towards her, gesturing wildly as if the Cesar of my ego was experiencing bloody death curtesy of white hot senatorial stabbings administered by psychedelics. Shouting, “In precisely this way, it is difficult to make much sense of our ephemeral existence without the concept of antagonistic pleiotropy.” Drawing painfully close and smelling her hair. “Are you single? Don’t answer that! First, observe, at the proper level of magnification, the center of evolution’s dramas, not the individual, but the gene. Now, if we are going to attempt to understand death, this inability of ours to achieve the escape velocity of our mortality, like those mortars which currently spunk the night sky with their rainbow smithereens. To understand this spectral Bukkake, we must cudgel the knees of our tired frameworks and streak madly into the arms of lusty new paradigms. Observe! If we were going to ask the obvious question; why do we perish amongst abundance? Why must we bust a fat, prismatic nut, and never be heard again? If we have food sufficient to meet our caloric needs, should we not be able to repair the damage we incur indefinitely? I say unto you; Let us suppose that there was a gene, in our ancestral past, which controlled for more than one phenotypic trait (i.e the protein expression of the genotype under influence of environment factors). One of these traits was quite beneficial early in life and ensured that the humans who possessed it were more likely to take it to pound town, but the same gene was also responsible for one or more defects which would manifest outside of prime reproductive years. You would end up with a proliferation of these genes irregardless of their ultimate cost, (i.e the eventual demise of the screaming mortar as it goes ungently into that good night) because reproduction is key. The mystery of senescence now seems tractable, doesn’t it?”  Silently she takes my hand and leads me away from the crowd. Once we’ve made it to the top of a small hill overlooking the celebration, she turns to me and says; "Sì, abbiamo un'anima. Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot.” This book is an account of one of the most successful science metaphors ever created, of how immortal genes are winnowed through the game theoretic calculus of natural selection into evolutionary stable states. About how the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators can produce all the various strategies which enable the carriers of this encoded information to survive and send it into the future. The Selfish Gene is one of the best books on evolution ever written. It profoundly communicates just what evolution is all about: the replication of genetic units of information, by whatever means possible. Viruses, retroviruses, parasitic insects, gut bacteria, mitochondria, the grotesque nuptial gifts of scorpion flies, and motorcycle accidents caused by toxoplasmosis - they are all successful cases of genes replicating in varied "survival machines," giving zero shits about how quaint their respective venues appear. It's an amazing, well-proved idea, wonderfully communicated by a passionate writer. It requires no advanced training or technical background to understand, and will reward your attention by permanently enriching your understanding of the natural world.                   9,568 reviews55.6k followers     October 4, 2021    The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins The gene-centred view of evolution that Dawkins championed and crystallized is now central both to evolutionary theorizing and to lay commentaries on natural history such as wildlife documentaries.  A bird or a bee risks its life and health to bring its offspring into the world not to help itself, and certainly not to help its species — the prevailing, lazy thinking of the 1960's, even among luminaries of evolution such as Julian Huxley and Konrad Lorenz — but (unconsciously) so that its genes go on.  Genes that cause birds and bees to breed survive at the expense of other genes.  تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز سوم ماه اکتبر سال 2011میلادی عنوان: ژن خودخواه؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داوکینز؛ مترجم نرگس رستمی‌گوران؛ تهران، نشر چشمه، 1389؛ در 481ص؛ شابک9789643629946؛ موضوع تکامل و زیست شناسی از نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده 20م عنوان: ژن خودخواه؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داکینز؛ مترجم جلال سلطانی؛ تهران، مازیار، 1396؛ در 432ص؛ شابک9786006043760؛ چاپ سوم سال1397؛ چاپ پنجم و ششم 1399؛ عنوان: ژن خودخواه؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داکینز؛ مترجم شهلا باقری؛ تهران، پژواک، 1399؛ در 581ص؛ شابک9789649309064؛  ریچارد داوکینز زیست‌شناس تکامل‌گرا، کتاب «ژن خودخواه» را در سال 1976میلادی منتشر کردند؛ بنیان بحث «داوکینز» در این کتاب در حوزه ی تکامل طبیعی، و علم ژنتیک است، ایشان ژنتیک را مبتنی بر نگرشی ژن‌محور شرح می‌دهند، و همچنین، رویکرد ایشان در زیست‌شناسی، متکی بر نظریه‌ ی «داروین» است؛ ایشان بر پایه نظریه ی «داروین» می‌پذیرند که تکامل طبیعی، از راه گزینش طبیعی کار می‌کند، و گزینش طبیعی به‌ معنی بقای شایسته‌ترین‌ها است؛ «داوکینز» نگرش ژن‌ مرکزی خود را در علم ژنتیک، با نظریه ی تکاملی «داروین» پیوند می‌زنند، و به این نتیجه ی پایه‌ ای می‌رسند که: «ژن»، عنصر اصلی گزینش طبیعی است؛ از نظر ایشان، هر چند رقابت مبتنی بر خودخواهی عنصر اصلی ژن برای بقاست، اما خودخواهی، صرفاً رفتار فردی ژن است؛ در عین حال، اولاً برآوردن خودخواهی ژن‌ها از اساس متکی بر همتاسازی، یا تکثیر شوندگی است، و ثانیاً این رفتار فردی در اوضاع و احوال ویژه ای روی می‌دهد، که امکان رویدادن اهداف خودخواهانه ژن را، به‌ منظور پایداری آن فراهم می‌آورد؛ در این اوضاع و احوال است که ژن خودخواه با دیگر ژن‌ها، که آنها نیز خودخواه‌ هستند، روبرو می‌شود و می‌خواهد رقابتی را با آنها پیش ببرد، که هدف آن نگهداری و بقای زندگی ارگانیسم، در کل، است؛ از دیدگاه «داوکینز» ارگانیسم موجود زنده، محیطی است، که رقابت خودخواهانه ژن را بر زمینه ی رقابت دیگرخواهانه‌ ای قرار می‌دهد، که بقای خود ارگانیسم زنده را می‌پذیرد؛ پس چشم همچشمی خودخواهانه ژن‌های خودخواه، در ارگانیسم به تعادل ژنتیکی، و بنابراین به بقای ارگانیسم می‌انجامد؛ «داوکینز» انتخاب یا همان گزینش طبیعی را، بازی بزرگ رقابت می‌داند، که در آن بازیگران یا رقابت‌ کنندگان اصلی، ژن‌های خودخواه‌ هستند؛ اما از آنجا که رقابت برای بقای ارگانیسم زنده انجام می‌شود، پس این رقابتی نه برای نابودی، که برای بقا یعنی تداوم زندگی است؛ از این رو «داوکینز» می‌کوشد در کتاب خود، تاریخ طبیعی را از دیدگاه علم تبیین کند؛ نخستین انتقاد مهم بر کتاب ژن خودخواه به همین نگرش به تاریخ طبیعی از منظر علم ــ علم ژنتیک ــ تا آن جایگاه است که می‌توان آن را با علم‌گرایی نویسنده توضیح داد؛ زیرا سنجش این موضوع یعنی حیات و تحول آن، موضوعی نیست که صرفاً از منظر علمی، و نظریه ژنتیک، به آن پرداخته شده باشد، بلکه باید از منظرهای دیگری نیز، به این نگره پرداخت، که نویسنده دیدگاههای دیگر را فراموش کرده است؛ مشخص است که از آن جمله هستند نگرش‌ه��ی دینی ــ در کنار نگرش علمی ــ برای این موضوع پاسخ‌های با قدمت بسیار وجود دارند که هنوز هم از سوی مردمان بسیاری در سراسر جهان پذیرفتی هستند و از این رو نباید چنین پاسخ‌هایی را نادیده گرفت؛ اما نکته‌ ی بسیار مهم این است که کتاب «ژن خودخواه» صرفاً درباره‌ ی علم ژنتیک، و ارائه‌ ی تبیین نوینی از نظریه‌ ی تکامل «داروین» نیست؛ اگر ژنتیک، در مجموع، به علم زیست‌شناسی مربوط می‌شود، اما «ریچارد داوکینز» فراتر از علم ژنتیک، به اتکای همان نگرش ژن‌محورانه، به دیگر قلمروهای زندگی اجتماعی انسان ــ مثلاً فرهنگ و تحولات فرهنگی ــ می‌پردازند؛ ایشان می‌کوشند قانون تکامل را در حوزه تحولات فرهنگی نیز تبیین کنند، و به اتکای آن، بقا یا زوال فرهنگ‌ها را به خوانشگر بنمایانند؛ «داوکینز» با تأکید بر تشابه تکامل فرهنگی با تکامل ژنتیکی، عامل تکامل فرهنگی را مِم ــ شبیه ژن ــ معرفی می‌کنند؛ ایشان با جعل مفاهیم «مم» و «ممتیک» می‌کوشند تکامل فرهنگی را در تشابه با تکامل ژنتیکی از طریق ژن و ژنتیک توضیح دهند؛ از نظر او «مم‌ها» ــ همچون آهنگ‌ها، ایده‌ها و شعارها و لباس، مد و...؛ ــ از راه تقلید، همتا سازی و تکثیر می‌شوند، و تحول و تکامل فرهنگی را ممکن می‌کنند؛ اگر در نظر او «ژن» واحد زیستی است، «مم» واحد اطلاعاتی است؛ در واقع «مم» آن هستیِ ذهنی است که «داوکینز» با جعل آن از حوزه ژنتیک (حوزه عمل خودخواهانه ژن) به حوزه فرهنگ عبور می‌کنند، و می‌کوشند تکامل و تحول فرهنگ را به خوانشگران بنمایانند؛ در عین حال، ایشان از همان مفاهیم رقابت، همتاسازی، خودخواهی و دیگرخواهی، در حوزه تحرک «مم‌ها» و انتقال و همتاسازی یا تکثیر آنها استفاده می‌کنند؛ دومین انتقاد مهم از «داوکینز» ناشی از همین تلاش ایشان برای یکسان‌سازی تحول ژنتیکی و تحول فرهنگی است؛ ایشان در این یکسان‌سازی تا آنجا پیش می‌روند که دین ــ وجهی از فرهنگ ــ را با همین الگوی نظری‌ خویش توضیح می‌دهند؛ برای نمونه، ایشان «ایمان» را، یک «مم» در حوزه‌ ی دین می‌شناسند که از راه تقلید، همتاسازی و تکثیر می‌شود؛ از اینجا می‌توان دریافت که در آرای «داوکینز» پیوند تکامل ژنتیکی، با تحول فرهنگی بسیار خیال‌پردازانه باز نموده می‌شود؛ این پاسخی نادرست نسبت به باورهای مذهبی است و به همین دلیل نمی‌تواند توضیح قانع‌ کننده‌ای از تداوم اندیشه‌های دینی در جهان ارائه کند؛ «داوکینز» می‌کوشند تحول فرهنگ را با نگرشی صرفاً علمی توضیح دهند؛ همین مسئله است که با انتقادات بسیاری مواجه شده است؛ «داوکینز» با یکسان دانستن تحول طبیعی و تحول فرهنگی، به تقابل علم و دین می‌رسند؛ در حالی که این دو شیوه‌ ی تبیین جهان، در همزیستی با هم قرار دارند و یکدیگر را نفی نمی‌کنند؛ «ریچارد داوکینز» از سال 1995میلادی تا سال2008میلادی استاد کرسی «چارلز سیمونی» برای ترویج علم، در «دانشگاه آکسفورد» بودند؛ ایشان از پدر و مادر بریتانیایی در «نایروبی» به دنیا آمده اند، در «آکسفورد» درس خوانده، و رساله ی دکتری خود را زیر نظر «نیکو تیبرگن» رفتارشناس برنده جایزه «نوبل» به سرانجام رسانده اند؛ ایشان از سال1967میلادی تا 1969میلادی در «دانشگاه کالیفرنیا» در «برکلی» استادیار بودند؛ سپس به‌ عنوان دانشیار و بعد استاد به بخش جانورشناسی «نیوکالج در آکسفورد» بازگشتند تا آنکه در سال 1995میلادی، به‌ عنوان نخستین استاد کرسی «سیمونی» منصوب شد؛ ایشان اکنون عضو ممتاز «نیوکالج» هستند؛ تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی     20th-century biology british               2 reviews9 followers     April 21, 2008   One of the most important things I took from  The Selfish Gene is an idea that I find a bit difficult to put into words.  Richard Dawkins is really good at crafting metaphors to describe scientific principles that on their own may be not be so interesting, or may be stubbornly inaccessible. While his rhetoric may make concepts more accessible and convenient to discuss, he openly warns that no metaphor is completely accurate. Understanding that the metaphors must be viewed skeptically, he offers this, "If we allow ourselves the license of talking about genes as if they had conscious aims, always reassuring ourselves that we could translate our sloppy language back into repectable terms if we wanted to, we can ask the question, what is a single selfish gene trying to do?"  All things being even, genes that are long-lasting or that replicate quickly, and genes that can replicate with high fidelity are going to outnumber those that are slow or erroneous in replication. Dawkins calls this the “selfish” nature of genetic replication. He chooses his words carefully though, and applies metaphors of self-interest only to genes that are, or are not, selected for by indifferent and unthinking mechanisms. Where this metaphor breaks down, as Dawkins admits, is when the idea of “selfishness” is brought up from genetics to the level of individuals within a group, or groups within a species. He criticizes such concepts in sociobiology, where claims are made that an individual’s actions are inherently selfish in order to serve their genes in themselves, or in other related individuals. While genes may be “selfish” in order to be selected, this doesn’t necessitate that individuals (“survival machines” as he so affectionately calls us) must as well act only in self-interest. In this video introduction to the book, Dawkins suggests that,  "…if you have “selfish” genes, which only means that natural selection works at the level of the gene, if you have “selfish” genes, then, you may have altruistic individuals."                    297 reviews163 followers     April 17, 2021   Reading this book was like meeting with a person about whom you have heard a lot, who has some kind of legendary status, and overall so well-acclaimed that you cannot resist the temptation to meet the person. Another thing you have heard is that the person is so simple, down to earth that he would take the trouble to talk to any layman, to make these biological terms easier, more comprehensible and comfortable to deal with. And you think talking to you won't cause him much trouble because you are well aware of some technical biological jargons.  So, when Mr. Dawkins finally meets you through his legendary The Selfish Gene, you eagerly wait to hear a few more intricate complex terms - similar to the stature of the book and the writer. The chapters in the beginning (2 &amp; 3) bore a little bit with their roundabout words. But if you can keep a little bit patience up to Chapter 5, then as the chapters go on you begin to realize why this book is a Classic after all! I must agree that it's one of the finest books I have read. Chapter 1 is adorable with its nice philosophical leaps. The best chapters are Battle of the Generations and Battle of the Sexes. The chapter on memes sounds like the movie Inception. Overall the book is the best reward for its readers.     science               102 reviews2 followers     October 2, 2007   Writing lucidly about science for a lay audience while remaining scientifically rigorous is not easy, and Dawkins does a tremendous job as he examines evolution from the point of view of the gene rather than the organism. I found this book to contain a number of "aha" moments -- for example, that rather than pose the question "Why is DNA an efficient mechanism for an individual organism to reproduce itself?", we should ask instead "How did a giant, complicated lumbering robot such as myself become a good mechanism for the reproduction of the self-replicating entities I call my genes? Why did biological matter floating around in the primordial stew originally clump together into larger organisms?"  Dawkins answers these questions and more in an engaging fashion, applying the theory of the selfish gene to aggression, altruism, sexual and familial relationships, and to the transmission of ideas in human societies.  And he makes a point of leaving us with the optimistic thought that we as humans should be informed by our biological history, but need not be bound by it.     nonfiction               Author  6 books2,015 followers     January 16, 2022    Review 2022 This was somewhat repetitious since I've read quite a few books on evolution since I last read this in April 2018 &amp; Dawkins takes pains in this, the 30th anniversary edition, to correct mistakes he made, updates others have made, &amp; to answer some of his critics. Some of the explanations seem needlessly pedantic until I realized just how subtle &amp; powerful his theory is. Even if it doesn't hold up in all circumstances (I'm not sure that it doesn't.) it has changed the field considerably by turning the point of view that preceded it on its collective head (group selection) &amp; influenced many other fields.  So, it has become clear to me that this one is even more influential than I knew at the time. I keep finding references (usually for, but occasionally against) the idea of the selfish gene. I'm interested in reading more by Edward O. Wilson who is one of those who disagrees with the idea. Wilson was also eminent in the field &amp; the finer points of their arguments are beyond me. This article takes a middling ground. https://thisviewoflife.com/richard-da...  I've also just read a discussion of memes by Daniel C. Dennett in From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds. It's not an area I'm terribly interested in, but I'd like to read Dawkins' take on it again. I think Dennett also codified his ideas of competence without comprehension, at least in part, from this work. Highly recommended to all. While I found the audiobook delightful, it's nice to have a text copy available to better grasp some of the more subtle points. ----------------- April 2018 Review This is the thirty year anniversary edition of the book (2006 rather than 1976) so it contains a lot of clarifications where he found there were misunderstandings. It also contains some corrections where he decided that he was either wrong or off target. He also mentions areas where other discoveries &amp; papers took his work even further. I think I found these the most enjoyable. It's great to see science in progress. He also added a few extra chapters that were fantastic. Of course, the main reason to read this book is to read the origin of the word "Meme" which Dawkins created &amp; loosed on the world in this book. I love origin stories. This is the third book that I've read written &amp; narrated by Dawkins. I liked it better than his autobiography, but not quite as much as The God Delusion. I'm not an evolutionary biologist, so some of it went into more depth than I appreciated. It was always interesting &amp; easy to understand, though. That he could make such complex topics so easily digested by a layman says a lot about both his ability as a writer &amp; his knowledge of the subject. His primary point is that evolution is about gene survival. We &amp; other living beings are just the vehicles that the genes build to perpetuate themselves. He makes it very clear throughout the book that when he ascribes words such as 'selfish' to behavior that he is putting the behavior in human terms for ease of communication. When he didn't, he used math to show his point, but he didn't do a lot of that &amp; it was always easy to follow even when the points were counter-intuitive. There were a fair few of those. One example is the Prisoner's Dilemma problem &amp; how it relates to selfishness. He spent quite a bit of time on this &amp; even provided the results of several computer simulations done later by colleagues that prove out &amp; explain the differences in iterated games versus single games. Wow. It really explains a lot about symbiosis, herd/group, &amp; even cuckoos' behavior. I'm just plain impressed by this man &amp; his thought processes, but I'm not sure if I'll read any more of his books. He mentions where he goes into more detail in other books &amp; papers throughout this edition of this book, but he covers enough of The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene for me here, I think. Maybe not. It's an intriguing subject. Perhaps if I come across the audio version I'll succumb to temptation. He &amp; Lalla Ward do a great job of narrating &amp; the ideas are fascinating.  It's amazing just how complex processes can arise out of such simple objects working in groups. Of course, there's been a LOT of time &amp; trial &amp; error. Statistically it makes sense. Dawkins has seen to that. Using his thoughts as a baseline for alien life is even more fascinating. I hope I live to see if his theories are born out. Of course, I recommend this highly. Definitely get this edition, if you can. If you've only read the first edition, get &amp; read this one. It's worth it.     1audio 2non-fiction 3classics               35 reviews19 followers     June 9, 2012   Finally, and after an excessive period of time, the main cause of which was college overwhelming demands, I managed to read and finish, from cover to cover, the book that launched the fame of the most distinguished evolutionary biologist in the world (Richard Dawkins): The Selfish Gene.Dawkins is often characterized as the World's Most Outspoken Atheist. This may be true, but it's concerned with a relatively recent development in his character. I think such reduction is misleading and unfair, quite frankly. Dawkins is an intelligent evolutionary biologist and he has contributed a lot to the field over the past three or four decades. He is very passionate about Darwinian Evolution that I'm surprised that he's not been referred to as "Darwin's pitbull" as much as Sir Huxley was known as "Darwin's Bulldog"! The book is an attempt by Dawkins to offer a meticulous explanation of organisms' behavior, especially animals. Animal behavior is such an intriguing subject, indeed!. Dawkins tries to explore this phenomenal world through the lens of what he calls, "The Selfish Gene Theory". The Selfish Gene Theory establishes that organisms evolve by Natural Selection, but the unit of selection is, surprisingly and against all common knowledge and conventions, the gene. It's not the species, as I used to firmly hold, not even the individual, but the gene, the selfish gene. Genes were here first long before us the multi-cellular organisms. In addition, they are "the replicators" who will live on, unlike us the mortals. They are the immortal units of selection, and we merely are "survival machines" as Dawkins affirms throughout the whole book. This, to me, has a very profound implication. It seems to me to negate the "hypothesis" of morality being also a product of our evolution because if the Selfish Gene Theory is true, then I don't see how the "survival of the species" would have mattered from the first place. However, Dawkins makes the case that selfish genes might "program" survival machines to adopt some forms of "altruistic" behaviors to meet their "selfish" ends. Dawkins' language is that of a "reductionist" which doesn't surprise me as a student of biology familiar with the scientific doctrine of "Occam's Razor". However, I understand how his language might disturb some readers. Dawkins reduces all forms of relationships and attributes them to "genetic" factors including those among family members. Altruistic behavior vs. selfish behavior can all be calculated mathematically. Your mother cares about you because you contain half of her genes! Forget love, affection, and all of that emotional talk. We're merely survival machines designed by our selfish genes to propagate them. Pretty disturbing, huh? Yet, this also has a crucial implication. Dawkins affirms in the beginning of the book that it's one of "biology", not "ethics". He states that we are "selfish by nature", but we can teach our children to be altruistic. To me, this raises a very important question: doesn't that assert that we, indeed, possess free will? This is a profound implication that I believe Dawkins was not aware of when first writing this book. He attempts to briefly discuss this matter in the endnotes by rejecting it, but I think he didn't succeed.There's some form of dualism that the theory suggests in our case: the conscious Homo sapiens.It's very evident and prevalent. One chapter of the book is devoted to what Dawkins call, "memes". It's such a great idea and it shows Dawkins' skill as a "philosopher". Simply, a meme is a "replicating idea" as Daniel Dennett defines it. It makes so much sense to me that memes are replicators just like genes floating from one mind to another and manipulating subjects to insure their survival. It seems to me that religion is an example of a meme that replicates itself (from followers to followers) and struggle for survival through consistent "adaptation" (modification)! Dawkins' animosity towards religion is probably as old as this book is, but he offers a very mild criticism of it which makes sense given that it's not really the center focus of this book. The Selfish Gene Theory is a revolutionary idea. However, even more revolutionary is the concept of "The Extended Phenotype" which illustrates the "long reach of the gene". Dawkins dedicates a whole book to this idea, and devotes the last chapter to it. The notion simply suggests that selfish genes influence very "indirect" behaviors such as, building nests in birds. I must read his book "The Extended Phenotype" since Dawkins explores the idea much more deeply and thoroughly. To conclude, the Selfish Gene Theory (or should I say hypothesis?) is indeed a profound seductive idea as an explanation of organisms' innate behavior. I don't know, though, how much of it is predicated upon scientific evidence and how much is mere speculation, but I do know that the book is a must-read for anyone interested in animal behavior. The book brilliantly offers answers to puzzling phenomenons, but it also raises a lot of profound questions. "The only kind of entity that has to exists in order for life to arise, anywhere in the universe, is the immortal replicator." - R. Dawkins                   40 reviews32 followers     December 8, 2014   Although a lot has changed in social biology and ethology since this book was originally published in 1976, “The Selfish Gene” brought me numerous insights which made my respect for Dawkins grow immensely. I’ll explain why.The book can be considered today almost out of date, I think, and there’s much in it to be criticized. Dawkins language is particularly reductionist as he explains various types of animal behaviors mathematically while attributing them solely to genetic factors.  He says, for instance, that an animal has 1/8 of chance of saving one of his cousins from drowning because there is a chance of 1 in 8 that he and his cousin have genes in common. Or that a mother cares about her babies just because their body is transporting half of her genes.  I’m not questioning it because I found the theory insensitive or cruel (especially when it comes to human beings). We all know very well how important are genes determining behavior. But today we also know how deeply are another factors involved in this process. They are certainly relevant in different measures between animals and humans, but I’m inclined to believe that even in animals they do not exert this kind of dictatorship. And even if they did, it would be almost impossible to use mathematics to calculate things like the probability of an animal saving his cousin's life. In chapter 11 Dawkins introduces the notion of “memes” and makes an exception to the sovereignty of genes: he mentions briefly that culture may change what was genetically “predetermined” to happen and, surprisingly, that it can be considered another type of evolution. However, most of the book doesn’t take this possibility into account, which is one of the reasons why I find it out of date. Conversely, Dawkins brings up some really interesting ideas that had never come to my mind in other ways. One of them is mentioned in the second chapter, in which he explains the origins of replicant molecules (DNAs) and is confronted with the inevitable and very contemporary question: when does life begins? He solves the problem masterfully in my opinion: “Should we then call the original replicators ‘living’? Who cares? (…) Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use. The mere presence in the dictionary of a word like ‘living’ does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world”. Another of my favorite parts is the one where the talks about the evolution of the capability of simulation in animals. His theory is that conscience emerged because the simulation that brains do to calculate probabilities and risks associated to everyday tasks became so complex at one point of the evolution that it was inevitable to start including the “self” in it.  I was also positively impressed by how Dawkins describes adaptation as the predominance of evolutionary stable strategies in opposition to unstable ones. It is an interesting approach to Darwin’s theory that he would probably have agreed with. The descriptions of various behaviors to exemplify his theory are also very engaging. Finally, the already mentioned chapter about memes is a good surprise at the end of the book, and reveals some of Dawkins’ skills as philosopher (as someone mentioned in a review below). For all these reasons, and although I was bored at many moments because of its reductionism, I found “The Selfish Gene” worth of reading. It certainly deserves its fame as a classic.     britânica               339 reviews231 followers     December 2, 2020   3 stars and in this book, this concept is explained through the perspective of genes. Dawkins manages to present complicated topics like cell division, probability, and animal behaviours through the "eyes" of the gene which will use its survival machine (the organism) to survive.   It was fascinating to to learn about relationships and customs that I took for granted, and to now get more understanding on why they occur as they do (especially mutualism and parasitism). Since I learn a lot about this in school, though separately, here I was able to draw connections with Mr. Dawkins' guidance that really enriched my prior knowledge. That being said, Dawkins writes in a simple writing style that may sometimes sound contemptuous of the reader, but I don't think that was the intent: he obviously knows much more about the topic, why would he talk to us as an equal in the field? I also found some of his remarks quite funny or satirical and found they helped lift the mood from just the nitty-gritty science facts.  There are a few 1 star reviews that tie a lot to religion and how Dawkins is overly dismissive of this. In my opinion, I don't exactly understand why this forced people to rate the book so low, since religion is mentioned maybe 2 or 3 times in the book, and in passing. Is Dawkins a bit dismissive of it? Well yes, but he isn't rude about it, he just states that some aspects of religions don't line up with what can be deduced through science... then again maybe I'm not the best person to speak on this, as I too am atheist. I don't know. I sure have read a lot of books that presented religion in a ruder manner, so I thought that Dawkins went about this in a respectful way.  Overall, I thought this book was really insightful, and will definitely be picking up more titles from this author.       a-3-stars b-adult c-non-fiction               Author  23 books681 followers     September 3, 2016    
 “ There are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the galaxy.”
 
 Sometimes science books can become unintentionally funny: 
 
  “What is the good of sex? This is an extremely difficult question for the evolutionist to answer. Most serious attempts to answer it involve sophisticated mathematical reasoning.”
 
 Okay! One of stupidest criticism here on Goodreads of Adam Smith’s Theory of Wealth of Nations’ was that he made the human selfishness as basis of his theory. It was stupid as Smith didn’t invented that ‘selfishness’ he merely showed us how our economy was already based on selfishness of individuals. It is same here. In fact, in this case ‘selfishness’ is apparent selfish behaviour of genes (‘apparent’ because genes do not make conscious choices, selfless-by-default ones just won’t survive) and any effects on the individuals are unconscious. Dawkins shows how selfishness of genes can actually bring out what, at first, may look like altruistic behaviour among animals.  Also, we need not be slave to our genes. In fact, we do resist behaviour imposed on us by genes. The best examples are people who remain without children all their life, contraceptives, welfare state etc. 
 
 “Contraception is sometimes attacked as 'unnatural'. So it is, very unnatural. The trouble is, so is the welfare state. I think that most of us believe the welfare state is highly desirable. But you cannot have an unnatural welfare state, unless you also have unnatural birth- control, otherwise the end result will be misery even greater than that which obtains in nature.”
 
 There are theories in here describing how first life must have started on planet. There is also a theory (theory, not law) that tries to explain why should people die of old age. Any explanations are better than 'God did it'. One of my favorite parts were those discussing Game theory involved in biology. Above all, there are all those fascinating aspects how some animals behave. There are some insects who can be like Chinese-boxes: 
 
  Female greenflies can bear live, fatherless, female offspring, each one containing all the genes of its mother. (Incidentally, an embryo in her mother's 'womb' may have an even smaller embryo inside her own womb. So a greenfly female may give birth to a daughter and a grand- daughter simultaneously, both of them being equivalent to her own identical twins.)
 
 And...do you remember that romantic dialogue, 'I'll die for you'? Ladies among matinses take it too literally: 
 
 “Mantises … When they mate, the male cautiously creeps up on the female, mounts her, and copulates. If the female gets th e chance, she will eat him, beginning by biting his head off, either as the male is approaching, or immediately after he mounts, or after they separate.” 
 
 Isn’t that lovely? Than there are the friendly fights (mostly to get girls): 
 
  "the notable thing about animal fights is that they are formal tournaments, played according to rules like those of boxing or fencing. Animals fight with gloved fists and blunted foils. Threat and bluff take the place of deadly earnest. Gestures of surrender are recognized by victors, who then refrain from dealing the killing blow or bite that our naive theory might predict.”
 
 Dawkins also points out how most of Darwin’s oringal theory was wrong. Yet, you won’t find any Darwin-fundamentalists fighting against evolutionists. Several of Dawkins' own postulates must have been already proved wrong - it was written 40 years ago, that is like stone age to scientists. I don't think he would mind either.Creationists, well, they are a different breed. I guess given the condition the world is in, with all those stupid wars and ozone holes; any ideas of intelligent design can be easily trashed. And have you ever heard of that *stops to search for a word*thing called 'Donald Trump' - what is so intelligent about his existence? If I had my way, I would also have humanity consider whether we aren’t too liberal with the word when we call ourselves an 'intelligent' race. And even assuming there was a creator -than what about his/her aesthetic sense? Why should he give us bad body order? What is so intelligent about that? Coming back to creationists, well, I think Christian church was a little stupid (no offence) when it picked a head-on fight against evolutionists. All they needed to do was to manipulate the meaning of phrases in Bible and tell the world that evolution was embodied in Bible, it was just that they weren't interpreting it right. Hinduism and Islam are far cleverer in this regard.  For example, as India’s respected prime minister will tell you Hindu gods had already invented plastic surgeries long before lesser mortals discovered Iron. Atom bombs, flying vehicles etc – you name it, we already had them ages ago. Read this review for more details. Whatever you may do, we did it in ancient times and were clever enough to forget about it. Also, one of most popular (pseudo) scholars on religion, Dr. Zakir Naik, tells us that truths like Big bang, evolution, Copernican solar system, existence of plasma state of matter, the growth of embryo etc. were all already explained by none other than God himself in Quran. There are many other scientific truths to be found in Quran that he has found using his  far-fetched sophisticated reasoning, you can listen to him here     1-africa non-fiction               Author  9 books49 followers     January 4, 2012   I asked Twitter for reading recommendations just before Christmas and one of them was this book. It's so outside my comfort zone (a book about genetics? Are you MAD?), I just went for it. And I am very glad I did.That's the great thing about Kindles. You can do mad stuff in seconds flat. Skip the forewords and introductions, they're sententious verbiage. Just start reading the book - by the time you've done, you'll actually WANT to go back to the forewords and revision notes. Because this book is seriously fun. Honestly. It's highly readable, thought-provoking and never less than entertaining. Imagine reading a TV series like Coast or a Robert Winston documentary - the mixture of powerful images, connections to the everyday and down to earth presentation actually make the subject matter of the book relevant, alive and, well, splendid. Richipoos takes the odd diversion to indulge in some academic spattery, (one reason, perhaps, this was dubbed a 'young book' - it was written 30 and more years ago) but generally is on the side of the reader, which is why his ideas come across so clearly. The book explores the role of the 'eternal gene', the miraculous and self-replicating bunch of amino-acids that is US and how we are effectively a co-operative of chemical conveniences. Starting with the primeval soup and ending with why mums and dads do what they do, it's a roller-coaster ride. I'm serious - like I said, this would normally tick all my ohnoimnotreadingthatshit buttons. I was grinning through most of it and rare was the day when I didn't share a thought or insight the book had triggered or opened up with my long-suffering wife Sarah. I had the time of my life reading this. I wish I could say the same about my my current struggle with Umberto Eco's somewhat turgid latest, but that - as they say - is another story...                   687 reviews130 followers     April 4, 2020   Any reader of fiction understands the importance of narrative point of view. Influential evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins adopts that idea here. The point of view is that of the gene. His “selfish gene” is a metaphor, an anthropomorphic representation of a replicating sequence of genetic code.He clarifies this idea with an astonishing admission:  “There is no universally agreed definition of a gene.”(p.36) Starting with this blank slate frees him to create parameters that suit his own purposes:  “A gene is defined as any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection....[A] gene is a replicator with high copying fidelity.” (p. 35) In one analogy he compares a gene to a cooperative team of rowers. The individual is merely a vehicle for the focused efforts of this team. Instead of quibbling about the physical entity of the gene, Dawkins focuses his attention on salient properties: copying errors, fecundity (the rate of replication), chromosomal rearrangement, and chemical “rivalry.” These in turn govern observable properties of the organism: viscosity ( “...any tendency for individuals to continue living to the place where they were born.”) and memory (p.282) His arena is a multi-generational dynamic of ephemeral winners and losers, quantitative dominance in the gene pool. He proposes various strategies for achieving that dominance, and asserts that the results are mathematically predictable through game theory. A step-wise picture of evolution emerges:  “Progressive evolution may be not so much a steady upward climb as a series of discrete steps from stable plateau to stable plateau.” (p.113) Each plateau signals the achievement of an  Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS).This revolutionary book was published in 1976. Dawkins cites two important influences. William Donald Hamilton (1936-2000) developed the idea of “kin selection” – the basis for the principle that  “...a gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies....” (p.114) In a chapter titled “Genesmanship", Dawkins provides a simplified version of a formula for calculating the odds that two individuals share a particular gene. George C. Williams (1926-2010) contributed the idea of pleioptropy – multiple effects of a single gene. An example is the activation of a gene when the chemical properties of aging accumulate. I mention these antecedents because I often felt I had fallen into a time warp. Dawkins' ideas are a far cry from the Mendelian genetics I learned in school. Readers familiar with these earlier evolutionary pioneers will have a much easier time navigating this book than I had.  I read the 40th anniversary edition, published in 2016. Extensive explanatory footnotes, often running on for pages, have been added and need to be read in conjunction with the text. This is expedited by the formatting of the Kindle edition.  Fortunately, this book is leavened with surprising behavioral examples. We learn that a whale song can continue for eight minutes without repetition. (p.68) We learn that a strain of worker bee has the “hygenic” behavior of detecting and culling grubs infected by a particular disease. The culling requires two steps: uncapping the wax cell of the larva and evicting the larva from the hive. (p.78) A strain of mice exhibit the “Bruce effect.” The male mouse exudes a chemical that causes a female impregnated by a different male to abort. (p.191) Vampire bats will regurgitate and share excess blood harvested during the night with unsuccessful bats. (p.298) Dawkins examines and explains these behaviors through the lens of his “selfish gene.”     ecosystems-nature history nonfiction               81 reviews7 followers     October 2, 2007   I read this book when I was a student and studying genetics at the time. This helped a lot, it made an awful lot more sense than what I was learning and I have Professor Dawkins to thank for making me look like a genius in a lecture and completely getting my head round an essay.I am a big fan of Richard Dawkins, and this is his genius. I admire his ability to argue something so comprehensively and convincingly. I first discovered him in a book of essays where he wrote a letter to his daughter Juliet (who was ten at the time) explaining how you must always look for evidence. That, I believe, is one of the most important things to learn in life and the way he presents it to a child is impressive. (The book, incidentally, is called How Things Work. I must see if I can add it) However, despite being in awe of Professor Dawkins, I find him a little cruel in the way he removes the potential for all the nice things in life. If he is correct, we may as well all be selfish and thoughtless at all times because to do otherwise is simply irrational. I like to retain a little naivete in my convictions, it makes life more palatable. Apparently "The Blind Watchmaker" is his best book, but I have completely read very few of his books and prefer to listen to him talk.                   158 reviews215 followers     November 29, 2015   I love reading books that challenge my worldview and compel me to change it. This book is an excellent work on Evolutionary biology, Genes, Behavioral biology and Natural selection, among many other fascinating topics. Dawkins is succinct, eloquent and a very intelligent tutor. He uses examples and metaphors to illustrate his point and to coalesce them all to form one unifying picture, of a universe, not in perfect harmony, but in tumult and constant change. The chapter on “Memes” blew me off absolutely; I would want my friends to read just that chapter even if they don’t read the whole book. His ideas are fascinating and logical, but his way of expressing and putting them in words is even better. What a shame that he got into the new atheist movement and all the bad publicity that came with it. As a scientist, I found him at the top of his game.This is a very readable, entertaining and beautifully written book that I would recommend to any one who, like me, bunked their biology lectures back in school. There is a lot to learn from this book. The 30th anniversary edition is annotated and made up to date with additional chapters, so the older edition should be avoided. Read it, let is rinse your brain, and repeat.                   114 reviews13 followers     March 10, 2019   قسمت‌هایی از این کتاب این پتانسیل را دارد تا در مدارس در کنار ریاضی و دیگر علوم تدریس شود!دید انسان قرن 21 به تکامل داروینی و نقش ژن بسیار محدود است و تلاش‌هایی ازجمله این کتاب و چند کتاب دیگر از داوکینز مثل ساعت‌ساز نابینا در این راستا ستودنی است.اما کتاب ژن خودخواه، یک جنبه ترسناک نیز دارد، کتاب نشان می‌دهد که ما (و تمام موجودات زنده) ماشین‌هایی هستیم برای ژن‌ها و وظیفه‌مان انتقال این ژن‌ها به نسل‌های بعدی است، خودخواهی‌های ما، دروغ‌گویی‌های ما و... همه نتیجه تکامل و نیاز به بقا برای ��ین ماشین بقا است، اما در کنار آنها، نیاز ما به یک دیگر، همکاری‌های اجتماعی و روابط خانوادگی هم نتیجه همین نیاز به بقاست، و یک نتیجه‌گیری جالب نیز داوکینز از این قسمت کتاب دارد: ایثارگری را باید به بچه آموزش داد زیرا این‌طور نیست که جزئی از سرشت ذاتی باشد.در کنار بحث تکامل ژن، در این کتاب به‌صورت خلاصه با مفهوم "میم" و تکامل فرهنگی نیز آشنا می���شویم، بخش خاصی از تکامل که فقط شامل انسان‌ها است.و در پایان هم به‌صورت خلاصه با مفهوم فنوتیپ (رخنمون) گسترش‌یافته و اثری که تمام موجودات زنده بر زندگی یک دیگر دارند آشنا می‌شویم.مفاهیمی که بسیار عجیب است که با این حجم پیشرفت تکنولوژی، باید در یک کتاب بخوانیم به‌جای اینکه در تمامی مجاری آموزشی با آنها آشنا شویم.                   5,581 reviews2,310 followers     February 22, 2013   I didn't find this one nearly as interesting or as fun as The God Delusion. At times, reading it felt like a homework assignment, but for that I will have to fault my own intellectual shortcomings, and NOT Dawkins' logic or writing ability. After all, I'm not about to criticize a man who manages to mention lawyers AND vampire bats in the same sentence..      sciency-stuff               337 reviews288 followers     May 9, 2016    The Selfish Gene is still widely read 40 years after publication, remarkable for a science book, and it continues to cause controversy. In straightforward language Dawkins offers theories for the beginning of life, evolution, sexual differentiation and altruism in human behavior. He takes literary license and uses anthropomorphic language to describe genetic attributes best described by mathematics. This technique makes the book accessible to the lay reader but also makes it read like our genes are consciously plotting their destiny. Dawkins inserts many disclaimers that this is not his intent. Detractors also assert that he is reducing human behavior and morals to nothing more than chemistry thus denying fundamental human value. Dawkins also goes to great length to deny this interpretation. I believe Dawkins succeeds. While very readable, Dawkins challenges our minds, requiring deep thought to reap equally deep rewards. My notes follow.How did life start? Dawkins proposes replicators. Think of chains of amino acids, abundant on the early earth, forming protein like molecules that can change the structure of other amino acid chains to look just like them. Dawkins doesn’t mention prions, but replicators sound very similar to me and today we find prions in ever more places and responsible for a host of diseases from mad cow to Alzheimer’s. Eventually the replicators run out of raw material and start consuming each other. Mutations occur: some develop defenses such as prototypical cell walls, then others develop ways to penetrate the walls and evolution is underway at some point crossing the threshold into what we would call living. The replicators themselves become genes, the dictators of the individual organism’s attributes and behaviors. The organism is the survival machine the genes have constructed and with over 3.5 billion years to work in, these machines can become very complicated, even human.  How did this evolution take place? Natural selection operates at the level of the gene. Individual organisms are the vehicles for the gene. The gene operates its vehicle through phenotypic effects. If that effect promotes individual survival and reproduction the gene spreads. Eventually all the genes in a population plateau at an Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS). Mutant genes will come and go but the rare positive one will disrupt the status quo until a new ESS is achieved. Dawkins key point is that natural selection operates not on what is best for the species or individual but what is best for the gene. This may seem like a truism, but this is where notes fall short. You have to read the book.  How did individual organisms become male and female? First were the isogametes which are produced by meiosis just like sperms and eggs. But unlike sperms and eggs isogametes are indistinguishable from each other. Thus any individual can mate with any other. Eventually sperms and eggs evolved as some gametes found it advantageous to be prolific and mobile (sperms) while others benefited by providing large and nutrient rich targets (eggs). The owners of the large and nutrient rich gametes invested more resources in their production. In animal evolution this led to females nurturing and caring for their offspring. Females adopted strategies to get help in the task including strategies to determine male faithfulness. Thus courtship is widely practiced among many species. If all males were faithful courtship would not be necessary. A readily compliant female would immediately attract a faithful companion and her genes would prosper. But too many easy females lead to philandering males who gain advantage for their genes propagating them widely. But a preponderance of philandering males in turn results in more females demanding evidence of commitment provided by courtship. Eventually the proportion of coy to easy female behavior and faithful to philandering male behavior balances out to an Evolutionary Stable Strategy. Keep in mind Dawkins presents this from the gene’s point of view. The genes are working to maximize their own numbers not the individual organism’s although that too may result. Similar to the idea of an ESS that balances animal courtship behavior is the ESS of aggressive behavior. In general aggressive behaviors will occupy a proportion of individual behaviors that equalize overall payback. If all members were aggressive, too many would get hurt. If none were, one aberrant aggressor would run amok spreading genes until too many aggressors reduced the payback below that of the non-aggressors. Eventually the proportion of aggressors and/or the range of aggressive behaviors of individuals will come to a balance, an ESS. What is good for the genes as expressed through the individual not the species dictates behavior. Lions don’t try to eat other lions to preserve the species but because it is far safer for the individual lion to attack an antelope for a meal than another lion.  Dawkins elaborates on the Prisoner’s Dilemma game showing it to be similar to the way ESS’s develop when the game is played continuously for an unknown indeterminate length of time. This version is called Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. It’s too complex to explain here, but nice guys don’t finish last in this explanation of how reciprocal altruism develops in animal and plant societies. He fascinatingly uses his examples to explain the “live and let live policy” between the German soldiers and the British soldiers facing each other in the trenches of WWI in the first two years of the war. This was of course not a great strategy for the generals who had to win the war but it worked quite well for the soldiers. For those interested in game theory and evolution this chapter is a must read. The genes that affect the individual’s fate are not only its own. Gene’s operate inside and outside the body of an organism. Dawkins gives the example of the snail and the parasitic fluke that preys on it. The fluke’s genes change the thickness of the snail’s shell which may not help the snail. Dawkins doesn’t mention the microbiome which has drawn so much attention lately. We now realize that most genes in and on the human body are not human but belong to the countless bacteria and microorganisms that populate our guts, mouths, skin, etc. The huge impact these foreign genes have on human wellbeing and behavior is just beginning to be understood.  In a presentation that otherwise seems to marginalize individual value in favor of the genes, Dawkins does acknowledge the power of human consciousness and culture to override genetic imperatives. Dawkins is famous for introducing the term meme in the The Selfish Gene. Derived from a Greek root to rhyme with the word gene, Dawkins christened meme the unit of transmission for the evolution of culture. It is the element of knowledge handed down generation to generation, be it language, song, fashion or ideas. The meme uses the human brain as its vehicle to propagate itself as it is transferred from person to person. Dawkins points to the concept of God as a particularly successful meme of great longevity and ubiquity and one that evolves just as genes do.  Even if you are uncomfortable with Dawkins thinking or his presentation style and even if some of the material is a bit dated, there is just way too much food for thought here to ignore. My notes are just a small taste of what this book provides. Five stars all the way. If you haven’t read it, please treat yourself. I hope it leaves your mind racing just as it did mine.     biology
The Selfish Gene
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61535.The_Selfish_Gene
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6117055-the-greatest-show-on-earth
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
2009-01-01
Author
<div><p>I will end with some notes of the delights I found in the book - most of them taken verbatim from the book. </p><div><p>*GENES</p><p>These don't mix like paint (which would create a middling average half way between our two parents....and if it did, all variation would rapidly disappear.) Instead genes passing on is like the shuffling and re-shuffling of a card pack. Genes don't blend, they shuffle. You could say they are shuffled badly, with groups of cards sticking together for several generations of shuffling, before chance happens to split them.</p><p>Any one of your eggs (or sperms if you are male) contains either your father's version of a particular gene or your mother's version, not a blend of the two. And that particular gene came from one (&amp; only one) of your four grandparents, and from one (&amp; only one) of your eight grandparents.</p><p>* GENE POOLS</p><p>These are created in environments of all different shapes, sizes and outlook. Islands, valleys surrounded by mountains which animals can't cross, areas of a certain climate etc. Gene pools are sculpted when humans interfere, eg when dog breeders breed bulldogs to encourage certain attributes.</p><p>* HYBRIDS</p><p>This involves a deliberate violation of the gene pool....eg the Labradoodle is a hybrid between a standard poodle and a Labrador retriever.</p><p>Some people are trying to breed labradoodles directly with other labradoodles, and to get them to breed true. At present second generation labradoodles recombine to produce more variety than pre-bred dogs are supposed to show. This is how many 'pure' breeds started - they went through an intermediate stage of high variation, subsequently trimmed down through generations of careful breeding, so that a proper purebreed began to regularly appear.</p><p>*A SINGLE MAJOR MUTATION</p><p>Sometimes new breeds of dogs get their start with the adoption of a single major mutation. In nature large mutations seldom survive eg basset hounds and dachshunds with very short legs acquired them in a singe step with the genetic mutation called achondroplasia, a classic example of a large mutation unlikely to survive in the wild. </p><p>*BREEDING FOR SPECIFIC ATTRIBUTES AND TALENTS</p><p>For instance dogs that can herd sheep, race, or pull sledges, or even 'point'. We could do the same for human beings too - though ethically this could pose a problem.</p><p>..........................................................................</p><p>WAYS OF MEASURING TIME........</p><p>*DENDROCHRONOLOGY - THE STUDY OF TREE RINGS.</p><p>Tree rings show whether it was a good lush year or a year of drought. These form into recognisable patterns eg a bunch of trees living between 1950 - 1970 will share the same patterns of drought and plenty for that period. </p><p>You can overlap tree rings this way, and create a library of tree rings going back through history eg.</p><p>Tree 1 1950 - 2016</p><p>Tree 2 1930 - 1990 </p><p>With tree 2, you have as a reference the patterns laid down with tree 1, from 1950 - 1990, so you can work out that the earlier rings in tree 2 make a pattern for 1930-1950. </p><p>You can do the same thing with trees 3 and 4.....steadily going further back through history with each tree. This way dendrochronoligists can date trees back over thousands of years, (theoretically it should work back over millions of years. </p><p>You don't have to cut a tree down to measure its rings, you can just take a plug from the tree.</p><p>*THE SEDIMENT IN GLACIAL LAKES (VARVES)</p><p>This lays down strata from season to season, and year to year.</p><p>*CORAL REEFS</p><p>This has annual growth rings, like trees.</p><p>*RADIOACTIVE CLOCKS	</p><p>1) There are a lot of them to choose from</p><p>2) They cover time from centuries to thousands of millions of years.</p><p>3) They have a margin of error of 1%</p><p>4) Layers or strata of rock get their names from the fossils we find in them.</p><p>Cumbrian<br />Ordovician<br />Silurian<br />Devonian<br />Carboniferous<br />Permian<br />Triassic<br />Jurassic<br />Cretaceous<br />Etc.</p><p>and you get sub-categories eg Upper Jurassic, Middle Jurassic and Lower Jurassic.</p><p>5) You can use radioactive dating of rocks to place a date on them.</p><p>Carbon is the element most indispensable to life - it enters the food web via photosynthesis in plants and from then on to living creatures.</p><p>Carbon dating is the most common form of dating. It was invented in the 1940s. It tells us that the earth is 4.6 billions years old.</p><p>....................................................................</p><p>*CONSERVAPEDIA</p><p>The notoriously misleading imitation of Wikipedia, It has a creationist editor - a lawyer called Andrew Schlafly.</p><p>*SPEED OF EVOLUTION</p><p>This can be slow or fast. The former is illustrated by Limulus (the horseshoe crab), which is sometimes called a living fossil. The latter is illustrated by bacterial strains, which have with great speed evolved a resistance to antibiotics.</p><p>*THE MISSING LINK<br />This has several meanings.</p><p>1) Gaps in the fossil record - eras shown in rock strata where there were no fossils. This is because the animals around then were not good fossil material, for instance they didn't have hard, mineralized skeletons.</p><p>2) The Piltdown Hoax</p><p>Many people were seeking a link between man and other primates. Eventually someone 'found' Piltdown Man - but it was a hoax. In the intervening time since the hoax we have found numerous fossils that link modern humans to the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees. </p><p>Interestingly there are as yet no fossils - as yet - linking that ancestor (which was neither chimpanzee nor human) to modern chimpanzees....but there are other ways of proving our connection to chimps.</p><p>* OUT OF THE SEA</p><p>All animals originated in the sea, and some, like whales, manatees and dugongs went back into the water. They never developed gills, and still breathe air. Others like seals and sea lions went part way back to the sea.</p><p>Hippos are quite closely related to whales, or at least to the ancestor of whales who walked on the land. Pigs are related to them too.</p><p>The most recent ancestor of all fish is shared by many non-fish too. Humans and other land vertebrates are descended from lobe-finned fish. We share an ancestor with coelacanthus and lungfish.</p><p>*THE WAY WE BUILD OUR BODIES FROM EMBRYOS</p><p>We do not do this from a blueprint or some sort of instructions from an architectural design. We do it more organically, like the dance of a flock of starlings, swooping beautifully together, but without a leader. There are thousands of birds but they never collide. They behave as a single individual - wheeling and turning as one. The edges of the flocks are sharply defined. The density is the same throughout the flick, but the starlings have no choreographer and no leader. This is how embryology works.</p><p>It is all done by local rules.<br />It is done at various levels, but especially the level of a single cell.</p><p>Influences that go on within the developing cells.....</p><p>Genes on proteins</p><p>Genes on genes</p><p>Proteins on the expression of genes</p><p>Proteins on proteins</p><p>Membranes</p><p>Chemical gradients</p><p>Physical and chemical guide rails in embryos.</p><p>Hormones (&amp; other mediators of action at a distance.)</p><p>Labelled cells seeking other with identical or complementary labels.</p><p>(Nobody understand the whole picture, and nobody needs to....)</p><p>* HOMOLOGY</p><p>The study of how bones in mammals correspond across the species - however different they are eg comparing a human hand with a bat wing, or horse's hoof.</p><p>* SAMENESS AND DIFFERENCE</p><p>The vertebrate skeleton is invariant across all vertebrates - while individual bones differ.</p><p>The crustaceans exoskeleton is invariant across all crustaceans while the individual 'tubes' vary.</p><p>The DNA code is invariant across all living creatures, while the individual genes themselves vary. Not just the genetic code itself, but the whole gene/protein system for running life is the same in animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, archaea and viruses. What varies is what is written in the code....not the code itself.</p><p>..........................................................</p><p>WAYS OF TESTING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MAMMALS......</p><p>*TESTING THE CLOSENESS/DISTANCE OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MAMMALS BY INJECTING RABBITS WITH PROTEINS AND INSPECTING THE STRENGTH OF THE ANTIBODIES PRODUCED IN RESPONSE.</p><p>The idea of this upsets me so I am not going to describe it more than this, but I feel it must be mentioned as it is of importance...not least because it showed how closely humans are related to chimpanzees.</p><p>DNA HYBRIDIZATION</p><p>Another bit of the book I skipped. It is how scientists worked out there there is 98% genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees. The technique involves heat and melting points.</p><p>READING THE SEQUENCE OF LETTERS IN THE GENES THEMSELVES</p><p>This is a more recent method, and more expensive. You measure the similarity between a pair of matching genes from difference species.</p><p>................................................................</p><p>*THE HUMAN BODY IS A SERIES OF MODIFIED IMPERFECTIONS</p><p>This is a clear sign of the fact that we evolved. Improvements could only come about by making ad hoc modifications to what is already there. We are burdened with all sorts of historical relics, anomalies and inperfections.</p><p>Interestingly, an improvement is quite likely to evolve not from the old organ which previously did a job, but from something completely different, which performed a completely different function....eg when our fish ancestors took to breathing air they didn't modify their gills to make a lung - instead they modified a pouch in the gut.</p><p>*MANKIND HAS ONLY RECENTLY BECOME UPRIGHT.</p><p>We have been land animals for about 400 million years. We have walked on our hind legs for only about 1% of that time.</p><p>Habitually walking on two legs as we do, had far-reaching ramifications all over the body, which entailed lots of compensatory adjustments. the reason that so many of us get back pain is because we weren't originally designed to walk upright.</p><p>*WHEN WE SEE THE OUTSIDE OF ANIMALS WE SEE ELEGANT DESIGN, WHEN WE SEE THEM DISSECTED WE SEE A MESS.</p><p>This is because of the history of how our bodies have adapted to our changing shapes, lifestyles and postures.</p><p>*THE ARMS RACE</p><p>The fastest animals in the world are cheetahs, lions and several species of antelope ie predators and their prey. They have both evolved to run very fast in relations to one another, one to pursue, one to escape. But nature knows when to stop. Increased speed creates thin, vulnerable legs....so there has been a cut off point, where further speed has been penalised. (Faster animals have not survived/bred.) Antelopes would not run as fast as they do were they not chased by fast predators, instead they would shunt more energy into making babies, or laying down more fat for the winter.</p><p>*NATURAL SELECTION</p><p>(To me this seems to contradict the paragraph above...)</p><p>This will favour the most competitive individuals, right up to the moment when the last one dies. It can drive a population to extinction, whilst constantly favouring, to the bitter end, those competitive genes that are destined to be the last to go extinct.</p><p>*NATURAL SELECTION AND GENE SURVIVAL</p><p>This is all about the survival of self-replicating DNA, be it in an elephant, or in the virus that is making you sneeze with the common cold. The ultimate message is "duplicate me". </p></div><p>Like the many other thousands who have read this, I enjoyed it enormously.</p>||||I|||| * Home
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 The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

 Richard Dawkins

 4.16
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 Charles Darwin, whose 1859 masterpiece "On the Origin of Species" shook society to its core, would surely have raised an incredulous eyebrow at the controversy over evolution still raging 150 years later.

 "The Greatest Show on Earth" is a stunning counter-attack on creationists, followers of "Intelligent Design" and all those who still question evolution as scientific fact. In this brilliant tour de force, Richard Dawkins pulls together the incontrovertible evidence that underpins it: from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics.

 "The Greatest Show on Earth" comes at a critical time as systematic opposition to the fact of evolution flourishes as never before in many schools worldwide. Dawkins wields a devastating argument against this ignorance whilst sharing with us his palpable love of science and the natural world. Written with elegance, wit and passion, it is hard-hitting, absorbing and totally convincing.
 Genres Science Nonfiction Biology Evolution Religion Atheism Popular Science
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 470 pages, Hardcover

 First published January 1, 2009

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 Richard Dawkins

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 Manny
 Author 28 books 13.4k followers
 October 22, 2013
 To any Young Earth Creationist who happens to be reading this review

 First, thank you for getting this far. It's to your credit: you're willing to find out something about what the other side has to say. You're probably expecting I'll tell you to read Dawkins's latest book. In fact, I'm not going to do that.

 Don't read this book. Dawkins is disrespectful and arrogant about Young Earth Creationism, and he will only annoy you. Instead, I suggest that you might want to look at Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species . When Darwin wrote it, pretty much everyone in the world was a Young Earth Creationist. Darwin had a great deal of sympathy for the Creationist position, and one of his own favorite books, which influenced him deeply, was the Creationist classic Natural Theology , by William Paley. Despite all this, Darwin found arguments which soon convinced a large part of his audience that their ideas about Young Earth Creationism were wrong.

 Dawkins continually quotes Darwin. He shows that even though Darwin didn't understand how evolution works - no one knew about DNA yet, or even the basics of genetic theory - the evidence at his disposal produced an overwhelming case that evolution must be the the root cause of the huge diversity of observed species. The clearest and most unanswerable part of the argument is the geographical distribution of the different kinds of animals. Just stop and think for a moment about the single fact that sloths are only to be found in South America. If the story of the Biblical Flood were true, then those slow-moving, tree-dwelling sloths would somehow have had to migrate from Mount Ararat to Brazil in a few thousand years, leaving no colonies anywhere en route. Darwin's Victorian audience thought carefully about the sloths, and could not find a sensible answer. It was even more impossible for them to explain, not just that kangaroos only exist in Australia, but that many similar species - wallabies, koalas, wombats and other marsupials - also only exist in Australia. There were a thousand more pieces of evidence, and they gave up. Darwin did not try to humiliate them, and he honestly admitted that there were important parts of the story he did not yet understand. Even with those provisos, the case was unanswerable. Since Darwin's time, nearly all of the missing parts of his argument have been filled in, as Dawkins explains here. But that's less important.

 As I said, start with Darwin. He's writing politely and respectfully for people like you, who are skeptical about evolution and want to be shown good reasons to believe it, and he is remarkably convincing.
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 diana
 51 reviews 20 followers
 November 9, 2009
 Two disclaimers before I begin my review:

 1. I am an atheist.
 2. I am a molecular biologist.

 So, I am clearly not the target audience. That being said, I really wanted to like this book. I am so happy that there are people out there who are speaking out in defense of evolution and (although not in this book) atheism, and as such I want to support Richard Dawkins. However, the best way I can sum up my feelings about the book is to say that it resembles a very long version of an undergraduate's final paper on evolution. Many arguments are not at all clear or well made, the diagram labeling is irregular or completely non-existent, and he does not seem to grasp how to effectively use figures to add to the text. He contradicts himself at least once (but pretty majorly), but it seems that this is due more to a faulty simplification of the scientific explanation that to a lack of knowledge.

 Ultimately, that's what it comes down to for me: all of the faults I found in the book should not have been there, because I KNOW that HE KNOWS BETTER. Not to mention that his goal would have been better served had he saved all of his half-assed, baseless speculations for beers with the fellas and used the space in the book to include more evidence for evolution. For example, one thing he did not address at all is morality/altruism, which would have been very relevant for creationists (who ARE his target audience) and for which there are some really interesting theories. Finally, while I understand the frustration, condescending anger is not generally a great tool for convincing people, regardless of how wrong they are.
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 A.J.
 136 reviews 51 followers
 May 20, 2010
 There's a general feeling out there about Richard Dawkins that he's a little too shrill, a little too hard on people, and perhaps a tad too full of himself. I've had a couple of these thoughts from time to time, though not the last one, and would almost catch myself nodding in agreement until I put myself in the man's shoes. Professor Dawkins is brilliant with a capital B. He is fanatically devoted to science and his particular subject, evolutionary biology. He has spent his life researching and exploring the elegant mysteries and pathways of life on our lonely blue world. And what does he get in return? 44% of Americans––granted he's British––think that the earth and everything in it was specially created about ten thousand years ago, that man roamed the earth with dinosaurs, and that the whole of biology and evolutionary history are to be supplanted by a fairy tale about a couple of teenagers who were convinced by a talking snake to eat an enchanted apple. This state of affairs would be repugnant enough if it was a privately held fantasy; instead what Dawkins gets is constant bombardment from imbeciles who want creation 'science' 'theory' taught alongside evolution in schools, as if there was some competition between the two. By air, land, sea, or Trojan Horse (Intelligent Design, so called), biologists are incessantly having to deal with misrepresentation and ignorance on a profound and disturbing scale.

 I personally, however, can't be too harsh. Not only was I once a creationist; I was the worst kind of creationist, a young earth creationist. Not only was I a young earth creationist; I was the worst sort of young earth creationist, a Kent Hovindiite. I was to science was the Philistines were to the Hebrews, what the Empire was to the Rebellion, what that kid with down syndrome is to Einstein. What I can do, though, is say with complete certainty is that education, not argument, is the antidote to creationism. Ignorance isn't a crime, and usually people aren't ignorant on purpose. For your average layman, it's not his fault that science education standards are so poor, or that lying snake oil salesmen like Ken Ham successfully peddle bullshit for a living.

 Having considered all that, I'm fairly convinced that your typical creationist response to this book will be a glassy stare and a trickle of drool. Part of this will be the enormous amount of nonsense, misrepresentations, misunderstandings, outdated arguments, falsehoods, and outright lies that have until now occupied the six inches of space between their ears. Trying to explain the complexities of biology to someone who thinks that Big Bang Cosmology is 'darwinism' is a higher mountain than Dawkins book is likely able to climb. A lot of bad wiring had to be completely redone even for me to follow the major themes of this book, and I've put a lot of effort into it.

 The second drawback is a personal weakness of Dawkins' writing. It's unfocussed, not particularly well organized, and it lacks the ferocious punch of amateur youtubers like Thunderf00t and Aronra (whose video series 'The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism' is balls-out awesome). Granted, the history of life on our planet and all the myriad means that we have of understanding it is not a topic suited to one book. I still maintain that the chapters could have been better ordered and more centered around a particular point, as opposed to the more conversational sprawl that is Dawkins' style. I find him a better speaker-communicator than writer-communicator, but a better writer than orator, if that makes any sense.

 Despite that, I appreciate the effort, passion, and the expertise that Professor Dawkins brings to this book. It is in its way a powerful examination of this subject, and riddled with amazing discoveries and evidences that while they only manage to show a fragment of the deluge that is the evidence for evolution, still enriches the mind and helps non-scientists to explore the wonders of the natural world.

 "Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact...That didn't have to be true. It is not self-evidently, tautologically, obviously true, and there was a time when most people, even educated people, thought it wasn't. It didn't have to be true, but it is....Evolution is the only game in town, the greatest show on earth."

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 Kevin
 463 reviews 68 followers
 November 18, 2022
 I can not emphasize enough how much I admire and respect Richard Dawkins. His books are veritable university courses on biology, anthropology and natural history, this one is no exception. If there's a knock on The Greatest Show On Earth , it's that you cannot read it when you're tired or sleepy. Richard is so passionate about his vocation that he sometimes forgets that some of us don't have his stamina, much less his vocabulary.

 Dawkins excels at anticipating counter arguments, probably because he hears them frequently, and he is quick to offer rock solid scientific evidence to bolster his bullet points. He also has a knack for coming at issues from various angles. Just when you think two pages of zoology have sufficiently put a topic to rest: BAM! here comes a paragraph of chemistry for good measure.

 This is what I love about Dawkins. He is adamantly opposed to ignorance. This is not a tome for the obtuse or faint of heart. This is a study in academic truth.
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 WarpDrive
 272 reviews 380 followers
 December 23, 2019
 An educational masterpiece of popular science, this is a brilliant, riveting page-turner written with eloquence, passion and competence.
 I am almost embarrassed to admit that I waited until now to read this shining book, which comprises so many themes in disparate but related areas in the realms of biology, anthropology, natural history, molecular chemistry and, of course, evolution theory.

 I am at a real loss to express how rewarding this reading experience has proved to be: after only 10% of the book I would not have hesitated to very highly recommend it to anybody interested in how life has evolved on this Planet.
 And, after less than 20% of the book, I was completely hooked: yes, many items discussed by Dawkins are public common knowledge, but the author puts everything all beautifully and passionately together in a riveting, compelling and highly coherent narrative that does not fail to illustrate the beauty and the unmatched thrill of the process of scientific inquiry.

 In particular, the case for evolution is proved with such an overwhelming overabundance of highly converging evidence, that only the most blinkered stupidity or close-mindedness can enable anybody to still promote a Creationist ideology in 2019.

 Some reviewers have criticized the barbed witticism and the occasionally acerbic attacks on Creationism carried out by the author in a sustained and forceful manner. I personally think these criticisms are unwarranted, and I actually found that Dawkins is always well justified and quite balanced and moderate in his approach: in this world of political correctness, too many people are scared to call a spade a spade and I think that the sheer obtuseness, stupidity and ignorance that pervade many anti-science Creationist attitudes should be named and denounced for what they are and for the danger that they represent to the future of the next generations. Dawkins' disdain for Creationism and its fundamental ideological opposition to science, and for its "counter-arguments" to evolution theory, is always completely warranted.
 Actually, i would have loved to see Dawkins highlight more explicitly how science is an integrated, coherent, cross-sustaining whole, similar to a gigantic epistemological crossword, and that you can't just pick and choose only the parts that do not conflict with your own religious or philosophical prejudices. This is precisely why climate change deniers, or "history-deniers" (using the apt term adopted by Dawkins to define Creationists) are not just dangerous for their own misguided "theories", but also because they implicitly jeopardize the position and progress of science "in toto". It is ironic that, given such an undeniable successes of modern science, even staunch Creationists hesitate to carry out a frontal attack on science, as some of them have at least some residual sense of ridicule: they prefer instead to promote pseudo-scientific misconceptions, (ab)using scientific terminology, or to promote the suggestion (like in the case of climate change) that the scientific community is divided on the issue. These attempts are as dangerous as any frontal explicit attack on science. Similarly dangerous, and similarly cowardly in their attempt to disguise the underlying ideology, are some of the s0-called "academic freedom" bills, which permit teachers to introduce creationist material into science classes. Science, truth and the natural world could not give a fig about the delusional ravings of ideologically inspired legislators: Nature is what it is, regardless of how we wish it to be. And Creationism, which has the same scientific credentials as Harry Potter, simply does not belong in a science class.

 However, having said all of this, I would not want to convey the incorrect impression that this book is mainly aimed at polemical aims: on the contrary, all arguments are presented in a coherent, lucid, highly informative and very persuasive way, and the elements of criticism are more than balanced by the book's constructive side, as the author has a real gift for lucidly treating some not-so-straightforward topics in a way any layman with a modicum of prior scientific education can very easily understand.

 The last chapter of the book is very sobering, illustrating how almost half the Americans (42%, according to a 2008 poll) reject evolution and believe that the Universe, the Earth and all current forms of life were created less than 10,000 years ago. Sadly, things cannot have improved much since, especially in the sad spectacle represented by today's post-truth and anti-science Trump's America, and this is all the reason to publish and promote books by the likes of Dawkins (the real solution would be to fundamentally overhaul and rebuild the public educational system, as there must be something terribly wrong and dysfunctional in a system that generates a population of which half believe in a "Young Earth" - but this is a different subject, I guess) .

 Totally recommended, this book should be made compulsory reading in all high schools. 5 stars.

 PS: a couple of quotes from the book:
 - it would be nice if those who oppose evolution would take a tiny bit of trouble to learn the merest rudiments of what it is that they are opposing
 - (as a consequence of the Young Earth Creationist views) stars whose distance from us is more than a few thousand light years must have been created with ready-made light beams stretching almost all the way to us
 owned science-and-maths
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 Maria
 132 reviews 34 followers
 July 10, 2011
 With the help of drawings, photos, cartoons, tables, diagrams & notes, an emphasis on extremely lucid step-by-step explanations, examples, iteration & reiteration & plenty of humor, R Dawkins shows that we are indeed so lucky to be witness to the Greatest Show on Earth -- this wonderful book is addressed not only to those interested in our natural world (and who'll maybe wish they'd majored in biology) but more particularly to the creationists and proponents of "intelligent design" -- as evidence for evolution it's one of the most fascinating books I've ever read. It's a beautifully detailed and concisely written effort (albeit a bit repetitious at times) that's full of extraordinary facts both serious and silly, a real experience. It's TERRIBLY witty. It filled me with joy. It should be read by everyone everywhere.
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 Peiman E iran
 1,394 reviews 674 followers
 July 24, 2019
 دوستانِ گرانقدر، از دیدگاهِ من، این کتابِ 580 صفحه ای، یکی از ارزشمندترین و آموزنده ترین کتابهایِ تاریخ است... «ریچارد داوکینز» این استاد و دانشمندِ خردمند و فرهیخته، با نوشتنِ این کتاب، نه تنها همچون گذشته با نوشته هایش دهانِ بیخردان و آفرینش باورانِ بیسواد را بسته است، بلکه اعتماد به نفسی به خوانندۀ این کتاب میدهد، که با آگاهی از موضوعاتِ گوناگونِ علمی، بتواند در جمع هایِ مختلف، با سری بالا از آنچه آموخته است، سخن بگوید
 این ریویو را در دو بخش برایِ شما عزیزان مینویسم.. بخشِ نخست در موردِ این کتاب و درونمایۀ آن است و بخشِ دوم در موردِ تکامل و مسائلِ مربوط به آفرینش میباشد
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 ریچارد داوکینز، این اندیشمندِ بزرگ، با زبانی گویا، حقایق و کشفیاتِ به روزی از: دانشِ ژنتیک، زمین شناسی، شیمی، زیست شناسی، میکروب شناسی، دانشِ مربوط به شناختِ سلولها و کاراییِ آنها، باکتری شناسی، کیهان شناسی، فسیل شناسی، گیاه شناسی، جانور شناسی، شناختِ آنزیم ها و پروتئینها، را در این کتاب به شما آموزش میدهد.... از تکامل به شکلی تازه سخن میگوید.. و در ادامه به مواردی همچون شکل دادن به خزانۀ ژن در موجودات، پرورشِ طبیعی، پرورشِ انتخابی، اهلی کردنِ جانواران به وسیلۀ طبیعت، انتخابِ طبیعی، ساعتهایِ گوناگونِ وقایع شمار همچون ساعتهایِ تکاملی، حلقه هایِ درختان، ساعتهایِ رادیواکتیوی، ساعتهایِ مولکولی و استفاده از کربن در محاسبۀ زمانِ تکامل، اشاره میکند و سپس با مثالهایی جذاب ثابت میکند که تکامل در برابرِ چشمانِ ما در حالِ رخ دادن است و آفرینش باوران نسبت به آن آگاهی ندارند و نمیخواهند بپذیرند.. شکافها و حلقه هایِ تکاملی را نشان میدهد و در موردِ ماهی هایی که نیاکانِ ما بوده اند توضیح میدهد که چگونه نیاکانِ ما از آب به خشکی آمدند و جریانِ شش و آبشش داشتنِ موجودات چیست.. در موردِ نهنگ و دلفین و تفاوتِ آنها با دیگر آبزیان مینویسد.. در موردِ تمامیِ شاخه هایِ انسانهایِ نخستین سخن میگوید و نشان میدهد که موجوداتِ موهومی همچون آدم و حوا، جایگاهی در چرخۀ تکاملِ دانش نداشته و ندارند و همگی داستانهایِ ساختگی توسطِ ادیان میباشند.. داوکینز با دانش و مواردِ اثبات شده، نشان میدهد که قرار نیست هماهنگ کننده ای در جهان وجود داشته باشد.. این طبیعت است که از همان اول همه چیز را پیش برده و به این روند ادامه میدهد.. از مدل سازی هایِ سلولی و تشکیلِ سیستمِ عصبی و لوله هایِ عصبی برای شما مینویسد و نقص هایِ ما انسانها و دیگرِ موجودات را نشان میدهد .. که این گویایِ این حقیقت است که اگر به خیالِ باطلِ آفرینش باوران، خالقی وجود داشته که موجودات را خلق کرده، آن خالق در مهندسی هایش اشتباهاتِ بیشماری داشته و کلی نواقص در بدنِ موجودات باقی گذاشته است.. موجوداتِ مختلف، ایراد و نقص هایِ احمقانۀ زیادی در وجودشان دارند... ریچارد داوکینز، این آموزگارِ خوش سخن، رمزهایِ ژنتیکی و همتاسازی هایِ مولکولی را به ساده ترین شکل به خوانندۀ کتاب آموزش میدهد... داوکینز از حرکتِ قاره ها در طولِ تاریخ میگوید و نشان میدهد که چگونه پوسته و ورقه هایِ زمین حرکت کرده و موجوداتِ زنده در این قاره ها و مناطق پراکنده ��ده و تکامل یافته اند، که این موضوع نشان میدهد داستانِ نوح و کشتیِ نوح و سوار شدنِ حیوانات در کشتی، داستانی بسیار بسیار کودکانه و ابلهانه میباشد... یعنی واقعاً در گودریدز، چند کتابخوان به این داستانِ احمقانۀ کشتی نوح باور دارند؟ خودشان به این داستان و باورهایشان نمیخندند؟
 این دانشمندِ گرامی، با زبانی ساده، جهشِ ژنتیکی را به ما می آموزد و سرانجام به سراغِ مسابقۀ تسلیحاتی در طبیعت و تمامیِ جانداران میرود.. موجوداتی که به شکلی زیرکانه و حتی ستمگرانه از دیگر موجودات استفاده میکنند تا بقا پیدا کرده و تکامل یابند.. زنبورهایی که تخمشان را در هزارپاها و کرمهایِ زنده میگذارند تا بچه هایشان زنده زنده از درون، این کرمها را بخورند و بزرگ شوند.. گوزن و آهوها و بزهایِ کوهی که سعی میکنند سرعتشان را افزایش دهند، نه برایِ دویدنِ سریعتر از یوزپلنگ، بلکه برایِ سریعتر دویدن نسبت به دوستان و خواهر و برادرهایشان.. تا آنهایی که عقب می افتند، اسیرِ یوزپلنگ شوند!! آنها فرصت فرار داشته باشند ... اینها همه از کارها و قوانینِ طبیعت است، یا یک آفریدگارِ سادیسمی و روانی آن را برنامه ریزی کرده است؟؟ مشخص است که این طبیعت است که با قوانینش سببِ تکاملِ موجوداتِ گوناگون بر رویِ زمین بوده و میباشد
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 معمولی ترین تاکتیکی که دیندارانِ آفرینش باور و منکرانِ تاریخ در موردِ تکامل به کار میبرند، این است که این وِرد را مدام به صورتِ احمقانه ای تکرار میکنند که: فسیلها را به من نشان بدهید، این فسیلها کجا هستند؟.... این موجوداتِ بیخرد فسیلهایِ استرالوپیتکوس، هومو هیبیلیس، هومو ارکتوس، هومو ساپینس، هومو ساپینسِ باستانی و هومو ساپینسِ امروزی را ندیده اند... اینها فسیلِ «پسرِ تورکانا» یا همان «پسر ناریوکوتومی» که مشهورترین نمونۀ هومو ارگاستر است را ندیده اند... این بیسوادها، جمجمۀ «خانم پلس» که مربوط به 3.6 میلیون سال پیش است را ندیده اند.. این ناباورانِ بیسواد، جمجمۀ «لوسی» را ندیده اند تا نیاکانِ ما در 3 میلیون سالِ پیش را بشناسند، آنهم نیاکانی که در آن زمان بر خلافِ شامپانزه ها، مستقیم راه میرفتند.. اینها جمجمۀ «تانگ کوچولو» را که در 2.5 میلیون سال پیش چشمانش توسطِ عقاب از کاسه بیرون آورده شده را نمیبینند... البته شاید این بیخردان تمامیِ این شواهد را دیده اند، ولی ایمانِ و تعصبی ابلهانه به داستانهایِ آفرینشِ دینی دارند و تصور میکنند در 6 هزار سال پیش، آدم و حوایی موهوم به یکباره از گل به وجود آمدند و در سوراخِ آنها روح دمیده شد!!! .... گفتن این نکته بسیار مسخره است، ولی متأسفانه 40 درصد از جمعیتِ آمریکا و بیش از 90 درصد از جمعیتِ مسلمان نشینِ آسیا، داستانهایِ کودکانۀ کتاب هایِ مقدس را واقعی میپندارند و به داستانِ آفرینش و داستانِ ابلهانۀ آدم و حوا و داستانِ طوفانِ نوح و وجودِ کشتیِ نوح در کوهِ آرارات، ایمان دارند ... فکر کنید که پراکندگیِ جغرافیاییِ جانوران چگونه به نظر میرسید، اگر همۀ آنها از کشتیِ نوح پراکنده میشدند!! آیا نباید یک قانونِ کاهشِ تنوعِ گونه ها، همانطور که از مرکزِ آن یعنی کوهِ آرارات دور میشویم، وجود داشته باشد!!؟ نیازی نیست به شما خردگرایانِ اهلِ دانش و تکامل باوران بگویم که این چیزی نیست که ما در جهان و در سرزمینهایِ گوناگون میبینیم ... کانگورو و کوآلا و بیلبیِ بزرگ گوش، چگونه در زمانِ نوح، از آرارات به استرالیا مهاجرت کردند؟؟؟؟ چه مسیری را در پیش گرفتند؟؟؟ چرا در میانِ راه در هندوستان و یا چین و دیگر مسیرِ جادۀ ابریشم توقف نکردند و تعدادی از آنها در این سرزمینها ساکن نشدند؟؟؟ چرا تمامیِ راستۀ بی دندانیان، مثلِ آرمادیلو و یا شش گونۀ اسلات، و یا چهارگونۀ مورچه خوارها، بی هیچ خطایی و تغییرِ مسیری به آمریکایِ جنوبی رفته و در بینِ راه هیچگونه اثری از خود به جا نگذاشته اند؟؟ چرا تمامِ پنگوئن ها در سفرِ طولانی که خدایِ آفرینش باوران برایشان تعیین کرده بود، به قطبِ جنوب رفتند و حتی یک نفر از آنها به قطبِ شمال نرفت؟؟؟؟ با آنکه قطبِ شمال هم به همان میزان که قطبِ جنوب میهمان نواز است، برایِ آنها مناسب بوده است!!! چرا موجوداتی همچون: آگوتی، پاکا، مارا، کاپی بارا، چین چیلا و بسیاری دیگر از راستۀ جوندگان، فقط مختص به آمریکایِ جنوبی هستند؟؟ یا در مسیرِ سفرِ عجیب به دستورِ خدایِ دین باوران، از آرارات به آمریکایِ جنوبی، هیچکدام نباید در جاهایِ دیگر یافت شوند!!! چرا میمونهایِ پخ بینی، فقط در آمریکایِ جنوبی هستند و در آسیا و یا آفریقا و اروپا دیده نمیشوند؟ بسیاری از موجوداتِ عجیبی که در ماداگاسکار میبینیم، در کجایِ این کره خاکی دیده شده اند؟؟ باور کنید نوح حتی روحش از این موجودات با خبر نبوده، چه برسد تمامیِ آنها را در کشتی جای دهد.. حتماً این همه موجوداتِ ماداگاسکار و میلیونها میلیونها حشرات و جانورانِ عجیبی که در سطحِ این کرۀ خاکی پراکنده هستند، به تخته پاره هایِ کشتیِ نوح چسبیده پخش شده اند.. چقدر این دینداران و آفرینش باوران، میتوانند ساده لوح باشند... اعتقاداتِ دین باورانِ مسلمان، مسیحی و یهودی، همچون فندقی کوچک شکننده است، کافیست پُتکِ دانش را بر رویِ آن بکوبید، آنگاه به سرعت پودر و تکه تکه میشود... ما باید دینباورانی که در مدارسِ ما هم همچون ویروس نفوذ پیدا کرده اند و این داستانهایِ ابلهانه را در مغزِ فرزندانمان فرو میکنند را نادیده بگیریم و به دانشورزیِ خودمان ادامه دهیم
 اگر منکرانِ تاریخ و دینداران، که به حقیقتِ تکامل و دانش، شک میورزند، نسبت به زیست شناسی نادان و جاهل هستند، آن دیندارانی که فکر میکنند جهان کمتر از ده هزار سال پیش از این آغاز شده است، بارها و بارها از آن منکران تاریخ، نادان تر و جاهلتر میباشند.. آنها بدتر از جاهل هستند و تا حدِ فساد، فریب خورده و اغفال شده اند.. آنها نه تنها حقایقِ زیست شناسی، بلکه حقایقِ فیزیک، زمین شناسی، کیهان شناسی، باستان شناسی، تاریخ و شیمی را هم انکار میکنند
 تمامیِ موجوداتِ زنده بر رویِ کره زمین، همگی از یک نیایِ مشترک و واحد ریشه گرفته اند.. یعنی رمزِ ژنتیکیِ جهان شمول بینِ همۀ جانوران، گیاهان، قارچ ها، باکتری ها، باستانیان و ویروسها، تقریباً همانند است و از آن فرهنگ 64 واژه ای که آن را با کلماتِ سه حرفی «دی اِن اِی» میشناسیم، ریشه گرفته است.. (البته یک میکروبِ عجیب و غریب و غیر عادی به نام «هارومسکاریوت» وجود داشته که اصلا از دی ان ای و یا پروتئین ها برای تکاملش استفاده نکرده است)... اگر زنده یاد داروین از ژن و دی اِن اِی باخبر بود و در زمانِ حیاتِ او این مسائلِ مهمِ امروزی کشف میشد، شاید داروین میتوانست در آن زمان ساده تر نظریه اش را اثبات کند.. ولی مهم این است که اگر داروین زنده بود، امروز در پوستِ خویش نمیگنجید، وقتی متوجه میشد که نظریۀ تکامل اش امروزه دیگر یک نظریه نیست، بلکه به یک قانون و یک واقعیت تبدیل شده است
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 امیدوارم این ریویو برایِ شما دوستانِ خردگرا و اهلِ دانش، مفید بوده باشه
 «پیروز باشید و ایرانی»
 علم-و-دانش
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 Caroline
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 May 4, 2016
 What a stunning read. I have read several books by Dawkins, mostly concerning evolution, and I think this was the easiest to understand. This is partly because I skipped the most difficult bits! For instance I am never going to know how carbon dating is done - but I can live with that. For the most part the book was hugely readable and deeply fascinating. The one thing that marred my pleasure slightly was the stress throughout on proving the theory of evolution to creationists, but then he would give us the statistics about how many creationists there are in the world......and his preoccupation became understandable.

 I will end with some notes of the delights I found in the book - most of them taken verbatim from the book.


 *GENES

 These don't mix like paint (which would create a middling average half way between our two parents....and if it did, all variation would rapidly disappear.) Instead genes passing on is like the shuffling and re-shuffling of a card pack. Genes don't blend, they shuffle. You could say they are shuffled badly, with groups of cards sticking together for several generations of shuffling, before chance happens to split them.

 Any one of your eggs (or sperms if you are male) contains either your father's version of a particular gene or your mother's version, not a blend of the two. And that particular gene came from one (& only one) of your four grandparents, and from one (& only one) of your eight grandparents.

 * GENE POOLS

 These are created in environments of all different shapes, sizes and outlook. Islands, valleys surrounded by mountains which animals can't cross, areas of a certain climate etc. Gene pools are sculpted when humans interfere, eg when dog breeders breed bulldogs to encourage certain attributes.

 * HYBRIDS

 This involves a deliberate violation of the gene pool....eg the Labradoodle is a hybrid between a standard poodle and a Labrador retriever.

 Some people are trying to breed labradoodles directly with other labradoodles, and to get them to breed true. At present second generation labradoodles recombine to produce more variety than pre-bred dogs are supposed to show. This is how many 'pure' breeds started - they went through an intermediate stage of high variation, subsequently trimmed down through generations of careful breeding, so that a proper purebreed began to regularly appear.

 *A SINGLE MAJOR MUTATION

 Sometimes new breeds of dogs get their start with the adoption of a single major mutation. In nature large mutations seldom survive eg basset hounds and dachshunds with very short legs acquired them in a singe step with the genetic mutation called achondroplasia, a classic example of a large mutation unlikely to survive in the wild.

 *BREEDING FOR SPECIFIC ATTRIBUTES AND TALENTS

 For instance dogs that can herd sheep, race, or pull sledges, or even 'point'. We could do the same for human beings too - though ethically this could pose a problem.

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 WAYS OF MEASURING TIME........

 *DENDROCHRONOLOGY - THE STUDY OF TREE RINGS.

 Tree rings show whether it was a good lush year or a year of drought. These form into recognisable patterns eg a bunch of trees living between 1950 - 1970 will share the same patterns of drought and plenty for that period.

 You can overlap tree rings this way, and create a library of tree rings going back through history eg.

 Tree 1 1950 - 2016

 Tree 2 1930 - 1990

 With tree 2, you have as a reference the patterns laid down with tree 1, from 1950 - 1990, so you can work out that the earlier rings in tree 2 make a pattern for 1930-1950.

 You can do the same thing with trees 3 and 4.....steadily going further back through history with each tree. This way dendrochronoligists can date trees back over thousands of years, (theoretically it should work back over millions of years.

 You don't have to cut a tree down to measure its rings, you can just take a plug from the tree.

 *THE SEDIMENT IN GLACIAL LAKES (VARVES)

 This lays down strata from season to season, and year to year.

 *CORAL REEFS

 This has annual growth rings, like trees.

 *RADIOACTIVE CLOCKS

 1) There are a lot of them to choose from

 2) They cover time from centuries to thousands of millions of years.

 3) They have a margin of error of 1%

 4) Layers or strata of rock get their names from the fossils we find in them.


 Cumbrian
 Ordovician
 Silurian
 Devonian
 Carboniferous
 Permian
 Triassic
 Jurassic
 Cretaceous
 Etc.

 and you get sub-categories eg Upper Jurassic, Middle Jurassic and Lower Jurassic.

 5) You can use radioactive dating of rocks to place a date on them.

 Carbon is the element most indispensable to life - it enters the food web via photosynthesis in plants and from then on to living creatures.

 Carbon dating is the most common form of dating. It was invented in the 1940s. It tells us that the earth is 4.6 billions years old.

 ....................................................................


 *CONSERVAPEDIA

 The notoriously misleading imitation of Wikipedia, It has a creationist editor - a lawyer called Andrew Schlafly.

 *SPEED OF EVOLUTION

 This can be slow or fast. The former is illustrated by Limulus (the horseshoe crab), which is sometimes called a living fossil. The latter is illustrated by bacterial strains, which have with great speed evolved a resistance to antibiotics.

 *THE MISSING LINK
 This has several meanings.

 1) Gaps in the fossil record - eras shown in rock strata where there were no fossils. This is because the animals around then were not good fossil material, for instance they didn't have hard, mineralized skeletons.

 2) The Piltdown Hoax

 Many people were seeking a link between man and other primates. Eventually someone 'found' Piltdown Man - but it was a hoax. In the intervening time since the hoax we have found numerous fossils that link modern humans to the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees.

 Interestingly there are as yet no fossils - as yet - linking that ancestor (which was neither chimpanzee nor human) to modern chimpanzees....but there are other ways of proving our connection to chimps.

 * OUT OF THE SEA

 All animals originated in the sea, and some, like whales, manatees and dugongs went back into the water. They never developed gills, and still breathe air. Others like seals and sea lions went part way back to the sea.

 Hippos are quite closely related to whales, or at least to the ancestor of whales who walked on the land. Pigs are related to them too.

 The most recent ancestor of all fish is shared by many non-fish too. Humans and other land vertebrates are descended from lobe-finned fish. We share an ancestor with coelacanthus and lungfish.

 *THE WAY WE BUILD OUR BODIES FROM EMBRYOS

 We do not do this from a blueprint or some sort of instructions from an architectural design. We do it more organically, like the dance of a flock of starlings, swooping beautifully together, but without a leader. There are thousands of birds but they never collide. They behave as a single individual - wheeling and turning as one. The edges of the flocks are sharply defined. The density is the same throughout the flick, but the starlings have no choreographer and no leader. This is how embryology works.

 It is all done by local rules.
 It is done at various levels, but especially the level of a single cell.

 Influences that go on within the developing cells.....

 Genes on proteins

 Genes on genes

 Proteins on the expression of genes

 Proteins on proteins

 Membranes

 Chemical gradients

 Physical and chemical guide rails in embryos.

 Hormones (& other mediators of action at a distance.)

 Labelled cells seeking other with identical or complementary labels.

 (Nobody understand the whole picture, and nobody needs to....)

 * HOMOLOGY

 The study of how bones in mammals correspond across the species - however different they are eg comparing a human hand with a bat wing, or horse's hoof.

 * SAMENESS AND DIFFERENCE

 The vertebrate skeleton is invariant across all vertebrates - while individual bones differ.

 The crustaceans exoskeleton is invariant across all crustaceans while the individual 'tubes' vary.

 The DNA code is invariant across all living creatures, while the individual genes themselves vary. Not just the genetic code itself, but the whole gene/protein system for running life is the same in animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, archaea and viruses. What varies is what is written in the code....not the code itself.

 ..........................................................

 WAYS OF TESTING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MAMMALS......

 *TESTING THE CLOSENESS/DISTANCE OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MAMMALS BY INJECTING RABBITS WITH PROTEINS AND INSPECTING THE STRENGTH OF THE ANTIBODIES PRODUCED IN RESPONSE.

 The idea of this upsets me so I am not going to describe it more than this, but I feel it must be mentioned as it is of importance...not least because it showed how closely humans are related to chimpanzees.

 DNA HYBRIDIZATION

 Another bit of the book I skipped. It is how scientists worked out there there is 98% genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees. The technique involves heat and melting points.

 READING THE SEQUENCE OF LETTERS IN THE GENES THEMSELVES

 This is a more recent method, and more expensive. You measure the similarity between a pair of matching genes from difference species.

 ................................................................


 *THE HUMAN BODY IS A SERIES OF MODIFIED IMPERFECTIONS

 This is a clear sign of the fact that we evolved. Improvements could only come about by making ad hoc modifications to what is already there. We are burdened with all sorts of historical relics, anomalies and inperfections.

 Interestingly, an improvement is quite likely to evolve not from the old organ which previously did a job, but from something completely different, which performed a completely different function....eg when our fish ancestors took to breathing air they didn't modify their gills to make a lung - instead they modified a pouch in the gut.

 *MANKIND HAS ONLY RECENTLY BECOME UPRIGHT.

 We have been land animals for about 400 million years. We have walked on our hind legs for only about 1% of that time.

 Habitually walking on two legs as we do, had far-reaching ramifications all over the body, which entailed lots of compensatory adjustments. the reason that so many of us get back pain is because we weren't originally designed to walk upright.

 *WHEN WE SEE THE OUTSIDE OF ANIMALS WE SEE ELEGANT DESIGN, WHEN WE SEE THEM DISSECTED WE SEE A MESS.

 This is because of the history of how our bodies have adapted to our changing shapes, lifestyles and postures.


 *THE ARMS RACE

 The fastest animals in the world are cheetahs, lions and several species of antelope ie predators and their prey. They have both evolved to run very fast in relations to one another, one to pursue, one to escape. But nature knows when to stop. Increased speed creates thin, vulnerable legs....so there has been a cut off point, where further speed has been penalised. (Faster animals have not survived/bred.) Antelopes would not run as fast as they do were they not chased by fast predators, instead they would shunt more energy into making babies, or laying down more fat for the winter.

 *NATURAL SELECTION

 (To me this seems to contradict the paragraph above...)

 This will favour the most competitive individuals, right up to the moment when the last one dies. It can drive a population to extinction, whilst constantly favouring, to the bitter end, those competitive genes that are destined to be the last to go extinct.

 *NATURAL SELECTION AND GENE SURVIVAL

 This is all about the survival of self-replicating DNA, be it in an elephant, or in the virus that is making you sneeze with the common cold. The ultimate message is "duplicate me".


 Like the many other thousands who have read this, I enjoyed it enormously.
 5-star-books science
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 Kris Madaus
 30 reviews 4 followers
 January 6, 2010

 Wow! This is definitely one of those books that makes you look at the world a little differently after reading. Richard Dawkins writes so well on the subject. He is extremely thorough in his description of the fact of evolution, but he doesn't dumb down his explanations either. If you are interested in a particular subject, he often references places you can go to continue the story. He paints a beautiful picture of how evolution really works and why that helps you appreciate this amazing world we live in just a little more.


 I won't get into some of the details he shares, but based on the facts that Dawkins reveals in his appendix about the exceedingly high percentage of people that believe in a creationist view, I thing every high school student should have to read this book. But it doesn't matter what you believe. The evidence shared in this book is fascinating. Long term lab experiments that shows us evolution before our very eyes, sea turtles that evolved from the sea to land to sea to land to sea again, our distant ancestor named the lungfish, how DNA and mitochondria are used to trace ancestors, the evidence for evolution across all branches of science - it is all simply intriguing.


 I appreciate people like Dawkins that can share such amazing things. I especially appreciate how he is more than willing to face creationists head on. If you don't believe in evolution, look at the evidence and then see if you feel the same way afterward - that is, if you are truly interested in answers to the big questions of life. You can say that Dawkins seems a bit aggressive in his books at times, but think about it this way. If you had a group of people constantly questioning questioning that the earth revolves around the sun, and you collected layers and layers of evidence to answer the question beyond reasonable doubt, but they still believe the sun revolved around the earth after all of the years of research, wouldn't you be a bit frustrated too? Dawkins is not only confronting creationists. He is confronting irrationality. Irrationality affects our quality of life. I commend Dawkins for saying enough is enough. He doesn't sugar coat the issue. He says is like it is.


 Excellent book!

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 Marvin
 1,414 reviews 5,315 followers
 November 28, 2009
 Richard Dawkins has taken his seat along with Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan as a great populist of science. In all of his science books and especially in The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence For Evolution , He has taken a complex subject and presented it with clarity to a population that usually gets lost in the seemingly foreign language of most scientists. Yet he does not "dumb down" neither. He has a gift for beautifully explaining difficult topics in a way a layman can understand. He saves his famous disdain, which was in abundant display in The God Delusion , for only when it is deserved. Much is made of Dawkins' supposed arrogance yet when he writes something that can be seen as arrogance, it is more of a sense of amazement that his fellow man can totally dismiss the evidence of evolution. There is a hilarious transcript of this in the book where Dawkins patiently sets out the evidence of intermediate fossils, and where this evidence can be seen, to a Creationist and the Creationist totally ignores it saying "Show me the evidence" like a mantra. Dawkins states he is aiming this book at the people who believe in creationism, which according to recent polls is 40 percent of the American population. I doubt that those people will give this book the time of day. Yet I also think that the 40 percent number includes a good number of people who on "on the fence" so to speak, those who simply haven't seen the evidence for evolution presented in such a clear and understandable manner. I think that is a reasonable audience for this book along with the ones, like me, who have a reasonable knowledge of evolution but wish to learn more.
 non-fiction
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 Jaya
 429 reviews 222 followers
 June 7, 2018
 3.75 stars.
 Felt a bit too technical for an un-science-y person like I. Nevertheless, 'twas bloody brilliant.
 Have a few unresolved queries, guess I have to find answers, somewhere else...
 am-not-smart-enough audio kindle
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 Paul Weiss
 1,182 reviews 124 followers
 August 12, 2022
 “The evidence for evolution grows by the day,”

 “and has never been stronger. At the same time, paradoxically, ill-informed opposition is also stronger than I can remember. This book is my personal summary of the evidence that the ‘theory’ of evolution is actually a fact – as incontrovertible a fact as any in science.”

 To summarize the intent and content of Richard Dawkins’ THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH , it’s tough to beat Dawkins’ own words in the opening paragraph of his preface.

 It’s instructive, it’s entertaining, it’s educational, it’s informative and, perhaps most important of all, it’s persuasive and convincing beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt that evolution exists, that it always has, and that, even today, it operates in real time, and occasionally causes changes at speeds that can best be characterized as jaw-dropping!

 My rather niggardly award of only three stars as opposed to a four- or five-star rave review stems from the fact that I have never been a lover of biology in my reading, no matter how accomplished the writing might be. Personal preference only. But the fact is, that THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH deserves your time if you’re a lover of popular science.

 If you’re a believer in a young earth or creationism, give it a shot! You never know where it might take your thinking.

 Paul Weiss
 anthropology archeology history
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 nemo the emo ☠️ (pagesandprozac)
 850 reviews 399 followers
 Shelved as 'put-down-for-now'
 December 29, 2017
 *sharp inhale*

 i'm religious. i'm a Catholic. and i'm not a creationist and i believe in evolution and i want to read this book because evolution is really interesting to me and i, too, want to take on Young Earth Creationists.

 however, dawkins has a Most terrible habit of dissing not only creationists, but anyone who believes in God, and tarring us all with the same brush and just generally being that One Specific Sort of Atheist who is very arrogant and thinks that all religious people are stupid.

 also, i'm not entirely sure why you would write a book that claims to want to convince creationists that they're wrong with such a strident tone, but i suppose dawkins just can't resist being annoying, can he.

 i'm going to read it, though, because evolution. and also, because even though dawkins can be terribly obnoxious, he is definitely a genius and very good at his field.

 oh, sweet Knowledge, look what i put up with in search of you.

 anyways to lighten the mood here's my favourite cover+article combo ever:
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 Catie
 17 reviews
 January 22, 2010
 Dawkins arguments for evolution are elegant and, in some cases, simply breath-taking. As a psychology professor myself, and as one who has had to contend with "history deniers" for years, I especially liked his description of Lenski's research on the evolution of bacteria. Although facts have always been denied by those who claim Intelligent Design as a valid explanation for all nature, Dawkins painstakingly and elegantly lays out unassailable facts in support of the theory of evolution. He stakes his claim early in the book ("...evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt....

 That said, I doubt seriouly that his book will challenge those who view evolution as only a theory, precisely because they would never open their minds to such a text as this!
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 Tag Riggs
 22 reviews 5 followers
 May 20, 2011
 After reading this book, I quickly realized that it was targeted for a particular audience--the choir complete with holy robes and clapping hands shouting, "...Preach it brother Dawkins, preach it my brother, Evolution AMEN!, Hallelujah!" I honestly think that it is required that you be a Dawkinite and part of the Dawkins Tabernacle Choir in order for you to take this book seriously.

 I was fully expecting some kind of scientific treatise yet it ended up being like a bunch of guys on the dock laughing and drinking beer talking about how the big one got away. It is amazing how he comes forth in every chapter in bold declarative sentences without justifications or support (support other than being anomalous tautologies) to conclude in mealy mouthed suppositions and suggestions.

 I have done a chapter by chapter review on my Facebook page so if interested, you may look for my opinions over there.

 For a guy who claimed many books on evolution under his belt yet forgot to give evidence to all his previous ones until TGSOE (He even admits this), I am amazed at what people are willing to believe simply because someone says it to be thus. Dumbing down has reached a new low on this one. I cannot see how anyone who approaches the subject from a scholarly viewpoint can take this book seriously.

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 Kat Kennedy
 475 reviews 16k followers
 October 15, 2014
 A really well written, interesting, logical discussion on evolution. I quite enjoyed this book.
 i-learned-something-new
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 Des
 92 reviews 6 followers
 December 9, 2012
 Most of what Dawkins explains in this book was not yet known when I went to school.
 My jaw was dropping several times during this most pleasurable trip through the physical evidence of evolution.
 In 4 billion years we went from a single cell to a fully developed human, and now each of us has repreated it in the 9 months we are in the womb of our mother. The wonder of epigenisis without a blueprint!

 But the funniest part in it was his quote of Monty Pythons 'All things dull and ugly':
 All things dull and ugly
 All creatures short and squat
 All things rude and nasty
 The Lord God made the lot

 Each little snake that poisons
 Each little wasp that stings
 He made their brutish venom
 He made their horrid wings

 All things sick and cancerous
 All evil great and small
 All things foul and dangerous
 The Lord God made them all

 Each nasty little hornet
 Each beastly little squid
 Who made the spiky urchin?
 Who made the sharks? He did
 All things scabbed and cancerous
 All pox great and small
 Putrid, foul and gangrenous
 The Lord God made them all.

 And if you ever want to marvel at nature, look at this virus, that looks like a lunar lander.
 http://www.armageddononline.org/image...

 And this is just a single cell?
 https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/im...

 I did not know that the skeleton of all mammals is identical in the structure and sequence of bones. Just the size and shape differs.

 What an eye-opening book.

 british science-philosophy
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 Megan
 393 reviews 7 followers
 March 9, 2010
 I wish I'd had engaging and interesting texts like this to read when I had to take science classes in high school. I always wanted to like science so much, but I always got bogged down in minutae, in questions the text or teachers didn't address, and in the boredom of rote memorization. This book really made me like biology. Not only does it explain concepts in an intelligent and cohesive way, it has pictures! Color pictures, even. Much like the ones I stared at in biology or earth science instead of paragraphs of text. It absolutely engaged my visual approach to learning.

 I really enjoyed the way various bits of evidence for evolution were put forth, and weaved into other parts. This book has so much information beyond just the fossil record, it's awesome. Many disciplines of science, from paleontology to astronomy to genetics, are pulled in to all establish evidence for the evolutionary theory. And Richard Dawkins writes in such an engaging manner. I really enjoyed this one.
 2010 adult ajpl
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 Христо Блажев
 2,170 reviews 1,417 followers
 September 1, 2022
 ЕВОЛЮЦИЯТА е “Най-великото шоу на Земята”, доказва смазващият Ричард Докинс\
 http://www.knigolandia.info/2011/12/b...

 Това е Книга, която не би трябвало да има нужда да бъде писана. Но както Докинс посочва още в началото, потискащо много хора са се вкопчили в без��мната идея за планета на няколко хиляди години, едновременно сътворение на всички живи същества на планетата, че и въртене на Слънцето около Земята пътем. Всичко, заради което трябваше да се напише и величествената “Делюзията Бог”. И заради което се налага да съществува “Най-великото шоу на Земята”. Може би трябва да сме благодарни на креационистите с вяра вместо мозък – те са движещата сила на интелектуални гиганти като Докинс и борбата с религиозната агресия към децата (и не само) мотивира създаването на такива книги.
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 Ana
 805 reviews 588 followers
 December 21, 2016
 Oh, Dawkins. Tell me more of evolution, please. Speak to me of genes and their ways. Teach me things about the world. I could read this stuff for hours. I am endlessly fascinated and the more I understand of evolution, the more I am aware of how unbelievably lucky I am that I exist, that anything exists, that I can learn about it.
 absolute ebook non-fiction
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 Cherie
 31 reviews 26 followers
 October 25, 2013
 Richard Dawkins has crafted a masterpiece dedicated to explaining evolution in a way that the layman can understand, providing excellent examples of evidence from fossil evidence to observable evidence, genetic evidence, and so on. My personal favorite chapter was on the geographic distribution of animals and speciation. It is really like an extraordinary puzzle that fits together so beautifully. Richard Dawkins uses the detective analogy to describe the study of evolution. And I can't think of anything more fitting. Because of course we weren't there and we can't see macro evolution in action, but we can see the clues (evidence) left behind and see that evolution is indeed a fact of nature.

 I thought it was excellently paced. Richard Dawkins takes it slow at first, leading up from artificial and sexual selection to get the reader accustomed to the idea of natural selection. Then before he talks about fossil evidence he first makes sure the reader understands how dating methods work and how accurate they are. It's just fantastic, I learned so much and it was very interesting. Richard Dawkins writes with a passion and devotion that is difficult to understand for creationists. They ask how an atheist can be filled with awe and wonder with life if they believe it was all an accident. The answer is because nature in its entirety is chaotic and unusual... It's cruel and harsh, and very uncaring... But it's also beautiful and magnificent and completely fascinating. To say it all was created by a god is a mockery of the complexity that is shown in life.

 This should honestly be required reading. So many people lack a basic understanding of evolution or even a respect of science in general. I have already recommended this book to several friends and some creationists that I've debated, but I encourage everybody to read this at some point in their life.
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 paper0r0ss0
 648 reviews 42 followers
 August 22, 2021
 Divertita e divertente escursione nel vasto campo della Teoria dell'Evoluzione darwiniana. Il tono e' leggero ma rigoroso e puntiglioso, gli aneddoti non mancano e le frequenti notazioni curiose non annoiano il lettore. Ben presto ci si accorge pero' che il vero intento del libro non e' semplicemente quello di esporre la suddetta teoria evoluzionistica, ma di contrastare e contraddire tutte quelle correnti negazioniste religiose che propugnano la visione creazionista della vita. A ben vedere e' proprio questo il limite del libro, che vede sacrificata la possibilita' di focalizzare tutti punti controversi del darwinismo (specie in relazione al principio di selezione naturale, vedi ad es. Lewontin, Gould, Piattelli Palmarini) presentandolo come un Moloch inattaccabile (e cosi' non e').
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 Mohamed al-Jamri
 174 reviews 110 followers
 May 31, 2019
 For those looking for evidence supporting evolution, either because they themselves doubt it or want more evidences to argue for it, these two books can do the job extremely well.

 I bet the vast majority if not all of those who read "The Greatest Show on Earth" & "Why Evolution is True" with an open mind and understand them, will regard evolution as true and be able to argue in its favor strongly.

 Both authors maintain that evolution is compatible with #religion although they do not elaborate on that. In fact, Dawkins -who is notorious for his criticism of religion- goes on and lists a number of British #bishops and public figures who call for teaching of evolution in publicly-funded schools.

 I recommend reading Dawkins book first since he explains what is evolution and natural selection in detail before moving to the evidence while Coyne presents a lot of evidences and details.

 For books that try to reconcile between religion and evolution, I hear that "Finding Darwin's God" & "The Language of God" are good, although I haven't read them yet.
 popular-science-recommendations
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 Bruce Hatton
 452 reviews 59 followers
 May 13, 2020
 Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is one of those rare scientists who is capable of addressing his specific area of science to the layperson (and I certainly am such – biology wasn’t even on the syllabus at my school) in a lucid and enlightening manner without ever having to “dumb down”. His unwavering enthusiasm for the subject is evident throughout, as is his often wicked sense of humour.
 This certainly isn’t a book one can rush through. However, I found a careful study revealed many of the wonders of evolution by natural selection and explained why there were so many “flawed designs” (including humans) as individual creatures very gradually adapted in order to survive changing environments.
 The reading process is helped enormously by plenty of illustrations, diagrams and some beautiful colour photographs. Each chapter had its own breathtaking revelations. Although it took me a while to get through, overall I found this an extremely enlightening and rewarding read.
 science
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 David Rubenstein
 801 reviews 2,502 followers
 April 3, 2010
 What a wonderful book! I've enjoyed several other books by Richard Dawkins, and this is his best. The chapter named "History Written All Over Us" could have been called, "Unintelligent Design". It is just one of many arguments, why evolution is a proven theory.

 Dawkins makes a point that a good scientific theory must be falsibiable. That means, that if certain evidence were ever collected, or observations made, then one must conclude that the theory is false. He describes how if fossils were ever found in the wrong geological strata, one would immediately have to conclude that evolution is false. But although tons of fossils have been discovered all over the world, not a single one has ever been found in the wrong geological layer.
 biology nonfiction science
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 David S. T.
 126 reviews 19 followers
 May 5, 2011
 This isn't the best introductory book I've read on evolution, Dawkins loves to insult the people who don't hold his views, goes way to far sometimes to get his point across and has a tendency to ramble on and mention interesting but irrelevant stuff. Once you get past the flaws this actually is a pretty good book, oddly by the end some of those qualities I hated about the book in the beginning, I started to appreciate more in the end (I kind of enjoy the almost pointless side stories and facts).

 When I started reading this book, I put it down for a while because I got tired of the creationist rants, which apparently the high number of people who deny evolution is why this book is written. Dawkins even goes as far as comparing an evolution denier as the equivalent of someone denying the existence of the roman civilization or even worse a holocaust denier. I'm sorry but lacking the understanding or denying evolution is nothing like denying the holocaust. For one thing we've never really witnessed one animal evolving into another completely different species, meaning one "kind" into another "kind", in our lifetime (which is far too short of a time scale) or even more a bacteria evolving into a mammal, this doesn't mean evolution is false (its not), but it is far different than denying the holocaust. Anyways eventually I picked the book back up and it was far better as I got further into it. Also expect to hear the word “history-deniers” every few pages, I guess he wants us to remember just how terrible the evolution deniers are. Since this book is written to convince the 40% of American who deny evolution, Dawkins should realize by now that insulting your target audience isn't the best way to get them to listen to you. If anything his books do more help to the young earth creationist movement and intelligent design.

 The subtitle of this book is “The Evidence for Evolution”, which is kind of an unfitting title, I found that Coyne's Why Evolution is True contains far more evidence in far fewer pages and is overall a better introduction to evolution. You see Dawkins often goes off on rants which do not to move the evidence along. For example in a chapter he discusses the age of the earth, he spends several pages discussing getting the age from tree rings. You see you can match the width of tree rings with others and go back to earlier dates, but then he says that the chain of tree rings goes back 11,000 years only, well the pages he spent on this argument do nothing to convince a young earth creationist of the age of the earth, in fact the argument works in their favor. The book is full of these little side notes and stories which causes the page numbers to go up, but the relevant information doesn't follow. Also expect tons of foot notes with mostly rants about TV shows he wants to be on, his childhood, or why we should call the Beijing Man, the Peking fossil, ect.

 I know I've complained some but don't get me wrong, this book, once you look past the flaws, is still very interesting and worth reading (assuming that you're not a creationist). Many of the side stories which I complained about are actually interesting if you don’t mind frequent diversions and he goes into DNA a little more than the other non DNA specific evolution books I've read. So in the end I do think its pretty good, just not as a first book on evolution.
 science
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 A.L. Buehrer
 Author 9 books 49 followers
 May 8, 2019
 I have to see both sides. I’m really not content to only read what reconfirms what I already believe. Even if I doubt that anything could change my mind on a subject (sometimes facts are facts) I want to be able to see what the other person sees and understand how they think.

 I was in this objective sportsmanly mood when I picked this book up. By the end of chapter one I was struggling to maintain that attitude. Why? Because Dawkins has absolutely no interest in playing fair. I like to think that even people who disagree with me can still be intelligent intellectually honest people. Dawkins clearly doesn’t.

 I took issue with a lot more than just the science in this book. Overall, it was well constructed—I think he went over the subjects that he needed to cover. But…I don’t know. Maybe I’m out-growing pop science, but for me, he wasted so much time on prose explaining obvious things, and trying to keep us poor non-scientists interested.

 I didn’t notice his writing voice in The Selfish Gene. I vastly prefer that book. The Selfish Gene had something that actually took some page-time to explain. In this book his style felt like somebody desperately trying to write a lot of words. A lot of chains of adjectives and repeated ideas. I found myself skimming large sections because he had made his point and it was time to start connecting it to the next one, but he was in no hurry.

 He did a lot of things I never would have done writing a similar book. He claimed in the beginning he was writing for both evolutionists who wanted to combat their stupid creationist relatives at family gatherings and for creationists themselves. I can confirm he was not writing this book with any thought for the possibility that the second group would read him at all. He doesn’t believe in creationists enough to think they would ever dare to read something that might shake their faith. Neither does he ever show any respect for his opposition. He constantly refers to evolution skeptics as “history-deniers” and stereotypes them as willfully scientifically illiterate and emotionally hysterical.

 Never once in the course of the book does Dawkins acknowledge that there are fully-educated, fully-rational scientists that don’t read the evidence the way he does. He consistently juxtaposes “scientists” and “history-deniers” as mutually exclusive groups. Never once does he even mention a debate or exchange between himself and real ID scientists. His anecdotes are limited to face-offs with journalists and random people on the street.

 The biggest downfall of the book stems from the fact that—unlike some of us—Dawkins makes no effort to understand his opposition. This manifests as the most glaring scientific mistake in the whole book: he wastes a huge amount of time proving microevolution. News flash: educated creationists believe in microevolution. Microevolution is simply variation that arises from shuffling genetic information. (Dawkins doesn’t think I, as a creationist, know what “information” is. He can be wrong.) Macroevolution requires significant amounts of new genetic information and is much more problematic. Macroevolution is the process that, over billions of years, turns worms to humans. This is what we need you to prove, Dawkins.

 Anyway. I read this.
 atheism evolution non-fiction
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 Jim
 Author 6 books 2,015 followers
 August 1, 2019
 This was written to inform those who believe in evolution how to counter the arguments of those who don't. It hasn't been worth the effort in my experience. Young Earth Creationists (YEC) who believe that the world is only as old as their version of their bible tells them it is (The term apparently applies to people in all branches of the Abrahamic religions plus a few others.) are so dedicated to their intentional ignorance that changing their minds is impossible. They have THE ANSWER & it doesn't matter if it doesn't make a lick of sense & continually contradicts itself. They'll still use cell phones & praise their god(s). None of it was surprising since I'm surrounded by them. Dawkins, who lives in the UK, even mentions the Ark Park & Creationist Museum which are both in my state & not too far away. Shudder. Anyway, that thread of the narrative got pretty old for me & it lost a star for that. Probably a personal problem.

 I found his explanations in the workings of evolution really interesting, though. Even though I've read several of his books, he's come up with new areas & explanations that make sense of some truly remarkable adaptations.

 Here are the chapters from the Wikipedia entry:
 The book is divided into 13 chapters spanning over 400 pages, and includes an appendix called "The history-deniers" in the end material.

 Only a theory? (nature of scientific theory and fallibility)
 Dogs, cows and cabbages (artificial selection)
 The primrose path to macro-evolution
 Silence and slow time (age of the Earth and the geologic time scale)
 Before our very eyes (examples of evolution observed)
 Missing link? What do you mean, 'missing'? (the fossil record)
 Missing persons? Missing no longer (human evolution)
 You did it yourself in nine months (a statement attributed to J. B. S. Haldane; discusses developmental biology)
 The ark of the continents (biogeography and plate tectonics)
 The tree of cousinship (the tree of life, homology and analogy)
 History written all over us (vestigiality and unintelligent design)
 Arms races and 'evolutionary theodicy' (coevolution and evolutionary arms races)
 There is grandeur in this view of life (based on the final passage of On the Origin of Species)

 I read this as an audiobook narrated by Dawkins & Lalla Ward. They're a great team. Really make the words pop. Highly recommended.
 1audio 2non-fiction science
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 Nicky
 4,138 reviews 1,003 followers
 August 16, 2016
 Richard Dawkins is, from my point of view, a fairly unpleasant man even when I agree with him. He sets out to make this book an explanation of how evolution works (but for that, I would go with Coyne’s Why Evolution is True), and why it is the correct explanation for various phenomena we can observe around us. It’s not as bad as The God Delusion for anti-theist statements, though there are a few speckled in there, and he makes a fairly good line of argument.

 Of course, since I think evolution is an obvious conclusion, so I’m not exactly the audience he was hoping to convince — and it’s likely I didn’t notice instances of his usual arrogant attitude that would bother someone who doesn’t already believe in the same things. I think you’re probably safer with Coyne’s book.

 Or this set of logical steps:

 1. There are creatures who are better adapted to their environment than others of the same species.
 Because they are better adapted, they will be more successful in survival and, consequently, breeding.
 2. These traits, when heritable, can be passed on the creature’s offspring — and they can have many offspring.
 3. These offspring will be better adapted, and will meet others who are also well adapted to breed with.
 4. Good adaptations accumulate over the course of generations.
 5. The environment is not stable and changes over time. Adaptation is necessary to allow a species to survive in the same area, and species do survive in the same area.
 6. Over a long period of time, enough changes will accumulate that individuals of that species would not be able to breed with the original species, or with a branch of the species that adapted differently.
 7. Evolution via natural selection has necessarily occurred.

 Plus extra evidence like shared DNA, the fact that we can artificially (and in a very short space of time) cause a species to evolve by selecting traits we want (e.g. high milk yield in cows), and the fossil record which contains plenty of examples of transitional fossils… You don’t need Dawkins; go back to Darwin. Even without the evidence we have now, he saw the necessary chain of events, and he was much more sympathetic to other views, and meticulous about his evidence.

 Nonetheless, Dawkins’ book is clear and pretty well-written; I just don’t like his attitude, and I don’t think he will reach the desired audience.

 Originally posted here.
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 Shaun
 521 reviews 180 followers
 December 4, 2017
 So, I admire Dawkins as both a scientist and a writer. His passion for science and the endless search for truth is infectious and his talent for writing magnificent prose is noteable.

 I had the pleasure to go see him speak at the Center for Inquiry in D.C., and also got to mingle with him before the show (a fun story for sure). Needless to say, he was amazing.

 I know some people think he is an angry atheist, but I think they are missing the point, and he does a great job of making his point at the beginning of this book.

 A very worthwhile read for anyone curious about evolution. So much information yet very readable.
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I will end with some notes of the delights I found in the book - most of them taken verbatim from the book.   *GENES These don't mix like paint (which would create a middling average half way between our two parents....and if it did, all variation would rapidly disappear.) Instead genes passing on is like the shuffling and re-shuffling of a card pack. Genes don't blend, they shuffle. You could say they are shuffled badly, with groups of cards sticking together for several generations of shuffling, before chance happens to split them. Any one of your eggs (or sperms if you are male) contains either your father's version of a particular gene or your mother's version, not a blend of the two. And that particular gene came from one (&amp; only one) of your four grandparents, and from one (&amp; only one) of your eight grandparents. * GENE POOLS These are created in environments of all different shapes, sizes and outlook. Islands, valleys surrounded by mountains which animals can't cross, areas of a certain climate etc. Gene pools are sculpted when humans interfere, eg when dog breeders breed bulldogs to encourage certain attributes. * HYBRIDS This involves a deliberate violation of the gene pool....eg the Labradoodle is a hybrid between a standard poodle and a Labrador retriever. Some people are trying to breed labradoodles directly with other labradoodles, and to get them to breed true. At present second generation labradoodles recombine to produce more variety than pre-bred dogs are supposed to show. This is how many 'pure' breeds started - they went through an intermediate stage of high variation, subsequently trimmed down through generations of careful breeding, so that a proper purebreed began to regularly appear. *A SINGLE MAJOR MUTATION Sometimes new breeds of dogs get their start with the adoption of a single major mutation. In nature large mutations seldom survive eg basset hounds and dachshunds with very short legs acquired them in a singe step with the genetic mutation called achondroplasia, a classic example of a large mutation unlikely to survive in the wild.  *BREEDING FOR SPECIFIC ATTRIBUTES AND TALENTS For instance dogs that can herd sheep, race, or pull sledges, or even 'point'. We could do the same for human beings too - though ethically this could pose a problem. .......................................................................... WAYS OF MEASURING TIME........ *DENDROCHRONOLOGY - THE STUDY OF TREE RINGS. Tree rings show whether it was a good lush year or a year of drought. These form into recognisable patterns eg a bunch of trees living between 1950 - 1970 will share the same patterns of drought and plenty for that period.  You can overlap tree rings this way, and create a library of tree rings going back through history eg. Tree 1 1950 - 2016 Tree 2 1930 - 1990  With tree 2, you have as a reference the patterns laid down with tree 1, from 1950 - 1990, so you can work out that the earlier rings in tree 2 make a pattern for 1930-1950.  You can do the same thing with trees 3 and 4.....steadily going further back through history with each tree. This way dendrochronoligists can date trees back over thousands of years, (theoretically it should work back over millions of years.  You don't have to cut a tree down to measure its rings, you can just take a plug from the tree. *THE SEDIMENT IN GLACIAL LAKES (VARVES) This lays down strata from season to season, and year to year. *CORAL REEFS This has annual growth rings, like trees. *RADIOACTIVE CLOCKS	 1) There are a lot of them to choose from 2) They cover time from centuries to thousands of millions of years. 3) They have a margin of error of 1% 4) Layers or strata of rock get their names from the fossils we find in them. CumbrianOrdovicianSilurianDevonianCarboniferousPermianTriassicJurassicCretaceousEtc. and you get sub-categories eg Upper Jurassic, Middle Jurassic and Lower Jurassic. 5) You can use radioactive dating of rocks to place a date on them. Carbon is the element most indispensable to life - it enters the food web via photosynthesis in plants and from then on to living creatures. Carbon dating is the most common form of dating. It was invented in the 1940s. It tells us that the earth is 4.6 billions years old. .................................................................... *CONSERVAPEDIA The notoriously misleading imitation of Wikipedia, It has a creationist editor - a lawyer called Andrew Schlafly. *SPEED OF EVOLUTION This can be slow or fast. The former is illustrated by Limulus (the horseshoe crab), which is sometimes called a living fossil. The latter is illustrated by bacterial strains, which have with great speed evolved a resistance to antibiotics. *THE MISSING LINKThis has several meanings. 1) Gaps in the fossil record - eras shown in rock strata where there were no fossils. This is because the animals around then were not good fossil material, for instance they didn't have hard, mineralized skeletons. 2) The Piltdown Hoax Many people were seeking a link between man and other primates. Eventually someone 'found' Piltdown Man - but it was a hoax. In the intervening time since the hoax we have found numerous fossils that link modern humans to the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees.  Interestingly there are as yet no fossils - as yet - linking that ancestor (which was neither chimpanzee nor human) to modern chimpanzees....but there are other ways of proving our connection to chimps. * OUT OF THE SEA All animals originated in the sea, and some, like whales, manatees and dugongs went back into the water. They never developed gills, and still breathe air. Others like seals and sea lions went part way back to the sea. Hippos are quite closely related to whales, or at least to the ancestor of whales who walked on the land. Pigs are related to them too. The most recent ancestor of all fish is shared by many non-fish too. Humans and other land vertebrates are descended from lobe-finned fish. We share an ancestor with coelacanthus and lungfish. *THE WAY WE BUILD OUR BODIES FROM EMBRYOS We do not do this from a blueprint or some sort of instructions from an architectural design. We do it more organically, like the dance of a flock of starlings, swooping beautifully together, but without a leader. There are thousands of birds but they never collide. They behave as a single individual - wheeling and turning as one. The edges of the flocks are sharply defined. The density is the same throughout the flick, but the starlings have no choreographer and no leader. This is how embryology works. It is all done by local rules.It is done at various levels, but especially the level of a single cell. Influences that go on within the developing cells..... Genes on proteins Genes on genes Proteins on the expression of genes Proteins on proteins Membranes Chemical gradients Physical and chemical guide rails in embryos. Hormones (&amp; other mediators of action at a distance.) Labelled cells seeking other with identical or complementary labels. (Nobody understand the whole picture, and nobody needs to....) * HOMOLOGY The study of how bones in mammals correspond across the species - however different they are eg comparing a human hand with a bat wing, or horse's hoof. * SAMENESS AND DIFFERENCE The vertebrate skeleton is invariant across all vertebrates - while individual bones differ. The crustaceans exoskeleton is invariant across all crustaceans while the individual 'tubes' vary. The DNA code is invariant across all living creatures, while the individual genes themselves vary. Not just the genetic code itself, but the whole gene/protein system for running life is the same in animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, archaea and viruses. What varies is what is written in the code....not the code itself. .......................................................... WAYS OF TESTING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MAMMALS...... *TESTING THE CLOSENESS/DISTANCE OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MAMMALS BY INJECTING RABBITS WITH PROTEINS AND INSPECTING THE STRENGTH OF THE ANTIBODIES PRODUCED IN RESPONSE. The idea of this upsets me so I am not going to describe it more than this, but I feel it must be mentioned as it is of importance...not least because it showed how closely humans are related to chimpanzees. DNA HYBRIDIZATION Another bit of the book I skipped. It is how scientists worked out there there is 98% genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees. The technique involves heat and melting points. READING THE SEQUENCE OF LETTERS IN THE GENES THEMSELVES This is a more recent method, and more expensive. You measure the similarity between a pair of matching genes from difference species. ................................................................ *THE HUMAN BODY IS A SERIES OF MODIFIED IMPERFECTIONS This is a clear sign of the fact that we evolved. Improvements could only come about by making ad hoc modifications to what is already there. We are burdened with all sorts of historical relics, anomalies and inperfections. Interestingly, an improvement is quite likely to evolve not from the old organ which previously did a job, but from something completely different, which performed a completely different function....eg when our fish ancestors took to breathing air they didn't modify their gills to make a lung - instead they modified a pouch in the gut. *MANKIND HAS ONLY RECENTLY BECOME UPRIGHT. We have been land animals for about 400 million years. We have walked on our hind legs for only about 1% of that time. Habitually walking on two legs as we do, had far-reaching ramifications all over the body, which entailed lots of compensatory adjustments. the reason that so many of us get back pain is because we weren't originally designed to walk upright. *WHEN WE SEE THE OUTSIDE OF ANIMALS WE SEE ELEGANT DESIGN, WHEN WE SEE THEM DISSECTED WE SEE A MESS. This is because of the history of how our bodies have adapted to our changing shapes, lifestyles and postures. *THE ARMS RACE The fastest animals in the world are cheetahs, lions and several species of antelope ie predators and their prey. They have both evolved to run very fast in relations to one another, one to pursue, one to escape. But nature knows when to stop. Increased speed creates thin, vulnerable legs....so there has been a cut off point, where further speed has been penalised. (Faster animals have not survived/bred.) Antelopes would not run as fast as they do were they not chased by fast predators, instead they would shunt more energy into making babies, or laying down more fat for the winter. *NATURAL SELECTION (To me this seems to contradict the paragraph above...) This will favour the most competitive individuals, right up to the moment when the last one dies. It can drive a population to extinction, whilst constantly favouring, to the bitter end, those competitive genes that are destined to be the last to go extinct. *NATURAL SELECTION AND GENE SURVIVAL This is all about the survival of self-replicating DNA, be it in an elephant, or in the virus that is making you sneeze with the common cold. The ultimate message is "duplicate me".   Like the many other thousands who have read this, I enjoyed it enormously.
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6117055-the-greatest-show-on-earth
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17977.The_Ancestor_s_Tale
The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolut…
2004-09-01
Author
<div><div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1713956-manny"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>28 books13.4k followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/38373521">April 8, 2010</a></section><div><p>On Monday, an old friend came round to lunch, and, while we were having a cup of tea in the living room, remarked on the number of Richard Dawkins books on my shelf. Somehow, I'd never heard that she'd actually had Dawkins as a supervisor for one term when she was an undergraduate at Oxford in the late 70s; it was in connection with the course she was reading on animal behaviour. I asked what he was like as a person, and she was unenthusiastic. Clearly very intelligent, but there was something about him that she found disquieting. She wouldn't go so far as to say that he'd behaved inappropriately, there was never a specific incident she could point to, but she constantly felt that he was just an inch from the line. Well... charismatic, thirty-something male supervisor, attractive young female undergraduate, animal behaviour, you can see plenty of scope for that. And she said that, even then, he'd go on about religion. After a while, she became increasingly sure that his hostile feelings were rooted in some kind of personal disappointment he'd suffered, though she had no idea what it might have been.<p>I asked her which Dawkins she'd read, and, like most people, it was <i>The Selfish Gene</i> and <i>The God Delusion</i>. She hadn't particularly liked either one. I can sympathize with her point of view. But, as other reviewers here have said, Dawkins is a more complex person than he's generally given credit for, and if you read <i>The Ancestor's Tale</i> you'll see another side. I suppose one could say that he's attacking religion here too, but the strategy is completely the opposite of the blunt, in-your-face assault he uses in the <i>The God Delusion</i>; to my mind, it's also far more effective. Rather than tell you what's ugly and wrong about Intelligent Design, he concentrates his energies on showing you what's beautiful and right about evolution, and how, far from contradicting traditional religious beliefs, it reveals them with a clarity that previous generations have been unable to see. </p><p>I kept thinking of Saint Francis of Assisi, and his love of all living creatures. "Brother bird, sister ant"... they're beautiful poetic phrases. But what do they mean? Evidently, this finch can't literally be my brother. There is no way that my mother could have given birth to him. The conventional explanation is that we're both "children of God", which is fine as far as it goes; the problem is that it doesn't really shed much light on the nature of our relationship. The astonishing thing about evolution, which forms the core of this book, is that it shows how the bird and ant truly are my brother and sister. Well, not quite brother and sister - in fact, they're very distant cousins. Dawkins traces the family tree, and shows precisely how we're all related. He starts with the obvious cases (apes, monkeys), then goes back to other mammals, and then further through reptiles, birds, amphibians, insects, sponges, plants and all the way to protozoa. On the way, he tells you some extraordinary stories. Well, that shouldn't be a surprise; think what interesting stories you hear when you meet up with a friend you used to know well, but haven't seen for a decade. Here, you are in some cases meeting up with people you haven't seen for several hundred million years.</p><p>At the end, I felt, as I had never felt before, how we're all one family in the plain, everyday sense of the word, and how we're linked though the genes we share, which we've inherited from our common ancestors. It's a truly incredible thought. As Dawkins says on the last page: it's not so much that he disagrees with religious people, it's more that they're saying it the wrong way. If you are yourself a religious person who wants to learn to be closer to God and His Creation, you could do worse than read this book.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1713956?shelf=science">science</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1713956?shelf=strongly-recommended">strongly-recommended</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1713956?shelf=transcendent-experiences">transcendent-experiences</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/224453-jen"></a></section><section><p>39 reviews19 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/17753770">March 14, 2008</a></section><div><p>Poor Dawkins - he gets a bad reputation. People think he's mean and nasty and heartless and elitist. <p>Okay, I might have to grant people the "elitist" bit, because, well, I'm a bit of an elitist myself. But I dare you all to read this book and then tell me that Dawkins isn't a total squishy. </p><p>Let's just say this - he stops in the middle of the book to talk about how much he misses Douglas Adams, who was a dear friend of his. He waxes poetic about evolution and how much he wishes he could meet our ancestors. He refers to Olivia Judson's "Doctor Tatiana's Sex Guide for All Creation," makes a brief homage to it, and then sweetly states that he could never do the style justice (making clear along the way that he's <i>read</i> the darned thing, which delights me for reasons that can only be understood by someone else who's read the book, because it's Just That Fabulous). </p><p>And he puts his wife in the index, even though the references to her are miniscule (and, in fact, much less frequent than in any other book). He credits his research assistant as his co-author. In general, he's a sweetheart.</p><p>I will stop fangirling the man, now, and simply tell you that the <i>science</i> in this book? Is brilliant, wondrous, and awe-inspiring in its breadth. Fantastic book. </p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/53165-warwick"></a></section><section><p>809 reviews14.4k followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/710342737">September 14, 2013</a></section><div><p>There are some facts the simple knowing of which seems to me to be a supreme achievement of our species. The fact that we are all made of stardust. The fact that 99.9999999999999 percent of all matter is empty. The fact that mass and energy can be expressed in terms of each other. Stuff like that.<p>Pre-eminent among these to me, for sheer mind-expanding awe, is the fact that life on this planet has developed precisely once, as far as we know, and everything on earth has evolved from it. That means that when you go outside and lie down in the garden, everything you can see and hear – people walking nearby, their pet dogs, the squirrel darting past, the birds you can hear tweeting, the insects and tiny bugs crawling around underneath you, the trees the birds are standing on, the grass you're lying on, the bacteria in your guts – all of them are your cousins: you're quite literally related to them in the real, genealogical sense.</p><p>If you go far enough back in time, in other words, you will eventually find a creature whose descendants evolved into both squirrels (say) and people. Indeed, the rules of heredity being what they are, you could even find a single <i>individual</i> who was a common ancestor to every squirrel and human alive. And indeed such an animal really did exist, around 75 million years ago in the Upper Cretaceous. It probably looked sort of mousey, and Dawkins estimates that he or she was our ‘15-million-greats-grandparent’. Squirrels are not ‘closer’ to this creature than humans are: we and they are equally related, having been evolving independently for the same amount of time.</p><p><i>The Ancestor's Tale</i> takes exactly this approach to exploring evolution. It starts with humans and works backwards – looking first at the common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees, and continuing until we reach the common ancestor of all life on earth. Dawkins's word for a common ancestor of more than one species is ‘concestor’, and there are only about 40 of them (!) between us and the origin of life more than three billion years ago. The Cretaceous mammal I mentioned above, which evolved into us and squirrels (along with all the other rodents, lagomorphs and primates), is Concestor 10 according to this schema.</p><p>I think there's a lot of traps you can fall into when you start thinking about evolution. It's easy to feel, instinctively, that evolution is somehow teleological: that it's been working <i>towards</i> – if not us, then at least creatures that are increasingly complex and increasingly intelligent. But that of course is not the case. Things survive that reproduce themselves well, and there are plenty of single-celled organisms still with us that have seen no need to get any more complicated for millions of years. Bacterial life is in fact astonishingly varied and rich, whole phyla of creatures that branched off before multicellular life even came about; indeed, chemically speaking,</p><blockquote>we are more similar to some bacteria than some bacteria are to other bacteria.</blockquote><p>Just think about <i>that</i> for a second.</p><p>Before Dawkins got distracted by religious idiocy, he was well known as being one of the scientists most able to explain complicated ideas in a fresh and accessible way. All his skills are on display in this work. It's not just the zoology and the evolutionary biology, where you'd expect him to be strong; there's also a fantastically lucid explanation of the biochemistry within a cell, and even one of the best explanations of the physics of radioactivity that I've come across. He is calm and careful; he repeats himself where necessary; he shares several teacherly witticisms; and he does all this without ever condescending to the reader. He allows paragraphs of complex material to sit, so that you can read and re-read them a few times before he carries on. Occasionally he cannot stop himself breaking out in exclamations of wonder or poetic meditation – as when he discusses the fossilised footprints of three early hominids from some three-and-a-half million years ago:</p><blockquote>Who does not wonder what these individuals were to each other, whether they held hands or even talked, and what forgotten errand they shared in a Pliocene dawn?</blockquote><p>His enthusiasm is infectious. The whole book is a fantastic exploration of this most beautiful piece of modern human understanding. It's full of astonishing anecdotes and scientific details about the natural world, but it also all ties together into a conception of life that's more awe-inspiring and more moving than any supernatural system could ever be.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/53165?shelf=anthropology">anthropology</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/53165?shelf=biology">biology</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/53165?shelf=evolution">evolution</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/155663-david-rubenstein"></a></section><section><p>801 reviews2,502 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1979110916">April 23, 2017</a></section><div><p>This is the 2016, revised edition of this fabulous book. In this edition, Richard Dawkins is a co-author with Yan Wong. This is a very hefty tome, just under 800 pages. It is a marvelously inventive, masterful look at evolution, as seen from the point of view of homo sapiens <i>travelling backwards in time</i>, back to the dawn of life. Each time the route of evolution reaches a branch point with another species, it is called a <i>Rendezvous</i>; there are 40 rendezvous altogether. The book is extremely interesting and informative. Below I summarize some of the interesting facts I learned.<p>Some creationists point to the so-called gaps in the fossil record as proof that the scientific theory of evolution is not sufficient to explain the development of species. But Dawkins argues that even without any fossils, the evidence for evolution would still be immense. The distributions of species on continents and islands, the patterns of resemblance, an genetic sequences are sufficient to prove evolution. Fossils are a welcome bonus. The gaps in the fossil records are not all that important.</p><p>The agricultural revolution helped to support a larger population, but did nothing to increase people's health or happiness; in fact it did just the opposite.</p><p>There is a very interesting discussion about our most recent common ancestor. That is to say, the human who is the common ancestor to all people alive on Earth today. It is very surprising, that the most recent common ancestor lived around 10,000 years ago.</p><p>Silver foxes bred in captivity by D.K. Belyaev for twenty years were bred for tameness. After twenty years, the foxes behaved like border collies! They became friendly, sought human company, and wagged their tails when approached. They even looked like border collies!</p><p>We were told when we were young that eating carrots help us see better in the dark. But this was a rumor started by WWII strategists to avoid revealing the secret of radar.</p><p>The best analogy for genes is not that they serve as a blueprint, but rather that they serve as a toolbox of routines. So, while a large percentage of our genes is in common with those of other animals, our main difference from other animals is not the toolbox of DNA routines, but is instead the pattern of choosing genetic routines from the available toolbox. This is called the science of epigenetics, which has been around since Conrad Weddington coined the term in 1942.</p><p>In 1866, Ernst Haeckel announced that the hippo is a close relative to the whale. This has since been proven through DNA; the hippo's closest living relative actually is the whale!</p><p>The duck-billed platypus closes its eyes shut when hunting for food. Its duck bill is a very sensitive organ with 60,000 mechanical and 40,000 electrical sensors. The platypus swivels its bill back and forth, feeling for impulses from potential prey. It probably gets a detailed 3D image of electrical disturbances in its vicinity. It probably is doing some sophisticated beamforming to increase its sensitivity.</p><p>Dawkins remarks about a lot of interesting speculations why humans are bipedal. He gives a number of arguments both why bipedal walking is helpful, but others why it is not.<br />In 1954, the British Colonial Administration destroyed the ecosystem of Lake Victoria. Against the advice of biologists, the Nile perch was introduced to the lake, which destroyed fifty species of cichlids, and critically endangered another 130 species. This newly introduced predator had caused devastation to the local economies around the lake. This is the reason why bureaucrats should not try to play God, and play around with ecosystems.</p><p>This raises the question, how did so many species evolve in the lake, in the first place? Dawkins makes some interesting speculations about how various species could be physically isolated in the lake, in order to allow the species to branch out due to evolution.</p><p>Dawkins makes a strong effort to avoid repeating stories that he told in other books. Instead of repeating them, he makes references to his many other books, for the reader to see additional examples. This is so different from that of many other authors, who often repeat themselves from one book to the next.</p><p>A variety of human inventions were anticipated in the animal kingdom. Some examples: echo-ranging (bats), electro-location (duckbill platypus), dam (beaver), parabolic reflector (limpet), infrared sensor (snakes), hypodermic syringe (wasp, snake, scorpion), harpoon (cnidarian), jet propulsion (squid). The wheel and axle was also anticipated; the rhizobium has a true axle and a freely rotating hub, driven by a tiny molecular motor. Such a wheel could not evolve in a large organism, which would involve twisting blood vessels.</p><p>I personally loved the renaming of the concept of Intelligent Designers from "Argument from Irreducible Complexity" to "Argument from Personal Incredulity." The argument "says less about nature than about the poverty of your imagination."</p><p>Dawkins speculates about what would happen if the "tape of evolution" were to be re-run in the forward direction, starting from pre-Cambrian times? What would happen if it were re-run a statistical number of times? Or starting from an earlier or later time? This experiment has, in a sense, been done to a limited extent in isolated locations like Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar and South America. Also, evolution in has turned out very similarly when allowed to run twice. Eyes have evolved independently 40-60 times, using nine independent optical principles!Echolocation has evolved at least four times in four animals; toothed whales, oilbirds, cave swiftlets and bats. The venomous sting has evolved at least ten times independently. True flapping flight has evolved four times. Parachuting and gliding has evolved maybe hundreds of times.</p><p>These notes above represent only a tiny fraction of the thought-provoking concepts in this book. This is a challenging book to read, not only because it is so long, but because of the many complex concepts that are described. The authors even warn the reader at one point that certain pages can be skipped if desired. But the entire book is fascinating. With each species rendezvous, a fractal diagram portrays the branching, along with dates and contour lines; what a fabulous visual portrayal of the concept of evolution!</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/155663?shelf=biology">biology</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/155663?shelf=evolution">evolution</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/155663?shelf=paleontology">paleontology</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7407364-luffy"></a></section><section><p>932 reviews703 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3628417952">November 10, 2020</a></section><div><p>I got irked with this book and maybe the fault lies in my limitations, but just like with Roman history, there's a lot of guesswork going on. Is that science?<p>In this book it's written that it's probable that our ancestors don't come from Africa. But I remember a YouTube video where Dawkins approves that we're all Africans. Politically correct but stably not as much.</p><p>I got fed up with a book that's either too brainy for me or because it is simply has a not interesting a finale enough. It could have been better. But I dislike it for now and forever.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7407364?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7407364?shelf=one-star">one-star</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7407364?shelf=overhyped">overhyped</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/614778-ahmad-sharabiani"></a></section><section><p>9,568 reviews55.6k followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/877269157">January 4, 2020</a></section><div><p>The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, Richard Dawkins<br />The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life is a science book by Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong on the subject of evolution, which follows the path of humans backwards through evolutionary history, describing some of humanity's cousins as they converge on their common ancestors. It was first published in 2004, and substantially updated in 2016.<p>تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز چهارم ماه ژانویه سال 2018 میلادی<br />عنوان: داستان نیاکان: سفری به آغاز حیات؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داوکینز؛</p><p>داستان نیاکان با زیرعنوان «سفری به آغاز حیات» کتاب علمی عمومی نوشتهٔ ریچارد داوکینز در سال 2004 میلادی است؛ که با همکاری دستیار پژوهشی داوکینز، یان ونگ نوشته شده‌ است. این کتاب مسیر انسان در تاریخ تکاملی را از امروز تا گذشته تصویر می‌کند؛ و سفر را از انسان شروع کرده، به سوی پسرخاله‌ های قدیمی او در درخت زندگی می‌رود. در این مسیر به مرور با پسرخاله‌ های قبلی‌تر انسان، به عنوان «نیای مشترک» همگرا می‌شود. کتاب در سال 2005 نامزد جایزهٔ بهترین کتاب علمی اونتیز شد. چکیده: داستان به صورت یک سفر زیارتی روایت شده‌ است، که در آن مسیر همهٔ جانداران مدرن، به سوی منشا حیات پی گرفته می‌شود. انسان‌ها پسرخاله‌ های تکاملی خود را در پاتوق‌های میان راه ملاقات می‌کنند. در این نقاط تبارها منشعب می‌شوند. داوکینز در هرکدام از این نقاط تلاش می‌کند تا با استفاده از شواهد مولکولی و فسیلی، محتمل‌ترین نوع نزدیک‌ترین نیای مشترک را توضیح دهد؛ و در میان مسیر، جانداران مدرنی که در گذشته با انسان هم‌سفر بوده‌ اند را توصیف کند. سفر کلاً از چهل «میعادگاه» تشکیل شده که از «میعادگاه صفر» آغاز می‌شود و به سوی نزدیک‌ترین نیای مشترک انسان تا میعادگاه سی و نهم که باکتری است پیش می‌رود. با این وجود که داوکینز به‌ طور کل از درخت زندگی توصیف شده اطمینان دارد، در برخی از شاخه‌ ها هشدار داده که در زمان نوشتن، از وزنه ی سنگینی از مدارک بهره نداشته‌ است. داوکینز در هر نقطه ی ملاقات در میان سفر، داستان جالبی در مورد جانداران پسرخاله حکایت می‌کند. هر نوع تازه‌ ای اعم از گونه، سرده، و خانواده داستان منحصر بفردی را برای سرگرمی خوانشگر دربردارد. این ویژگی‌های عجیب به وسیلهٔ روش‌های تازهٔ زیست‌شناسی تکاملی شناسایی شده‌ اند، و با دقت در داستان قرار گرفته‌ اند تا نشان دهند چگونه نظریه تکامل داروینی قادر به توضیح همهٔ تنوع حیات بر روی کرهٔ زمین است. در این کتاب داستان‌های شخصی داوکینز در مورد موضوعات نیز به چشم می‌خورد؛ که در آن‌ها داستان‌هایی از دوران کودکی و دانشگاه خود نیز نقل کرده‌ است. برای مثال، او شگفتی خود ر�� از فهمیدن اینکه اسب‌های آبی نزدیک‌ترین خویشاوندان نهنگها هستند را توصیف کرده‌ است. با اینکه کتاب به ترتیب زمانی نوشته شده‌ است، می‌توان هر بخش را به صورت جداگانه هم مطالعه کرد. به‌ طور کلی می‌توان داستان نیاکان را دانشنامه ای دربارهٔ موضوعات اصلی تکامل دانست. ایشان کتاب را به دوست و استاد اسبق داوکینز، جان مینارد اسمیت تقدیم کرده‌ است. ا. شربیانی</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/614778?shelf=21th-century">21th-century</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/614778?shelf=anthropology">anthropology</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/614778?shelf=biology">biology</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1148633-brian-hodges"></a></section><section><p>212 reviews52 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/33248397">October 23, 2010</a></section><div><p>This book blew my mind so many times in so many ways. It is quite simply the most fascinating thing I have ever read about life on this planet. Dawkins traces our evolution from the present day back through the very first organisms on earth. He uses various "rendezvouses" to show the points where we connected with other species and phyla and what those connections say about us, about our biology and about life in general. <p>By tracing our lineage back through these various “concestors” Dawkins makes you realize just how unique and amazing your own body is… amazing in ways you probably always took for granted. From the way we gestate to the fact that we have a spinal column to the way that our own cells even work. It was never a guarantee that we would have ANY of these things. It seriously makes you wonder how everything might have turned out had different evolutionary pressures been exerted millions, or even billions of years ago. For instance, had a meteorite not wiped out the dinosaurs, “we” would probably still be little more than tiny rodents scavenging for scraps at night while the REAL rulers of the planet slept.</p><p>Dawkins touches on this latter aspect in the final chapter, with a series of thought experiments about how things might go down if evolution were to “rerun” from the beginning. Which aspects of life would be likely to sprout up again? Which aspects were far-fetched happy accidents? Perhaps one of the most mind blowing statements Dawkins makes is in reference to eukaryotic cells, which comprise every form of life on this planet except for bacteria. The formation of these special and absolutely “necessary” cells was such a long shot evolutionarily speaking that Dawkins doubts it likely to have happened twice. In fact he goes so far as to say he thinks that the formation of eukaryotic cells was probably MORE unfathomable than the initial spark of life itself! Whoever said scientists strip all the magic and wonder out of the universe has obviously never read this book.</p><p>Dawkins' prose, as always, is fresh, illuminating, and often humorous, explaining heavy concepts so they make perfect sense to a layman. Seriously, if you're interested in this stuff at all, add this one to the very top of your list.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1148633?shelf=bloody-brilliant">bloody-brilliant</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1148633?shelf=favorites">favorites</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1148633?shelf=life-changing">life-changing</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5431286-david"></a></section><section><p>293 reviews143 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/420207792">June 5, 2017</a></section><div><p><b>6-stars</b><p><i>[NOTE: I like to provide a 6-star rating to a book when it has been able to keep me in a state of amazement almost continuously for at least 80% of its content.]</i></p><p>A terrific book on evolution from the vast spectrum of creatures on this planet. Truly, a lot of information has been provided. Can be a bit heavy to people who may not be from a scientific academic background. Almost every topic that I read in the book kept me in a state of awe while I learnt new things. The book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to get mesmerized by stuff that exists on Planet Earth itself! :)</p><p>HEAVILY RECOMMENDED!!</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5431286?shelf=6-star-masterpiece">6-star-masterpiece</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5431286?shelf=british-writing">british-writing</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5431286?shelf=evolution-origins">evolution-origins</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/14084605-pink"></a></section><section><p>537 reviews497 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1014009094">October 16, 2014</a></section><div><p>Wow. <p>I like Richard Dawkins. I like what he has to say in <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/14743.The_God_Delusion">The God Delusion</a> and I like his tweets for the same reason. </p><p>Lots of people don't like his confrontational stand on religion, but don't let that put you off here. </p><p>First and foremost, he is an amazing scientist. </p><p>This book is so comprehensive, it is daunting just thinking about it. When I collected it from the library and saw the size, I outwardly groaned, wondering how I would tackle it. I needn't have worried. </p><p>Dawkins takes us on a 'backwards' pilgrimage through time, showing how we humans joined up with all other living creatures along the way. After getting through half the book and discovering that we'd already passed mammals, birds and fish, I wondered how interested I'd actually be in cnidarians, ctenophores or choanoflagellates, but they proved to be equally as fascinating. Dawkins breaks the information into short chapters, or rendezvous points, relating things back to animals we've already encountered along the way. Yet he doesn't stop there. He shows how we link with fungi, plants and bacteria, before finally considering how the first life forms began and whether or not this could be recreated. </p><p>What I particularly liked was how Dawkins doesn't make guesswork for periods that we just don't know about. Where dates are so far away that we don't have the full picture (500 million years and counting) Dawkins relates what is known, then tells us the current theories. The gaps still to be filled are not a disappointment, but an exciting prospect of things yet to learn. </p><p>I don't have a scientific background at all, though I was able to understand most of what I read. I did get confused with some terms and with trying to keep track of the different classifications (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species) or timescales (eon, era, period, epoch, age) plus all the subdivisions within these. Luckily the book was comprehensive enough that I was able to flip back to an earlier section, or refer to a chart to refamiliarise myself before moving on to the next tale. </p><p>I was left feeling a little overwhelmed by the end and so I'll finish with a quote from Dawkins that encapsulates things - </p><p>"It is not pride in my book but reverence for life itself that encourages me to say, if you want a justification for the latter, open the former, anywhere at random. And reflect on the fact that although this book has been written from a human point of view, another book could have been written in parallel for any 10 million starting pilgrims. Not only is life on this plant amazing, and deeply satisfying, to all those whose senses have not become dulled by familiarity: the very fact that we have evolved the brain power to understand our evolutionary genesis redoubles the amazement and compounds the satisfaction." </p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7169684">August 15, 2011</a></section><div><p>Fascinating zoology but plenty of flotsam. "The Beaver's Tale" "The Duckbill's Tale" and "The Axolotl's Tale" are outstanding examples of modern naturalism. The classical genetics is adequate but the molecular data is explained minimally and not compelling. More details on the challenges and uncertainties inherent in genomic sequencing and cross-species comparisons would have been helpful. When Dawkins is not discussing zoology the writing is overly verbose, and suffers the professor's conceit of assuming his readers are interested in his opinions on matters beyond his expertise which are infused with the type of absolutism he criticizes elsewhere in the book. The poor, strangely moralistic mathematics and tired political rants are best left for the faculty lounge or starry-eyed students. This is a good 600-page book that could be a great 300-page book with some vigorous editing.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/57901-jerzy"></a></section><section><p>467 reviews104 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21015227">June 27, 2008</a></section><div><p>Fantastic! If I'd read this in high school I would definitely be a biologist by now.<br />Often I agree with Dawkins' views on creationists, but usually he's an obnoxious ass about it. Thankfully, in this book he only disses them occasionally. For most of the book he sticks to his strengths, i.e., clear and exciting explanations of the beautiful yet structured diversity of the natural world.<p>Lots of nifty thoughts about how evolution works and how mind-shatteringly cool life is. There's an interesting structure to the book, traveling backwards in time from today to the origin of life, and telling tales or lessons from each of our major ancestors along the way. It made me appreciate how much more there is to life than the small handful of mammals, fish, birds, and trees we usually think about.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/57901?shelf=science">science</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/57901?shelf=sixstars">sixstars</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8079403-max"></a></section><section><p>337 reviews288 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1828744805">December 22, 2016</a></section><div><p>Dawkins presents evolutionary biology in a Chaucerian format. As with the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales, each of Dawkins tales is about pilgrims on their way to a common destination, in this case the beginning of life. Each group of species marches back in time rendezvousing where they share their most recent common ancestor, what Dawkins calls a “Concester”. The first rendezvous is six million years ago (6 Ma) where we, our Homo and Australopithecine ancestors share a Concestor with the chimpanzees, bonobos and their ancestors. Dawkins describes 40 rendezvous such as the apes meet the monkeys at 25 Ma, the primates meet the rodents and rabbits at 75 Ma, the chordates meet the echinoderms at 550 Ma and ending with bacteria. Working backwards helps eliminate hindsight, assuming that a creature evolved in a certain way because in the future it would be important. <p>Each tale not only describes some life form but some aspect of science associated with it. For example we learn how scientists use the fossil record and genetic techniques as evaluation tools. He shows how dates and evolutionary branches are derived from genetics using mitochondrial DNA, the Y chromosome and triangulation of DNA sequences. He explains how dates are determined using dendrochronology (tree rings), paleomagnetism, and radioactive decay. As we follow the path of evolution in reverse, we learn the science behind it.</p><p>I read the updated 2016 version coauthored with Yan Wang. It reflects recent discoveries such as those of the Denisovans, whose story takes the place of the Neanderthals in the earlier version. Improvements in DNA extraction and sequencing enabled scientists in 2009 to derive the entire genome of a Denisovian from a 40,000 year old fingertip. There are many other revisions and corrections to the first edition published in 2006. In another update convergent replaces related development to explain the origin of many flightless birds such as the Dodo. Genetic studies now show they are descended from pigeons that became isolated on remote islands where they thrived growing big and losing their wings. Our understanding of the tree of life is always changing. Below are other samples of Dawkins’ discussions that caught my attention.</p><p>Dawkins presents evolution as a flow of groups of individuals. Species arise when intermediate creatures become extinct. But as evolution occurs there are no distinct lines. A variety of archaic Homo sapiens blurred the dividing line between Homo erectus and modern Homo sapiens. Classification can be arbitrary and is often contested. New genes work their way through the group and if the group is isolated from other groups eventually it becomes distinct. This all takes time. If closely related groups come in contact with each other there is hybridization. Modern humans apparently interbred with Neanderthals 45000 years ago even though the two lines had separated 500,000 years before that. Similarly modern humans interbred with Denisovans. </p><p>Dawkins offers perspective citing the ring species. He points to California salamanders in mountains that form a circle around the Central Valley. At the southern end two distinct populations won’t interbreed, but each population interbreeds with its neighbors in the other direction. This interbreeding continues uninterrupted all around the mountains coming back to the neighbors that won’t interbreed. There is an unbroken chain between the two. Are they separate species? Similarly gulls that won’t interbreed in Britain interbreed with their neighbors to the east and west forming a continuous chain around the world ending with each other. Like the salamanders, the gulls are connected to each other through the unbroken chain until at the ends the differences seem to have become too great. Dawkins uses the ring species as an example of what happens with all species through time. There is a similar uninterrupted chain from us to our australopithecine ancestors and to the beginning of life. Only the demise of intermediaries lets us define species. </p><p>Was the most recent common ancestor, Concester, of humans and chimpanzees bipedal? Some scientists believe this is the case. The chimpanzee may have reverted to knuckle walking. What drove bipedalism in the first place? Ability to see over tall grass, ability to carry food back to a mate, ability to squat feed for long periods when snails and worms were more abundant than fruit, or as Dawkins thinks, sexual selection? Even back then females may have liked their mates to stand tall. They and/or their males may also have preferred less body hair. No other ape lost its hair so sexual selection as opposed to natural selection seems reasonable. In most animals females select their mates, but Darwin thought that men selected women for less body hair. Whichever way, both sexes would be affected. A mate with a bigger brain may also have curried favor.</p><p>Dawson educates us on plate tectonics and its evolutionary effects. The formation and breakup of Pangea into Laurasia and Gondwana had significant implications for the diversity of life. Subsequent breakups isolating Madagascar and Australia explain their unique animals. We get the Platypus Tale. Is the platypus primitive? It had as much time to evolve as we have. It lays eggs and has a bill but what a bill – supersensitive to movement and electric field disturbances. What other mammal can locate its prey without listening, seeing or touching it? Dawkins explores the nerve connections between bill and brain and speculates that the platypus visualizes the feedback from its bill just as we do the feedback from our eyes.</p><p>Dawkins’ tale of the sea squirt shows the tongue and cheek that is sprinkled through his writing. This amazing creature starts out with a notochord and nervous system making it a chordate, a member of our phylum. It looks like a tadpole as a juvenile swimming around then in its adult stage, it lands head first on a rock and permanently attaches itself. It digests its nerve system, notochord and other parts and turns into a big bag that filters the plankton from seawater. Dawkins digresses ”A second Aldous Huxley might project fictional human longevity to the point where some super-Methuselah finally settles down on his head and metamorphoses into a giant sea squirt, fastened permanently to the sofa in front of a television.” Perhaps today we should substitute tablet or phone for TV. In either case, once settled, Dawkins notes that it “eats its brain, like an associate professor getting tenure.” </p><p>We are entertained by the stories of many other bizarre creatures, behaviors and relationships. Who would, aside from a zoologist, think of the echinoderm (starfish, sea cucumber, etc.) as sharing the most recent common ancestor we have with another phylum? The starfish’s radial design means it has no front or back, left or right. It may lead with any of its five legs. Its nerve cord forms a circle. Its anus is on top and mouth on bottom. Yet the molecular biologists say its genes show it evolved from a bilateral animal just like us.</p><p>What about the bdelloid rotifers? All of these tiny aquatic animals are female. There is no need for males, no shared gene pool. Each rotifer reproduces a new organism with two sets of chromosomes as do animals that reproduce sexually. Thus over the millennia as mutations accumulate the genes will become even more diverse than those in a shared pool. Millions of years of asexual reproduction have resulted in more than 450 species of these unique creatures. Then there are the animals that keep their males in place – literally. Some trigger fish females carry their diminutive males on their sides for use when and as needed. Some scale insect females carry their males as mere specs on their legs.</p><p>Dawkins explores the beginning of life. He looks at RNA World theory which holds that life started with RNA as both a replicator and an enzyme, in essence a self-replicating catalyst. He points to experiments that show segments of RNA taken from viruses can replicate and evolve in water. He discusses the idea of life forming in rocks, going even further afield than theories about life starting around hydrothermal vents. He point out that cracks in rocks are teeming with bacteria that live off of chemical processes without benefit of the sun. </p><p>Finally he ponders the different ways life could have evolved. If we went back to the beginning and started all over again what would life be like today? What aspects have been convergent and which contingent. Many features evolved more than once, for example eyes, echolocation, and flight. Others such as our big brains and use of language evolved only once. Perhaps most significant is the incorporation of bacteria into archaea forming mitochondria which made life for us eukaryotes possible. Nick Lane argues in his book <i>Power, Sex, Suicide</i> that this event would be unlikely to ever be repeated.</p><p><i>The Ancestor’s Tale</i> is a tour de force, a comprehensive view of evolutionary biology full of fascinating details about diverse life forms. It is packed with the latest scientific theories. Above all it demonstrates the interconnectedness of all life. This clearly is heartfelt by Dawkins. His awe and enthusiasm for his subject is infectious. Reading it was an experience. After 700 pages, I was sorry it was over. For those with a serious interest I can’t recommend it highly enough.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/8079403?shelf=biology">biology</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4788401-lee-harmon"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>4 books105 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/152220169">March 5, 2011</a></section><div><p>While I read different genres, I only review books with a religious content. So, if I may be excused for one of my “liberal Christian rants,” let me say this: It’s a sad day when a book about evolution earns a spot on the shelves of a religion blog. It simply astounds me that half of all Americans still do not believe in evolution. The evidence is so overwhelmingly against a young earth that if Christianity is going to survive, it must pull its head out of the sand and reinterpret the Bible’s creation story (anything but a literal interpretation!) before it alienates the coming generation, who will simply know better.<p>This book will help. I’m not a fan of Dawkins’ anti-religion tirades, but when he sticks to his evolutionary biology, his writing is a pure delight. It’s insightful, highly intelligent, and witty. The subtitle of the book is A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, and it’s a long journey backward in time from present-day humans to the beginnings of life four million years ago.</p><p>You’ll meet Cro-Magnon man, the Neanderthals, chimpanzees and gorillas, monkeys, rodents and rabbits, reptiles, sharks, flatworms, sponges, fungi, plants, and far more, each with their own unique role and story to tell.</p><p>Scientific understanding is, and ever will be, in a state of transition. As we learn, we shape our theories to fit the facts. It’s an exploration that never ends, an exciting quest for truth that Dawkins excels in sharing. He stops often along this journey back in time to introduce interesting life forms and their evolutionary sidebars, evoking wonder and appreciation for the real creation story that far exceeds any ancient tales. It’s such a treat that I’m almost envious of long-time creationists who can, by opening their minds and turning the cover of this book, open themselves up to a new world of wonder.</p><p>You will see the world in a different way after reading this.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/695116-jim"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>6 books2,015 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3277070221">April 14, 2020</a></section><div><p>What an interesting way to look at evolution, from the present back into the past in the format of &amp; a homage to Chaucer's <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/2696.The_Canterbury_Tales">The Canterbury Tales</a>. He chose 40 major stops along the journey &amp; told some great tales. Thankfully, these were usually from his perspective so there wasn't any foolishness, but he was entertaining.<p>I found the backward format a really good way of cementing various relationships into my mind better. There was a lot of new (to me) &amp; fascinating material about how evolution works. He came up with great examples &amp; occasionally wandered into other interesting areas such as human races.</p><p><i>“Natural selection is a beguiling counterfeiter of deliberate purpose.”</i></p><p><i>“Evolution, or its driving engine natural selection, has no foresight. In every generation within every species, the individuals best equipped to survive and reproduce contribute more than their fair share of genes to the next generation. The consequence, blind as it is, is the nearest approach to foresight that nature permits." </i></p><p>I've read several other books on evolution by Dawkins, so there was some repetition, but he cut down on much of that himself by referencing where he originally went into detail. As an audiobook read by him &amp; Ward, it was fantastic, as always. Highly recommended.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/695116?shelf=1audio">1audio</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/695116?shelf=2non-fiction">2non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/695116?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/69500282-hamid"></a></section><section><p>130 reviews9 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3062534994">December 22, 2019</a></section><div><p>Richard Dawkins' "the ancestor's tale" is the story of all life on Earth told in reverse order. It starts from us "moderns" and goes back to our closer cousins, all the way back to the common ancestor of all life on Earth. Dawkins uses the word "concestor" to refer to a common ancestor. It's a fascinating tale. Even though I had to go through nearly 800 pages, I wasn't bored in one single moment. There were times, of course, when it got a little more technical, but all in all I learned so much since a wealth of information is presented in each chapter. We are all African apes. Chimpanzees are our closest cousins and we share roughly 98 percent of our genes with them. You learn that natural selection grants no possibility of foresight. In other words, evolution does not plan ahead. To Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin, co-discoverers of natural selection, the geographical aspect of natural history gave away the fact of evolution. If species were created independently, why should a Creator choose to put 50 species of lemur on Madagascar, but nowhere else? Why should the Galapagos host a set of finches so different from species on other oceanic islands, but strikingly similar both to each other and to birds on the nearest mainland? For Darwin, peahens choose peacocks simply because, in their eyes, they are pretty (sexual selection). For Alfred Wallace, there's something more than the outward appearance. The bright feathers are a token of their underlying health and fitness. In the fruit fly tale, we learn about DNA mechanism. Textbooks of biology are wrong when they describe DNA as a blueprint. Embryos do nothing remotely like following a blueprint. DNA is not a description in any language, of what the finished body should look like. On this planet, embryos follow recipes. Creationists foolishly liken darwinian natural selection to a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and having the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. They are wrong, of course, for they completely miss the gradual, cumulative nature of natural selection.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/69500282?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/350233-casey"></a></section><section><p>272 reviews120 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5748334">September 6, 2007</a></section><div><p>After finishing The Selfish Gene, I rushed out to the store to buy another of Dawkins' books. While the size of this tome was quite intimidating, I found the premise utterly fascinating. The narrative traces humans' evolutionary ancestry, from primates to "concestor zero," or the beginning of life on Earth.<p>Dawkins' knowledge of zoology shines as he gives examples of the fascinating animals that share some of our genes. Readers will undoubtedly learn about plants and animals they had never heard of before, from Australian marsupials to the strange creatures that inhabit Madagascar. The book reads like a novel, and after finishing it I feel more connected, not just to my own species, but to all the creatures around me that share in this crazy thing called life.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/350233?shelf=knowledge-is-good">knowledge-is-good</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/24897389-richard"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>1 book38 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5044723330">October 14, 2022</a></section><div><p>It’s something I’d wondered myself in the past: not how we see colours, not the biological technicalities of colour vision, but what they’re for, why we see in colour at all. And after reading one particular essay in this extraordinary book, then mulling it over while out being taken for a walk by my dog, I suddenly saw the answer to that. It wasn’t exactly what the essay was about; that was more to do with the ways in which very different animals sense the world around them (the star-nosed mole, the bat, the platypus, or us humans) but I got even more out of it than the author had put in. It had already crossed my mind years before that, with her almost unbelievably sensitive nose, I’m betting my dog doesn’t just <i>smell</i> the world in colour, but in full on, in-your-face, <i>technicolour</i>—and now, if that’s so, I also understood why. And all that from a single short essay among dozens, a three-page sliver tucked away among a humongous seven hundred.<br />   The book itself isn’t easy to characterise in a short review. It’s patterned after Chaucer’s <i>The Canterbury Tales</i>, and just as that was a series of reflections on life, so is this; but while, for Chaucer, that meant human life, in <i>The Ancestor’s Tale</i> it’s all of life on Earth, everything else that lives here too. The “stories” are actually essays about the whole business of being a tiny living part of this planet.<br />   Perhaps some will be put off by the author’s name, which would be a pity. Dawkins is used as a human punch-bag by an impressive variety of people, on which to vent their own shortcomings, frustrations and bile; but you get a truer picture here: more likeable than the rabble would have you believe, as clear-headed and meticulous a guide as you could ask for to lead an odyssey across several billion years—and even has a sense of humour (although the publishers should have handed out free gas-masks ahead of the paddlefish-up-a-creek joke!).<br />   An exceptional book.<br /> </p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/24897389?shelf=birds-in-cages-is-wrong">birds-in-cages-is-wrong</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/24897389?shelf=labcoats-and-telescopes">labcoats-and-telescopes</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/81791013-michael-kress"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>1 book11 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2394364987">June 11, 2018</a></section><div><p>Dawkins was the author who made me realize how fascinating evolutionary biology is. I had read a few of his books before I started this one, but they were all around 300 to 400 pages. This one is 614 pages. It goes back in time, starting in the present moment until we finally reach the dawn of evolution. What an interesting way to write a book! It tells the stories of many species and the common ancestors that we share with them. As the book progresses, our cousins get more and more distant. Eve's Tale explains how the Y chromosome was passed down from mother to daughter through all generations and can be traced back to a hypothetical “Eve.” The Peacock's Tale explains how male peacocks evolved colorful, flashy looking feathers to attract a mate. The Dodo's Tale is a sad story about extinction. Dodos never had to deal with predators, so they never evolved any ways of escaping from them. When humans arrived on their island, they were so slow and easy to kill that they went extinct in a short period of time. There are many more stories like these in the book. The ending of the book is well written and comes around full circle in a cool way. If you've never read anything by Dawkins, I would recommend The Selfish Gene or River Out of Eden. But if you have already read a few of his books, this is a good one that goes a little more in depth.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/81791013?shelf=2000s-early">2000s-early</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/81791013?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/352711-leftbanker"></a></section><section><p>770 reviews279 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5904644">January 14, 2016</a></section><div><p>“My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world.”<p>That's Dawkins at the end of this marvelous achievement. A completely fascinating scientific version of Genesis. Infinitely more interesting than the Bible's account of the beginnings of life on earth. This is a story that all intelligent people should know something about. It is the greatest story imaginable for all who inhabit this planet. If you are ignorant of this story—especially if willfully so—you are doing great harm to your development as a thinking adult. </p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/352711?shelf=crime-gangsters">crime-gangsters</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/352711?shelf=politics">politics</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/352711?shelf=religion">religion</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2268905-chris"></a></section><section><p>383 reviews139 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/929699658">October 13, 2015</a></section><div><p>Richard Dawkins has done an astounding job producing this book. If it were not for his other great works, <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/61535.The_Selfish_Gene">The Selfish Gene</a> and <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/61538.The_Extended_Phenotype_The_Long_Reach_of_the_Gene">The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene</a>, <i>The Ancestor's Tale</i> would be his best work in evolutionary science. It matters not one bit that it's a summary and synthesis of others' primary work: great scientists have always been able to look out across their field of expertise and write a defining work of value for both scientists and the educated public.<p>My only, slight, quibble with the book is that in the decade since it was published there has been significant change in many parts of the "tree of life." More species have been discovered, more fossils found. Most importantly, molecular analysis across species of shared genetic haplotypes and DNA from mitochondria has unleashed a tidal wave of new information allowing a more precise determination of our common ancestors, especially the most distant. Dawkins used the earlier results of this same research when writing this book in 2003, but he notes in the book itself that it would have to be revised soon with new information. That, of course, is the way of science and what makes it exciting.</p><p>Thus, I'm happy to find that the second, updated, edition will be published in early 2016 (see here: <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/27188073.The_Ancestor_s_Tale_A_Pilgrimage_to_the_Dawn_of_Life">The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life</a>) with the latest scientific developments and additional evolution-relevant species "tales." I hope that one of these is "told" by a member of the fascinating Fungi—one of the three great multicellular kingdoms—with which we share an unidentified common ancestor roughly 1.1 billion years ago. The original edition naturally includes this rendezvous along with background information, but omits the tale.</p><p>Should you wait for the new edition? No, unless your a critic of fine detail. The deep time and awesome diversity of evolution will not change. Our place as a species relative to the rest of life will not shift. And Dawkins' inspiring prose will remain.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2268905?shelf=first-american-edition">first-american-edition</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2268905?shelf=nonfiction">nonfiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2268905?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/223837-nicky"></a></section><section><p>4,138 reviews1,003 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/67667415">August 23, 2009</a></section><div><p>I love this book. It's not the kind of thing I usually read, because I prefer fiction to non-fiction by far, at least when I have a choice about it. And I really, really loathe Dawkins' The God Delusion, largely because of the tone he takes toward people who are religious believers. But The Ancestor's Tale is mostly just science, and it's written in an accessible, almost conversational way. It actually has literary ancestors (ha), in the form of The Canterbury Tales, which Dawkins chose as his format to tell the tale of a pilgrimage through history to find our ancestors. He does slip in some references to his own beliefs, but here they aren't too offensive or intrusive.<p>When I say 'accessible', I don't mean 'dumbed down'. The science and maths and the theory and the sheer detail is here. I read a couple of reviews that people found it boring once it got to a certain point because there's 'too much detail' about things like bacteria. Which I think is more of a 'your mileage may vary' attitude than anything -- I think Dawkins gave the space to the bacteria that they deserve, all things considered.</p><p>There's a lot of speculation in here, too -- but so much of science is speculation. Dawkins is fairly clear about when he can and can't 'prove' things, and explains the methods by which they can be proved if they can. You don't have to have a huge knowledge of science or maths to understand -- some, and an interest in it, I suppose, but not so very very much.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/223837?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/223837?shelf=science-fact">science-fact</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/14115149-jaclynn"></a></section><section><p>592 reviews38 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/695925774">June 27, 2018</a></section><div><p>Not recommended for those with a passing interest in evolution...this is heavy into the math and science realms. This is an extremely in depth, hefty tome as seen from the point of view of homo sapiens travelling backwards in time to the dawn of life. Dawkins tale is modeled after Canterbury Tales, and is about pilgrims on their way to a common destination, in this case the beginning of life. Each group of species marches back in time rendezvousing where they share their most recent common ancestor, what Dawkins calls a “Concester”. The first rendezvous is six million years ago (6 Ma) where we, our Homo and Australopithecine ancestors share a Concestor with the chimpanzees, bonobos and their ancestors. There are so many thought-provoking concepts in this book, but this is a challenging book to read, not only because it is so long, but because of the many complex concepts that are described. But the entire book is fascinating. With each species rendezvous, a fractal diagram portrays the branching, along with dates and contour lines; what a fabulous visual portrayal of the concept of evolution! I am continually amazed the genius of Dawkins...this book is so comprehensive, it is daunting just thinking about it, let alone researching and writing it!</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/14115149?shelf=anthropology">anthropology</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/14115149?shelf=best-historical-non-fiction">best-historical-non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/14115149?shelf=history">history</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/63015728-ian-d"></a></section><section><p>512 reviews50 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3605087504">October 26, 2020</a></section><div><p>Ένα απολαυστικό ταξίδι στο χρόνο, προς τα πίσω αυτή τη φορά, από το Homo sapiens sapiens στις απαρχές της ζωής και τα πρώτα προκαρυωτικά κύτταρα με οδηγό τον αγαπημένο μας εξελικτικό βιολόγο Richard Dawkins. Πάντα εκτιμούσα τους ανθρώπους που μεταλαμπαδεύουν με τόσο πάθος την αγάπη τους για την επιστήμη και το βιβλίο αυτό δεν αποτελεί εξαίρεση.<br />Αν έπρεπε οπωσδήποτε να βρω κάτι αρνητικό, θα στεκόμουν στο μέγεθός του. Δεν ξέρω αν ο συγγραφέας θα μπορούσε να με εμπεριέξει σ' αυτή την εμπειρία αν δεν με ενδιέφερε ήδη το αντικείμενο, ωστόσο δεν παύει να είναι ένα εξαιρετικά καλογραμμένο και ευανάγνωστο έργο. </p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/63015728?shelf=british-lit">british-lit</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/63015728?shelf=nonfiction">nonfiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/63015728?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/69348187-xavier"></a></section><section><p>150 reviews57 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2057534295">May 15, 2020</a></section><div><p>Richard Dawkins does a wonderful job at leading the reader on a grand pilgrimage throughout the eons, introducing you to our great evolutionary ancestors. He starts the journey working backwards, beginning with <i>Homo Sapiens</i> and then the earliest bipedal apes like <i>Homo Habilis</i>, then ending with the earliest replicating life, the one that would've started it all billions of years ago. Unfortunately, it didn't leave any fossils behind (soft-body creatures tend not to sadly but it has happened at a site in China) but if we work the molecular clock backwards we can deduce that somewhere in the 'primordial soup' a molecule began to copy itself, and it was really good at it.<p>As we meet the different pilgrims Dawkins explains how evolution shaped life in the most exciting and unusual ways. Some creatures on our planet function in the most ridiculous ways. I don't wish to spoil these parts but it is awe-inspiring for sure.</p><p>This was a fun and truly educating read for me. I learned so much about the different kinds of life that inhabit our planet. Human beings are just one tiny branch in the grand tree of life. We have only been here for a second in geological time, a drop in the bucket. <b>The Ancestor's Tale</b> is a humbling experience.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/69348187?shelf=biology">biology</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/69348187?shelf=dawkins">dawkins</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/69348187?shelf=evolution">evolution</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/44504-brian"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>16 books39 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/502427">March 31, 2007</a></section><div><p>I've been a fan of Dawkins for a while solely based on interviews, but this is the first of his books I've actually read. It works its way backwards through the evolutionary tree, detailing how all living things are related - how a stranger on the street, your dog, your house plant, bacteria and you are all distant cousins. It's a fascinating read, technical enough if you're interested, but not so much so that it's threatening to the non-science minded. It's broken into various "tales" - "The Howler Monkey's Tale", "The Hippo's Tale", "The Blind Cave Fish's Tale" - a la Chaucer - which makes the size of the book a bit less daunting. Best of all, it's excellent ammunition for the next time you find yourself in a debate with someone arguing for "intelligent design."</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/44504?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/44504?shelf=science-and-math">science-and-math</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4394768">August 11, 2007</a></section><div><p>This is my favorite book in the whole world. Someday it may be eclipsed by something else but for now it's this. What I love most about this book is the number of times I found myself thinking, "Wow, I had no idea". It makes perfect sense when you think it out, but the entire premise of the book, that every living thing on earth, from human being to plant to bacteria, shares a common ancestor, that actually existed at a point sufficiently far enough in the past. The book consists of a "pilgrimage" to that ancestor modeled loosely after "The Canterbury Tales". </p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/411786-courtney-stirrat"></a></section><section><p>189 reviews46 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6761820">September 25, 2007</a></section><div><p>The Ancestor's Tale is an incredible find! With a form based loosely on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins marches back in time to each of humankind's ancestors. Witty, brilliant and engaging, you will learn a great deal about evolutionary biology, and a million fun and intriguing facts. Whether you agree to disagree with the facts establishing evolution as a law of science, this book is worth your time. Plus, it is so dense and rich, you will feel proud to put it on your shelf after you have finished it!! </p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/411786?shelf=scienceisgreatifitsnotyourjob">scienceisgreatifitsnotyourjob</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2031425-marie"></a></section><section><p>19 reviews2 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/47086761">February 22, 2009</a></section><div><p>I'm not a scientist, but I have an insatiable curiousity about all things scientific. I should say I am still reading this book - stated two years ago. It has been a real challenge to follow the information presented simply because there is SOOOOOOO much of it. However, I am determined to fihish it someday. Biggest challenge for me is retaining and relating all the information. It is still a fascinating book though admittedly sometimes very hard for mw to stay awake through some of the technical stuff. I really want to read it and understand it all but not sure my brain can handle it all!!</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1339246-gendou"></a></section><section><p>574 reviews255 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/135380692">December 20, 2010</a></section><div><p>This book is a sort of Canterbury Tales for evolutionary biology.<br />It follows our ancestors back to the root as they merge with other branches on the tree of life.<br />For those who know programming, this sums it up succinctly:<pre>for(Species i = humans; i.parent != null; i = i.parent) {<br /> print(i.anecdotes[rand() % i.anecdotes.length]);<br />}</pre>Dawkins is awesome. Yep.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1339246?shelf=biology">biology</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1339246?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2499456"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>3 books255 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1073217346">October 13, 2014</a></section><div><p>Ричард Докинс пише интересни неща за еволюцията, като тоя път е решил да проследи генеалогията на човечеството, но в обратна посока - като слиза надолу стъпка по стъпка и ни среща с нашите предци, докато стигне до създаването на първия живот.<p>Като цяло не лошо и много информативно упражнение, но крайният му смисъл ми се губи.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section></section></article></div></div>||||I|||| * Home
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 The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

 Richard Dawkins

 4.14
 26,630 ratings 856 reviews
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 The renowned biologist and thinker Richard Dawkins presents his most expansive work yet: a comprehensive look at evolution, ranging from the latest developments in the field to his own provocative views. Loosely based on the form of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins's Tale takes us modern humans back through four billion years of life on our planet. As the pilgrimage progresses, we join with other organisms at the forty "rendezvous points" where we find a common ancestor. The band of pilgrims swells into a vast crowd as we join first with other primates, then with other mammals, and so on back to the first primordial organism.

 Dawkins's brilliant, inventive approach allows us to view the connections between ourselves and all other life in a bracingly novel way. It also lets him shed bright new light on the most compelling aspects of evolutionary history and theory: sexual selection, speciation, convergent evolution, extinction, genetics, plate tectonics, geographical dispersal, and more. The Ancestor's Tale is at once a far-reaching survey of the latest, best thinking on biology and a fascinating history of life on Earth. Here Dawkins shows us how remarkable we are, how astonishing our history, and how intimate our relationship with the rest of the living world.
 Genres Science Nonfiction Biology Evolution History Popular Science Anthropology
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 688 pages, Paperback

 First published September 1, 2004

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 Richard Dawkins

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 4.14
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 Manny
 Author 28 books 13.4k followers
 April 8, 2010
 On Monday, an old friend came round to lunch, and, while we were having a cup of tea in the living room, remarked on the number of Richard Dawkins books on my shelf. Somehow, I'd never heard that she'd actually had Dawkins as a supervisor for one term when she was an undergraduate at Oxford in the late 70s; it was in connection with the course she was reading on animal behaviour. I asked what he was like as a person, and she was unenthusiastic. Clearly very intelligent, but there was something about him that she found disquieting. She wouldn't go so far as to say that he'd behaved inappropriately, there was never a specific incident she could point to, but she constantly felt that he was just an inch from the line. Well... charismatic, thirty-something male supervisor, attractive young female undergraduate, animal behaviour, you can see plenty of scope for that. And she said that, even then, he'd go on about religion. After a while, she became increasingly sure that his hostile feelings were rooted in some kind of personal disappointment he'd suffered, though she had no idea what it might have been.

 I asked her which Dawkins she'd read, and, like most people, it was The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion . She hadn't particularly liked either one. I can sympathize with her point of view. But, as other reviewers here have said, Dawkins is a more complex person than he's generally given credit for, and if you read The Ancestor's Tale you'll see another side. I suppose one could say that he's attacking religion here too, but the strategy is completely the opposite of the blunt, in-your-face assault he uses in the The God Delusion ; to my mind, it's also far more effective. Rather than tell you what's ugly and wrong about Intelligent Design, he concentrates his energies on showing you what's beautiful and right about evolution, and how, far from contradicting traditional religious beliefs, it reveals them with a clarity that previous generations have been unable to see.

 I kept thinking of Saint Francis of Assisi, and his love of all living creatures. "Brother bird, sister ant"... they're beautiful poetic phrases. But what do they mean? Evidently, this finch can't literally be my brother. There is no way that my mother could have given birth to him. The conventional explanation is that we're both "children of God", which is fine as far as it goes; the problem is that it doesn't really shed much light on the nature of our relationship. The astonishing thing about evolution, which forms the core of this book, is that it shows how the bird and ant truly are my brother and sister. Well, not quite brother and sister - in fact, they're very distant cousins. Dawkins traces the family tree, and shows precisely how we're all related. He starts with the obvious cases (apes, monkeys), then goes back to other mammals, and then further through reptiles, birds, amphibians, insects, sponges, plants and all the way to protozoa. On the way, he tells you some extraordinary stories. Well, that shouldn't be a surprise; think what interesting stories you hear when you meet up with a friend you used to know well, but haven't seen for a decade. Here, you are in some cases meeting up with people you haven't seen for several hundred million years.

 At the end, I felt, as I had never felt before, how we're all one family in the plain, everyday sense of the word, and how we're linked though the genes we share, which we've inherited from our common ancestors. It's a truly incredible thought. As Dawkins says on the last page: it's not so much that he disagrees with religious people, it's more that they're saying it the wrong way. If you are yourself a religious person who wants to learn to be closer to God and His Creation, you could do worse than read this book.
 science strongly-recommended transcendent-experiences
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 Jen
 39 reviews 19 followers
 March 14, 2008
 Poor Dawkins - he gets a bad reputation. People think he's mean and nasty and heartless and elitist.

 Okay, I might have to grant people the "elitist" bit, because, well, I'm a bit of an elitist myself. But I dare you all to read this book and then tell me that Dawkins isn't a total squishy.

 Let's just say this - he stops in the middle of the book to talk about how much he misses Douglas Adams, who was a dear friend of his. He waxes poetic about evolution and how much he wishes he could meet our ancestors. He refers to Olivia Judson's "Doctor Tatiana's Sex Guide for All Creation," makes a brief homage to it, and then sweetly states that he could never do the style justice (making clear along the way that he's read the darned thing, which delights me for reasons that can only be understood by someone else who's read the book, because it's Just That Fabulous).

 And he puts his wife in the index, even though the references to her are miniscule (and, in fact, much less frequent than in any other book). He credits his research assistant as his co-author. In general, he's a sweetheart.

 I will stop fangirling the man, now, and simply tell you that the science in this book? Is brilliant, wondrous, and awe-inspiring in its breadth. Fantastic book.
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 Warwick
 809 reviews 14.4k followers
 September 14, 2013
 There are some facts the simple knowing of which seems to me to be a supreme achievement of our species. The fact that we are all made of stardust. The fact that 99.9999999999999 percent of all matter is empty. The fact that mass and energy can be expressed in terms of each other. Stuff like that.

 Pre-eminent among these to me, for sheer mind-expanding awe, is the fact that life on this planet has developed precisely once, as far as we know, and everything on earth has evolved from it. That means that when you go outside and lie down in the garden, everything you can see and hear – people walking nearby, their pet dogs, the squirrel darting past, the birds you can hear tweeting, the insects and tiny bugs crawling around underneath you, the trees the birds are standing on, the grass you're lying on, the bacteria in your guts – all of them are your cousins: you're quite literally related to them in the real, genealogical sense.

 If you go far enough back in time, in other words, you will eventually find a creature whose descendants evolved into both squirrels (say) and people. Indeed, the rules of heredity being what they are, you could even find a single individual who was a common ancestor to every squirrel and human alive. And indeed such an animal really did exist, around 75 million years ago in the Upper Cretaceous. It probably looked sort of mousey, and Dawkins estimates that he or she was our ‘15-million-greats-grandparent’. Squirrels are not ‘closer’ to this creature than humans are: we and they are equally related, having been evolving independently for the same amount of time.

 The Ancestor's Tale takes exactly this approach to exploring evolution. It starts with humans and works backwards – looking first at the common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees, and continuing until we reach the common ancestor of all life on earth. Dawkins's word for a common ancestor of more than one species is ‘concestor’, and there are only about 40 of them (!) between us and the origin of life more than three billion years ago. The Cretaceous mammal I mentioned above, which evolved into us and squirrels (along with all the other rodents, lagomorphs and primates), is Concestor 10 according to this schema.

 I think there's a lot of traps you can fall into when you start thinking about evolution. It's easy to feel, instinctively, that evolution is somehow teleological: that it's been working towards – if not us, then at least creatures that are increasingly complex and increasingly intelligent. But that of course is not the case. Things survive that reproduce themselves well, and there are plenty of single-celled organisms still with us that have seen no need to get any more complicated for millions of years. Bacterial life is in fact astonishingly varied and rich, whole phyla of creatures that branched off before multicellular life even came about; indeed, chemically speaking,

 we are more similar to some bacteria than some bacteria are to other bacteria.


 Just think about that for a second.

 Before Dawkins got distracted by religious idiocy, he was well known as being one of the scientists most able to explain complicated ideas in a fresh and accessible way. All his skills are on display in this work. It's not just the zoology and the evolutionary biology, where you'd expect him to be strong; there's also a fantastically lucid explanation of the biochemistry within a cell, and even one of the best explanations of the physics of radioactivity that I've come across. He is calm and careful; he repeats himself where necessary; he shares several teacherly witticisms; and he does all this without ever condescending to the reader. He allows paragraphs of complex material to sit, so that you can read and re-read them a few times before he carries on. Occasionally he cannot stop himself breaking out in exclamations of wonder or poetic meditation – as when he discusses the fossilised footprints of three early hominids from some three-and-a-half million years ago:

 Who does not wonder what these individuals were to each other, whether they held hands or even talked, and what forgotten errand they shared in a Pliocene dawn?


 His enthusiasm is infectious. The whole book is a fantastic exploration of this most beautiful piece of modern human understanding. It's full of astonishing anecdotes and scientific details about the natural world, but it also all ties together into a conception of life that's more awe-inspiring and more moving than any supernatural system could ever be.
 anthropology biology evolution
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 David Rubenstein
 801 reviews 2,502 followers
 April 23, 2017
 This is the 2016, revised edition of this fabulous book. In this edition, Richard Dawkins is a co-author with Yan Wong. This is a very hefty tome, just under 800 pages. It is a marvelously inventive, masterful look at evolution, as seen from the point of view of homo sapiens travelling backwards in time , back to the dawn of life. Each time the route of evolution reaches a branch point with another species, it is called a Rendezvous ; there are 40 rendezvous altogether. The book is extremely interesting and informative. Below I summarize some of the interesting facts I learned.

 Some creationists point to the so-called gaps in the fossil record as proof that the scientific theory of evolution is not sufficient to explain the development of species. But Dawkins argues that even without any fossils, the evidence for evolution would still be immense. The distributions of species on continents and islands, the patterns of resemblance, an genetic sequences are sufficient to prove evolution. Fossils are a welcome bonus. The gaps in the fossil records are not all that important.

 The agricultural revolution helped to support a larger population, but did nothing to increase people's health or happiness; in fact it did just the opposite.

 There is a very interesting discussion about our most recent common ancestor. That is to say, the human who is the common ancestor to all people alive on Earth today. It is very surprising, that the most recent common ancestor lived around 10,000 years ago.

 Silver foxes bred in captivity by D.K. Belyaev for twenty years were bred for tameness. After twenty years, the foxes behaved like border collies! They became friendly, sought human company, and wagged their tails when approached. They even looked like border collies!

 We were told when we were young that eating carrots help us see better in the dark. But this was a rumor started by WWII strategists to avoid revealing the secret of radar.

 The best analogy for genes is not that they serve as a blueprint, but rather that they serve as a toolbox of routines. So, while a large percentage of our genes is in common with those of other animals, our main difference from other animals is not the toolbox of DNA routines, but is instead the pattern of choosing genetic routines from the available toolbox. This is called the science of epigenetics, which has been around since Conrad Weddington coined the term in 1942.

 In 1866, Ernst Haeckel announced that the hippo is a close relative to the whale. This has since been proven through DNA; the hippo's closest living relative actually is the whale!

 The duck-billed platypus closes its eyes shut when hunting for food. Its duck bill is a very sensitive organ with 60,000 mechanical and 40,000 electrical sensors. The platypus swivels its bill back and forth, feeling for impulses from potential prey. It probably gets a detailed 3D image of electrical disturbances in its vicinity. It probably is doing some sophisticated beamforming to increase its sensitivity.

 Dawkins remarks about a lot of interesting speculations why humans are bipedal. He gives a number of arguments both why bipedal walking is helpful, but others why it is not.
 In 1954, the British Colonial Administration destroyed the ecosystem of Lake Victoria. Against the advice of biologists, the Nile perch was introduced to the lake, which destroyed fifty species of cichlids, and critically endangered another 130 species. This newly introduced predator had caused devastation to the local economies around the lake. This is the reason why bureaucrats should not try to play God, and play around with ecosystems.

 This raises the question, how did so many species evolve in the lake, in the first place? Dawkins makes some interesting speculations about how various species could be physically isolated in the lake, in order to allow the species to branch out due to evolution.

 Dawkins makes a strong effort to avoid repeating stories that he told in other books. Instead of repeating them, he makes references to his many other books, for the reader to see additional examples. This is so different from that of many other authors, who often repeat themselves from one book to the next.

 A variety of human inventions were anticipated in the animal kingdom. Some examples: echo-ranging (bats), electro-location (duckbill platypus), dam (beaver), parabolic reflector (limpet), infrared sensor (snakes), hypodermic syringe (wasp, snake, scorpion), harpoon (cnidarian), jet propulsion (squid). The wheel and axle was also anticipated; the rhizobium has a true axle and a freely rotating hub, driven by a tiny molecular motor. Such a wheel could not evolve in a large organism, which would involve twisting blood vessels.

 I personally loved the renaming of the concept of Intelligent Designers from "Argument from Irreducible Complexity" to "Argument from Personal Incredulity." The argument "says less about nature than about the poverty of your imagination."

 Dawkins speculates about what would happen if the "tape of evolution" were to be re-run in the forward direction, starting from pre-Cambrian times? What would happen if it were re-run a statistical number of times? Or starting from an earlier or later time? This experiment has, in a sense, been done to a limited extent in isolated locations like Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar and South America. Also, evolution in has turned out very similarly when allowed to run twice. Eyes have evolved independently 40-60 times, using nine independent optical principles!Echolocation has evolved at least four times in four animals; toothed whales, oilbirds, cave swiftlets and bats. The venomous sting has evolved at least ten times independently. True flapping flight has evolved four times. Parachuting and gliding has evolved maybe hundreds of times.

 These notes above represent only a tiny fraction of the thought-provoking concepts in this book. This is a challenging book to read, not only because it is so long, but because of the many complex concepts that are described. The authors even warn the reader at one point that certain pages can be skipped if desired. But the entire book is fascinating. With each species rendezvous, a fractal diagram portrays the branching, along with dates and contour lines; what a fabulous visual portrayal of the concept of evolution!
 biology evolution paleontology
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 Luffy
 932 reviews 703 followers
 November 10, 2020
 I got irked with this book and maybe the fault lies in my limitations, but just like with Roman history, there's a lot of guesswork going on. Is that science?

 In this book it's written that it's probable that our ancestors don't come from Africa. But I remember a YouTube video where Dawkins approves that we're all Africans. Politically correct but stably not as much.

 I got fed up with a book that's either too brainy for me or because it is simply has a not interesting a finale enough. It could have been better. But I dislike it for now and forever.
 non-fiction one-star overhyped
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 Ahmad Sharabiani
 9,568 reviews 55.6k followers
 January 4, 2020
 The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, Richard Dawkins
 The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life is a science book by Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong on the subject of evolution, which follows the path of humans backwards through evolutionary history, describing some of humanity's cousins as they converge on their common ancestors. It was first published in 2004, and substantially updated in 2016.

 تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز چهارم ماه ژانویه سال 2018 میلادی
 عنوان: داستان نیاکان: سفری به آغاز حیات؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داوکینز؛

 داستان نیاکان با زیرعنوان «سفری به آغاز حیات» کتاب علمی عمومی نوشتهٔ ریچارد داوکینز در سال 2004 میلادی است؛ که با همکاری دستیار پژوهشی داوکینز، یان ونگ نوشته شده‌ است. این کتاب مسیر انسان در تاریخ تکاملی را از امروز تا گذشته تصویر می‌کند؛ و سفر را از انسان شروع کرده، به سوی پسرخاله‌ های قدیمی او در درخت زندگی می‌رود. در این مسیر به مرور با پسرخاله‌ های قبلی‌تر انسان، به عنوان «نیای مشترک» همگرا می‌شود. کتاب در سال 2005 نامزد جایزهٔ بهترین کتاب علمی اونتیز شد. چکیده: داستان به صورت یک سفر زیارتی روایت شده‌ است، که در آن مسیر همهٔ جانداران مدرن، به سوی منشا حیات پی گرفته می‌شود. انسان‌ها پسرخاله‌ های تکاملی خود را در پاتوق‌های میان راه ملاقات می‌کنند. در این نقاط تبارها منشعب می‌شوند. داوکینز در هرکدام از این نقاط تلاش می‌کند تا با استفاده از شواهد مولکولی و فسیلی، محتمل‌ترین نوع نزدیک‌ترین نیای مشترک را توضیح دهد؛ و در میان مسیر، جانداران مدرنی که در گذشته با انسان هم‌سفر بوده‌ اند را توصیف کند. سفر کلاً از چهل «میعادگاه» تشکیل شده که از «میعادگاه صفر» آغاز می‌شود و به سوی نزدیک‌ترین نیای مشترک انسان تا میعادگاه سی و نهم که باکتری است پیش می‌رود. با این وجود که داوکینز به‌ طور کل از درخت زندگی توصیف شده اطمینان دارد، در برخی از شاخه‌ ها هشدار داده که در زمان نوشتن، از وزنه ی سنگینی از مدارک بهره نداشته‌ است. داوکینز در هر نقطه ی ملاقات در میان سفر، داستان جالبی در مورد جانداران پسرخاله حکایت می‌کند. هر نوع تازه‌ ای اعم از گونه، سرده، و خانواده داستان منحصر بفردی را برای سرگرمی خوانشگر دربردارد. این ویژگی‌های عجیب به وسیلهٔ روش‌های تازهٔ زیست‌شناسی تکاملی شناسایی شده‌ اند، و با دقت در داستان قرار گرفته‌ اند تا نشان دهند چگونه نظریه تکامل داروینی قادر به توضیح همهٔ تنوع حیات بر روی کرهٔ زمین است. در این کتاب داستان‌های شخصی داوکینز در مورد موضوعات نیز به چشم می‌خورد؛ که در آن‌ها داستان‌هایی از دوران کودکی و دانشگاه خود نیز نقل کرده‌ است. برای مثال، او شگفتی خود ر�� از فهمیدن اینکه اسب‌های آبی نزدیک‌ترین خویشاوندان نهنگها هستند را توصیف کرده‌ است. با اینکه کتاب به ترتیب زمانی نوشته شده‌ است، می‌توان هر بخش را به صورت جداگانه هم مطالعه کرد. به‌ طور کلی می‌توان داستان نیاکان را دانشنامه ای دربارهٔ موضوعات اصلی تکامل دانست. ایشان کتاب را به دوست و استاد اسبق داوکینز، جان مینارد اسمیت تقدیم کرده‌ است. ا. شربیانی
 21th-century anthropology biology
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 Brian Hodges
 212 reviews 52 followers
 October 23, 2010
 This book blew my mind so many times in so many ways. It is quite simply the most fascinating thing I have ever read about life on this planet. Dawkins traces our evolution from the present day back through the very first organisms on earth. He uses various "rendezvouses" to show the points where we connected with other species and phyla and what those connections say about us, about our biology and about life in general.

 By tracing our lineage back through these various “concestors” Dawkins makes you realize just how unique and amazing your own body is… amazing in ways you probably always took for granted. From the way we gestate to the fact that we have a spinal column to the way that our own cells even work. It was never a guarantee that we would have ANY of these things. It seriously makes you wonder how everything might have turned out had different evolutionary pressures been exerted millions, or even billions of years ago. For instance, had a meteorite not wiped out the dinosaurs, “we” would probably still be little more than tiny rodents scavenging for scraps at night while the REAL rulers of the planet slept.

 Dawkins touches on this latter aspect in the final chapter, with a series of thought experiments about how things might go down if evolution were to “rerun” from the beginning. Which aspects of life would be likely to sprout up again? Which aspects were far-fetched happy accidents? Perhaps one of the most mind blowing statements Dawkins makes is in reference to eukaryotic cells, which comprise every form of life on this planet except for bacteria. The formation of these special and absolutely “necessary” cells was such a long shot evolutionarily speaking that Dawkins doubts it likely to have happened twice. In fact he goes so far as to say he thinks that the formation of eukaryotic cells was probably MORE unfathomable than the initial spark of life itself! Whoever said scientists strip all the magic and wonder out of the universe has obviously never read this book.

 Dawkins' prose, as always, is fresh, illuminating, and often humorous, explaining heavy concepts so they make perfect sense to a layman. Seriously, if you're interested in this stuff at all, add this one to the very top of your list.

 bloody-brilliant favorites life-changing
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 David (דוד)
 293 reviews 143 followers
 June 5, 2017
 6-stars

 [NOTE: I like to provide a 6-star rating to a book when it has been able to keep me in a state of amazement almost continuously for at least 80% of its content.]

 A terrific book on evolution from the vast spectrum of creatures on this planet. Truly, a lot of information has been provided. Can be a bit heavy to people who may not be from a scientific academic background. Almost every topic that I read in the book kept me in a state of awe while I learnt new things. The book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to get mesmerized by stuff that exists on Planet Earth itself! :)

 HEAVILY RECOMMENDED!!
 6-star-masterpiece british-writing evolution-origins
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 Pink
 537 reviews 497 followers
 October 16, 2014
 Wow.

 I like Richard Dawkins. I like what he has to say in The God Delusion and I like his tweets for the same reason.

 Lots of people don't like his confrontational stand on religion, but don't let that put you off here.

 First and foremost, he is an amazing scientist.

 This book is so comprehensive, it is daunting just thinking about it. When I collected it from the library and saw the size, I outwardly groaned, wondering how I would tackle it. I needn't have worried.

 Dawkins takes us on a 'backwards' pilgrimage through time, showing how we humans joined up with all other living creatures along the way. After getting through half the book and discovering that we'd already passed mammals, birds and fish, I wondered how interested I'd actually be in cnidarians, ctenophores or choanoflagellates, but they proved to be equally as fascinating. Dawkins breaks the information into short chapters, or rendezvous points, relating things back to animals we've already encountered along the way. Yet he doesn't stop there. He shows how we link with fungi, plants and bacteria, before finally considering how the first life forms began and whether or not this could be recreated.

 What I particularly liked was how Dawkins doesn't make guesswork for periods that we just don't know about. Where dates are so far away that we don't have the full picture (500 million years and counting) Dawkins relates what is known, then tells us the current theories. The gaps still to be filled are not a disappointment, but an exciting prospect of things yet to learn.

 I don't have a scientific background at all, though I was able to understand most of what I read. I did get confused with some terms and with trying to keep track of the different classifications (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species) or timescales (eon, era, period, epoch, age) plus all the subdivisions within these. Luckily the book was comprehensive enough that I was able to flip back to an earlier section, or refer to a chart to refamiliarise myself before moving on to the next tale.

 I was left feeling a little overwhelmed by the end and so I'll finish with a quote from Dawkins that encapsulates things -

 "It is not pride in my book but reverence for life itself that encourages me to say, if you want a justification for the latter, open the former, anywhere at random. And reflect on the fact that although this book has been written from a human point of view, another book could have been written in parallel for any 10 million starting pilgrims. Not only is life on this plant amazing, and deeply satisfying, to all those whose senses have not become dulled by familiarity: the very fact that we have evolved the brain power to understand our evolutionary genesis redoubles the amazement and compounds the satisfaction."
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 GWC
 61 reviews 2 followers
 August 15, 2011
 Fascinating zoology but plenty of flotsam. "The Beaver's Tale" "The Duckbill's Tale" and "The Axolotl's Tale" are outstanding examples of modern naturalism. The classical genetics is adequate but the molecular data is explained minimally and not compelling. More details on the challenges and uncertainties inherent in genomic sequencing and cross-species comparisons would have been helpful. When Dawkins is not discussing zoology the writing is overly verbose, and suffers the professor's conceit of assuming his readers are interested in his opinions on matters beyond his expertise which are infused with the type of absolutism he criticizes elsewhere in the book. The poor, strangely moralistic mathematics and tired political rants are best left for the faculty lounge or starry-eyed students. This is a good 600-page book that could be a great 300-page book with some vigorous editing.
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 Jerzy
 467 reviews 104 followers
 June 27, 2008
 Fantastic! If I'd read this in high school I would definitely be a biologist by now.
 Often I agree with Dawkins' views on creationists, but usually he's an obnoxious ass about it. Thankfully, in this book he only disses them occasionally. For most of the book he sticks to his strengths, i.e., clear and exciting explanations of the beautiful yet structured diversity of the natural world.

 Lots of nifty thoughts about how evolution works and how mind-shatteringly cool life is. There's an interesting structure to the book, traveling backwards in time from today to the origin of life, and telling tales or lessons from each of our major ancestors along the way. It made me appreciate how much more there is to life than the small handful of mammals, fish, birds, and trees we usually think about.
 science sixstars
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 Max
 337 reviews 288 followers
 December 22, 2016
 Dawkins presents evolutionary biology in a Chaucerian format. As with the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales, each of Dawkins tales is about pilgrims on their way to a common destination, in this case the beginning of life. Each group of species marches back in time rendezvousing where they share their most recent common ancestor, what Dawkins calls a “Concester”. The first rendezvous is six million years ago (6 Ma) where we, our Homo and Australopithecine ancestors share a Concestor with the chimpanzees, bonobos and their ancestors. Dawkins describes 40 rendezvous such as the apes meet the monkeys at 25 Ma, the primates meet the rodents and rabbits at 75 Ma, the chordates meet the echinoderms at 550 Ma and ending with bacteria. Working backwards helps eliminate hindsight, assuming that a creature evolved in a certain way because in the future it would be important.

 Each tale not only describes some life form but some aspect of science associated with it. For example we learn how scientists use the fossil record and genetic techniques as evaluation tools. He shows how dates and evolutionary branches are derived from genetics using mitochondrial DNA, the Y chromosome and triangulation of DNA sequences. He explains how dates are determined using dendrochronology (tree rings), paleomagnetism, and radioactive decay. As we follow the path of evolution in reverse, we learn the science behind it.

 I read the updated 2016 version coauthored with Yan Wang. It reflects recent discoveries such as those of the Denisovans, whose story takes the place of the Neanderthals in the earlier version. Improvements in DNA extraction and sequencing enabled scientists in 2009 to derive the entire genome of a Denisovian from a 40,000 year old fingertip. There are many other revisions and corrections to the first edition published in 2006. In another update convergent replaces related development to explain the origin of many flightless birds such as the Dodo. Genetic studies now show they are descended from pigeons that became isolated on remote islands where they thrived growing big and losing their wings. Our understanding of the tree of life is always changing. Below are other samples of Dawkins’ discussions that caught my attention.

 Dawkins presents evolution as a flow of groups of individuals. Species arise when intermediate creatures become extinct. But as evolution occurs there are no distinct lines. A variety of archaic Homo sapiens blurred the dividing line between Homo erectus and modern Homo sapiens. Classification can be arbitrary and is often contested. New genes work their way through the group and if the group is isolated from other groups eventually it becomes distinct. This all takes time. If closely related groups come in contact with each other there is hybridization. Modern humans apparently interbred with Neanderthals 45000 years ago even though the two lines had separated 500,000 years before that. Similarly modern humans interbred with Denisovans.

 Dawkins offers perspective citing the ring species. He points to California salamanders in mountains that form a circle around the Central Valley. At the southern end two distinct populations won’t interbreed, but each population interbreeds with its neighbors in the other direction. This interbreeding continues uninterrupted all around the mountains coming back to the neighbors that won’t interbreed. There is an unbroken chain between the two. Are they separate species? Similarly gulls that won’t interbreed in Britain interbreed with their neighbors to the east and west forming a continuous chain around the world ending with each other. Like the salamanders, the gulls are connected to each other through the unbroken chain until at the ends the differences seem to have become too great. Dawkins uses the ring species as an example of what happens with all species through time. There is a similar uninterrupted chain from us to our australopithecine ancestors and to the beginning of life. Only the demise of intermediaries lets us define species.

 Was the most recent common ancestor, Concester, of humans and chimpanzees bipedal? Some scientists believe this is the case. The chimpanzee may have reverted to knuckle walking. What drove bipedalism in the first place? Ability to see over tall grass, ability to carry food back to a mate, ability to squat feed for long periods when snails and worms were more abundant than fruit, or as Dawkins thinks, sexual selection? Even back then females may have liked their mates to stand tall. They and/or their males may also have preferred less body hair. No other ape lost its hair so sexual selection as opposed to natural selection seems reasonable. In most animals females select their mates, but Darwin thought that men selected women for less body hair. Whichever way, both sexes would be affected. A mate with a bigger brain may also have curried favor.

 Dawson educates us on plate tectonics and its evolutionary effects. The formation and breakup of Pangea into Laurasia and Gondwana had significant implications for the diversity of life. Subsequent breakups isolating Madagascar and Australia explain their unique animals. We get the Platypus Tale. Is the platypus primitive? It had as much time to evolve as we have. It lays eggs and has a bill but what a bill – supersensitive to movement and electric field disturbances. What other mammal can locate its prey without listening, seeing or touching it? Dawkins explores the nerve connections between bill and brain and speculates that the platypus visualizes the feedback from its bill just as we do the feedback from our eyes.

 Dawkins’ tale of the sea squirt shows the tongue and cheek that is sprinkled through his writing. This amazing creature starts out with a notochord and nervous system making it a chordate, a member of our phylum. It looks like a tadpole as a juvenile swimming around then in its adult stage, it lands head first on a rock and permanently attaches itself. It digests its nerve system, notochord and other parts and turns into a big bag that filters the plankton from seawater. Dawkins digresses ”A second Aldous Huxley might project fictional human longevity to the point where some super-Methuselah finally settles down on his head and metamorphoses into a giant sea squirt, fastened permanently to the sofa in front of a television.” Perhaps today we should substitute tablet or phone for TV. In either case, once settled, Dawkins notes that it “eats its brain, like an associate professor getting tenure.”

 We are entertained by the stories of many other bizarre creatures, behaviors and relationships. Who would, aside from a zoologist, think of the echinoderm (starfish, sea cucumber, etc.) as sharing the most recent common ancestor we have with another phylum? The starfish’s radial design means it has no front or back, left or right. It may lead with any of its five legs. Its nerve cord forms a circle. Its anus is on top and mouth on bottom. Yet the molecular biologists say its genes show it evolved from a bilateral animal just like us.

 What about the bdelloid rotifers? All of these tiny aquatic animals are female. There is no need for males, no shared gene pool. Each rotifer reproduces a new organism with two sets of chromosomes as do animals that reproduce sexually. Thus over the millennia as mutations accumulate the genes will become even more diverse than those in a shared pool. Millions of years of asexual reproduction have resulted in more than 450 species of these unique creatures. Then there are the animals that keep their males in place – literally. Some trigger fish females carry their diminutive males on their sides for use when and as needed. Some scale insect females carry their males as mere specs on their legs.

 Dawkins explores the beginning of life. He looks at RNA World theory which holds that life started with RNA as both a replicator and an enzyme, in essence a self-replicating catalyst. He points to experiments that show segments of RNA taken from viruses can replicate and evolve in water. He discusses the idea of life forming in rocks, going even further afield than theories about life starting around hydrothermal vents. He point out that cracks in rocks are teeming with bacteria that live off of chemical processes without benefit of the sun.

 Finally he ponders the different ways life could have evolved. If we went back to the beginning and started all over again what would life be like today? What aspects have been convergent and which contingent. Many features evolved more than once, for example eyes, echolocation, and flight. Others such as our big brains and use of language evolved only once. Perhaps most significant is the incorporation of bacteria into archaea forming mitochondria which made life for us eukaryotes possible. Nick Lane argues in his book Power, Sex, Suicide that this event would be unlikely to ever be repeated.

 The Ancestor’s Tale is a tour de force, a comprehensive view of evolutionary biology full of fascinating details about diverse life forms. It is packed with the latest scientific theories. Above all it demonstrates the interconnectedness of all life. This clearly is heartfelt by Dawkins. His awe and enthusiasm for his subject is infectious. Reading it was an experience. After 700 pages, I was sorry it was over. For those with a serious interest I can’t recommend it highly enough.
 biology
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 Lee Harmon
 Author 4 books 105 followers
 March 5, 2011
 While I read different genres, I only review books with a religious content. So, if I may be excused for one of my “liberal Christian rants,” let me say this: It’s a sad day when a book about evolution earns a spot on the shelves of a religion blog. It simply astounds me that half of all Americans still do not believe in evolution. The evidence is so overwhelmingly against a young earth that if Christianity is going to survive, it must pull its head out of the sand and reinterpret the Bible’s creation story (anything but a literal interpretation!) before it alienates the coming generation, who will simply know better.

 This book will help. I’m not a fan of Dawkins’ anti-religion tirades, but when he sticks to his evolutionary biology, his writing is a pure delight. It’s insightful, highly intelligent, and witty. The subtitle of the book is A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, and it’s a long journey backward in time from present-day humans to the beginnings of life four million years ago.

 You’ll meet Cro-Magnon man, the Neanderthals, chimpanzees and gorillas, monkeys, rodents and rabbits, reptiles, sharks, flatworms, sponges, fungi, plants, and far more, each with their own unique role and story to tell.

 Scientific understanding is, and ever will be, in a state of transition. As we learn, we shape our theories to fit the facts. It’s an exploration that never ends, an exciting quest for truth that Dawkins excels in sharing. He stops often along this journey back in time to introduce interesting life forms and their evolutionary sidebars, evoking wonder and appreciation for the real creation story that far exceeds any ancient tales. It’s such a treat that I’m almost envious of long-time creationists who can, by opening their minds and turning the cover of this book, open themselves up to a new world of wonder.

 You will see the world in a different way after reading this.
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 Jim
 Author 6 books 2,015 followers
 April 14, 2020
 What an interesting way to look at evolution, from the present back into the past in the format of & a homage to Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales . He chose 40 major stops along the journey & told some great tales. Thankfully, these were usually from his perspective so there wasn't any foolishness, but he was entertaining.

 I found the backward format a really good way of cementing various relationships into my mind better. There was a lot of new (to me) & fascinating material about how evolution works. He came up with great examples & occasionally wandered into other interesting areas such as human races.

 “Natural selection is a beguiling counterfeiter of deliberate purpose.”

 “Evolution, or its driving engine natural selection, has no foresight. In every generation within every species, the individuals best equipped to survive and reproduce contribute more than their fair share of genes to the next generation. The consequence, blind as it is, is the nearest approach to foresight that nature permits."

 I've read several other books on evolution by Dawkins, so there was some repetition, but he cut down on much of that himself by referencing where he originally went into detail. As an audiobook read by him & Ward, it was fantastic, as always. Highly recommended.
 1audio 2non-fiction science
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 Hamid
 130 reviews 9 followers
 December 22, 2019
 Richard Dawkins' "the ancestor's tale" is the story of all life on Earth told in reverse order. It starts from us "moderns" and goes back to our closer cousins, all the way back to the common ancestor of all life on Earth. Dawkins uses the word "concestor" to refer to a common ancestor. It's a fascinating tale. Even though I had to go through nearly 800 pages, I wasn't bored in one single moment. There were times, of course, when it got a little more technical, but all in all I learned so much since a wealth of information is presented in each chapter. We are all African apes. Chimpanzees are our closest cousins and we share roughly 98 percent of our genes with them. You learn that natural selection grants no possibility of foresight. In other words, evolution does not plan ahead. To Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin, co-discoverers of natural selection, the geographical aspect of natural history gave away the fact of evolution. If species were created independently, why should a Creator choose to put 50 species of lemur on Madagascar, but nowhere else? Why should the Galapagos host a set of finches so different from species on other oceanic islands, but strikingly similar both to each other and to birds on the nearest mainland? For Darwin, peahens choose peacocks simply because, in their eyes, they are pretty (sexual selection). For Alfred Wallace, there's something more than the outward appearance. The bright feathers are a token of their underlying health and fitness. In the fruit fly tale, we learn about DNA mechanism. Textbooks of biology are wrong when they describe DNA as a blueprint. Embryos do nothing remotely like following a blueprint. DNA is not a description in any language, of what the finished body should look like. On this planet, embryos follow recipes. Creationists foolishly liken darwinian natural selection to a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and having the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. They are wrong, of course, for they completely miss the gradual, cumulative nature of natural selection.
 science
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 Casey
 272 reviews 120 followers
 September 6, 2007
 After finishing The Selfish Gene, I rushed out to the store to buy another of Dawkins' books. While the size of this tome was quite intimidating, I found the premise utterly fascinating. The narrative traces humans' evolutionary ancestry, from primates to "concestor zero," or the beginning of life on Earth.

 Dawkins' knowledge of zoology shines as he gives examples of the fascinating animals that share some of our genes. Readers will undoubtedly learn about plants and animals they had never heard of before, from Australian marsupials to the strange creatures that inhabit Madagascar. The book reads like a novel, and after finishing it I feel more connected, not just to my own species, but to all the creatures around me that share in this crazy thing called life.
 knowledge-is-good
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 Richard
 Author 1 book 38 followers
 October 14, 2022
 It’s something I’d wondered myself in the past: not how we see colours, not the biological technicalities of colour vision, but what they’re for, why we see in colour at all. And after reading one particular essay in this extraordinary book, then mulling it over while out being taken for a walk by my dog, I suddenly saw the answer to that. It wasn’t exactly what the essay was about; that was more to do with the ways in which very different animals sense the world around them (the star-nosed mole, the bat, the platypus, or us humans) but I got even more out of it than the author had put in. It had already crossed my mind years before that, with her almost unbelievably sensitive nose, I’m betting my dog doesn’t just smell the world in colour, but in full on, in-your-face, technicolour —and now, if that’s so, I also understood why. And all that from a single short essay among dozens, a three-page sliver tucked away among a humongous seven hundred.
 The book itself isn’t easy to characterise in a short review. It’s patterned after Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales , and just as that was a series of reflections on life, so is this; but while, for Chaucer, that meant human life, in The Ancestor’s Tale it’s all of life on Earth, everything else that lives here too. The “stories” are actually essays about the whole business of being a tiny living part of this planet.
 Perhaps some will be put off by the author’s name, which would be a pity. Dawkins is used as a human punch-bag by an impressive variety of people, on which to vent their own shortcomings, frustrations and bile; but you get a truer picture here: more likeable than the rabble would have you believe, as clear-headed and meticulous a guide as you could ask for to lead an odyssey across several billion years—and even has a sense of humour (although the publishers should have handed out free gas-masks ahead of the paddlefish-up-a-creek joke!).
 An exceptional book.
 birds-in-cages-is-wrong labcoats-and-telescopes
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 Michael Kress
 Author 1 book 11 followers
 June 11, 2018
 Dawkins was the author who made me realize how fascinating evolutionary biology is. I had read a few of his books before I started this one, but they were all around 300 to 400 pages. This one is 614 pages. It goes back in time, starting in the present moment until we finally reach the dawn of evolution. What an interesting way to write a book! It tells the stories of many species and the common ancestors that we share with them. As the book progresses, our cousins get more and more distant. Eve's Tale explains how the Y chromosome was passed down from mother to daughter through all generations and can be traced back to a hypothetical “Eve.” The Peacock's Tale explains how male peacocks evolved colorful, flashy looking feathers to attract a mate. The Dodo's Tale is a sad story about extinction. Dodos never had to deal with predators, so they never evolved any ways of escaping from them. When humans arrived on their island, they were so slow and easy to kill that they went extinct in a short period of time. There are many more stories like these in the book. The ending of the book is well written and comes around full circle in a cool way. If you've never read anything by Dawkins, I would recommend The Selfish Gene or River Out of Eden. But if you have already read a few of his books, this is a good one that goes a little more in depth.
 2000s-early science
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 Leftbanker
 770 reviews 279 followers
 January 14, 2016
 “My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world.”

 That's Dawkins at the end of this marvelous achievement. A completely fascinating scientific version of Genesis. Infinitely more interesting than the Bible's account of the beginnings of life on earth. This is a story that all intelligent people should know something about. It is the greatest story imaginable for all who inhabit this planet. If you are ignorant of this story—especially if willfully so—you are doing great harm to your development as a thinking adult.
 crime-gangsters politics religion
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 Chris
 383 reviews 139 followers
 October 13, 2015
 Richard Dawkins has done an astounding job producing this book. If it were not for his other great works, The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene , The Ancestor's Tale would be his best work in evolutionary science. It matters not one bit that it's a summary and synthesis of others' primary work: great scientists have always been able to look out across their field of expertise and write a defining work of value for both scientists and the educated public.

 My only, slight, quibble with the book is that in the decade since it was published there has been significant change in many parts of the "tree of life." More species have been discovered, more fossils found. Most importantly, molecular analysis across species of shared genetic haplotypes and DNA from mitochondria has unleashed a tidal wave of new information allowing a more precise determination of our common ancestors, especially the most distant. Dawkins used the earlier results of this same research when writing this book in 2003, but he notes in the book itself that it would have to be revised soon with new information. That, of course, is the way of science and what makes it exciting.

 Thus, I'm happy to find that the second, updated, edition will be published in early 2016 (see here: The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life ) with the latest scientific developments and additional evolution-relevant species "tales." I hope that one of these is "told" by a member of the fascinating Fungi—one of the three great multicellular kingdoms—with which we share an unidentified common ancestor roughly 1.1 billion years ago. The original edition naturally includes this rendezvous along with background information, but omits the tale.

 Should you wait for the new edition? No, unless your a critic of fine detail. The deep time and awesome diversity of evolution will not change. Our place as a species relative to the rest of life will not shift. And Dawkins' inspiring prose will remain.
 first-american-edition nonfiction science
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 Nicky
 4,138 reviews 1,003 followers
 August 23, 2009
 I love this book. It's not the kind of thing I usually read, because I prefer fiction to non-fiction by far, at least when I have a choice about it. And I really, really loathe Dawkins' The God Delusion, largely because of the tone he takes toward people who are religious believers. But The Ancestor's Tale is mostly just science, and it's written in an accessible, almost conversational way. It actually has literary ancestors (ha), in the form of The Canterbury Tales, which Dawkins chose as his format to tell the tale of a pilgrimage through history to find our ancestors. He does slip in some references to his own beliefs, but here they aren't too offensive or intrusive.

 When I say 'accessible', I don't mean 'dumbed down'. The science and maths and the theory and the sheer detail is here. I read a couple of reviews that people found it boring once it got to a certain point because there's 'too much detail' about things like bacteria. Which I think is more of a 'your mileage may vary' attitude than anything -- I think Dawkins gave the space to the bacteria that they deserve, all things considered.

 There's a lot of speculation in here, too -- but so much of science is speculation. Dawkins is fairly clear about when he can and can't 'prove' things, and explains the methods by which they can be proved if they can. You don't have to have a huge knowledge of science or maths to understand -- some, and an interest in it, I suppose, but not so very very much.
 non-fiction science-fact
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 Jaclynn
 592 reviews 38 followers
 June 27, 2018
 Not recommended for those with a passing interest in evolution...this is heavy into the math and science realms. This is an extremely in depth, hefty tome as seen from the point of view of homo sapiens travelling backwards in time to the dawn of life. Dawkins tale is modeled after Canterbury Tales, and is about pilgrims on their way to a common destination, in this case the beginning of life. Each group of species marches back in time rendezvousing where they share their most recent common ancestor, what Dawkins calls a “Concester”. The first rendezvous is six million years ago (6 Ma) where we, our Homo and Australopithecine ancestors share a Concestor with the chimpanzees, bonobos and their ancestors. There are so many thought-provoking concepts in this book, but this is a challenging book to read, not only because it is so long, but because of the many complex concepts that are described. But the entire book is fascinating. With each species rendezvous, a fractal diagram portrays the branching, along with dates and contour lines; what a fabulous visual portrayal of the concept of evolution! I am continually amazed the genius of Dawkins...this book is so comprehensive, it is daunting just thinking about it, let alone researching and writing it!
 anthropology best-historical-non-fiction history
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 Ian D
 512 reviews 50 followers
 October 26, 2020
 Ένα απολαυστικό ταξίδι στο χρόνο, προς τα πίσω αυτή τη φορά, από το Homo sapiens sapiens στις απαρχές της ζωής και τα πρώτα προκαρυωτικά κύτταρα με οδηγό τον αγαπημένο μας εξελικτικό βιολόγο Richard Dawkins. Πάντα εκτιμούσα τους ανθρώπους που μεταλαμπαδεύουν με τόσο πάθος την αγάπη τους για την επιστήμη και το βιβλίο αυτό δεν αποτελεί εξαίρεση.
 Αν έπρεπε οπωσδήποτε να βρω κάτι αρνητικό, θα στεκόμουν στο μέγεθός του. Δεν ξέρω αν ο συγγραφέας θα μπορούσε να με εμπεριέξει σ' αυτή την εμπειρία αν δεν με ενδιέφερε ήδη το αντικείμενο, ωστόσο δεν παύει να είναι ένα εξαιρετικά καλογραμμένο και ευανάγνωστο έργο.
 british-lit nonfiction science
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 Xavier
 150 reviews 57 followers
 May 15, 2020
 Richard Dawkins does a wonderful job at leading the reader on a grand pilgrimage throughout the eons, introducing you to our great evolutionary ancestors. He starts the journey working backwards, beginning with Homo Sapiens and then the earliest bipedal apes like Homo Habilis , then ending with the earliest replicating life, the one that would've started it all billions of years ago. Unfortunately, it didn't leave any fossils behind (soft-body creatures tend not to sadly but it has happened at a site in China) but if we work the molecular clock backwards we can deduce that somewhere in the 'primordial soup' a molecule began to copy itself, and it was really good at it.

 As we meet the different pilgrims Dawkins explains how evolution shaped life in the most exciting and unusual ways. Some creatures on our planet function in the most ridiculous ways. I don't wish to spoil these parts but it is awe-inspiring for sure.

 This was a fun and truly educating read for me. I learned so much about the different kinds of life that inhabit our planet. Human beings are just one tiny branch in the grand tree of life. We have only been here for a second in geological time, a drop in the bucket. The Ancestor's Tale is a humbling experience.
 biology dawkins evolution
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 Brian
 Author 16 books 39 followers
 March 31, 2007
 I've been a fan of Dawkins for a while solely based on interviews, but this is the first of his books I've actually read. It works its way backwards through the evolutionary tree, detailing how all living things are related - how a stranger on the street, your dog, your house plant, bacteria and you are all distant cousins. It's a fascinating read, technical enough if you're interested, but not so much so that it's threatening to the non-science minded. It's broken into various "tales" - "The Howler Monkey's Tale", "The Hippo's Tale", "The Blind Cave Fish's Tale" - a la Chaucer - which makes the size of the book a bit less daunting. Best of all, it's excellent ammunition for the next time you find yourself in a debate with someone arguing for "intelligent design."
 non-fiction science-and-math
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 Robin
 2 reviews
 August 11, 2007
 This is my favorite book in the whole world. Someday it may be eclipsed by something else but for now it's this. What I love most about this book is the number of times I found myself thinking, "Wow, I had no idea". It makes perfect sense when you think it out, but the entire premise of the book, that every living thing on earth, from human being to plant to bacteria, shares a common ancestor, that actually existed at a point sufficiently far enough in the past. The book consists of a "pilgrimage" to that ancestor modeled loosely after "The Canterbury Tales".
 4 likes
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 Courtney Stirrat
 189 reviews 46 followers
 September 25, 2007
 The Ancestor's Tale is an incredible find! With a form based loosely on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins marches back in time to each of humankind's ancestors. Witty, brilliant and engaging, you will learn a great deal about evolutionary biology, and a million fun and intriguing facts. Whether you agree to disagree with the facts establishing evolution as a law of science, this book is worth your time. Plus, it is so dense and rich, you will feel proud to put it on your shelf after you have finished it!!
 scienceisgreatifitsnotyourjob
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 Marie
 19 reviews 2 followers
 February 22, 2009
 I'm not a scientist, but I have an insatiable curiousity about all things scientific. I should say I am still reading this book - stated two years ago. It has been a real challenge to follow the information presented simply because there is SOOOOOOO much of it. However, I am determined to fihish it someday. Biggest challenge for me is retaining and relating all the information. It is still a fascinating book though admittedly sometimes very hard for mw to stay awake through some of the technical stuff. I really want to read it and understand it all but not sure my brain can handle it all!!
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 Gendou
 574 reviews 255 followers
 December 20, 2010
 This book is a sort of Canterbury Tales for evolutionary biology.
 It follows our ancestors back to the root as they merge with other branches on the tree of life.
 For those who know programming, this sums it up succinctly:
 for(Species i = humans; i.parent != null; i = i.parent) {
 print(i.anecdotes[rand() % i.anecdotes.length]);
 }
 Dawkins is awesome. Yep.
 biology non-fiction
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 Петър Стойков
 Author 3 books 255 followers
 October 13, 2014
 Ричард Докинс пише интересни неща за еволюцията, като тоя път е решил да проследи генеалогията на човечеството, но в обратна посока - като слиза надолу стъпка по стъпка и ни среща с нашите предци, докато стигне до създаването на първия живот.

 Като цяло не лошо и много информативно упражнение, но крайният му смисъл ми се губи.
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Author  28 books13.4k followers     April 8, 2010   On Monday, an old friend came round to lunch, and, while we were having a cup of tea in the living room, remarked on the number of Richard Dawkins books on my shelf. Somehow, I'd never heard that she'd actually had Dawkins as a supervisor for one term when she was an undergraduate at Oxford in the late 70s; it was in connection with the course she was reading on animal behaviour. I asked what he was like as a person, and she was unenthusiastic. Clearly very intelligent, but there was something about him that she found disquieting. She wouldn't go so far as to say that he'd behaved inappropriately, there was never a specific incident she could point to, but she constantly felt that he was just an inch from the line. Well... charismatic, thirty-something male supervisor, attractive young female undergraduate, animal behaviour, you can see plenty of scope for that. And she said that, even then, he'd go on about religion. After a while, she became increasingly sure that his hostile feelings were rooted in some kind of personal disappointment he'd suffered, though she had no idea what it might have been.I asked her which Dawkins she'd read, and, like most people, it was The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion. She hadn't particularly liked either one. I can sympathize with her point of view. But, as other reviewers here have said, Dawkins is a more complex person than he's generally given credit for, and if you read The Ancestor's Tale you'll see another side. I suppose one could say that he's attacking religion here too, but the strategy is completely the opposite of the blunt, in-your-face assault he uses in the The God Delusion; to my mind, it's also far more effective. Rather than tell you what's ugly and wrong about Intelligent Design, he concentrates his energies on showing you what's beautiful and right about evolution, and how, far from contradicting traditional religious beliefs, it reveals them with a clarity that previous generations have been unable to see.  I kept thinking of Saint Francis of Assisi, and his love of all living creatures. "Brother bird, sister ant"... they're beautiful poetic phrases. But what do they mean? Evidently, this finch can't literally be my brother. There is no way that my mother could have given birth to him. The conventional explanation is that we're both "children of God", which is fine as far as it goes; the problem is that it doesn't really shed much light on the nature of our relationship. The astonishing thing about evolution, which forms the core of this book, is that it shows how the bird and ant truly are my brother and sister. Well, not quite brother and sister - in fact, they're very distant cousins. Dawkins traces the family tree, and shows precisely how we're all related. He starts with the obvious cases (apes, monkeys), then goes back to other mammals, and then further through reptiles, birds, amphibians, insects, sponges, plants and all the way to protozoa. On the way, he tells you some extraordinary stories. Well, that shouldn't be a surprise; think what interesting stories you hear when you meet up with a friend you used to know well, but haven't seen for a decade. Here, you are in some cases meeting up with people you haven't seen for several hundred million years. At the end, I felt, as I had never felt before, how we're all one family in the plain, everyday sense of the word, and how we're linked though the genes we share, which we've inherited from our common ancestors. It's a truly incredible thought. As Dawkins says on the last page: it's not so much that he disagrees with religious people, it's more that they're saying it the wrong way. If you are yourself a religious person who wants to learn to be closer to God and His Creation, you could do worse than read this book.     science strongly-recommended transcendent-experiences               39 reviews19 followers     March 14, 2008   Poor Dawkins - he gets a bad reputation. People think he's mean and nasty and heartless and elitist. Okay, I might have to grant people the "elitist" bit, because, well, I'm a bit of an elitist myself. But I dare you all to read this book and then tell me that Dawkins isn't a total squishy.  Let's just say this - he stops in the middle of the book to talk about how much he misses Douglas Adams, who was a dear friend of his. He waxes poetic about evolution and how much he wishes he could meet our ancestors. He refers to Olivia Judson's "Doctor Tatiana's Sex Guide for All Creation," makes a brief homage to it, and then sweetly states that he could never do the style justice (making clear along the way that he's read the darned thing, which delights me for reasons that can only be understood by someone else who's read the book, because it's Just That Fabulous).  And he puts his wife in the index, even though the references to her are miniscule (and, in fact, much less frequent than in any other book). He credits his research assistant as his co-author. In general, he's a sweetheart. I will stop fangirling the man, now, and simply tell you that the science in this book? Is brilliant, wondrous, and awe-inspiring in its breadth. Fantastic book.                    809 reviews14.4k followers     September 14, 2013   There are some facts the simple knowing of which seems to me to be a supreme achievement of our species. The fact that we are all made of stardust. The fact that 99.9999999999999 percent of all matter is empty. The fact that mass and energy can be expressed in terms of each other. Stuff like that.Pre-eminent among these to me, for sheer mind-expanding awe, is the fact that life on this planet has developed precisely once, as far as we know, and everything on earth has evolved from it. That means that when you go outside and lie down in the garden, everything you can see and hear – people walking nearby, their pet dogs, the squirrel darting past, the birds you can hear tweeting, the insects and tiny bugs crawling around underneath you, the trees the birds are standing on, the grass you're lying on, the bacteria in your guts – all of them are your cousins: you're quite literally related to them in the real, genealogical sense. If you go far enough back in time, in other words, you will eventually find a creature whose descendants evolved into both squirrels (say) and people. Indeed, the rules of heredity being what they are, you could even find a single individual who was a common ancestor to every squirrel and human alive. And indeed such an animal really did exist, around 75 million years ago in the Upper Cretaceous. It probably looked sort of mousey, and Dawkins estimates that he or she was our ‘15-million-greats-grandparent’. Squirrels are not ‘closer’ to this creature than humans are: we and they are equally related, having been evolving independently for the same amount of time.  The Ancestor's Tale takes exactly this approach to exploring evolution. It starts with humans and works backwards – looking first at the common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees, and continuing until we reach the common ancestor of all life on earth. Dawkins's word for a common ancestor of more than one species is ‘concestor’, and there are only about 40 of them (!) between us and the origin of life more than three billion years ago. The Cretaceous mammal I mentioned above, which evolved into us and squirrels (along with all the other rodents, lagomorphs and primates), is Concestor 10 according to this schema. I think there's a lot of traps you can fall into when you start thinking about evolution. It's easy to feel, instinctively, that evolution is somehow teleological: that it's been working towards – if not us, then at least creatures that are increasingly complex and increasingly intelligent. But that of course is not the case. Things survive that reproduce themselves well, and there are plenty of single-celled organisms still with us that have seen no need to get any more complicated for millions of years. Bacterial life is in fact astonishingly varied and rich, whole phyla of creatures that branched off before multicellular life even came about; indeed, chemically speaking, we are more similar to some bacteria than some bacteria are to other bacteria. Just think about that for a second. Before Dawkins got distracted by religious idiocy, he was well known as being one of the scientists most able to explain complicated ideas in a fresh and accessible way. All his skills are on display in this work. It's not just the zoology and the evolutionary biology, where you'd expect him to be strong; there's also a fantastically lucid explanation of the biochemistry within a cell, and even one of the best explanations of the physics of radioactivity that I've come across. He is calm and careful; he repeats himself where necessary; he shares several teacherly witticisms; and he does all this without ever condescending to the reader. He allows paragraphs of complex material to sit, so that you can read and re-read them a few times before he carries on. Occasionally he cannot stop himself breaking out in exclamations of wonder or poetic meditation – as when he discusses the fossilised footprints of three early hominids from some three-and-a-half million years ago: Who does not wonder what these individuals were to each other, whether they held hands or even talked, and what forgotten errand they shared in a Pliocene dawn? His enthusiasm is infectious. The whole book is a fantastic exploration of this most beautiful piece of modern human understanding. It's full of astonishing anecdotes and scientific details about the natural world, but it also all ties together into a conception of life that's more awe-inspiring and more moving than any supernatural system could ever be.     anthropology biology evolution               801 reviews2,502 followers     April 23, 2017   This is the 2016, revised edition of this fabulous book. In this edition, Richard Dawkins is a co-author with Yan Wong. This is a very hefty tome, just under 800 pages. It is a marvelously inventive, masterful look at evolution, as seen from the point of view of homo sapiens travelling backwards in time, back to the dawn of life. Each time the route of evolution reaches a branch point with another species, it is called a Rendezvous; there are 40 rendezvous altogether. The book is extremely interesting and informative. Below I summarize some of the interesting facts I learned.Some creationists point to the so-called gaps in the fossil record as proof that the scientific theory of evolution is not sufficient to explain the development of species. But Dawkins argues that even without any fossils, the evidence for evolution would still be immense. The distributions of species on continents and islands, the patterns of resemblance, an genetic sequences are sufficient to prove evolution. Fossils are a welcome bonus. The gaps in the fossil records are not all that important. The agricultural revolution helped to support a larger population, but did nothing to increase people's health or happiness; in fact it did just the opposite. There is a very interesting discussion about our most recent common ancestor. That is to say, the human who is the common ancestor to all people alive on Earth today. It is very surprising, that the most recent common ancestor lived around 10,000 years ago. Silver foxes bred in captivity by D.K. Belyaev for twenty years were bred for tameness. After twenty years, the foxes behaved like border collies! They became friendly, sought human company, and wagged their tails when approached. They even looked like border collies! We were told when we were young that eating carrots help us see better in the dark. But this was a rumor started by WWII strategists to avoid revealing the secret of radar. The best analogy for genes is not that they serve as a blueprint, but rather that they serve as a toolbox of routines. So, while a large percentage of our genes is in common with those of other animals, our main difference from other animals is not the toolbox of DNA routines, but is instead the pattern of choosing genetic routines from the available toolbox. This is called the science of epigenetics, which has been around since Conrad Weddington coined the term in 1942. In 1866, Ernst Haeckel announced that the hippo is a close relative to the whale. This has since been proven through DNA; the hippo's closest living relative actually is the whale! The duck-billed platypus closes its eyes shut when hunting for food. Its duck bill is a very sensitive organ with 60,000 mechanical and 40,000 electrical sensors. The platypus swivels its bill back and forth, feeling for impulses from potential prey. It probably gets a detailed 3D image of electrical disturbances in its vicinity. It probably is doing some sophisticated beamforming to increase its sensitivity. Dawkins remarks about a lot of interesting speculations why humans are bipedal. He gives a number of arguments both why bipedal walking is helpful, but others why it is not.In 1954, the British Colonial Administration destroyed the ecosystem of Lake Victoria. Against the advice of biologists, the Nile perch was introduced to the lake, which destroyed fifty species of cichlids, and critically endangered another 130 species. This newly introduced predator had caused devastation to the local economies around the lake. This is the reason why bureaucrats should not try to play God, and play around with ecosystems. This raises the question, how did so many species evolve in the lake, in the first place? Dawkins makes some interesting speculations about how various species could be physically isolated in the lake, in order to allow the species to branch out due to evolution. Dawkins makes a strong effort to avoid repeating stories that he told in other books. Instead of repeating them, he makes references to his many other books, for the reader to see additional examples. This is so different from that of many other authors, who often repeat themselves from one book to the next. A variety of human inventions were anticipated in the animal kingdom. Some examples: echo-ranging (bats), electro-location (duckbill platypus), dam (beaver), parabolic reflector (limpet), infrared sensor (snakes), hypodermic syringe (wasp, snake, scorpion), harpoon (cnidarian), jet propulsion (squid). The wheel and axle was also anticipated; the rhizobium has a true axle and a freely rotating hub, driven by a tiny molecular motor. Such a wheel could not evolve in a large organism, which would involve twisting blood vessels. I personally loved the renaming of the concept of Intelligent Designers from "Argument from Irreducible Complexity" to "Argument from Personal Incredulity." The argument "says less about nature than about the poverty of your imagination." Dawkins speculates about what would happen if the "tape of evolution" were to be re-run in the forward direction, starting from pre-Cambrian times? What would happen if it were re-run a statistical number of times? Or starting from an earlier or later time? This experiment has, in a sense, been done to a limited extent in isolated locations like Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar and South America. Also, evolution in has turned out very similarly when allowed to run twice. Eyes have evolved independently 40-60 times, using nine independent optical principles!Echolocation has evolved at least four times in four animals; toothed whales, oilbirds, cave swiftlets and bats. The venomous sting has evolved at least ten times independently. True flapping flight has evolved four times. Parachuting and gliding has evolved maybe hundreds of times. These notes above represent only a tiny fraction of the thought-provoking concepts in this book. This is a challenging book to read, not only because it is so long, but because of the many complex concepts that are described. The authors even warn the reader at one point that certain pages can be skipped if desired. But the entire book is fascinating. With each species rendezvous, a fractal diagram portrays the branching, along with dates and contour lines; what a fabulous visual portrayal of the concept of evolution!     biology evolution paleontology               932 reviews703 followers     November 10, 2020   I got irked with this book and maybe the fault lies in my limitations, but just like with Roman history, there's a lot of guesswork going on. Is that science?In this book it's written that it's probable that our ancestors don't come from Africa. But I remember a YouTube video where Dawkins approves that we're all Africans. Politically correct but stably not as much. I got fed up with a book that's either too brainy for me or because it is simply has a not interesting a finale enough. It could have been better. But I dislike it for now and forever.     non-fiction one-star overhyped               9,568 reviews55.6k followers     January 4, 2020   The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, Richard DawkinsThe Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life is a science book by Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong on the subject of evolution, which follows the path of humans backwards through evolutionary history, describing some of humanity's cousins as they converge on their common ancestors. It was first published in 2004, and substantially updated in 2016.تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز چهارم ماه ژانویه سال 2018 میلادیعنوان: داستان نیاکان: سفری به آغاز حیات؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داوکینز؛ داستان نیاکان با زیرعنوان «سفری به آغاز حیات» کتاب علمی عمومی نوشتهٔ ریچارد داوکینز در سال 2004 میلادی است؛ که با همکاری دستیار پژوهشی داوکینز، یان ونگ نوشته شده‌ است. این کتاب مسیر انسان در تاریخ تکاملی را از امروز تا گذشته تصویر می‌کند؛ و سفر را از انسان شروع کرده، به سوی پسرخاله‌ های قدیمی او در درخت زندگی می‌رود. در این مسیر به مرور با پسرخاله‌ های قبلی‌تر انسان، به عنوان «نیای مشترک» همگرا می‌شود. کتاب در سال 2005 نامزد جایزهٔ بهترین کتاب علمی اونتیز شد. چکیده: داستان به صورت یک سفر زیارتی روایت شده‌ است، که در آن مسیر همهٔ جانداران مدرن، به سوی منشا حیات پی گرفته می‌شود. انسان‌ها پسرخاله‌ های تکاملی خود را در پاتوق‌های میان راه ملاقات می‌کنند. در این نقاط تبارها منشعب می‌شوند. داوکینز در هرکدام از این نقاط تلاش می‌کند تا با استفاده از شواهد مولکولی و فسیلی، محتمل‌ترین نوع نزدیک‌ترین نیای مشترک را توضیح دهد؛ و در میان مسیر، جانداران مدرنی که در گذشته با انسان هم‌سفر بوده‌ اند را توصیف کند. سفر کلاً از چهل «میعادگاه» تشکیل شده که از «میعادگاه صفر» آغاز می‌شود و به سوی نزدیک‌ترین نیای مشترک انسان تا میعادگاه سی و نهم که باکتری است پیش می‌رود. با این وجود که داوکینز به‌ طور کل از درخت زندگی توصیف شده اطمینان دارد، در برخی از شاخه‌ ها هشدار داده که در زمان نوشتن، از وزنه ی سنگینی از مدارک بهره نداشته‌ است. داوکینز در هر نقطه ی ملاقات در میان سفر، داستان جالبی در مورد جانداران پسرخاله حکایت می‌کند. هر نوع تازه‌ ای اعم از گونه، سرده، و خانواده داستان منحصر بفردی را برای سرگرمی خوانشگر دربردارد. این ویژگی‌های عجیب به وسیلهٔ روش‌های تازهٔ زیست‌شناسی تکاملی شناسایی شده‌ اند، و با دقت در داستان قرار گرفته‌ اند تا نشان دهند چگونه نظریه تکامل داروینی قادر به توضیح همهٔ تنوع حیات بر روی کرهٔ زمین است. در این کتاب داستان‌های شخصی داوکینز در مورد موضوعات نیز به چشم می‌خورد؛ که در آن‌ها داستان‌هایی از دوران کودکی و دانشگاه خود نیز نقل کرده‌ است. برای مثال، او شگفتی خود ر�� از فهمیدن اینکه اسب‌های آبی نزدیک‌ترین خویشاوندان نهنگها هستند را توصیف کرده‌ است. با اینکه کتاب به ترتیب زمانی نوشته شده‌ است، می‌توان هر بخش را به صورت جداگانه هم مطالعه کرد. به‌ طور کلی می‌توان داستان نیاکان را دانشنامه ای دربارهٔ موضوعات اصلی تکامل دانست. ایشان کتاب را به دوست و استاد اسبق داوکینز، جان مینارد اسمیت تقدیم کرده‌ است. ا. شربیانی     21th-century anthropology biology               212 reviews52 followers     October 23, 2010   This book blew my mind so many times in so many ways. It is quite simply the most fascinating thing I have ever read about life on this planet. Dawkins traces our evolution from the present day back through the very first organisms on earth. He uses various "rendezvouses" to show the points where we connected with other species and phyla and what those connections say about us, about our biology and about life in general. By tracing our lineage back through these various “concestors” Dawkins makes you realize just how unique and amazing your own body is… amazing in ways you probably always took for granted. From the way we gestate to the fact that we have a spinal column to the way that our own cells even work. It was never a guarantee that we would have ANY of these things. It seriously makes you wonder how everything might have turned out had different evolutionary pressures been exerted millions, or even billions of years ago. For instance, had a meteorite not wiped out the dinosaurs, “we” would probably still be little more than tiny rodents scavenging for scraps at night while the REAL rulers of the planet slept. Dawkins touches on this latter aspect in the final chapter, with a series of thought experiments about how things might go down if evolution were to “rerun” from the beginning. Which aspects of life would be likely to sprout up again? Which aspects were far-fetched happy accidents? Perhaps one of the most mind blowing statements Dawkins makes is in reference to eukaryotic cells, which comprise every form of life on this planet except for bacteria. The formation of these special and absolutely “necessary” cells was such a long shot evolutionarily speaking that Dawkins doubts it likely to have happened twice. In fact he goes so far as to say he thinks that the formation of eukaryotic cells was probably MORE unfathomable than the initial spark of life itself! Whoever said scientists strip all the magic and wonder out of the universe has obviously never read this book. Dawkins' prose, as always, is fresh, illuminating, and often humorous, explaining heavy concepts so they make perfect sense to a layman. Seriously, if you're interested in this stuff at all, add this one to the very top of your list.     bloody-brilliant favorites life-changing               293 reviews143 followers     June 5, 2017    6-stars  [NOTE: I like to provide a 6-star rating to a book when it has been able to keep me in a state of amazement almost continuously for at least 80% of its content.]  A terrific book on evolution from the vast spectrum of creatures on this planet. Truly, a lot of information has been provided. Can be a bit heavy to people who may not be from a scientific academic background. Almost every topic that I read in the book kept me in a state of awe while I learnt new things. The book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to get mesmerized by stuff that exists on Planet Earth itself! :) HEAVILY RECOMMENDED!!     6-star-masterpiece british-writing evolution-origins               537 reviews497 followers     October 16, 2014   Wow. I like Richard Dawkins. I like what he has to say in The God Delusion and I like his tweets for the same reason.  Lots of people don't like his confrontational stand on religion, but don't let that put you off here.  First and foremost, he is an amazing scientist.  This book is so comprehensive, it is daunting just thinking about it. When I collected it from the library and saw the size, I outwardly groaned, wondering how I would tackle it. I needn't have worried.  Dawkins takes us on a 'backwards' pilgrimage through time, showing how we humans joined up with all other living creatures along the way. After getting through half the book and discovering that we'd already passed mammals, birds and fish, I wondered how interested I'd actually be in cnidarians, ctenophores or choanoflagellates, but they proved to be equally as fascinating. Dawkins breaks the information into short chapters, or rendezvous points, relating things back to animals we've already encountered along the way. Yet he doesn't stop there. He shows how we link with fungi, plants and bacteria, before finally considering how the first life forms began and whether or not this could be recreated.  What I particularly liked was how Dawkins doesn't make guesswork for periods that we just don't know about. Where dates are so far away that we don't have the full picture (500 million years and counting) Dawkins relates what is known, then tells us the current theories. The gaps still to be filled are not a disappointment, but an exciting prospect of things yet to learn.  I don't have a scientific background at all, though I was able to understand most of what I read. I did get confused with some terms and with trying to keep track of the different classifications (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species) or timescales (eon, era, period, epoch, age) plus all the subdivisions within these. Luckily the book was comprehensive enough that I was able to flip back to an earlier section, or refer to a chart to refamiliarise myself before moving on to the next tale.  I was left feeling a little overwhelmed by the end and so I'll finish with a quote from Dawkins that encapsulates things -  "It is not pride in my book but reverence for life itself that encourages me to say, if you want a justification for the latter, open the former, anywhere at random. And reflect on the fact that although this book has been written from a human point of view, another book could have been written in parallel for any 10 million starting pilgrims. Not only is life on this plant amazing, and deeply satisfying, to all those whose senses have not become dulled by familiarity: the very fact that we have evolved the brain power to understand our evolutionary genesis redoubles the amazement and compounds the satisfaction."                August 15, 2011   Fascinating zoology but plenty of flotsam. "The Beaver's Tale" "The Duckbill's Tale" and "The Axolotl's Tale" are outstanding examples of modern naturalism. The classical genetics is adequate but the molecular data is explained minimally and not compelling. More details on the challenges and uncertainties inherent in genomic sequencing and cross-species comparisons would have been helpful. When Dawkins is not discussing zoology the writing is overly verbose, and suffers the professor's conceit of assuming his readers are interested in his opinions on matters beyond his expertise which are infused with the type of absolutism he criticizes elsewhere in the book. The poor, strangely moralistic mathematics and tired political rants are best left for the faculty lounge or starry-eyed students. This is a good 600-page book that could be a great 300-page book with some vigorous editing.                  467 reviews104 followers     June 27, 2008   Fantastic! If I'd read this in high school I would definitely be a biologist by now.Often I agree with Dawkins' views on creationists, but usually he's an obnoxious ass about it. Thankfully, in this book he only disses them occasionally. For most of the book he sticks to his strengths, i.e., clear and exciting explanations of the beautiful yet structured diversity of the natural world.Lots of nifty thoughts about how evolution works and how mind-shatteringly cool life is. There's an interesting structure to the book, traveling backwards in time from today to the origin of life, and telling tales or lessons from each of our major ancestors along the way. It made me appreciate how much more there is to life than the small handful of mammals, fish, birds, and trees we usually think about.     science sixstars               337 reviews288 followers     December 22, 2016   Dawkins presents evolutionary biology in a Chaucerian format. As with the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales, each of Dawkins tales is about pilgrims on their way to a common destination, in this case the beginning of life. Each group of species marches back in time rendezvousing where they share their most recent common ancestor, what Dawkins calls a “Concester”. The first rendezvous is six million years ago (6 Ma) where we, our Homo and Australopithecine ancestors share a Concestor with the chimpanzees, bonobos and their ancestors. Dawkins describes 40 rendezvous such as the apes meet the monkeys at 25 Ma, the primates meet the rodents and rabbits at 75 Ma, the chordates meet the echinoderms at 550 Ma and ending with bacteria. Working backwards helps eliminate hindsight, assuming that a creature evolved in a certain way because in the future it would be important. Each tale not only describes some life form but some aspect of science associated with it. For example we learn how scientists use the fossil record and genetic techniques as evaluation tools. He shows how dates and evolutionary branches are derived from genetics using mitochondrial DNA, the Y chromosome and triangulation of DNA sequences. He explains how dates are determined using dendrochronology (tree rings), paleomagnetism, and radioactive decay. As we follow the path of evolution in reverse, we learn the science behind it. I read the updated 2016 version coauthored with Yan Wang. It reflects recent discoveries such as those of the Denisovans, whose story takes the place of the Neanderthals in the earlier version. Improvements in DNA extraction and sequencing enabled scientists in 2009 to derive the entire genome of a Denisovian from a 40,000 year old fingertip. There are many other revisions and corrections to the first edition published in 2006. In another update convergent replaces related development to explain the origin of many flightless birds such as the Dodo. Genetic studies now show they are descended from pigeons that became isolated on remote islands where they thrived growing big and losing their wings. Our understanding of the tree of life is always changing. Below are other samples of Dawkins’ discussions that caught my attention. Dawkins presents evolution as a flow of groups of individuals. Species arise when intermediate creatures become extinct. But as evolution occurs there are no distinct lines. A variety of archaic Homo sapiens blurred the dividing line between Homo erectus and modern Homo sapiens. Classification can be arbitrary and is often contested. New genes work their way through the group and if the group is isolated from other groups eventually it becomes distinct. This all takes time. If closely related groups come in contact with each other there is hybridization. Modern humans apparently interbred with Neanderthals 45000 years ago even though the two lines had separated 500,000 years before that. Similarly modern humans interbred with Denisovans.  Dawkins offers perspective citing the ring species. He points to California salamanders in mountains that form a circle around the Central Valley. At the southern end two distinct populations won’t interbreed, but each population interbreeds with its neighbors in the other direction. This interbreeding continues uninterrupted all around the mountains coming back to the neighbors that won’t interbreed. There is an unbroken chain between the two. Are they separate species? Similarly gulls that won’t interbreed in Britain interbreed with their neighbors to the east and west forming a continuous chain around the world ending with each other. Like the salamanders, the gulls are connected to each other through the unbroken chain until at the ends the differences seem to have become too great. Dawkins uses the ring species as an example of what happens with all species through time. There is a similar uninterrupted chain from us to our australopithecine ancestors and to the beginning of life. Only the demise of intermediaries lets us define species.  Was the most recent common ancestor, Concester, of humans and chimpanzees bipedal? Some scientists believe this is the case. The chimpanzee may have reverted to knuckle walking. What drove bipedalism in the first place? Ability to see over tall grass, ability to carry food back to a mate, ability to squat feed for long periods when snails and worms were more abundant than fruit, or as Dawkins thinks, sexual selection? Even back then females may have liked their mates to stand tall. They and/or their males may also have preferred less body hair. No other ape lost its hair so sexual selection as opposed to natural selection seems reasonable. In most animals females select their mates, but Darwin thought that men selected women for less body hair. Whichever way, both sexes would be affected. A mate with a bigger brain may also have curried favor. Dawson educates us on plate tectonics and its evolutionary effects. The formation and breakup of Pangea into Laurasia and Gondwana had significant implications for the diversity of life. Subsequent breakups isolating Madagascar and Australia explain their unique animals. We get the Platypus Tale. Is the platypus primitive? It had as much time to evolve as we have. It lays eggs and has a bill but what a bill – supersensitive to movement and electric field disturbances. What other mammal can locate its prey without listening, seeing or touching it? Dawkins explores the nerve connections between bill and brain and speculates that the platypus visualizes the feedback from its bill just as we do the feedback from our eyes. Dawkins’ tale of the sea squirt shows the tongue and cheek that is sprinkled through his writing. This amazing creature starts out with a notochord and nervous system making it a chordate, a member of our phylum. It looks like a tadpole as a juvenile swimming around then in its adult stage, it lands head first on a rock and permanently attaches itself. It digests its nerve system, notochord and other parts and turns into a big bag that filters the plankton from seawater. Dawkins digresses ”A second Aldous Huxley might project fictional human longevity to the point where some super-Methuselah finally settles down on his head and metamorphoses into a giant sea squirt, fastened permanently to the sofa in front of a television.” Perhaps today we should substitute tablet or phone for TV. In either case, once settled, Dawkins notes that it “eats its brain, like an associate professor getting tenure.”  We are entertained by the stories of many other bizarre creatures, behaviors and relationships. Who would, aside from a zoologist, think of the echinoderm (starfish, sea cucumber, etc.) as sharing the most recent common ancestor we have with another phylum? The starfish’s radial design means it has no front or back, left or right. It may lead with any of its five legs. Its nerve cord forms a circle. Its anus is on top and mouth on bottom. Yet the molecular biologists say its genes show it evolved from a bilateral animal just like us. What about the bdelloid rotifers? All of these tiny aquatic animals are female. There is no need for males, no shared gene pool. Each rotifer reproduces a new organism with two sets of chromosomes as do animals that reproduce sexually. Thus over the millennia as mutations accumulate the genes will become even more diverse than those in a shared pool. Millions of years of asexual reproduction have resulted in more than 450 species of these unique creatures. Then there are the animals that keep their males in place – literally. Some trigger fish females carry their diminutive males on their sides for use when and as needed. Some scale insect females carry their males as mere specs on their legs. Dawkins explores the beginning of life. He looks at RNA World theory which holds that life started with RNA as both a replicator and an enzyme, in essence a self-replicating catalyst. He points to experiments that show segments of RNA taken from viruses can replicate and evolve in water. He discusses the idea of life forming in rocks, going even further afield than theories about life starting around hydrothermal vents. He point out that cracks in rocks are teeming with bacteria that live off of chemical processes without benefit of the sun.  Finally he ponders the different ways life could have evolved. If we went back to the beginning and started all over again what would life be like today? What aspects have been convergent and which contingent. Many features evolved more than once, for example eyes, echolocation, and flight. Others such as our big brains and use of language evolved only once. Perhaps most significant is the incorporation of bacteria into archaea forming mitochondria which made life for us eukaryotes possible. Nick Lane argues in his book Power, Sex, Suicide that this event would be unlikely to ever be repeated.  The Ancestor’s Tale is a tour de force, a comprehensive view of evolutionary biology full of fascinating details about diverse life forms. It is packed with the latest scientific theories. Above all it demonstrates the interconnectedness of all life. This clearly is heartfelt by Dawkins. His awe and enthusiasm for his subject is infectious. Reading it was an experience. After 700 pages, I was sorry it was over. For those with a serious interest I can’t recommend it highly enough.     biology               Author  4 books105 followers     March 5, 2011   While I read different genres, I only review books with a religious content. So, if I may be excused for one of my “liberal Christian rants,” let me say this: It’s a sad day when a book about evolution earns a spot on the shelves of a religion blog. It simply astounds me that half of all Americans still do not believe in evolution. The evidence is so overwhelmingly against a young earth that if Christianity is going to survive, it must pull its head out of the sand and reinterpret the Bible’s creation story (anything but a literal interpretation!) before it alienates the coming generation, who will simply know better.This book will help. I’m not a fan of Dawkins’ anti-religion tirades, but when he sticks to his evolutionary biology, his writing is a pure delight. It’s insightful, highly intelligent, and witty. The subtitle of the book is A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, and it’s a long journey backward in time from present-day humans to the beginnings of life four million years ago. You’ll meet Cro-Magnon man, the Neanderthals, chimpanzees and gorillas, monkeys, rodents and rabbits, reptiles, sharks, flatworms, sponges, fungi, plants, and far more, each with their own unique role and story to tell. Scientific understanding is, and ever will be, in a state of transition. As we learn, we shape our theories to fit the facts. It’s an exploration that never ends, an exciting quest for truth that Dawkins excels in sharing. He stops often along this journey back in time to introduce interesting life forms and their evolutionary sidebars, evoking wonder and appreciation for the real creation story that far exceeds any ancient tales. It’s such a treat that I’m almost envious of long-time creationists who can, by opening their minds and turning the cover of this book, open themselves up to a new world of wonder. You will see the world in a different way after reading this.                   Author  6 books2,015 followers     April 14, 2020   What an interesting way to look at evolution, from the present back into the past in the format of &amp; a homage to Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. He chose 40 major stops along the journey &amp; told some great tales. Thankfully, these were usually from his perspective so there wasn't any foolishness, but he was entertaining.I found the backward format a really good way of cementing various relationships into my mind better. There was a lot of new (to me) &amp; fascinating material about how evolution works. He came up with great examples &amp; occasionally wandered into other interesting areas such as human races.  “Natural selection is a beguiling counterfeiter of deliberate purpose.”   “Evolution, or its driving engine natural selection, has no foresight. In every generation within every species, the individuals best equipped to survive and reproduce contribute more than their fair share of genes to the next generation. The consequence, blind as it is, is the nearest approach to foresight that nature permits."   I've read several other books on evolution by Dawkins, so there was some repetition, but he cut down on much of that himself by referencing where he originally went into detail. As an audiobook read by him &amp; Ward, it was fantastic, as always. Highly recommended.     1audio 2non-fiction science               130 reviews9 followers     December 22, 2019   Richard Dawkins' "the ancestor's tale" is the story of all life on Earth told in reverse order. It starts from us "moderns" and goes back to our closer cousins, all the way back to the common ancestor of all life on Earth. Dawkins uses the word "concestor" to refer to a common ancestor. It's a fascinating tale. Even though I had to go through nearly 800 pages, I wasn't bored in one single moment. There were times, of course, when it got a little more technical, but all in all I learned so much since a wealth of information is presented in each chapter. We are all African apes. Chimpanzees are our closest cousins and we share roughly 98 percent of our genes with them. You learn that natural selection grants no possibility of foresight. In other words, evolution does not plan ahead. To Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin, co-discoverers of natural selection, the geographical aspect of natural history gave away the fact of evolution. If species were created independently, why should a Creator choose to put 50 species of lemur on Madagascar, but nowhere else? Why should the Galapagos host a set of finches so different from species on other oceanic islands, but strikingly similar both to each other and to birds on the nearest mainland? For Darwin, peahens choose peacocks simply because, in their eyes, they are pretty (sexual selection). For Alfred Wallace, there's something more than the outward appearance. The bright feathers are a token of their underlying health and fitness. In the fruit fly tale, we learn about DNA mechanism. Textbooks of biology are wrong when they describe DNA as a blueprint. Embryos do nothing remotely like following a blueprint. DNA is not a description in any language, of what the finished body should look like. On this planet, embryos follow recipes. Creationists foolishly liken darwinian natural selection to a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and having the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. They are wrong, of course, for they completely miss the gradual, cumulative nature of natural selection.    science               272 reviews120 followers     September 6, 2007   After finishing The Selfish Gene, I rushed out to the store to buy another of Dawkins' books. While the size of this tome was quite intimidating, I found the premise utterly fascinating. The narrative traces humans' evolutionary ancestry, from primates to "concestor zero," or the beginning of life on Earth.Dawkins' knowledge of zoology shines as he gives examples of the fascinating animals that share some of our genes. Readers will undoubtedly learn about plants and animals they had never heard of before, from Australian marsupials to the strange creatures that inhabit Madagascar. The book reads like a novel, and after finishing it I feel more connected, not just to my own species, but to all the creatures around me that share in this crazy thing called life.     knowledge-is-good               Author  1 book38 followers     October 14, 2022   It’s something I’d wondered myself in the past: not how we see colours, not the biological technicalities of colour vision, but what they’re for, why we see in colour at all. And after reading one particular essay in this extraordinary book, then mulling it over while out being taken for a walk by my dog, I suddenly saw the answer to that. It wasn’t exactly what the essay was about; that was more to do with the ways in which very different animals sense the world around them (the star-nosed mole, the bat, the platypus, or us humans) but I got even more out of it than the author had put in. It had already crossed my mind years before that, with her almost unbelievably sensitive nose, I’m betting my dog doesn’t just smell the world in colour, but in full on, in-your-face, technicolour—and now, if that’s so, I also understood why. And all that from a single short essay among dozens, a three-page sliver tucked away among a humongous seven hundred.   The book itself isn’t easy to characterise in a short review. It’s patterned after Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and just as that was a series of reflections on life, so is this; but while, for Chaucer, that meant human life, in The Ancestor’s Tale it’s all of life on Earth, everything else that lives here too. The “stories” are actually essays about the whole business of being a tiny living part of this planet.   Perhaps some will be put off by the author’s name, which would be a pity. Dawkins is used as a human punch-bag by an impressive variety of people, on which to vent their own shortcomings, frustrations and bile; but you get a truer picture here: more likeable than the rabble would have you believe, as clear-headed and meticulous a guide as you could ask for to lead an odyssey across several billion years—and even has a sense of humour (although the publishers should have handed out free gas-masks ahead of the paddlefish-up-a-creek joke!).   An exceptional book.     birds-in-cages-is-wrong labcoats-and-telescopes               Author  1 book11 followers     June 11, 2018   Dawkins was the author who made me realize how fascinating evolutionary biology is. I had read a few of his books before I started this one, but they were all around 300 to 400 pages. This one is 614 pages. It goes back in time, starting in the present moment until we finally reach the dawn of evolution. What an interesting way to write a book! It tells the stories of many species and the common ancestors that we share with them. As the book progresses, our cousins get more and more distant. Eve's Tale explains how the Y chromosome was passed down from mother to daughter through all generations and can be traced back to a hypothetical “Eve.” The Peacock's Tale explains how male peacocks evolved colorful, flashy looking feathers to attract a mate. The Dodo's Tale is a sad story about extinction. Dodos never had to deal with predators, so they never evolved any ways of escaping from them. When humans arrived on their island, they were so slow and easy to kill that they went extinct in a short period of time. There are many more stories like these in the book. The ending of the book is well written and comes around full circle in a cool way. If you've never read anything by Dawkins, I would recommend The Selfish Gene or River Out of Eden. But if you have already read a few of his books, this is a good one that goes a little more in depth.    2000s-early science               770 reviews279 followers     January 14, 2016   “My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world.”That's Dawkins at the end of this marvelous achievement. A completely fascinating scientific version of Genesis. Infinitely more interesting than the Bible's account of the beginnings of life on earth. This is a story that all intelligent people should know something about. It is the greatest story imaginable for all who inhabit this planet. If you are ignorant of this story—especially if willfully so—you are doing great harm to your development as a thinking adult.      crime-gangsters politics religion               383 reviews139 followers     October 13, 2015   Richard Dawkins has done an astounding job producing this book. If it were not for his other great works, The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene, The Ancestor's Tale would be his best work in evolutionary science. It matters not one bit that it's a summary and synthesis of others' primary work: great scientists have always been able to look out across their field of expertise and write a defining work of value for both scientists and the educated public.My only, slight, quibble with the book is that in the decade since it was published there has been significant change in many parts of the "tree of life." More species have been discovered, more fossils found. Most importantly, molecular analysis across species of shared genetic haplotypes and DNA from mitochondria has unleashed a tidal wave of new information allowing a more precise determination of our common ancestors, especially the most distant. Dawkins used the earlier results of this same research when writing this book in 2003, but he notes in the book itself that it would have to be revised soon with new information. That, of course, is the way of science and what makes it exciting. Thus, I'm happy to find that the second, updated, edition will be published in early 2016 (see here: The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life) with the latest scientific developments and additional evolution-relevant species "tales." I hope that one of these is "told" by a member of the fascinating Fungi—one of the three great multicellular kingdoms—with which we share an unidentified common ancestor roughly 1.1 billion years ago. The original edition naturally includes this rendezvous along with background information, but omits the tale. Should you wait for the new edition? No, unless your a critic of fine detail. The deep time and awesome diversity of evolution will not change. Our place as a species relative to the rest of life will not shift. And Dawkins' inspiring prose will remain.     first-american-edition nonfiction science               4,138 reviews1,003 followers     August 23, 2009   I love this book. It's not the kind of thing I usually read, because I prefer fiction to non-fiction by far, at least when I have a choice about it. And I really, really loathe Dawkins' The God Delusion, largely because of the tone he takes toward people who are religious believers. But The Ancestor's Tale is mostly just science, and it's written in an accessible, almost conversational way. It actually has literary ancestors (ha), in the form of The Canterbury Tales, which Dawkins chose as his format to tell the tale of a pilgrimage through history to find our ancestors. He does slip in some references to his own beliefs, but here they aren't too offensive or intrusive.When I say 'accessible', I don't mean 'dumbed down'. The science and maths and the theory and the sheer detail is here. I read a couple of reviews that people found it boring once it got to a certain point because there's 'too much detail' about things like bacteria. Which I think is more of a 'your mileage may vary' attitude than anything -- I think Dawkins gave the space to the bacteria that they deserve, all things considered. There's a lot of speculation in here, too -- but so much of science is speculation. Dawkins is fairly clear about when he can and can't 'prove' things, and explains the methods by which they can be proved if they can. You don't have to have a huge knowledge of science or maths to understand -- some, and an interest in it, I suppose, but not so very very much.     non-fiction science-fact               592 reviews38 followers     June 27, 2018   Not recommended for those with a passing interest in evolution...this is heavy into the math and science realms. This is an extremely in depth, hefty tome as seen from the point of view of homo sapiens travelling backwards in time to the dawn of life. Dawkins tale is modeled after Canterbury Tales, and is about pilgrims on their way to a common destination, in this case the beginning of life. Each group of species marches back in time rendezvousing where they share their most recent common ancestor, what Dawkins calls a “Concester”. The first rendezvous is six million years ago (6 Ma) where we, our Homo and Australopithecine ancestors share a Concestor with the chimpanzees, bonobos and their ancestors. There are so many thought-provoking concepts in this book, but this is a challenging book to read, not only because it is so long, but because of the many complex concepts that are described. But the entire book is fascinating. With each species rendezvous, a fractal diagram portrays the branching, along with dates and contour lines; what a fabulous visual portrayal of the concept of evolution! I am continually amazed the genius of Dawkins...this book is so comprehensive, it is daunting just thinking about it, let alone researching and writing it!    anthropology best-historical-non-fiction history               512 reviews50 followers     October 26, 2020   Ένα απολαυστικό ταξίδι στο χρόνο, προς τα πίσω αυτή τη φορά, από το Homo sapiens sapiens στις απαρχές της ζωής και τα πρώτα προκαρυωτικά κύτταρα με οδηγό τον αγαπημένο μας εξελικτικό βιολόγο Richard Dawkins. Πάντα εκτιμούσα τους ανθρώπους που μεταλαμπαδεύουν με τόσο πάθος την αγάπη τους για την επιστήμη και το βιβλίο αυτό δεν αποτελεί εξαίρεση.Αν έπρεπε οπωσδήποτε να βρω κάτι αρνητικό, θα στεκόμουν στο μέγεθός του. Δεν ξέρω αν ο συγγραφέας θα μπορούσε να με εμπεριέξει σ' αυτή την εμπειρία αν δεν με ενδιέφερε ήδη το αντικείμενο, ωστόσο δεν παύει να είναι ένα εξαιρετικά καλογραμμένο και ευανάγνωστο έργο.     british-lit nonfiction science               150 reviews57 followers     May 15, 2020   Richard Dawkins does a wonderful job at leading the reader on a grand pilgrimage throughout the eons, introducing you to our great evolutionary ancestors. He starts the journey working backwards, beginning with Homo Sapiens and then the earliest bipedal apes like Homo Habilis, then ending with the earliest replicating life, the one that would've started it all billions of years ago. Unfortunately, it didn't leave any fossils behind (soft-body creatures tend not to sadly but it has happened at a site in China) but if we work the molecular clock backwards we can deduce that somewhere in the 'primordial soup' a molecule began to copy itself, and it was really good at it.As we meet the different pilgrims Dawkins explains how evolution shaped life in the most exciting and unusual ways. Some creatures on our planet function in the most ridiculous ways. I don't wish to spoil these parts but it is awe-inspiring for sure. This was a fun and truly educating read for me. I learned so much about the different kinds of life that inhabit our planet. Human beings are just one tiny branch in the grand tree of life. We have only been here for a second in geological time, a drop in the bucket. The Ancestor's Tale is a humbling experience.     biology dawkins evolution               Author  16 books39 followers     March 31, 2007   I've been a fan of Dawkins for a while solely based on interviews, but this is the first of his books I've actually read. It works its way backwards through the evolutionary tree, detailing how all living things are related - how a stranger on the street, your dog, your house plant, bacteria and you are all distant cousins. It's a fascinating read, technical enough if you're interested, but not so much so that it's threatening to the non-science minded. It's broken into various "tales" - "The Howler Monkey's Tale", "The Hippo's Tale", "The Blind Cave Fish's Tale" - a la Chaucer - which makes the size of the book a bit less daunting. Best of all, it's excellent ammunition for the next time you find yourself in a debate with someone arguing for "intelligent design."    non-fiction science-and-math           August 11, 2007   This is my favorite book in the whole world. Someday it may be eclipsed by something else but for now it's this. What I love most about this book is the number of times I found myself thinking, "Wow, I had no idea". It makes perfect sense when you think it out, but the entire premise of the book, that every living thing on earth, from human being to plant to bacteria, shares a common ancestor, that actually existed at a point sufficiently far enough in the past. The book consists of a "pilgrimage" to that ancestor modeled loosely after "The Canterbury Tales".                   189 reviews46 followers     September 25, 2007   The Ancestor's Tale is an incredible find! With a form based loosely on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins marches back in time to each of humankind's ancestors. Witty, brilliant and engaging, you will learn a great deal about evolutionary biology, and a million fun and intriguing facts. Whether you agree to disagree with the facts establishing evolution as a law of science, this book is worth your time. Plus, it is so dense and rich, you will feel proud to put it on your shelf after you have finished it!!     scienceisgreatifitsnotyourjob               19 reviews2 followers     February 22, 2009   I'm not a scientist, but I have an insatiable curiousity about all things scientific. I should say I am still reading this book - stated two years ago. It has been a real challenge to follow the information presented simply because there is SOOOOOOO much of it. However, I am determined to fihish it someday. Biggest challenge for me is retaining and relating all the information. It is still a fascinating book though admittedly sometimes very hard for mw to stay awake through some of the technical stuff. I really want to read it and understand it all but not sure my brain can handle it all!!                  574 reviews255 followers     December 20, 2010   This book is a sort of Canterbury Tales for evolutionary biology.It follows our ancestors back to the root as they merge with other branches on the tree of life.For those who know programming, this sums it up succinctly:for(Species i = humans; i.parent != null; i = i.parent) { print(i.anecdotes[rand() % i.anecdotes.length]);}Dawkins is awesome. Yep.    biology non-fiction               Author  3 books255 followers     October 13, 2014   Ричард Докинс пише интересни неща за еволюцията, като тоя път е решил да проследи генеалогията на човечеството, но в обратна посока - като слиза надолу стъпка по стъпка и ни среща с нашите предци, докато стигне до създаването на първия живот.Като цяло не лошо и много информативно упражнение, но крайният му смисъл ми се губи.
The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolut…
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17977.The_Ancestor_s_Tale
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11256979-the-magic-of-reality
The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
2011-01-01
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 The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

 Richard Dawkins , Dave McKean ( Illustrator)

 4.05
 26,086 ratings 1,974 reviews
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 Goodreads Choice Award
 Nominee for Best Nonfiction (2011)
 Magic takes many forms. Supernatural magic is what our ancestors used in order to explain the world before they developed the scientific method. The ancient Egyptians explained the night by suggesting the goddess Nut swallowed the sun. The Vikings believed a rainbow was the gods’ bridge to earth. The Japanese used to explain earthquakes by conjuring a gigantic catfish that carried the world on its back—earthquakes occurred each time it flipped its tail. These are magical, extraordinary tales. But there is another kind of magic, and it lies in the exhilaration of discovering the real answers to these questions. It is the magic of reality—science.

 Packed with clever thought experiments, dazzling illustrations and jaw-dropping facts, The Magic of Reality explains a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena. What is stuff made of? How old is the universe? Why do the continents look like disconnected pieces of a puzzle? What causes tsunamis? Why are there so many kinds of plants and animals? Who was the first man, or woman? This is a page-turning, graphic detective story that not only mines all the sciences for its clues but primes the reader to think like a scientist as well.

 Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous evolutionary biologist and one of science education’s most passionate advocates, has spent his career elucidating the wonders of science for adult readers. But now, in a dramatic departure, he has teamed up with acclaimed artist Dave McKean and used his unrivaled explanatory powers to share the magic of science with readers of all ages. This is a treasure trove for anyone who has ever wondered how the world works. Dawkins and McKean have created an illustrated guide to the secrets of our world—and the universe beyond—that will entertain and inform for years to come.
 Genres Science Nonfiction Philosophy Religion Biology Atheism Evolution
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 271 pages, Hardcover

 First published January 1, 2011

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 Richard Dawkins

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 Ahmad Sharabiani
 9,564 reviews 111 followers
 September 9, 2021
 ‭The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True, Richard Dawkins

 The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True is a 2011 book by the British biologist Richard Dawkins, with illustrations by Dave McKean. The book was released on 15 September 2011 in the United Kingdom, and on 4 October 2011 in the United States.

 It is a graphic science book aimed primarily at children and young adults. Dawkins has stated that the book is intended for those aged around 12 years and upwards, and that when trialling the book prior to publishing, younger readers were able to understand its content with additional adult assistance.

 تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هجدهم ماه فوریه سال 2017میلادی

 عنوان: جادوی واقعیت، چطور میدانیم چه چیزی واقعا درست است؟؛ نویسنده: ریچارد داوکینز (داکینز)؛ تصویرگر: دیو مک‌کین؛ ترجمه و تنظیم: مینا خبوشانی، ویراستار: آرش حسینیان؛ ناشر: اینترنتی، 1392؛ موضوع ناداستانها از نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده 21م

 فهرست کتاب: یک: «واقعیت چیست؟»؛ دو: «اولین انسان چه کسی بود؟»؛ سه: «تنوع گونه‌ های جانوری به چه دلیل است؟»؛ چهار: «چیزها از چه ساخته شده‌ اند؟»؛ پنج: «چرا شب و روز، تابستان و زمستان داریم؟»؛ شش: «خورشید چیست؟»؛ هفت: «رنگین کمان چیست؟»؛ هشت: «چیزها چه زمانی و چگونه آغاز شدند؟»؛ نه: «آیا ما تنها هستیم؟»؛ ده: «زلزله چیست؟»؛ یازده: «چرا چیزهای بد اتفاق می‌افتند؟»؛ دوازده: «معجزه چیست»؛

 برخلاف کتابهای «ساعت‌ساز نابینا»؛ و «ژن خودخواه»؛ که برای خوانشگرانِ نسبتا سطح بالا نگاشته شده، این‌بار قلم «ریچارد داکینز(داوکینز)» دارای زبانی ساده است و گویا، همگان آن را میفهمند؛ ایشان اینبار تلاش می‌کنند، تا شگفتی‌های علم را بازگشایی کنند؛ «ریچارد داوکینز»، نامدارترین زیست‌ شناس تکاملی، با همکاری «دیو مک‌کین» هنرمند برجسته ی طراحی، با به‌ کارگیری نوشتار، و تصاویر گرافیکی، یکی از زیباترین و خواناترین کتاب‌های علمی عمومی را، گردآوری کرده‌ اند؛ کتاب «جادوی واقعیت»، پاسخهایی ساده به پرسش‌هایی دشوار است؛ در این کتاب، «داوکینز» کوشش می‌کنند، با ترکیب عقلانیت و شواهد موجود، پاسخی درست به پرسشها ارائه دهند؛ مسائلی که «داوکینز» طرح می‌کنند، هم برای بزرگسالان جالب است و هم مورد علاقه ی نوجوانان است؛

 در بخش نخستین: انسان چه کسی بود، نویسنده که خود از طرفداران فرگشت است، با بیانی ساده و جذاب نحوه ی فرگشت (تکامل) را شرح می‌دهند؛ یا در بخش: «خورشید چیست»، از داستان اسطوره‌ ها آغاز می‌کنند، و نهایتا به این می‌رسند که خورشید نه یک خدا، که یک ستاره است! نکته کتاب اینجاست، که تنها به علم زیست‌ شناسی (تخصص خود داوکینز) و فرگشت محدود نمی‌شود؛ از فیزیک تا نجوم بحث می‌شوند؛ به‌ نوعی می‌توان گفت «ریچارد داوکینز» کوشش دارند در «جادوی واقعیت»، باورهای خرافی را از منطق علمی پاک کنند

 تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 24/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 17/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
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 BookHunter M ُH َM َD
 1,523 reviews 3,837 followers
 May 26, 2023



 لا تقرأ لهذا الرجل فهو ملحد
 و هل أقرأ له شروح فقهية أو سيرة نبوية؟ ! إنما هو العلم الذى يملكه بنو البشر بغض النظر عن الدين و الجنس و النوع و العرق.
 و لكنه يبث إلحاده بين السطور و ينفى دائما وجود الإله بل و يسخر في هذا الكتاب تحديدا من المعجزات النبوية سواء التوراتية أو غيرها.
 يا عزيزى ليكن في علمك ان العلماء ما بين ملحد إلحاد صريح أو ربوبى يؤمن بوجود إله لا يتدخل في شئون العالم أبدا أو متشكك لا ينفى و لا يثبت وجود الله و قليلا ما تجد منهم المؤمن ناهيك عن الموحد فإن كنت مؤمنا حقا فلن يضيرك شيئا من ذلك بإذن الله.

 الكتاب يعتبر في محو الأمية العلمية و هو مقدمة علمية لمجموعة من المواضيع المتنوعة التي يمكن البناء عليها بعد ذلك بقراءة كتب كاملة عن أي موضوع يستهويك.

 تربط الأسطورة بين جميع المواضيع فهو يبدأ كل فصل بالأساطير الشائعة عنه سواء كانت أساطير شعبية أو قصص دينى يتنافى مع المنطق العلمى ثم يشرح السبب العلمى بإسلوب سهل جدا و ظريف بدون تعقيد.

 الأسئلة الوجودية التى تتبادر إلى أذهان الجميع عن الفرق بين العلم و الخرافة. من هو أول البشر و كيف يحدث الليل و النهار. ما هى الجاذبية و الوزن. مم تتكون الأشياء و لماذا يوجد هذا العدد الهائل من الكاىنات. عن الشمس و الزلازل و قوس قزح و كيف بدأ كل شىء و لماذا تحدث أشياء ضارة و ما المعجزة

 ربما كان الكتاب يحتاج لبعض الصور التوضيحية بدلا من اللجوء للإنترنت كثيرا للبحث في نقاط معينة جاء شرحها مبهما.

 الفكرة الأساسية للكتاب هي ان الواقع اشد سحرا مما نظن و لكنه سحر واقعى و علمى و يمكن فهم الكثير منه و نحن على الطريق للمزيد من الفهم و الوعى بأنفسنا و بالعالم من حولنا
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 Ahmad Ebaid
 285 reviews 2,122 followers
 December 15, 2023


 عندما كنت (أي ريتشارد دوكنز) في عمر الثماني سنوات, انتقلت أسرتي للإقامة لفترة قصيرة في منزل يُطلق عليه اسم "كوكوز", يبلغ عمره نحو 400 سنة, بدعامات سوداء من الطراز المعماري التيودوري, ولم يكن مثيراً للدهشة, أن أسطورة اختصت بالمنزل حول كاهن توفي منذ زمن بعيد مخفي في ممر سري. وكانت تروّج قصة بأنك تستطيع سماع وقع أقدامه على درجات السلم, مع التواء؛ لأن السلم في أيام الشبح كان يحتوي على درجة زائدة.
 وأتذكر السعادة التي كانت تغمرني وأنا أنقل القصة لأصدقاء المدرسة التي كنت بها. ولم يخطر ببالي قط أن أتساءل عن مدى صحة الدلائل. فقد كان كافياً أن المنزل قديم وأن أصدقائي كانوا في حالة انبهار.

 ولقد أوضح علماء نفس الأطفال, أن الأطفال بالغي الصغر حين يسألون عن سبب أن نوعاً معينا من الصخور مدبب الرأس يستبعدون الأسباب العلمية كتفسير ويفضلون الجواب: "كي تتمكن الحيوانات من استخدامها في حك جلودها", ويبدوا أن هناك عدد من البالغين مازالوا لا يمكنهم التخلص من أنواع مماثلة للتفسير عندما نصل إلى نكبات كالزلازل, أو إلى حسن الحظ كما يحدث للمحظوظين الهاربين من الزلازل. فالزلازل والبراكين والأمراض مازال يعزوها بعض الناس إلى الآلهة الغاضبة.

 والمعجزات, السحر, والأساطير باستطاعتها أن تبعث على التسلية. لكن الحقيقة تنطوي على سحر خاص بها. إن الحقيقة أكثر سحراً من أي أسطورة أو لغز مصنوع أو معجزة. للعلم سحره النابع منه: إنه سحر الواقع.

 وأريد أن أبين لك أن العالم الحقيقي, طبقاً للفهم العلمي, يمتلك سحراً نابعاً من داخله. سحر شاعري, شيء ما يمنحنا قشعريرة, شيء ما يجعلنا نشعر أننا أحياء على نحو أكثر عمقاً.
 انه الجمال الملهم الذي كله سحر متزايد نظراً لأنه سحر حقيقي ونستطيع أن نفهم كيفية عمله, فبجانب الجمال والسحر الحقيقيين للعالم الواقعي, إن التعاويذ الخارقة والخدع المؤدّاة في العروض تبدو رخيصة ومبتذلة. إنه ليس من الخوارق أو الخدع, إنه مدهش, مدهش وحقيقي. مدهش لأنه حقيقي.

 ولهذا فالكتاب مقسّم لفصول عن أكثر الظواهر التي يساء تعليل أسبابها. وقبل شرح الأسباب العلمية, يوجد سرد للأساطير التي تفسّر هذه الظواهر لتستطيع المقارنة بنفسك.
 وهناك فصل لا يسبقه أساطير. ذاك الذي يتحدّث عن الذرات, فأسلافنا قبل اختراع الميكروسكوب لم يكن بإمكانهم ملاحظتها, لهذا لا أساطير عنها. عكس الأساطير اليابانية عن الزلازل, فهي عديدة كالزلازل هناك.

 والختام لفصل عن المعجزات والكيفية الأمثل للتعامل معها كما تعامل معها الاسكتلندي "ديفيد هيوم". وهناك مليون شيء يمكن لنا أن نتخيله لكنه بعيد الاحتمال عن الواقع: الجنيات والعفاريت, الجان والحيوانات الخرافية, وإن السبب الوحيد المناسب للاعتقاد في وجود شيء ما ما؛ هو الأدلة الحقيقية عليه.


 ****
 فكرّت في إنقاص نجمة من تقييم الكتاب لأنه أقرب لكتاب مبسط للغاية, حتى أنه يمكن أن يفهمه الأطفال, كما أني لدي معلومات تغطي أجزاء كبيرة من الكتاب, ولكن بدا لي من السخف أن أعاقب الكتاب لأنه لم يحتوِ على شيء ليس من المفترض أن يحتويه ولم يعدني أحد بأن أجده. الكتاب كان لغرض, وهو تبسيط لسحر الواقع, وقد أدى غرضه على أكمل وجه.


 ***
 الترجمة ممتازة؛ نقلت أسلوب ريتشارد دوكنز المميز وكأنني أسمعه في وثائقي لا أقرأ حروف قلمه.
 **
 المحتويات:


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 تحديث: للأسف لم أنتبه لوجود نسخة موضحه بالصور للكتاب إلا بعدما انتهيت من قراءة الترجمة العربية. كما أنه يوجد نسخة كاملة موضحه بالصور والفيديو وتجارب وألعاب كتطبيق للآيباد بحجم 766 ميجا وبسعر خمسة يورو, أي أرخص قليلاً من النسخة الورقية للترجمة العربية, وفي نفس ثمن النسخة الالكترونية منها.
 وهذا هو موقع التطبيق http://www.magicofrealityapp.com/

 ويمكنك قراءة أول 10 صفح من الترجمة العربية مجانا من هنا ["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>
 أديان علوم
 102 likes
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 Brian Clegg
 Author 214 books 2,870 followers
 September 13, 2011
 A surprising number of scientists feel that Richard Dawkins does the public understanding of science real harm through his belligerent attacks on religion, which turn off a good half of his potential audience, but no one can doubt that he has a talent for getting science, particularly biology, across to a general readership. This is his first attempt at a children's book (or rather a 'family' book as it is aimed at a wider readership) and it has much to praise.

 The Magic of Reality is a solid feeling hardback, half way between an ordinary non-fiction book and a coffee table book in format. Every page is illustrated by Dave McKean, with a mix of full colour photographs and diagrams, and heavily stylised line drawings - these last were perhaps a little angular and abstract for the younger audience, but overall the illustration is a good balance of supporting the text without overwhelming the page.

 The approach that Dawkins takes is an excellent one, picking up on ten key questions of science - 'What is reality? Who was the first person? Why are there so many different kinds of animals? What are things made of? Why do we have night and day, winter and summer? What is the sun? What is a rainbow? When and how did everything begin? Are we alone? and What is an Earthquake?' Each of these starts with ancient mythical explanations (where there are any) then goes on to detail the way that science answers the questions, using the starting point of the basic question to explore many different aspects of science that can be sensibly linked to it.

 All this works superbly well. Although it seems slightly odd that biology comes before the more fundamental physics and cosmology chapters, the absolute gem of the book (as you might expect) is the way that Dawkins handles 'Who was the first person?' His use of a stack of photographs, stretching back into the past, one of each generation, is masterful, inventive and wonderfully eye-opening. I love the way he really pushes the paradox that every creature in every generation is the same species as the previous generation's photograph - yet over the millions of years we can see a progression from fish-like creature to modern human. If ever there was a single bit of writing that could totally wipe out anyone's objections to evolution it's this chapter. I loved it. It will really challenge the readers to think and will open their eyes.

 However, it's important not to let the brilliance of much of the book hide a couple of significant flaws. In terms of science content, the huge disappointment is that Dawkins doesn't mention much modern physics. Both quantum theory and relativity really don't get any coverage. Particle physics only gets a passing reference with a wimp-out about the author not really understanding quarks. This isn't good enough. Omitting quantum theory and relativity from physics is like missing evolution out of biology - it's that significant an omission.

 The other problem I have is with the final two chapters. Because there aren't 10 questions, there are 12. The remaining two are 'Why do bad things happen?' and 'What is a miracle.' The first of these isn't too bad as it handles chance, but both are primarily Dawkins returning to his bugbear of attacking religion. I don't think this has a place in a science book, and it certainly shouldn't be given two chapters. I think this will confuse and quite probably bore younger readers, as after all the other wonders, these two chapters are, frankly, lacking in scientific joy. There is also one very dubious part. Dawkins suggests that readers use a method of assessing miracles that boils down to 'How do they stand up to common sense?' The trouble with this approach is much of modern physics doesn't fit with what common sense predicts. For that matter, most probability runs counter to common sense. As Dawkins himself points out, common sense expects that after a row of throwing heads, a coin is more likely to throw tails - but common sense gets it wrong. It seems highly spurious to use common sense as a scientific tool, when you've just shown it fails magnificently.

 I still think this is a great book, and I suspect many young readers will simply not bother with the last couple of chapters. Covering all of science is tricky, but despite the failings in physics, the rest of the book is good enough to make this, without doubt, one of the best children's science books of 2011.

 (Review originally posted on www.popularscience.co.uk - reproduced with permission)
 78 likes
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 Bradley
 Author 4 books 4,390 followers
 March 30, 2017
 To be sure, I need to be clear as to WHY I like this book. It's not like any of the science or reasoning in it is new or unusual, or that I haven't heard many similar reasonings here or there all the way from high school physics courses all the way to certain and strange movies I've enjoyed.

 Why I do love this book is simple: it's clear, concise, and it does a very admirable job of setting up magical thinking in all its flavors against the fundamentals of science.

 It's a great primer. I think I would have loved reading this when I was 13 or 14. It might have even sparked my interest in science even more than I had been sparked... but that might not be possible. Science Fiction did a perfectly admirable job in that department, with Heinlein and Asimov as my tutors.

 Even so, apart from the things I've heard about of Dawkins, this is relatively mild in the religion bashing. He uses logic and reasoning, postulating clearly and setting up the universe as it is, not as we wish it would be. He also makes sure that Occam's Razor is quite sharp.

 I certainly have no complaints about this book, assuming I wanted a basic primer, of course.

 As for being an adult reading this? It's charming. It's somewhat magical in the sense that I draw a sense of wonder about the universe and our living within it. For that alone I would recommend it as a bit of light reading, assuming you're up to your science snuff. :)
 2017-shelf non-fiction science
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 Ahmed Ibrahim
 1,198 reviews 1,725 followers
 June 23, 2018
 يضع دوكنز إجابة مناسبة للسؤال الذي سمعته كثيرًا: ما فائدة القراءة في العلوم ومعرفة أشياء لن تفيدنا في مجرى حياتنا؟
 لا يقوم دوكنز بتخصيص الوقت للرد على هذا السؤال، لكن في حديثه عن الواقع وسحره نجد الإجابة الصالحة للرد.

 كلمة السحر يُراد بها غالبًا نوعين من الأحداث، الحدث الذي يعتمد على خفة اليد أو الخدع البصرية، أو الحدث الجمالي الذي يجعلنا نقف منه مشدوهين. المراد بالسحر هنا هو الحقيقة المذهلة التي تقف خلف تفسير الواقع ومعرفة دقائق الأمور الغامضة بإخضاع الأحداث للملاحظات العلمية الدقيقة.

 لا أتفق أن ما يقدمه العلم هو التفسير الصحيح مطلقًا، لكنه في الغالب هو التفسير الأكثر منطقية، وهذا يجعلنا مواجهة تفسير آخر بجوار التفسير الديني والتفسير الفلسفي.

 في هذا الكتاب يقوم دوكنز بعرض تاريخ مبسط للكثير من الأمور العلمية، طريقة عرض دوكنز جذابة، وفكرة تحدثه أولا عن الأساطير والتفسيرات الدينية قبل أن يتناول الموضوع بشكل علمي هي فكرة عظيمة.

 بعد أن ينتهي في الفصل الأول من تفسير معنى الواقع ومعنى السحر يبدأ بعدها في تناول الأمور من البداية، من كان الإنسان الأول؟ في هذا الفصل ومايليه: لماذا يوجد عدد بالغ الكثرة من الحيوانات المختلفة؟ يتحدث باختصار وتكثيف عن التطور وأصل الإنسان والأمور الذي مر بها لكي يصل إلى هذه المرحلة، وهكذا التحدث عن الحيوانات وفكرة تشارك الجينات التي تجعل من المستحيل أن تتشارك كل الحيوانات جيناتها، مع نظرة سريعة غير مخلة يعرض دوكنز لمحات سريعة من التطور الذي هو شاغله بوصفه عالم بيولوجيا.

 ثم يتدرج في تفسير الأمور بالتدريج الآتي حسب عنواين الفصول: مم تتكون الأشياء؟ لماذا الليل والنهار، الشتاء والصيف؟ ما الشمس؟ ما قوس قزح؟ متى وكيف بدأ كل شيء؟ هل نحن بمفردنا؟ ما الزلزال؟ لماذا تحدث أشياء ضارة؟ ما المعجزة؟.. يقع كل سؤال من هؤلاء في فصل حيث يستعرض دوكنز النظرات الأسطورية ثم يلحقها بالنظرات العلمية في تفسير هذه الظواهر، فيتنقل ما بين الذرة وما تتكون منه وصولًا للكواركات ومساهماتها في نشاة الكون، وفكرة وجود الليل والنهار والشتاء والصيف ووصف العمليات الكونية التي تفسر هذه الظاهرة، ثم يتوسع في النظر لمكونات الكون ومجراته ونجومه والحديث عن الشمس بصفة خاصة، ثم عرض نظرية نيوتن في تحليل الضوء إلى ألوانه الذي يتكون منها وهي ألوان قوس قزح، فيفسر ظاهرة قوس قزح وأهميتها في اكتشاف بعد النجوم عنها وحصائصها، ثم الأنفجار العظيم وتبعاته، وفكرة أن يكون هناك مخلوقات غيرنا في الكون ووجود هذه الاحتمالية وتحليل الشروط التي يجب أن تتوفر لأن يظن العلماء بأن علي هذا للكوكب حياة، ثم تفسير الزلازل والرجوع إلى أصلها النابع من باطن الأرض وما يحدث فيها من عمليات تفسر تكوين القارات وتباعدها على مدار ملايين السنين، وتناوله لفكرة وقوع الأشياء الضارة والعوامل السببية التي تجعل الناس يظنون في هذا، وفي النهاية يختتم بتناوله لفكرة المعجزة وتحليلها بشكل منطقي بالاعتماد علي نظرة هيوم للمعجزة وتحيليله لها.

 هذا الكتاب من أكثر الكتب إمتاعًا وسهولة في التناول، يتنقل فيه دوكنز ما بين الأحداث الكونية واضعًا تفسيرات العلم لهذه الظواهر مع تبسيطها وعرضها بطريقة خفيفة وجذابة.
 أعتقد أن هذا الكتاب هو أفضل وأسهل بداية لمن يريد أن ينظر نظرة سريعة للعلم وما يطرحه من تفسيرات.
 2018 علوم كتب-متنوعة
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 Caroline
 520 reviews 670 followers
 May 20, 2015
 I am still sizzling with delight over my latest Dawkins' read - having soaked up its information like a hungry sponge. It leaves the reader totally awed and dazzled with the world. I’m humming with it. The birds (plump with protons and neurons, atoms and molecules) are singing louder than ever in the garden, and that amazingly mysterious and wonderful star that we call the sun, (roaring away converting hydrogen to helium), shines even more brilliantly in the blue sky as we make a sedate path round it's circumference, twirling round and round on our axis at a giddy rate of 1000 miles per hour. Thank goodness for the stickiness of gravity, and Mother Earth's determination to keep us clasped to her bosom.

 Ahhhhh ...this book has made me so happy. At last, a book giving a fantastic overview of science that I can easily understand. I obviously have the science age of a 12 year old (the age group that everyone says the book is geared towards....)

 Something is wrong in my lauding of this book though. Dawkins wouldn’t like it. The term "Mother Earth" smacks of anthropomorphism, and he ain’t having any of it. In fact a good fifth of the book is dedicated to the recounting of various myths from around the world – including what he considers the Christian myth - and at the end of every segment on myths Dawkins goes on to show how science is better. Much much better than myth.

 In fact I mentioned I was reading this book to a neighbour, and he said “Yeah, Dawkins – that’s the guy who keeps banging on against God.” To have a scientist and communicator of the calibre of Dawkins referred to in those terms is I think terrible, but he has bought it upon himself. He just cannot live and let live.

 In fact I have changed my mind about what I said in the above paragraph... I have since read the Wikipedia article on Creationism (see the paragraphs headed "Creationism internationally").

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism

 Given the large number of people who support the idea of Creationism - it is very good that Dawkins is arguing against it..... But I still don't like a lot of his other criticisms and quips against religion.



 Taken from Richard Dawkins.net.

 Anyway, to get back to the science. This book is a.m.a.z.i.n.g. I learnt tons, and loved every minute of reading it. The chapters have headings which speak for themselves…and also illustrate well the age group Dawkins is appealing to.

 *Who was the first person?
 *Why are there so many different kinds of animals?
 *What are things made of?
 *Why do we have night and day, winter and summer?
 *What is the sun?
 *What is a rainbow?
 *When and how did everything begin?
 *Are we alone?
 *What is an earthquake?

 There isn’t one single diagram in the book. He does it all with words - but he is an incredibly brilliant writer, and it is utterly memorable and fascinating. Time and time again he wrote about things that I'd previously only half understood, and made them crystal clear. I feel hugely grateful to him. Highly recommended.
 5-star-books children science
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 Peiman E iran
 1,438 reviews 794 followers
 May 30, 2016
 اگر چندان اهل تماشایِ مستندهای گوناگون در رابطه با چگونگی شکل گیریِ جهانِ پیرامونِ خودتان نیستید... و بهتر میدانید که با خواندنِ کتاب پی به این رازِ بزرگ ببرید... دوستانِ گرانقدر، من این کتاب را برایِ شروع پیشنهاد میکنم... توضیحاتِ کامل و بی نقص همراه با تصاویرِ دیدنی

 البته همگی با چگونگیِ شکل گیریِ دنیا در قرآن و تورات و انجیل، آشنا شده ایم!!.. این کتاب را نیز بخوانید، بد نیست.. تفاوت هایِ جزیی با گ��ته هایِ پیامبران دارد.. به بزرگیِ خودتان ببخشید... مثلاً در این کتاب نگفته است که انسان از خاک و آب دهان درست شده و از سوراخِ بینی روح در بدنش دمیده اند... یک خورده فقط یکخورده علمی تر بیان شده... یا نگفته زن و همان حوا از دندۀ سمت چپِ آدم خلق شده است... یا عمر این دنیارا 6000 سال بیان نکرده.. میلیون ها سال میداند... البته پیامبران درست گفتناااااا... ولی باز تأکید میکنم شما به بزرگی خودتان جناب پروفسور <داوکینز> را ببخشید... کافری که صبح تا شب در حال محاربه با خدا باشد که انتظاری از وی نمیتوان داشت... پدر جان چیکار داری مردم را آگاه کنی؟ بگذارید بر باورهایِ خرافیِ خود پایبند ��اشند و در آرامشِ خیالی خود به سر ببرند... بگذارید فکر کنند یعقوب تا صبح با خدا کشتی گرفت و درخواست برکت کرد... یا موسی در صحرا می دوید و خدا دنبالش بود که چرا شومبولت را ختنه نکرده ای!!.... یا رسولِ بتِ الله اکبر، قدم بر چشم فرشتگان نهاد و سوار بر براق، آن یابویِ سفید بالدار، لطف کردند تا آسمان هفتم رفتند بالا و به صدرة المنتها رسیدند ( مهم نیست کجاست) ... آقای داوکینزِ کافر و بیسواد... تو نمیدانی فرشته ها قطراتِ باران را به روی دوش میگیرند و می آورند به پایین؟ آمدی و در مورد هیدرولوژی و چرخۀ حیات توضیح میدهی؟ برای شما متأسفم پروفسور... به شما هم میگویند دانشمند؟ دانشمند یعنی جعفر صادق، که هنوز هم نمیدانیم از کجا سواد خواندن و نوشتن در آن انزوا و گوشه نشینی آموخت و چه کتابِ مهمی برایِ انسانها بر جای گذاشت و به غیر از چپاولِ پول مردمِ بیچاره و دعا کردن آنها برایِ آنکه به بهشت بروند چه کرده است!!! بل��، به او میگویند دانشمند و یا به علی ابن موسی رضا، که انقدر با مأمون همپیکِ خود مست میکرده که رویِ پایش بند نبوده است، چه برسد به آنکه قلم در دست بگیرد و در مورد علم و دانش بنویسد
 پروفسور، آن خطِ وسطِ ماه را میدانید که چیست!؟؟ رسولِ اللهِ اکبر، یک شب یک هویی طالب شدند و به منظور تفریح و اثباتِ قدرتِ ماوراییِ خود، ماه را دو نیم کرده و به اصطلاحاً شق القمر فرمودند، که لطف عالی مستدام، ولی همۀ مورخانِ بزرگِ دنیا با ایشون چون موجوداتِ بیابانی و چندش آور را میخوردند، بد بودند و کسی در موردِ این رویدادِ بزرگ در تاریخ جهان صحبتی نکرده است... آقای <داوکینز> شما با این همه ادعا نمیدانید خدا اول شب و روز را آفرید.. بعد ماه و خورشید را ۳ روز بعد یکهویی خلق کرده است... بعد تازه خوششان امد که به به چه چیزی خلق کرده ام... روز قیامت شمارو میبینم آقای < داوکینز> که در حال ورود به آتش جهنم هستید، آنهم در حالی که کتاب هایتان آتش گرفته و بر رویِ دوشتان است.. ولی ما سفارش شده ایم... میرویم در بهشت شراب میخوریم.. یه طرفمان غلمان ها ( پسرایِ ناز و سفید که از 16 سال پیرتر نمیشن و همیشه راضی به سکسِ مقعدی هستن و باستنشون از شرق تا غرب هست) نشسته اند... یک طرفمان نیز پورن استارا هایِ بهشتی و حوری ها نشسته اند... حالا شما هی کفر بگویید... البته یک روز شما نیز واردِ این فاحشه خانهٔ بهشتی می شوید... ولی یک مهر داغ شده بر رویِ پیشونیتان خورده است... دلیلش را نمیدانم.. واقعاً چرا مهرِ داغ !!! چرا؟! شاید برایِ آنکه حوری ها و غلمان به شما پا ندهند ... نگران نباش پروفسور.. برای هر کدام از ما مسلمانهایِ معتقد به خرافات،حداقل ۷۰ هزار حوری در نظر گرفته شده است، خودم چند هزارتا به شما قرض میدهم
 ریچاردِ عزیز، زحمت کشیدی برایِ این کتاب.. ولی خواهشاً قرآن و کتاب آفرینش را مسخره و تحریف نکنید که این کتاب سرشار از مسائل به روز شده و مطابقِ پیشرفتِ دانشِ بشری است

 دوستان خردمندِ من.. جدا از شوخی، این کتاب بسیار مفید است
 درود بر < ریچارد داوکینز> این بزرگمردِ خردمند و اندیشمند
 < پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
 علم-و-دانش فلسفه
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 Noah
 Author 12 books 15 followers
 October 12, 2011
 I live in the United States in the 21st century. There is no greater danger to our species and our civilization right now than religious crazies. How can we ask our businesses to change the way they do business so as to prevent climate change if half of the country doesn't believe in scientific evidence? Or worse yet, if they expect a big bearded man to come down and bail us out if things get too bad?

 What about the people who believe that the world will end, in the next few years, with a war in the Middle East? What if their faith leads them to believe we should go to war to make this come about?

 Yes, these are scary people and there are a lot of them.

 I'd like to think that Mr. Dawkins had these people in mind when he wrote this book. It may be too late for the current generation who have turned their minds off and handed over their rational thought in exchange for "faith." But perhaps the next generation can be saved in time, and with their help we CAN actually do the work necessary to make the world a better place?

 From that perspective, this is an important and incredible book. It is a blow struck for logic over foolishness.

 But all the way through, I did find myself having mixed feelings. I don't think Mr. Dawkins really understands the purpose of the old myths and legends. The distinction between fairy tales and mythology seems to be missing from his understanding. When the old stories about the "gods" and nature of reality were written, they were neither meant to be "just so stories" nor were all of them intended to take the place of science. While he chooses to use the myths throughout his book to make his own book more entertaining, he clearly looks down on them and shows no consciousness that there is a deeper level of meaning to be found in mythology: the realm of the psychological. I would suggest he sit down and re-read his Joseph Campbell. The mythological creation of the world, the end of the world, the nature of mythological reality was never meant to be science. It was often meant to represent the internal journey of mankind.

 On page 202 he writes, "We don't have to invent wildly implausible stories: we have the joy and excitement of real scientific investigation and discovery to keep our imaginations in line. And in the end that is more exciting than fantasy." Why do we need to keep our imaginations in line? Can't we mature to the point at which we are able to partake in scientific investigation on Mondays and mythological investigation on Wednesdays? Can't we be trusted to learn the difference and keep them apart?

 Science cannot help us with questions of existence. It will never help us with "How ought I act?" or "What meaning can I find in my life?" "What happens after we die?" "How can I find happiness?" But perhaps the ancient knowledge, allied with philosophy, can be of some use with these (more important) problems?

 There are snide remarks here and there aimed at Astrology, aliens, and such. He may be right about many of them, but the attacks lack any logical depth.

 Overall, I would certainly recommend this book to any and all children of the right reading level, but I would also want to talk to that child as they were reading it. Maybe take them for a walk in the woods and teach them about talking to the trees. There certainly is more in the world we actually experience than is dreamnt of in Mr. Dawkins' science.

 Dave McKean, as always, is a master. His artwork is well worth the price of the book all by itself. He gets 16 stars.
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 Emily
 603 reviews 5 followers
 September 16, 2012
 I'm a big fan of Dawkins ever since reading The Selfish Gene many many years ago. However, I was very disppointed in this book, which is so basic that it shouldn't contain surprises for anyone who graduated from high school. There were no surprises and nothing really new - the most interesting part for me was how each chapter is introduced with an example of a myth that people have made up to explain some natural phenomenon, which the rest of the chapter then explains. I found the majority of it plodding, basic, and disappointing.

 HOWEVER ... on looking over some of the other reviews on Goodreads, I see several people saying this book is intended for younger readers. There was nothing at all in the book's description on Audible that indicated this. However, if that's the case then it's a good, clear, basic introduction for a kid around 8-12 years old. On that basis I'll give it 3 stars. As an adult book, which was my expectation of it, it was very basic stuff and came across rather condescending quite a lot of the time. Marks against the publisher for not making the intended audience extremely clear in the summary.
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 Kevin
 579 reviews 170 followers
 March 29, 2021
 Written for younger readers, ‘The Magic of Reality’ is a superb, easy to understand introduction to science and the scientific method. Dawkins puts biology, geology and astronomy in terms that anyone can understand, while simultaneously infusing every syllable with a sense of wonder and awe. His passion for science, all science, is downright contagious - making this an ideal book for that budding astrophysicist or anthropologist in the family (or that scientifically illiterate relation who still swears by astrology or dianetics or Oral Roberts).
 authors-richard-dawkins evolution non-fiction
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 Darian Onaciu
 52 reviews 14 followers
 June 30, 2019
 As a wee child - no, I'm not Scottish, I just like how 'wee' sounds - I was introverted and could rarely feel at ease while playing with other children.
 Unfortunately that was a problem because, being human, I also didn't enjoy being left out of activities. All that changed when I discovered the magic of reading books - no, I didn't turn into a robot from the Dungeon Dimensions.

 Now, don't get me wrong, I wasn't a hermit and got my periodic dose of socialization - yup, sounds cringeworthy - it's just that I felt more at ease with a book because I could travel to new worlds, identify with heroes and villains, see with my mind's eye fictitious or real wonders - yup, way more entertaining than the games children usually play.

 While in secondary school I started with reading folk and fairy tales and at some point got to a book whose title would be loosely translated as The Legends of the Olympus .
 I liked it a lot and started wondering about truth, gods, superpowers and religions - you know, as all children do at some point.

 So I started asking questions and the more answers I received, being born in a country where more than 80% are orthodox, the more I was convinced that one of the best ways someone could get closer to the Truth and be able to better understand the world around us would be to become a priest.

 Being a respectable goal to pursue, my mother and grandparents, although none were regular churchgoers, encouraged me to do so. So I picked up a Bible and started reading it, only to discover it was full of metaphors and words that as a child I couldn't understand - so I got bored and put it down, nonetheless retaining my faith in a higher power.

 Years passed by and after the 8th grade national exam I got in at a very good high-school in my small town, in a class with a STEM specialization focusing on Information Technology and Mathematics.
 I was the odd duck from the class who excelled at English - foreign language - and Romanian - the national language of the country I was born in.
 I wrote poems depicting my teenage angst and some short prose - speaking of which, I'm sure I'd get a good laugh if I'd discover my 'writings'.
 I still liked to read but my reading habits, as far as I can remember, just exited the era of Jules Verne's works and gravitated towards books like Oliver Twist , White Fang , Robinson Crusoe and so on.

 But my reading habits were about to change due to a totally unexpected factor: my new girlfriend. We were classmates and she was a rare combo: one of the smartest and cutest - the best, if you're perchance reading this review (she liked to argue a lot).
 She was way better than me in STEM but I had the edge in humanities.
 She introduced me to J. K. Rowling , Frank Herbert , Carl Sagan and more.

 I really looked up to her.

 So when she told me she was an atheist and I told her I was a believer, well, the two hormonal teenage universes clashed and although I can't exactly remember, there is about a 100% chance we had an expletive filled fight about it.

 But with all our differences we cared about each other and continued being together for a few years.

 More than her looks and academic smarts I appreciated the books we shared and her astuteness in conversation.
 We talked about anything and everything debating pros and cons. It didn't matter if the subject was asinine or something crucially important like 'would someone after being subjected to teleportation be the same person or merely a clone of the original?'
 She pushed me out of my comfort zone, stretched my mind and I loved her for it.

 But belief was a touchy subject. Although I went to church only at special occasions throughout the year, I considered myself a believer.
 But I also considered myself a smart person who liked to read and ask questions to better understand the Universe.
 But what if those questions started to elicit uncomfortable emotions?
 Which identity would prevail then?

 Questions like:
 "Why is there more than one religion?"
 "How can you tell that you believe in the right one?"
 "Wouldn't the time of your existence in history, the place you were born in and/or your parents influence your choice of religion more than your free will?"
 "If there is a God then why are bad things happening to good people?" and so on.

 Had it been out then, this book would have been the perfect gift for me.
 In fact, if I could travel back in time I'd gift it to my secondary school self - though I'm sure he would only partially understand it - then travel a bit forward and hand it to my high school self.
 Be a kind person and gift this book to people who are curious and like to ask questions.

 I had to realize on my own through reading books, having interesting conversations and just plain living, that people are creatures of habit, that we act more on an emotional than logical basis, that there are a throng of cognitive biases which continuously incapacitate our decision making and obstruct our evolution. And make no mistake, changing one's mind is strictly a personal journey.

 But should we tolerate our faults by recognizing our limitations we can make tremendous progress and see the beauty of the Universe not through n interpretations of unchanging ancient texts but through the lens of the only incrementally self actualizing instrument: science.

 Jesus, this turned out to be a bit personal.
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 Yazeed AlMogren
 401 reviews 1,311 followers
 March 25, 2015
 يتحدث ريتشارد دوكنز في هذا الكتاب الذي أنتهى منه في عام 2011 عن بعض الظواهر الطبيعية والطبية والكونية وكيفية حدوثها وماذا كانت تعتقد الأمم القديمة عنها قبل أن يأتي العلم الحديث بتفسير لها، الكتاب شيق وممتع وترجمة عدنان الشهاوي كانت متقنة ورائعة لدرجة تشعر بها بأن لغة الكتاب الأصلية هي العربية لولا الخطأ الذي وقع فيه المترجم عندما نقل أن سقراط هو أول من فكر بالذرة بينما الصحيح "كما ورد أيضًا في النسخة الإنجليزية من الكتاب" هو أن ديموقريطوس من فكر بذلك
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 Algernon
 59 reviews 25 followers
 December 25, 2022
 In this book, you'll find out why you can't turn a frog into a prince (in detail) through magic-- wan's magic, but you can turn a fish into a prince through reality's magic-- Evolution by Natural Selection

 This book is structured in a way that it asks Humanities' oldest questions: why earthquakes happen? What is a Rainbow? And then starts by giving mythical explanations from different cultures, like according to one African myth an earthquake happens when a giant holding the Earth puts it down to hug his wife (who is holding the heaven).
 Finally, it ends the chapter by introducing the scientific answer, and the real reason for earthquakes: the Tectonic Plates Theory. To say the least, the way it's structured is genius: it builds up your curiosity continuously form the start of the chapter so by the time you reach the real answer you're quite excited to know. It makes you the more appreciate the science we have now-- seeing what the poor bastards of the past had, and the alternative to the scientific answer, and the alternative to the scientific answer is not really that attractive, to say the least.

 Most of the time I read this book right after work while mentally and physically drained. Nonetheless, it's so well and clearly written I enjoyed and understood it all the same, mostly.

 My only 2023 resolution is to read all of Dawkins' stuff.
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 Imane
 87 reviews 280 followers
 February 12, 2016
 انا قارئة مبتدئة لذا لا تضحكوا ان قلت لكم اني ترددت كثيرا قبل قراءة هذا الكتاب ريتشارد دوكنز ملحد ماذا ساستفيد من هذا النوع من الكتب لكن فضولي تغلب في نهاية الامر و رغم ذلك حملت معي سلاحي و قررت اذا لم يعجبني ما يقوله سوف اتوقف لكن المفاجاة اني وجدت الكتاب جد جد جد ممتع من الكتب العلمية القليلة التي استمتعت بقرائتها حتى الان خاصة النسخة الانجليزية مرفقة بصور توضيحية تشبه كتب الاطفال و خجلت من نفسي لماذا حكمت على الكتاب قبل قرائته فقط لاني لا اتفق مع افكار الكاتب من ماذا خفت انا اعرف ان قدراتي العقلية لا تسمح لي بفهم كلام العلماء لذا كتبهم لا تؤثر في حقا محتوى الكتاب يعكس عنوانه سحر الواقع لذا انصح من يريد قرائته ان يتعامل مع الكتاب على اساس انه كتاب علمي بحث ساعيد قرائته عما قريب و هذه المرة بدون احكام مسبقة
 اعادة-قراءة علم
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 Raha
 186 reviews 212 followers
 August 18, 2017
 این کتاب کوتاه و مصور ، نظریه فرگشت (یا تکامل) را به زبانی ساده توضیح می دهد
 نظریه فرگشت یک نظریه علمی در مورد تحولات عالم جانداران است . بر اساس گفته های این کتاب ، انسان ها و تمامی پستاندارانی که در حال حاضر بر روی زمین زندگی می کنند یک جد مشترک در 185 میلیون سال قبل داشته اند که گونه ی خاصی از آبزیان و در واقع یک ماهی بوده است
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 Ziad
 56 reviews 16 followers
 September 5, 2017
 خمس نجمات لا تكفي
 واحد من اهم الكتب العلمية التي قراءتها بل هو الاهم
 تبسيط النظريات العلمية بطريقة رائعة
 ودحض الخرافات بأسلوب مقنع
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 Христо Блажев
 2,331 reviews 1,581 followers
 February 9, 2022
 Магията на реалността е навсякъде около ни: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/m...

 Разпалването на детското въображение е лесно – но да се насочи по смислен път дал��ч не толкова, човечеството е измислило безброй фалшиви идеи, с които да си обясни реалността, но често те се оказват по-силни от нея и остават вкоренени в съзнанието. Хилядолетия наред митовете са създавали пъстър илюзорен свят, населен с причудливи свръхестествени съзнания, и тези приказки са все така залегнали дълбоко в нашата култура и имат своите агресивни поддръжници. Но Докинс и Маккийн правят нужното както да им отдадат почит – митовете са проявление на нашата творческа природа, – така и да идат отвъд тях и да покажат, че в научното обяснение на света, което има предимството да бъде доказуемо, има също толкова магия, но от различен тип.

 CIELA Books
 http://knigolandia.info/book-review/m...
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 Hanum Salsabila
 48 reviews 11 followers
 August 27, 2020
 4.5 ⭐
 I already read too much fiction this month, so i would try with some academic book. This book is so good. Dawkins made it quite fun, most parts of this book aren’t boring at all. The way he narrated this book is really humble, he isn’t patronized us the reader, and he admitted that he still didn’t understand some part and somehow made himself equal to the reader (of course he isn’t).

 However, i found a few other parts of the book is a little bit boring. Like the atom part, the explanation is quite long.

 I found many interesting information in this book like how to measure time in fossils with radioactive clocks using uranium-238, sun and it’s mythology, and also the question i’ve always wanted to know : who is the first person on earth? And the idea that auto immune disease could be a weapon to fight cancer is really fascinating.

 This book ends with my favorite chapter about several miracles and the possibility that really happened at that time. Well done, Dawkins. I would totally read all of your books.
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 Maruf Hossain
 Author 31 books 240 followers
 April 13, 2017
 এসএসসি, এইচএসসি'র ছাত্রছাত্রী এবং নন-সায়েন্স ব্যাকগ্রাউন্ড নিয়ে লেখাপড়া করেছেন যারা তাদের জন্য অসাধারণ (৫ তারা দেয়ার মতো) এক বই। তবে সায়েন্স ব্যাকগ্রাউন্ড যাদের, তারা নতুন কিছু জানার আশায় পড়তে বসলে হতাশ হবেন (অন্তত আমার ক্ষেত্রে তা-ই হয়েছে)। অবশ্য বইটা লেখাই হয়েছে শিশু-কিশোরদের জন্য---তারা যেন বিজ্ঞানের সৌন্দর্যের প্রতি আকৃষ্ট করার জন্য গুরুত্বপূর্ণ কিছু টপিক নিয়ে কথা বলেছেন লেখক, সহজ ভাষায়।

 মোট ১২টি অধ্যায়ে বিভক্ত বইটি। বারোটি অধ্যায়ের নামগুলো উল্লেখ করলেই এ-বইয়ের আলোচনার বিষয়বস্তুগুলো মোটামুটি পরিষ্কার হয়ে যাবে। অধ্যায়গুলোর নাম পর্যায়ক্রমে নিচে দিয়ে দিলাম। সাথে ব্র্যাকেটে প্রতিটা অধ্যায়ের উল্লেখযোগ্য টপিকগুলোর নামও (যেক্ষেত্রে প্রযোজ্য) দিয়ে দিলাম---
 **অধ্যায় ১-- বাস্তবতা কী? জাদু কী?(বিজ্ঞান ও অলৌকিকতা; বিবর্তনের ধীর জাদু)।
 **অধ্যায় ২-- আদিতম পূর্বপুরুষ
 **অধ্যায় ৩-- প্রাণের এত বৈচিত্র্য কেন আছে? (শ্রেণীবিন্যাস; কীভাবে ভাষা ও প্রজাতি আলাদা হয়; প্রজাতির উৎপত্তিতে বিচ্ছিন্নতার শক্তি; মিশ্রণ, নির্বাচন ও টিকে থাকা)
 **অধ্যায় ৪-- সবকিছু কী দিয়ে তৈরি? (কীভাবে অণু-পরমাণু চলাচল করে; প্রাণের গঠনে কার্বনের অনবদ্য ভূমিকা)
 **অধ্যায় ৫-- রাত আর দিন কেন আছে? শীতের পর গ্রীষ্ম কেন আসে?
 **অধ্যায় ৬-- সূর্য তুমি কে? (সূর্য আসলেই কী; নক্ষত্রের প্রক্রিয়া; নক্ষত্রের জীবনকাহিনী; সুপারনোভা ও নক্ষত্রের সন্তান; গ্রহাণু এবং উল্কাপাত; জীবন টিকিয়ে রাখতে আলো)
 **অধ্যায় ৭-- রঙধনু কী? (আলো কী দিয়ে তৈরি; বৃষ্টির ফোঁটা কীভাবে রঙধনু তৈরি করে)
 **অধ্যায় ৮-- কখন এবং কীভাবে সবকিছুর শুরু হয়েছিল? (বিগ ব্যাংয়ের শুরুর দিকে)
 **অধ্যায় ৯-- আমরা কি একা? (বহির্বিশ্বে কি আসলেই প্রাণ আছে?; গোল্ডিলকের খোঁজে)
 **অধ্যায়<১০-- ভূমিকম্প কী? (মহাদেশ কীভাবে চলাচল করে; তাপের প্রভাবে চলাচল)
 **অধ্যায় ১১-- অশুভ ঘটনা কেন ঘটে (ভাগ্য সম্ভাবনা ও ঘটনা ঘটার কারণ; পলিয়ানা ও প্যারানয়া)
 **অধ্যায় ১২-- অলৌকিক ঘটনা আসলে কী (আজকের অলৌকিকতা আগামীর প্রযুক্তি)

 বইটার আকর্ষণীয় একটা দিক হ���্ছে, প্রতিটা অধ্যায়ের শুরুতে সেই অধ্যায়ের টপিকগুলো নিয়ে প্রচলিত মিথগুলোর কথা বলেছেন সংক্ষেপে।

 চমৎকার অনুবাদের ��ন্য অনুবাদককে ধন্যবাদ না দিলে অন্যায় হয়ে যাবে। এমনিতেই আমাদের দেশে ভালো অনুবাদের আকাল। ভালো অনুবাদকরা আবার ভালো বই অনুবাদও করেন না। তাই, ভালো ভালো ননফিকশনগুলো বাংলা ভাষাভাষী পাঠকদের বিরাট একটা অংশের কাছে অপরিচিতই থেকে যাচ্ছে। সেই জায়গায় একেবারেই তরুণ অনুবাদক সিরাজাম মুনির শ্রাবণের প্রথম অনুবাদ বই-ই ননফিকশন দিয়ে অনুবাদ জীবন শুরু করাটা রীতিমতো দুঃসাহসিক এক কাজ। তাছাড়া তিনি য�� নিতান্তই শখের বসে অনুবাদ করে কোনরকমে যা-তা একটা বই পাঠকদের হাতে তুলে দিতে দিতে লেখালেখিতে আসেননি---এসেছেন দায়িত্ববোধ এবং নিদারুণ ভালোবাসা থেকে, তা বইটা হাতে নিলেই স্পষ্ট হয়ে ফুটে উঠে। অনুবাদকের পরিশ্রম ও নিবেদনের ছাপ স্পষ্টভাবে প্রতীয়মান প্রতিটি অধ্যায়ে, প্রতিটি ছত্রে। চমৎকার সাবলীল ভাষায় ননফিকশনের মতো আপাতদৃষ্টিতে শুকনো জিনিসের অনুবাদ করেছেন তিনি অত্যন্ত যত্নে। অনুবাদককে ধন্যবাদ। আশা করি, ভবিষ্যতে আরও দারুণ দারুণ এবং অসাধারণ ননফিকশনের অনুবাদ পাব তার কাছ থেকে। আশা করি, বাংলা ভাষায় ভালো মানের অনুবাদ ননফিকশনের যে অপ্রতুলতা রয়েছে, তা কাটিয়ে উঠতে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ অবদান রাখবেন তিনি।

 'দ্য ম্যাজিক অব রিয়্যালিটি' মাধ্যমিক ও উচ্চমাধ্যমিক পর্যায়ের শিক্ষার্থী এবং নন-সায়েন্স ব্যাকগ্রাউন্ডের শিক্ষার্থীদের জন্য ভীষণ উপকারী এক বই বলেই আমার বিশ্বাস।
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 Shaimaa Ali
 635 reviews 310 followers
 April 20, 2014
 فى "سحر الواقع" يأخذنا داوكنز فى مقارانات عديدة بين الأساطير والعلم فى استعراض جذاب يجعلك لا تترك الكتاب لحظة! لقد نجح تماماً فى جعلى قارئة نهمة لكتابه حتى انتهيت منه!!

 فى أول فصلين يحاول داوكنز جاهداً تأكيد قانون الانتخاب الطبيعى الذى جاء به داروين وأثره فى تفسير عملية التطور البطىء للأجناس المختلفة (ومن ضمنها الانسان بالطبع) .. كل ما نجح ان يثبته هو الاستدلال بأن الشفرة الوراثية للانسان تختلف بتسعة احرف فقط عن الشمبانزى ، بينما يختلف الفأر عنا فى ١٣٩ حرفاً .. ثمّ؟! لا شىء!! لم يفسر لنا لمًَّ .. لم يفسر لنا كيف .. انما هو يستطرد فقط فى الشرح..

 بعد ذلك استخدم مقارنة شديدة الغرابة فى الفصل الثالث بين عدد الحيوانات الكثيرة ووجود لغات عديدة فى العالم ،
 فبناءً على اندثار لغات عديدة وحتى اختلاف طريقة استخدام الكلمات نفسها فى اللغة الواحدة حدث ذلك بالضبط فى جينات الحيوانات المختلفة ونتيجة قانون الانتقاء الطبيعى فما بقى لدينا هو هذه الأنواع المختلفة من الحيوانات !!
 فى نفس الفصل مرّ بسرعة على قصة برج بابل وقصة اليهود عن بدء الخلق متهكماً كيف استطاع آدم ان يقوم بهذه المهمة الشاقة وهى تسمية كل الحيوانات التى يصل تعداد انواعها الى ملايين بأسمائها .. ( هذا بالطبع مختلف عن اعتقادنا -نحن المسلمين - بأن الله سبحان وتعالى هو الذى علّم آدم الأسماء كلها)!
 بينما يختتم الفصل الرابع بالتهكم على كل الكتب المقدسة، سائلاً لم لم تحتوى على أسرار الكون او على علاج الأمراض المختلفة ( كأن الكتب المقدسة من وجهة نظره هى مجلة Science او National Geographic ) !!

 بدءً من الفصل الرابع وحتى الأخير يواصل شرحه العلمى للعديد من الظواهر العلمية ( الشمس ،الزلازل، قوس قزح ، الليل والنهار ، كيف بدأ الكون ، هل توجد حياة على كواكب أخرى ، ما هى المعجزة.. الخ)
 اصطدامى الوحيد معه كان فى النقاط الدينية .. فتقريباً داوكنز لم يترك معجزة دينية الا وقد فندها!!
 الكتاب يقدم معلومة علمية دسمة بأسهل طريقة ممكنة .. لن تندم ابداً عند قرائته ..

 آخر فقرة والتى تلخص رأيه فى العلم والأساطير:
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 المعجزات والسحر والأساطير ، باستطاعتها أن تبعث على التسلية، ولقد تسلينا بها على طول صفحات هذا الكتاب. وكل الناس تحب القصص الجيدة ، وأملى ان تكونوا قد استمتعتم بالعلوم التى جاءت فى أعقاب الأساطير. وأملى أن توافقوا على أن الحقيقة تنطوى على سحر خاص بها. إن الحقيقة أكثر سحراً - بالمعنى الأفضل والأكثر إثارة للكلمة - من أى أسطورة أو لغز مصنوع او معجزة. للعلم سحره النابع منه: انه سحر الواقع!
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 Nihal Vrana
 Author 7 books 13 followers
 August 25, 2013
 This was the worst popular science book that I have read. It was lazily-written with no real structure rather than flimsy chapter beginnings with myths. The information in it was extremely random and superficial. I'm sorry to say this but it is nothing more than a rant of a famous person than a popular science book with an aim to inform its audience.

 I used to enjoy Dawkins' books back in the day; when they were about topics which he has a good grasp of (i.e. evolution). But I really don't like what he has become since then, a figurehead basically who does not refrain from giving his opinion on any topic at all. For example, his "speculation" about auto-immune diseases in the book shows that he really did not understand them very well, yet it did not stop him from talking about them.

 The beauty of science is that it never really needs to defend itself. The proofs it comes up with always speak for themselves. When you understand them thoroughly, you will be convinced anyway. So the science does not need "Champions", it convinces by evidence. But somehow over the last 10 years, Mr. Dawkins became a self-proclaimed champion of science which, as a professional researcher, irks me. The language, content and style of this book added to my dislike of him as a popular figure.
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 Charlie Hasler
 Author 2 books 220 followers
 April 29, 2020
 I enjoyed this read very much. I have read The God Delusion but that is the only other Dawkins book I have read.

 I enjoy Dawkins "right between the eyes" style of writing. This is a superb read, very interesting and complicated science is broken down so even knuckle draggers like me can understand it.


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 Book Shark
 772 reviews 147 followers
 October 5, 2011
 A note for all my goodreads friends, if you like my review please go to Amazon and click the like button. It would help my "reviewer cred". Thanks and enjoy this wonderful book.


 The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True by Richard Dawkins

 "The Magic of Reality" is the latest contribution by evolutionary-biologist icon Richard Dawkins. Professor Dawkins is on a mission of education and in this enlightening book he reaches a younger audience by introducing science like only he can. In one of the most beautifully illustrated science books, he takes the reader on a ride on a wide-range of topics of interest that masterfully navigates between myth and what is real. This mesmerizing 272-page book is composed of the following twelve chapters: 1. What is reality? What is magic? , 2. Who was the first person? , 3. Why are there so many different kinds of animals? , 4. What are things made of? , 5. Why do we have night and day, winter and summer? , 6. What is the sun? , 7. What is a rainbow? , 8. When and how did everything begin? , 9. Are we alone? , 10. What is an earthquake? , 11. Why do bad things happen? ,and 12. What is a miracle?

 Positives:
 1. A wonderful book on science that is accessible to a younger audience without compromising the science lovers in all of us. Bravo!
 2. It's a book written by the great Richard Dawkins, so you know the quality goes in before the product goes out.
 3. A true labor of love. The educator in Professor Dawkins comes out and now even our children will benefit from his prodigious knowledge.
 4. One of the most beautifully illustrated books you will ever find. Great quality binding only matched by its substance.
 5. Science knowledge conveyed in a brilliant, lucid manner.
 6. Great format. In each chapter, Professor Dawkins illustrates clearly the difference between the wishful and what is "really" real.
 7. What a wonderful way to learn about science. Great practical examples throughout this beautiful book. A ride of knowledge, hop on! Readers of all ages will enjoy this great book.
 8. Even-handed and pleasant tone throughout.
 9. A wide range of fascinating science topics in the hands of the master.
 10. Great wisdom throughout, "We should always be open-minded, but the only good reason to believe that something exists is if there is real evidence that it does".
 11. The book cleverly goes from myth to reality.
 12. The concept of magic in three tiers: supernatural, stage and poetic.
 13. Evolution in the hands of the master. Awesome.
 14. Was there ever a first person? Insightful indeed. The best illustrated example I've ever read.
 15. Great explanation on DNA.
 16. Clever examples throughout, one of the many strengths of this book.
 17. A wide range of fascinating science topic in the hands of a master.
 18. The three common phases of matter.
 19. The importance of the scientific meyhod.
 20. The concept of empty space...I finally get it.
 21. The importance of carbons, organic chemistry.
 22. Telling that there are no myths to describe atoms...
 23. So what causes the difference between winter and summer...find out.
 24. The illusion of relative movement.
 25. The great Isaac Newton. Gravity, lights...we are not worthy.
 26. The difference between mass and weight.
 27. A great illustration of how far stars are from us.
 28. How coal is created.
 29. Differences between stars and planets.
 30. Energy and the sun.
 31. What determines the size of a star? Find out.
 32. The epic of Gilgamesh. Interesting.
 33. Rainbow as an illusion and how they are formed.
 34. Lights as vibrations...I see.
 35. Steady state versus the Big Bang theory.
 36. How we determine the distance between anything in the universe.
 37. How we determine age.
 38. Spectral barcoders...neat.
 39. Methods for detecting planets.
 40. The keys for life on other planets.
 41. Plate tectonics illustrated, wonderful.
 42. The speed of continents, sea-floor spreading...
 43. Myths debunked.
 44. Practical explanation for probability.
 45. Great examples of evolution...parasites.
 46. How the immune system works. Fascinating.
 47. Miracles what they are.
 48. David Hume's irrefutable logic regarding miracles and many great examples.
 49. Absolutely kindles the fire of learning.
 50. An excellent gift for all occasions.

 Negatives:
 1. The book is intended for a younger audience and covers briefly a lot of topics. If you are expecting an in-depth analysis. This is not the book for you.
 2. No bibliography.

 In summary, a fabulous book for all to enjoy. I usually limit my purchases to Kindle books because of the convenience but I'm glad I was "forced" to buy this book in hardcover binding. It's a beautiful book inside and out. Substance finally matches style and it's a science book for all to enjoy and for years to come. There is a sense of awe, a poetic magic for reality. For all his knowledge, Professor Dawkins is humbled by what little we do know and how much more we need to find out about the world. It's precisely this drive to know more and that hunger for knowledge that I always wanted to convey to my children. Finally, I have a book that expresses my sentiments and I have Richard Dawkins to thank!
 evolution science
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 Antonia
 Author 7 books 32 followers
 November 11, 2011
 Great book: clear and accessible (not sure of the best age group, though). Kids are naturally curious and fascinated by how the world works. They're also susceptible to all kinds of nonsense, of course. This much-needed book fill s a gap between simplistic kids' books and adult science books. Also, we need books that help kids understand, not just the facts of the world, but how we know them and, more generally, how do we know whether something's true or not? And I should think this book would be invaluable to parents, a good many of whom could probably not explain natural selection, DNA, plate tectonics, or probability.

 Where else could one find so much in one book? And the illustrations by Dave McKean are astonishing —though somewhat overwhelming. Sometimes too large and distracting. I don't like the weirdly formatted titles with mixed, funky fonts in different colors and sizes (within the same title, that is). But that's me.

 I couldn't tell what age group he's addressing. I read somewhere that he's said about age 12 and up. But sometimes he sounds he's talking to six-year-olds. At other times, he uses terms like "the scientific method." Huh, what? The tone bugged me all the way through. The best children's books are those that don't talk down, that adults can enjoy just as much as a 12-year-old. I didn't (always) find that to be true of this one.

 I had some mixed feelings about the content, though — not the scientific content, but the way he makes fun of myths, etc. Okay, they're not literally true, but. . . . There's a difference between fairytales and mythology. As another Goodreads reviewer (Noah) has said: "When the old stories about the "gods" and nature of reality were written, they were neither meant to be "just so stories" nor were all of them intended to take the place of science.." The tone bothered me a bit, too. I didn't care for the authorial intrusion.

 Noah also quotes Dawkins here: "We don't have to invent wildly implausible stories: we have the joy and excitement of real scientific investigation and discovery to keep our imaginations in line. And in the end that is more exciting than fantasy." Noah then asks, "Why do we need to keep our imaginations in line?" Good point.

 "Science . . . will never help us with "How ought I act?" or "What meaning can I find in my life?" . . . "How can I find happiness?" But perhaps the ancient knowledge, allied with philosophy, can be of some use with these problems. . . . "

 I have no sense at all of how kids would respond to this (don't have any). I would love to see this book reviewed by some 12-year-olds.

 Apparently, there's a very cool iPad version, which I haven't seen.
 read-in-2011
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 Hani Al-Kharaz
 261 reviews 95 followers
 May 27, 2016
 يسعى المؤلف في كتابه الى تبيان أن الواقع - كما تفسره الحقائق العلمية - أكثر سحراً وإبداعاً من التفسيرات الأسطورية التي تستند الى رد الواقع الى قوى خارقة وأحداث غريبة أو الحظ والمصادفة. واستخدم في كتابه لغة علمية سلسة وبالغة التشويق، تعرض الحقائق العلمية بأسلوب مبسط ومفهوم لشرائح عمرية مختلفة. ولكنني أعيب عليه مبالغته في السخرية من أساطير الشعوب القديمة. هذه المبالغة في نظري تنطوي على تعالٍ من الإنسان المعاصر الذين يدين بفضل ما وصل إليه في واقع الأمر الى تراكم المعرفة الناتجة عن تجربة الشعوب التي سبقته. فإذا كان المؤلف مؤمناً ومسلماً بنظرية النشوء والارتقاء للكائنات الحية عبر ملايين السنين، ويعتبرها فتحاً علمياً فالأولى أن لا يغض الطرف عن ارتقاء العقل البشري عبر آلاف السنين ولا يرى العبقرية في ذلك.

 الكتاب سيضع الكثير من القراء العرب في مواجهة بين الكشوفات العلمية وبعض المسلمات الإيمانية. شخصياً لا يساورني شك في صحة هذه الكشوفات العلمية التي وردت في الكتاب ولكنني أراها - على نقيض الكاتب - سبباً آخر للإيمان بالله وليس العكس.
 فنظرية داروين على سبيل المثال تبدو لي منطقية ولكنها لا تدل بالضرورة على عدم وجود الخالق ولا يلزم الاعتقاد بها سحبها على الجنس البشري أيضاً. فبحسب هذه النظرية، لا بد وأن يكون هناك أصل ما تطورت عنه الأحياء الموجودة اليوم، وعليه لا بد وأن يكون هناك خالق لهذا الأصل. وإذا كان هناك خالق لهذا الأصل، فلا يعجزه أن يجعل الإنسان أصل نفسه. بعبارة أخرى، القادر على إيجاد السمكة الأولى - التي يشير الكاتب الى احتمال كونها الجد الأكبر للبشر قبل مئات الملايين من السنين - قادر على إيجاد الانسان من العدم في أي نقطة من الزمن ودون الحاجة لإدخاله في سلسلة من التطورات عن أحياء أخرى. حتى التكيف الموجود في الكائنات الحية والذي يسمح لهم بالتطور الجيني حسب مقتضيات الانتقاء الطبيعي لا بد وأن يكون له خالق.

 في المحصلة، الكتاب ممتع ومثير ويستحث العقل على التفكير، وبالتأكيد يستحق القراءة.


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 Taghreed Jamal El Deen
 638 reviews 627 followers
 Shelved as 'paused'
 March 3, 2018
 ما بعرف ليش لازم يعيد ويزيد لأكتر من 20 صفحة حتى يوصلي فكرة بديهية .!
 يبدو أنو أنا والعلوم الطبيعية ما في أي كيميا بيناتنا وكل محاولات التقريب والمصالحة لن تنفع .
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 Negativni
 148 reviews 70 followers
 November 13, 2015
 Sa Čarolijom stvarnosti Richard Dawkins je želio na zanimljiv i razumljiv način približiti djeci ono što znamo o svijetu oko nas. Ilustracije je radio Dave McKean, možda najpoznatiji po naslovnicama mnogih izdanja Gaimanovog Sandmana. Sviđa mi se njegov stil. Ilustracije su pomaknute , zanimljive i dobro su uklopljene u knjigu.

 Dawkins knjigu preporučuje djeci od 12 godina pa na više, no zbog jednostavnije obrade tema nije loša ni za odrasle koji ne bi ulazili u dubinu pojedinih tema, a željeli bi znati barem osnove. Knjiga je podjeljenja na poglavlja i svako počinje nekim od velikih pitanja na koja su ljudi dugo tražili odgovor. Gotovo svako poglavlje počinje i nekim mitom, a potom se objašnjava kako su znanstvenici došli do (zasad) najtočnijih odgovora.

 Uz 10 glavnih poglavlja: Tko je bio prva osoba? Zašto ima toliko različitih vrsta životinja? Od čega su građene stvari? Zašto imamo noć i dan, zimu i ljeto? Što je Sunce? Što je duga? Kako i kada je sve počelo? Jesmo li sami? Što je potres? i Zašto se događaju loše stvari? Tu je i prvo poglavlje, kao svojevrsni uvod: Što je stvarnost? Što je čarolija? te zadnje Što je čudo?

 Pitanja su nam svima sigurno poznata i većina misli da zna točne odgovore na gotovo sve, no probajte sami sebi odgovoriti na njih redom... Ako negdje zapnete - uzmite ovu knjigu!

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 عبدالرحمن عقاب
 720 reviews 864 followers
 May 20, 2014
 مؤلف هذا الكتاب هو ريتشارد دوكنز، وهو لمن لا يعرفه حامل راية "الكفر بالله" في هذا الزمن، وصاحب الكتب والمحاضرات والأفلام الوثائقية التي تنادي برسالة واحدة (لا حاجة بنا لإله) –تعالى الله عمّا يقول- و يركّز "دوكنز" في غالب نشاطاته على ما حملته نظرية التطوّر للعالم من كشف يغنيهم عن الأديان.
 المهم، في هذا الكتاب يخاطب "دوكنز" فئة عمرية صغيرة نسبيًا، ربما هي فئة 10-20 سنة، ويشرح فيه التفسيرات العلمية للظواهر من حولنا(مثل الليل والنهار والفصول وقوس قزح والأمراض و الضوء والشمس والذرة...الخ) بشكل جميل ومبسّط لكنه وافٍ وعميق ومدّعم بالأمثلة من الحياة . غير أنّ "دوكنز" يبتديء فصوله بضرب أمثلة من التفسير القديم لمثل هذه الظواهر، أقصد أساطير الشعوب وبعض التفسيرات من الأديان، ليعرض بعدها "بخبث" للتفسير العلمي (المدعّم بالأدلّة) في مقابل تلك الخزعبلات التي ينتقيها باحتراف ليظهر سخافتها أو سذاجتها ..
 وفي نهاية الكتاب يقول صراحة أنّ أيّ تفسير ديني أو أسطوري يحمل جماله الخاص كونه قصّة (مسلية) لكنّ العلم يحمل جمال الحقيقة.
 الكتاب لا يعدو عن محاولة "ذكية" من دوكنز لإيصال رسالته "الكفرية" إلى أبعد مدى وأوسع انتشار. وفي كتبه الأخرى وأفلامه الوثائقية ومحاضراته حرب أشدّ ضرواة على "الدين" ككلّ. ما أحلم الله! والله غالبٌ على أمره.
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 Fernando
 57 reviews 19 followers
 January 28, 2022
 This was my first Dawkins book, and it seems like the perfect place to start with him. It is written in a very straight-forward manner, as if the author is trying to explain scientific matters and answers to a teenager.

 Overall fascinating, and you'll probably nod along the way, especially if you're an atheist and prefer a rational and logical view of the world and not one based in religious or other types of beliefs.
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Shelved as 'paused'
The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11256979-the-magic-of-reality
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31487.Unweaving_the_Rainbow
Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appeti…
1998-01-01
Author
<div><div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/12365383-pausetowonder"></a></section><section><p>23 reviews16 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/474572850">January 13, 2013</a></section><div><p>The actual science bits in here are great. Learned heaps about the workings of light and colour, sound and hearing... was even reminded that the idea of "superstitious behavior" in animals is attributed to Skinner (and not, sadly, my own idea). Much geeky excitement experienced all round by yours truly. Dawkins does a fine job of explaining complex ideas clearly and well.<p>That's what was good about Unweaving the Rainbow.</p><p>Sadly, what feels like way more than half of the book was spent painstakingly trying to argue people out of believing in astrology, ghosts, remote viewing, etc. using logic and scientific fact. Its starts about one third the way in. My problem with this is threefold:</p><p>1) Dawkins is assuming that logic and scientific fact <i>would</i> have persuasive power for anyone believing in what he calls "superstition" or "ad hoc magic". (And really, why would it? I think believers would be the first to point out that this sort of thing is beyond the purview of science.)</p><p>2) Dawkins assumes that these "deluded" people are reading his book. I can't say for sure, but personally, I would be surprised if a diehard believer in ESP or astrology would be interested in reading Dawkins' explanation of Fraunhofer lines, the electromagnetic spectrum and other fairly hardcore sciencey topics that fill the first third of this book. Seems like a different sort of audience. So he ends up "preaching to the choir" -- and there is something rather uncomfortably self-righteous about this. Not to mention dull.</p><p>3) Dawkins (I don't mean to be unkind, but I can't think of any other to state the fact) embarrasses himself when he wanders out of the world of science and into literature and the humanities. Critiques of the scientific accuracy of Wordsworth poems or a fantasy story by Mark Twain are cringe-making.</p><p>What Dawkins doesn't understand about human psychology is a lot. I think his whole crusade against religion has been a waste of a good scientific mind and has done a lot of damage to the discussion. His aggressive, dismissive and disrespectful approach has only put people on the defensive and set an unfortunate example.</p><p>I was hoping for a lot more "wonder of science". Instead, I felt like I was getting lectured at length for something I didn't even do. What do I care about astrology??</p><p>Anyhow, I was hoping for more wonders-of-science and less railing. Disappointing. </p><p>Better books on science and wonder that I'd recommend:</p><p><a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/6885204.The_Age_of_Wonder_How_the_Romantic_Generation_Discovered_the_Beauty_and_Terror_of_Science">
 
</a> <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/14451025.In_Defence_of_Wonder_and_Other_Philosophical_Reflections">
 
</a></p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3784227-amanda"></a></section><section><p>12 reviews60 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/130634014">June 18, 2011</a></section><div><p>The first half or so was amazing, and the rest was still really interesting (especially the end), if not quite as exhilarating. At the same time, you have to remember that even that powerhouse of scientific poetry, Carl Sagan, had some dry chapters every now and then. Some dryness definitely doesn't make it any less worth the read, and its mild anyway. Overall, this book was extremely enjoyable, and a breeze to get through. 4.5 stars, will probably be 5 on the reread.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/179565-krista"></a></section><section><p>439 reviews9 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72502178">March 21, 2010</a></section><div><p>One of the Goodreads reviews on this book relates, simply, that the writer of the review had been on a cruise ship with the author prior to reading the book. When she DID read the book, she regretted that she didn't "do some kind of small violence to his person" while on the cruise with him.<p>In many ways, that sums up my take beautifully. This was the most interesting book I've ever despised. Certainly, I have a brain not suited to the exigencies of science. But when he wasn't losing me in a web of convoluted explanation, he was was looking down his nose at me like a curmudgeonly professor who is inordinately piqued that an average undergraduate had the audacity to drop by during office hours and ask a stupid question.</p><p>That said, I learned a lot and, while I did not become a convert to his thesis that science can be as beautiful as poetry, I will admit that, were my brain more suited to the beauty of, say, probability, I would have been in ecstasy while perusing the pages of this tome. In discussing how we discover our world; "... we arrived by being born, and we didn't burst conscious into the world but accumulated awareness gradually through babyhood. The fact that we slowly apprehend our world, rather than suddenly discover it, should not subtract from its wonder." And maybe that's where he lost me. I haven't accumulated enough awareness to see what he sees. And to believe what he believes. But condescension does not encourage me to become more aware. It encourages me to shrug and go back to my music, or my poetry, or my philosophy. </p><p>All of that said, there were several "aha" moments; some "I-never-knew-that-before!" aha, some "I-never-thought-about-it-that-way-before!" aha and some "I-had-totally-forgotten-about-that!" aha. </p><p>Like his analogy about how expansive the earth's past is; "Fling your arms wide in an expansive gesture to span all of evolution from its origin at your left fingertip to today at your right fingertip. All the way across your midline to well past your right shoulder, life consists of nothing but bacteria. Many-celled, invertebrate life flowers somewhere around your right elbow. The dinosaurs originate in the middle of your right palm, and go extinct around your last finger joint. The whole story of Homo sapiens and our predecessor Homo erectus is contained in the thickness of one nail-clipping. As for recorded history; as for the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Jewish patriarchs, the dynasties of Pharohs, the legions of Rome, the Christian Fathers, the Laws of the Medes and Persians which never change; as for Troy and the Greeks, Helen and Achilles and Agamemnon dead; as for Napolean and Hitler, the Beatles and Bill Clinton, they and everyone that knew them are blown away in the dust from one light stroke of a nail file."</p><p>In my opinion, that qualifies as scientific poetry. But that's because it takes an idea and sketches it with metaphor and examples that are accessible and understandable to my way of thinking. And Dawkins, too often, refuses to "stoop" to "that level."</p><p>For example, consider this quote from astrophysicist Chandrasekhar; "... beauty is that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound." Indeed. Of course, I left out the beginning of the quote which talks about math and how it relates to nature. That's not beautiful to me. I understand why it's beautiful to those whose brains process math differently. But my brain does not work that way. My mind responds to a different beauty. Does that make my idea of beauty any less valid? Dawkins would undoubtedly say, "Yes." Then he'd kick me out of his office and grumble discontentedly as he adjusted his suspenders and wandered back to his desk.</p><p>But when Dawkins DOES lower himself to my level and speak my language, he pulls me right in; his discussion on coincidence and how, in our multi-media age, we are more likely to see a pattern where there is none, was eye-opening. And his fascinating riff on the fact that science is an affront to common sense made me smile in satisfaction; "For example, every time you drink a glass of water you are imbibing at least one molecule that passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell ... there are many more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the sea ... solid matter, even a hard diamond, consists almost entirely of empty space." </p><p>Another riff that gave me pause was Dawkins' take on God's covenant with Abraham; "He didn't promise Abraham eternal life as an individual ... But he did promise something else. 'And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly ... and thou shalt be a father of many nations ... And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.' Abraham was left in no doubt that the future lay with his seed, not his individuality. God knew his Darwinism."</p><p>That is what I was looking for in this book. Someone with the title " Professor of the Public Understanding of Science" should really like average, thoughtful humans a bit more than Dawkins seems to. And if one is going to celebrate the diversity of life, one should also celebrate the diversity of ways of looking at life. We can't all think like Dawkins. It is hubris of Dawkins to expect all of us to try. And to belittle us when we fail. </p><p>Rather, he could have made his case for why his way of thinking is a valid and valuable addition to the layers of awareness that allow us to continually find beauty in our universe. But to discount and belittle the other ways of finding beauty was a mistake. He should have calculated that in some sort of equation before he published.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/12885249-gabrielam13"></a></section><section><p>135 reviews24 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1989055540">April 28, 2019</a></section><div><p>Cred că aceasta a devenit cartea mea preferată de la Dawkins. Spre deosebire de toate celalte pe care le-am citit, deși mi s-au părut la fel de interesante din punct de vedere al informațiilor prezentate, "Destrămarea curcubeului" este cea mai filosofică și lirică. Ceea ce, de fapt, este și ceea ce urmărește Dawkins: să prezinte argumente în favoarea poeticiății științei.<p>Contrar a ceea ce mulți cred, știința nu distruge magia lumii sau, cum ar spune Blaga, ea nu distruge ”corola de minuni a lumii”. Dimpotrivă. Ea revelă universul din care facem parte în toată măreția lui și expune misterele care ne vin în întâmpinare când încercăm să-l descifrăm. Dar chiar și când aflăm modul cum funcționează fenomenele din jurul nostru, chiar și cele care ne inspiră frumusețe și venerație precum curcubeul și stelele sau mintea umană, răspunsurile științei nu distrug lirismul, ci ele inspiră la fel de multă mirare și sublim ca în fața oricărei opere de artă. </p><p>Dawkins argumentează că Keats și toți ceilalți poeți care gândesc asemenea lui greșesc când îl acuză pe Newton că a distrus magia curcubeului atunci când l-a explicat. Și că daca ei și-ar folosi talentul poetic pentru a transpune în versuri explicația acestor fenomene, tangoul între știință și poezie ar fi cu mult mai frumos decât orice altă explicație inventată … </p><p>Nu pot decât să fiu de acord în totalitate cu această perspectivă a lui Dawkins. Și mie mi se pare că lumea pe care ne-o prezintă știința este una fascinantă și cuceritoare și am fost prinsă de farmecul ei încă de când am descoperit astronomia. Însă dincolo de teza principală a cărții, așa cum ne-a obișnuit mereu autorul, avem șansa și să descoperim și multe idei interesante din universul biologiei, dar și al informaticii și fizicii. </p><p>Închei cu câteva citate care mi se par că sunt cele mai grăitoare pentru mesajul cărții: <br />”Creierul este o masă de materie de circa 1300g, pe care o puteți ține în mână și care poate concepe un univers de o sută de miliarde de ani-lumină în diametru.” Marian C. Diamond</p><p>"Isaac Asimov ofera o ilustrare dramatica: este ca si cum toata materia din univers ar fi un bob de nisip, asezat in mijlocul unei camere goale cu lungimea, inaltimea si latimea de 32 km. Si totusi, in acelasi timp, este ca si cum acel bob unic de nisip a fost pulverizat intr-o mie de milioane de milioane de milioane de fragmente, pentru ca acesta e numarul aproximativ de stele din univers. Acestea sunt unele dintre faptele astronomiei si puteti vedea cat sunt de frumoase."</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/12885249?shelf=popularizarea-stiintei">popularizarea-stiintei</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4331887-steve"></a></section><section><p>79 reviews23 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/123335911">October 24, 2010</a></section><div><p>Written a few years prior to The God Delusion, this book serves as a useful bridge for anyone familiar with Dawkins's atheist output but unfamiliar with his more scientific titles. His critics often like to portray him as arrogant, hectoring (or that other old chestnut: 'shrill') and overly absorbed with the cold clinical application of the scientific method. Well he may not be cuddly, and I may not agree with his approach to everything, but for the most part I find him genial, honorable and good-natured, and this book - essentially a non-religious celebration of life and the scientific method - displays his warmth and humanity in bucketloads as it reveals how a greater understanding of science enlarges - rather than diminishes - our sense of wonder. This was enlightening, beautifully written and highly recommended. I know I will read it again.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4331887?shelf=favorites">favorites</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4331887?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3357765-jimmy"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>5 books202 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4136918044">August 22, 2021</a></section><div><p>Dawkins begins by bemoaning the fact that "poets, too many of them and for too long, have overlooked the goldmine of inspiration offered by science." I recently judged a poetry contest based on a science theme. The poems were a pleasure to read because I rarely see such a theme. <p>Some lawyers prefer jurors who are clueless about DNA. Defense lawyers want to get their clients off, and prosecutors want to convict someone. Such a shame. Especially when you consider how flawed human visual identification is. </p><p>Children are not only gullible to what their parents tell them, but this "extreme early gullibility is followed by equally obstinate subsequent unshakability." What a "devastating combination" this is. Like the Jesuits used to say, "Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man." </p><p>A psychic game to play: Take a large group. Flip a coin. Those who guess heads or tails right keep standing. Keep doing that until you are left with a "psychic." </p><p>William James once said in 1910: "There are more worms unattached to hooks than impaled upon them; therefore, on the whole, says Nature to her fishy children, bite at every worm and take your chances." </p><p>As much as I love Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins's critique is right on the money and worth reading for lovers of science. Same goes for his critique of Franz De Waal and Margaret Mead. </p><p>Miriam Rothschild speaks of a "worm which lives exclusively under the eyelids of the hippopotamus and feeds upon its tears." </p><p>Marian C. Diamond: "The brain is a three pound mass you can hold in your hand that can conceive of a universe a hundred billion light-years across."</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3357765?shelf=atheism">atheism</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3357765?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1833413-michael"></a></section><section><p>38 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/368532938">July 14, 2012</a></section><div><p>As a person unlearned--well, okay, let's be honest, frankly ignorant--in science, I enjoyed this wide-ranging book. Dawkins largely achieves his aim: to show that an understanding of the science of phenomena can create a sense of wonder equal to mythic or poetic metaphor, with a concomitant gain in understanding and an increased desire to know still more and to look askance at delusions that are unsupportable in light of what we know and continue to learn. Not every chapter is strong. The part on bad science metaphors is not as interesting as the rest and serves simply as an attack on a view of evolution on which he disagrees. Those well-versed in science might find passages to carp at. For the interested non-scientist, this book is engaging and a useful primer on many topics. Keats, no mean explorer of knowledge, in spite of his dismissal of Newton's optics as an unpoetic unweaving of the rainbow, would, I would bet, enjoy this book mightily once he became current with the growth of scientific understanding since his time. </p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/60293611-animesh"></a></section><section><p>73 reviews5 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4772096278">June 19, 2022</a></section><div><p>You know Dawkins is a staunch atheist. He will climb on you if you say you believe in God.. or so I have heard. He is also an accomplished evolutionary scientist as is visible from his other works.<p>Can this book change someone who does not find joy in science? I would say no because in the first place this will be picked up by someone who likes if not loves science. </p><p>Can this book change someone who wants to know if he can find joy in science? Assuming that he knows SOME bits of science already.. I would say maybe. The book is particularly enjoyable in the first half and the last chapter where you do get a sense of wonder and amazement but the middle is too technical and frankly difficult to read. The concept of "self-feeding co-evolution" is a must read.</p><p>People believe in superstitions and other mystical abstractions particularly because they find solace in it. People also find solace in music, arts. I know a friend who found solace in reading stories at his lowest points. Science can give you existential crisis. Can I enjoy science like I enjoy music? <br />Are there specific things which I should do to enjoy science just like I enjoy listening to music without knowing anything about musical theory? Dawkins does not answer that.</p><p>I wonder what Dawkins thinks about the boom in scientific educational content on the Internet today. On one side there is a lot of pop-sci content that one should stay away from, but there are a lot of other beautiful collaborations between journalists, scientists and mathematicians ( Shout out to Brady and his channels- SixtySymbols, Numberphile, Computerphile, PeriodicVideos, etc.). Man, I wish there existed some book which was coauthored by both Dawkins and Betrand Russell...</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1660832-kevin"></a></section><section><p>1,428 reviews35 followers</p></section></div><section><section><p><b>Read</b></p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3042000114">November 12, 2019</a></section><div><p>Enjoyed this book a lot especially the chapters on how humans delude themselves or allow others to delude them, including newspapers that include astrology columns. That seems very fitting for todays world where politicians yell fake news if they don't like the story about themselves. The final chapter is really great as well about memes and language. </p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1660832?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1660832?shelf=philosophy">philosophy</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1660832?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/940772-mark"></a></section><section><p>5 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/16529645">February 27, 2008</a></section><div><p>Dawkins makes a strong case for those of us who believe that scientific literacy not only does not have to come at the price of aesthetic appreciation, but can actually enhance it. Put another way, good science inspires good poetry. The sense of wonder we feel when watching the sun set should if anything be enhanced if we are aware of the physics of light reaching our retina, the 93 million miles the light had to travel to reach us, the ability of the light to at times be refracted into a rainbow, etc. Science can also correct bad poetry or metaphors; he does a good job of showing why an understanding of the arbitrary position of stars' light as it reaches us should argue against astrology, and is as unrelenting against numerology, postmodernism, and religious fundamentalism. Anyone who appreciates Bill Bryson will enjoy this book. The author gives one of the most cogent explanations I have read for our propensity to overweight anecdotal, statistically insignificant events.<br />My only gripes about the book were his tendency to assume the reader has as much knowledge of and fondness for Keats and Byron as he seems to have, and his apparent impatience for those who lose themselves in their metaphors, looking for meaning in random physical events. I believe only a minority of people can tolerate the anxiety that comes from confronting their smallness in the universe, a universe that if it is ruled by a deity does not apparently need to be (as Stephen Hawkings so aptly illustrated in a Brief History of Time).</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8184722-gustavo-krieger"></a></section><section><p>116 reviews4 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1117290153">December 12, 2014</a></section><div><p>A weak book from Dawkins. Regardless of his ideas being right or wrong, he is a bad writer, and here he is worse than ever. He stumbles from the banal to the sublime, to the complex to the simple, to the popular to the academic without even noticing that. One page you are reading a very important theory and in the next paragraph he goes on telling you about a trivial thing that has happened to him the day before. Sometimes pages and pages are spent trying to explain something not important, and then when the important thing comes, Dawkins treats it as "already explained" and leave it as that.<br />Other thing he loves to do, and it's just plain bad writing, is comparing things one with another. As a first step to understand the problem, it's ok, but he dwells too long on metaphors. I.e., comparing the human brain to a computer. He goes on and on and on until there's no more use using the metaphor; it becomes harder and harder to believe in him, and things become ridiculous. The worst part is a link he makes between the evolution of the human brain, memes, and a tango he cannot forget. There's a lot of guessing in this book, too. And some theories are not that credible. <br />His criticism of astrology and other spiritual stuff are more or less correct, and it's something important that must be adressed, but he can't write a coherent chapter to express his ideas. He criticises a bit, then talk about other thing, then comes a very complex but short paragraph, then it's a trivial thing again, etc.<br />There are some good moments, very few, but in short: very badly written. <br /></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/119323055-fusioneight"></a></section><section><p>103 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4749109384">June 8, 2022</a></section><div><p><p> My first Dawkins book, and it's pretty decent. </p><p>Dawkins doesn't agree with the relatively common view that science reduces the universe to its mere components, and so sets to talk about superstitions and about how the world really works, without diminishing its beauty and wonder. It's a satisfying science-popularizing book that doesn't stoop low in its explanation.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/538517-alissa-thorne"></a></section><section><p>301 reviews26 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/62956820">May 6, 2017</a></section><div><p>﻿I would love to praise <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/31487.Unweaving_the_Rainbow_Science__Delusion_and_the_Appetite_for_Wonder">Unweaving the Rainbow Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder</a> as a layman's introduction to the wonders of science. The premise of the book is that the scientific view is not the bleak and cold perspective that it has a reputation for. In support of this, the book is chock full of little tidbits that demonstrate the beauty, the elegance, the chaos and the awe-inspiring complexity of the world around us. Dawkins endeavors to make science real to us, to seduce us with its simplicity, to floor us by making the massive tangible, and to tantalize us with the beautiful intricacy that can be seen if you just have the understanding.<p>Sadly I can also describe this book as a long and rambling rant about the bountiful and varied thorns in Richard Dawkins' side. Sure, I share the pain of many of those thorns. But even to me, his litany of complaints eventually started to feel like the mean-spirited nit-picking of a cantankerous old man.</p><p>It is tricky to strike a balance between providing harsh criticism of bad ideas while still being respectful to the people who believe them. And yet this is a challenge that skeptics should be uniquely well suited for. I never cease to be amazed when a skeptic work explains the natural human fallacies that tend to lead to a particular faulty conclusion and the mechanism in our brains that make the belief appealing and intuitive... then in the next paragraph, have the audacity to call people who have made these entirely reasonable mistakes idiots or charlatans!</p><p>Excepting perhaps the small choir of skeptics that Dawkins is preaching to, we all know someone who holds a scientifically unsound belief. Even most generally pro-science people hold one or two personal superstitions. Nobody appreciates their friends and family members mocked or accused of malicious intent, and they take it even less kindly when the name-calling is pointed their way. It is a tragic irony that this is what leaves people with a bad taste in their mouth, leading to the very anti-science sentiments that Dawkins is trying to prevent.</p><p>I wish I could recommend this book to friends. I would love to be able to say, "Read this, and maybe you will begin to see why being an atheist is not depressing as you are imagining, but in fact wondrous and hopeful." But I would be ashamed for a friend to read this book, and be subjected to witnessing the cruel ridicule dished out by Dawkins.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/538517?shelf=about-science">about-science</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/538517?shelf=genre-nonfiction">genre-nonfiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/30276417-nancy-mills"></a></section><section><p>380 reviews27 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1150397357">December 1, 2019</a></section><div><p>Hmph. This one has me all over the place in terms of how much I was liking it at any particular juncture. The final chapter is a solid 5 star essay on its own, an ode to the depth of the human brain, the (probably uniquely human) use of language, metaphor and representational graphics to advance our species' knowledge and create durable memes. My wording, not Dawkins'. <br />At times I forgot myself and thought I was reading Stephen Pinker. If you start reading this book and find yourself bored or irritated, at least read the last chapter. It redeems itself.<br />As far as the rest of the book, some of it is the usual pompous argument for atheism that I've come to associate with Richard Dawkins. He bogs this reader down with blather regarding "good scientific poetry" vs. "bad scientific poetry " and then proceeds to inflict upon us his own brand of the latter. And not surprisingly (if you've read much Dawkins) he snipes at Stephen Jay Gould ("bad poetry in his hands is all the more damaging because Gould is a graceful writer") <br />Nevertheless, between Dawkins' preachy drivel this book contains rich veins of mesmerizing science writing, spanning topics ranging from characteristics of light (hence the name of the book ) to audio perception to DNA evidence. A treat for those of us who love reading about science. Then back he goes to verbally pummeling astrology and other such superstitious nonsense. Really, Richard, you're preaching to the choir here. Chances of the avid consumers of headlines such as "Marilyn Monroe Comes Back as a Lettuce" and "Statue of Elvis Found on Mars" are not lining up to buy your books.<br />Dawkins shines when he abandons attacking idiots and picking on colleagues and focuses on actual science: <br />Evolutionary biology, symbiosis, the strategy of cuckoos who duck parental duties by manipulating other kinds of birds into raising their kids, our minds' perceptual tricks and so on. Dawkins manages to pack a bunch of intriguing science into this book, which makes it well worth reading. No one writes more lucidly or entertainingly than Richard Dawkins when he is not on his high horse. As noted before, the last chapter alone is worth reading the book for.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/30276417?shelf=read-science">read-science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/36943042-sauerkirsche"></a></section><section><p>366 reviews62 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2036077290">May 21, 2019</a></section><div><p>3,5 Sterne<p>Dawkins ist genial wenn es darum geht, wissenschaftliche Themen der Allgemeinheit nahe zu bringen und was vielleicht noch wichtiger ist, naturwissenschaftliche Denkweise und Wertschätzung. Er beschreibt hervorragend den Konflikt zwischen Geistes-, Sozialwissenschaften und Naturwissenschaft. Auch dass die Meinung von Geistes- oder Sozialwissenschaftlern in öffentlichen Diskussionen eher anerkannt und wertgeschätzt wird als die von Naturwissenschaftlern und das sogar bei naturwissenschaftlichen Themen (Stichwort Grüne Gentechnik, Landwirtschaft etc.).<br />Er erwähnt auch sehr treffend, dass Naturwissenschaften von manchen Pseudo-Feministinnen als "männlich" und "kalt" bezeichnet werden und Intuition und Glaube als weiblich, was der Selbstbestimmung von Frauen eher schadet als hilft.</p><p>Was mich gestört hat, waren die ständigen Seitenhiebe in Richtung Religion, Mythologie oder auch Phantastik. Es ist absolut in Ordnung wenn er Religionen aus wissenschaftlicher, logischer Sicht als fragwürdig darstellt. Ich persönlich bin Atheistin, lebe jedoch nach der Philosophie jeder wie er glücklich ist, solange er mich nicht bekehren möchte und anderen nicht damit schadet. Mythologie und Phantastik werden von Dawkins ebenfalls diffamiert, was ich etwas übertrieben finde. Mythen haben ihre Bedeutung und maßgeblich zur Entwicklung von verschiedenen Kulturen beigetragen. Ich finde Mythologie faszinierend, auch aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht und bin ein großer Fantasy-Fan, trotz (oder vielleicht auch gerade wegen) naturwissenschaftlichem Studium.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/36943042?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/36943042?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/904335-abi"></a></section><section><p>102 reviews78 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77836743">November 15, 2009</a></section><div><p>Hmmm, I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand I agree with him wholeheartedly that science and a scientific understanding of natural phenomena is a source of wonder. BUT, I think Dawkins throws the baby out with the bath water to a certain extent. To think of the rainbow in terms of water drops and light waves evokes one sort of beauty. But to think of the rainbow in terms of mythology, as something mysteriously wonderful, evokes quite another, one that is infinitely more suited to literature. Because all literature is, in one way or another, about human beings. Dawkins argues that literature would be much greater if it approached the rainbow in terms of its literal truth. Well, I certainly don't agree with that. Perhaps Keats was foolish to criticise Newton's 'unweaving of the rainbow', but he would have been equally foolish to write a poem devoid of humanity. A myth about a rainbow isn't about the rainbow at all, it's about the people that created the myth. It is perfectly possible to know what a rainbow really is and wonder at its complexity, whilst still being able to switch focus and approach it from a poetic angle, in which the rainbow will mean whatever the author wants it to mean. And that absolutely doesn't mean believing a myth to be TRUE in a real sense.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/904335?shelf=20th-century">20th-century</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/904335?shelf=england">england</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1947301-ericka-clou"></a></section><section><p>2,026 reviews158 followers</p></section></div><section><section><p><b>Read</b></p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2559317018">September 23, 2022</a></section><div><p>Admittedly, I didn't finish this book- which is why I didn't rate it. But the thesis that science doesn't diminish the beauty of the world is so obvious to me that it no longer felt valuable to read the second half of a book mostly of Dawkins congratulating himself for how smart he is. I did enjoy the actual description of how the rainbow works though. It's pretty rare for me to quit a book this far through though, so that's not a great sign.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1947301?shelf=1990s">1990s</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1947301?shelf=book-club-dad">book-club-dad</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1947301?shelf=nonfiction">nonfiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8676317-a-man-called-ove"></a></section><section><p>900 reviews218 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3058275897">November 28, 2019</a></section><div><p>3.5/5 "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."<br />Sometime ago, I liked a book by Dawkins wrote for children - <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/11256979.The_Magic_of_Reality_How_We_Know_What_s_Really_True">The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True</a>. In each chapter Dawkins beautifully explains one phenomena in a very lucid and loving way. This book is "The Magic of Reality" for adults.<br />Dawkins is acerbic and elitist and nihilist, until you finally pick up and read one of his books. His passion and love for science make it such a joy to read. And as for the "elitist" tag, his language is lucid and he comes across as honest. But this book was actually about answering the "nihilist" tag and celebrating science as something that makes life worth living.<br />Some of the chapters are spent debunking astrology and other pseudo-science in a very logical way. The chapters explaining DNA, light and sound were superb. I have read a few of his famous books on evolution before, and so the content of some of the chapters were very familiar. Perhaps I would have rated this book higher if it were my first book by him.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/8676317?shelf=science-sci-fi">science-sci-fi</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/51454575-nick-davies"></a></section><section><p>1,502 reviews40 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2120706687">August 2, 2020</a></section><div><p>Initially this was slightly infuriating. Though Dawkins does make a lot of sense, though I agree with a lot of his views and respect his scientific expertise, though this book does address a very interesting subject (the criticism of science by non-scientists that the detailed logical breakdown of how/why everything works is robbing the world and life of the mystery and magic), at times I felt that the author himself fell in to the trap he was criticising. <p>So I had no problem with what Dawkins was saying (some parts - using Fourier equations to estimate the penis size of elephants on musth based on the sine wave of piss stains left on the ground, and the role and evolution of <i>Mixotricha</i> inside termite guts, intracellular parasites of parasites within an insect that operates with a hive mind - particularly interesting) but more with how he was saying it. At times he came over confrontational and like he was ramming his point home (unnecessary for me as a reader who already understood and agreed with his conjecture), and at times he seemed to be throwing in italicised quotes of little relevance (and in doing so appeared more like the flawed misinterpretators of science he was seeking to separate his and most other scientists from).</p><p>Nevertheless, certainly a thought-provoking read - for all that I couldn't stomach reading Dawkins exclusively.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/51454575?shelf=2020">2020</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/63673587-aracne-mileto"></a></section><section><p>367 reviews15 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1877476787">April 5, 2017</a></section><div><p>Siempre es un placer leer a Dawkins, es un escritor que puede simplificar los conceptos más complejos y hacerte disfrutar de temas que a muchos les aburría de jóvenes: biología, química, física, etc (particularmente, yo aún no supero mis problemas con los vectores…).<p>Muchos piensan que la ciencia le quita el color a la vida con sus explicaciones complicadas y extensas, intentando arrebatarnos lo brillante y emocionante de lo desconocido. Pues este libro nos demuestra que la ciencia hace de todo menos eso.</p><p>En nuestro pasado, en nuestros genes, y en nuestra mente se esconden las respuestas a preguntas tan básicas como: ¿De dónde venimos?, ¿Cómo evolucionamos? ¿Cómo surgió la vida (no… no fue en 7 días) Y Dawkins explica punto por punto aquella información que no siempre es fácil encontrar, demostrando lo maravilloso que es estar informado, y te anima a seguir buscando más; por qué la ciencia nunca se detiene, siempre hay nuevos misterios que resolver.</p><p>¿Nunca han leído libros de divulgación científica? ¿alguna vez viste a una paloma supersticiosa? ¿Siempre comentas que el gen gay no existe pero no sabes que rayos es un gen?<br />Pues este libro puede ayudarte… y mucho.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/123517003-chuck-a"></a></section><section><p>29 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3629931523">March 1, 2021</a></section><div><p>The first 6 chapters of this book were great. Classic Dawkins in that he knows how to write to keep a reader engaged and motivated to learn. <br />Chapters 7-11 however were a bit of a slog for me. He delved a bit deeper into biology and evolution, which is great, but I had a hard time staying engaged. <br />Chapter 12 was the last chapter, and brought it all back together, and ended it off with some great poetry by John Keats.<p>Overall, not a terrible book. He talks about the symbiotic relationship that should (but many times doesn’t) exist between poetry and science. The last half is what gives it three stars for me. Not bad, but not my favorite Dawkins book. </p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/123517003?shelf=sciency-things">sciency-things</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/18393139-ellison-rhea"></a></section><section><p>36 reviews4 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/992734885">September 10, 2014</a></section><div><p>In this mindblowing science-based philosophical text, Dawkins invites the reader to see wonder in a world which, though often counter-intuitive and surprising, invites deep understanding.<p>Though Dawkins is a skilled scientist, this text shows that he is equally impressive as a philosopher. In his case, science and philosophy are closely linked-- before beginning this text, I described my anticipation at reading "this Athiestic firecracker of a mind", and my hopes were not disappointed. Dawkins skillfully navigates several areas of science, probability, and new knowledge of human perception to show that we should be in constant awe-- not because of mystery, which may soon be dispelled, but because so much is knowable and percievable. As a person of religion myself (Christian, mostly Protestant), I found that this read closed the gaps to which I'd relegated my God--and caused me to question whether I'd built a faith paradigm that was dependent on and argued from a point of ignorance (how-else-do-you-explain...).* Over all, this was a superbly written text, and I'm thankful for every bit of it.</p><p>A few notes on reading Dawkins: He is a great philsopher, but arguably an even better rhetorician. As a fan of rhetoric myself I was impressed with the deliacy with which he `wooed' a possibly religious audience-- not just with logos, but with ethos and pathos too-- positively quoting C.S. Lewis and sharing a deep concern for his fellow man (languge was usually male, unfortunately). Though to his credit, he seeks to free mankind from the confines of magial religious thought, some of his jabs at religion were neither scientific, fair, or mature. Implicitly equating Elvis sightings with Christian claims of Christ's resurrection; listing off Santa and Baby Jesus in the same category of quaint childhood belief; implying that religious education systems have been intentionally, nefariously designed to exploit the credulity of children-- all of this seems a little beneath someone of his apparent intellectual/philosophical capabilities. I generally avoid Christian literature because of these not-so-subtle jabs at those with opposing worldviews; it is good to know that committed Athiests can be just as underhanded and preachy! However, this was not excessive (Don't want to make your target audience throw the book!) and if you are aware of it and have a good sense of humor, you won't find it too hard to read through. </p><p>Dawkins also had some problematic moral conclusions whenever he ventured outside of his scientific field. For example, he seemed to imply that races had evolved seperately enough to make intermarriage a less-than-ideal situation and didn't clarify oherwise, and declined to address the white-male dominance within science when it would have been only natural to do so (he was lambasting those who completely reject science for that reason, dismissing their concerns almost entirely.) He's great, but keep in mind that this text should not replace readings in ethics or sociology.</p><p>A few quotes:</p><p>(On the Usefulness of Science) "If everything is judged by how `useful' it is-- useful for staying alive, that is-- we are left facing a futile circularity. There must be some added value. At lesst a part of life should be devoted to living that life, not just working to stop it ending." (5)</p><p>"We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways." (7)</p><p>"There are, of course, genuine philosophical difficulties. Is a truth just a so-far-unfalsified hypothesis?... Is anything ultimately true? On the other hand, no philosopher has any trouble using the language of truth when falsely accused of a crime, or when suspecting his wife of adultery." (21)</p><p>"Good science fiction has no dealings with fairy tales, but is premised on the world as an orderly place. There is mystery, but the universe is not frivolous or light-fingered in its changeability.... Science fiction may tinker with the laws of nature, arguably and preferably one law at a time, but it cannot abolish lawfulness itself and remain good science fiction." (29)</p><p>(On Astrological Signs): "...isn't this a form of discriminatory labeling rather like the cultural stereotypes which many of us nowadays find objectionable? I can imagine a Monty Python sketch in which a newspaper publishes a column something like this: `Germans: it is in your nature to be hard-working and methodical.... Spaniards: Your Latin blood may get the better of you...." (119)</p><p>"Skill in weilding metaphors and symbols is oneof the hallmarks of scientific genius." (186)</p><p>"We are alone among the animals in forseeing our end. We are also alone among the animals in being able to say before we die: Yes, this is why it was worth coming into life in the first place." (313)</p><p> *The curious reader may want to know that the answer was yes--this was, in part, the nature of my faith, and to that extent, it has been shaken-- not stirred-- but I also find God to be dynamically present in the elegance of the natural, in the known, and I found my paradigm of God and God's engagement with the world truer for having read Dawkins. I also think my God rather enjoys Dawkin's mind too-- and might even thank him for knocking over a few of the He-shaped dummy-idols we have created over time.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/18393139?shelf=summer-reading-2014">summer-reading-2014</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/57452845-alexandra"></a></section><section><p>105 reviews3 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2721264733">September 8, 2021</a></section><div><p>O privire fascinată asupra minunilor lumii, însoțită de analizele științifice aferente, amănunțite. Pentru cei care preferă nu doar să admire, ci și să disece.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/76215844-stephen-byrne"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>2 books23 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4226160147">October 21, 2021</a></section><div><p>Another fantastic collection of essays. </p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/18837608-tim-webber"></a></section><section><p>27 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4787159184">October 20, 2022</a></section><div><p>Did Not Finish (decided I have too many potentially better books waiting to be read and life's too short)</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4262636-john-michael-strubhart"></a></section><section><p>483 reviews10 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/219207987">March 31, 2022</a></section><div><p>This is a book of mostly opinions and perspectives, although there is a great deal of science to be learned. Dawkins' opinions and perspectives as well as his speculations are certainly well-informed and, as so many have said, he is a wonderful writer. It's a treat to read what he writes, even if you don't understand it. Dawkins addresses many of the metaphors that science writers use and how they are often used correctly and incorrectly to conceptualize and explain scientific ideas. My preference is for a science writer to be clear and concise and to define all the jargon used. But some people need analogies and metaphors make for pretty writing. How does one do it without being misleading though? That's the question. Dawkins makes a lot of good points - most of which I agree with. I find his opinions well-argued, and his speculations are ... well .... very British. Anyway, if you find evolution interesting and you appreciate good writing, you'll enjoy this read. </p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5803820-martin-pribble"></a></section><section><p>12 reviews19 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/525834008">February 11, 2013</a></section><div><p>This month, while in a Twitter hiatus, I managed to get around to reading a book. Yes, a real book, with paper and pages and a cardboard cover! The book I chose to read is by Dr Richard Dawkins, and this is one that is overlooked in terms of its importance and place in society, having been overshadowed by his more groundbreaking and most famous publications such as “The Blind Watchmaker”, “The Selfish Gene” and of course “The God Delusion.”<p>“Unweaving the Rainbow” was originally published in 1998, and apart from some unforeseen advances in science and technology, is as relevant today’s it was when written over ten years ago. The premise of the book, and the origin of the title, stem from a claim by the 19th century poet John Keats, in apparent dismay at Sir Isaac Newton for his discovery and documentation the separation of white light into the visible spectrum, or the rainbow as it is commonly known. Keats claims that Newton destroyed the wonder and poetry of the rainbow by “reducing it to prismatic colours.” Keats’ claim, and claims like it, are often employed as a last ditch attempt in refuting the importance or relevance of science, saying that the deep study of the beautiful can only reduce a wonderful thing, a thing of reverence and astonishment, to a mundane and dull object once fully understood. The extrapolation of this claim seems to be the mystery of the unknown in the form of god, souls, magic and spirituality will be destroyed by the understanding of the underlying principles that create these phenomena within humanity. Of course, this claim stems from a fear that science is, in fact, often correct, and may eventually rid the world of superstition and dogma.</p><p>Dawkins goes to great lengths to “unweave the rainbow” in it’s many guises; From the specific story of Keats and Newton to the charlitanism of new age mysticism, from pseudoscience to bad poetic communication, Dawkins has successfully constructed a case for the wonder and majesty of the natural world, the way things really are. He intersperses the book with pieces of prose and quotes from the arts and science, and shows that superstition and bad judgement do not lie solely within the confines of religion. Of course we knew this to be the case, but to analyse it in this manner really puts a perspective on who we are as a species, and why we believe the unbelievable.</p><p>Much like Michael Shermer’s book “Why People Believe Weird Things”, “Rainbow” gives numerous examples of how the human brain sees the world around it, and how our development as a species is sometimes hindered by our evolution, the very thing that brought us here. Biologically we are riddled with age old hangovers from times past, and socially we are told that science is devoid of wonder. The combination of these two aspects of modern society is that science is seen as a cold and soulless reduction of the universe to just a bunch of numbers on paper. While science can (and I believe will) explain away many of the aspects of life that we see as indescribable or mysterious, as Dawkins argues, this can only enhance our wonder at nature’s intricacies.</p><p>Dawkins, I feel, is always at his strongest when he talks of topics of which he is an expert; biology. When he speaks of religion, he all too often gets caught upon a personal battle of will and wits, and can come across as a less than savoury character. In “Rainbow” however, he successfully walks a thin line between scientific facts and the criticism of the human condition, without entering the territory of ad-hominem insults or personal attacks on individuals. He is neither too critical nor soft on the idiosyncrasies and quirks of human nature. He balances the rightful claim that science can only enhance our understanding of the universe and all it contains with the need for the poetic and the beautiful. This is a point that is all too often overlooked, and this message can only help to move forward any attempts by science to regain its place in the minds of modern humanity, without being seen as a threat to the beauty and appreciation we have for the natural world.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5163217-daniel"></a></section><section><p>595 reviews42 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/248245311">March 22, 2012</a></section><div><p>Obwohl <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/1194.Richard_Dawkins">Richard Dawkins</a> zweifelsfrei zu den genialeren (Evolutions-) Biologen zählt, möchte ich dieses Buch nur einem eingeschränkten Publikum empfehlen. Zwar hat sich der eloquente Engländer inzwischen einen Namen in Sachen Religionskritik gemacht (vermutlich ist er DER Paradeatheist); dieser Umstand alleine macht ihn aber, trotz aller Kontroversen, noch nicht interessant genug um sich als Laie durch dieses Buch zu quälen.<p>Nicht falsch verstehen - an und für sich ist es sicherlich interessant. Leider gibt es aber ein paar Kritikpunkte, die das Lesevergnügen unglaublich trüben.</p><p>Da wäre zum Einen, dass man ihm - bei allem Respekt für seine Leistungen! - schon einen gewissen Chauvinismus anmerkt. Wo es um Musik geht wird stets in den höchsten Tönen von "Klassik" gesprochen. In Sachen Poesie spielt er sich als Kenner auf und putzt jede andere Meinung so konsequent herunter, dass man selbst dann skeptisch wird, wenn man eigentlich seiner Meinung war / ist. Mit anderen Worten: Er lässt in diesem Buch so sehr den Gebildeten raushängen, dass es einem schon zum Halse heraushängt.</p><p>Und dann wäre da allgemein seine Neigung nur die Phantasielosigkeit als phantastisch darzustellen. Er hat seinen Standpunkt gegen blinde Religiosität oft genug dargelegt und mit Argumenten untermauert. Dass er es hier aber auf so ziemlich alles ausdehnt, das nicht zu 100% der Realität entspricht, zeugt von beschränkter Geistesgröße, denn ohne Fantasy- und Science-Fiction-Romane wären wohl viele Erfindungen der Menschheitsgeschichte niemals gemacht worden.</p><p>Man denke hierbei an die vielen Erfindungen aus dem Star-Trek-Universum, die Ingenieure in aller Welt so sehr begeisterten, dass wir ihm heute automatische Türen, Handys und vieles mehr zumindest zu einem großen Teil verdanken.</p><p>Nein, wenn Dawkins in diesem Buch über Star Trek, Akte X und alles herzieht, was ein wenig über den nüchternen Realismus hinausgeht, macht er sich - meiner Meinung nach - einer Arroganz schuldig, die ihm seine Gegner in den meisten anderen Punkten zu Unrecht ankreiden.</p><p>Der Ton macht die Musik. Und wenn man in einem Buch nicht nur darauf eingeht wie die Evolution das Wunder des 'Hörens', 'Abstrahierens' und 'Verstehens' ermöglichte, sollte man dabei nicht vergessen, dass man selbst aufpassen sollte, was man sagt und wie man es tut. Vor Allem, wenn man in seinem Werk versucht eine 'Poesie der Wissenschaft' zu beschwören.</p><p>Laien, die sich noch nie mit der Evolutionstheorie beschäftigt haben, können mit diesem Buch bestimmt etwas anfangen. Solche die, wie ich, gewisse Vorkenntnisse haben (Schulbildung ist dazu völlig ausreichend), werden sich streckenweise vermutlich ziemlich langweilen.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5163217?shelf=sb-allgemein">sb-allgemein</a></ul></section></section></article></div></div>||||I|||| * Home
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 Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

 Richard Dawkins

 4.02
 10,983 ratings 301 reviews
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 Keats accused Newton of destroying the poetry of the rainbow by explaining the origin of its colours. In this illuminating and provocative book, Richard Dawkins argues that Keats could not have been more mistaken, and shows how an understanding of science enhances our wonder of the world. He argues that mysteries do not lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution is often more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering even deeper mysteries. 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 on the human appetite for wonder.
 Genres Science Nonfiction Philosophy Biology Evolution Atheism Popular Science
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 352 pages, Paperback

 First published January 1, 1998

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 Richard Dawkins

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 4.02
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 pausetowonder
 23 reviews 16 followers
 January 13, 2013
 The actual science bits in here are great. Learned heaps about the workings of light and colour, sound and hearing... was even reminded that the idea of "superstitious behavior" in animals is attributed to Skinner (and not, sadly, my own idea). Much geeky excitement experienced all round by yours truly. Dawkins does a fine job of explaining complex ideas clearly and well.

 That's what was good about Unweaving the Rainbow.

 Sadly, what feels like way more than half of the book was spent painstakingly trying to argue people out of believing in astrology, ghosts, remote viewing, etc. using logic and scientific fact. Its starts about one third the way in. My problem with this is threefold:

 1) Dawkins is assuming that logic and scientific fact would have persuasive power for anyone believing in what he calls "superstition" or "ad hoc magic". (And really, why would it? I think believers would be the first to point out that this sort of thing is beyond the purview of science.)

 2) Dawkins assumes that these "deluded" people are reading his book. I can't say for sure, but personally, I would be surprised if a diehard believer in ESP or astrology would be interested in reading Dawkins' explanation of Fraunhofer lines, the electromagnetic spectrum and other fairly hardcore sciencey topics that fill the first third of this book. Seems like a different sort of audience. So he ends up "preaching to the choir" -- and there is something rather uncomfortably self-righteous about this. Not to mention dull.

 3) Dawkins (I don't mean to be unkind, but I can't think of any other to state the fact) embarrasses himself when he wanders out of the world of science and into literature and the humanities. Critiques of the scientific accuracy of Wordsworth poems or a fantasy story by Mark Twain are cringe-making.

 What Dawkins doesn't understand about human psychology is a lot. I think his whole crusade against religion has been a waste of a good scientific mind and has done a lot of damage to the discussion. His aggressive, dismissive and disrespectful approach has only put people on the defensive and set an unfortunate example.

 I was hoping for a lot more "wonder of science". Instead, I felt like I was getting lectured at length for something I didn't even do. What do I care about astrology??

 Anyhow, I was hoping for more wonders-of-science and less railing. Disappointing.

 Better books on science and wonder that I'd recommend:

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 Amanda
 12 reviews 60 followers
 June 18, 2011
 The first half or so was amazing, and the rest was still really interesting (especially the end), if not quite as exhilarating. At the same time, you have to remember that even that powerhouse of scientific poetry, Carl Sagan, had some dry chapters every now and then. Some dryness definitely doesn't make it any less worth the read, and its mild anyway. Overall, this book was extremely enjoyable, and a breeze to get through. 4.5 stars, will probably be 5 on the reread.
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 Krista
 439 reviews 9 followers
 March 21, 2010
 One of the Goodreads reviews on this book relates, simply, that the writer of the review had been on a cruise ship with the author prior to reading the book. When she DID read the book, she regretted that she didn't "do some kind of small violence to his person" while on the cruise with him.

 In many ways, that sums up my take beautifully. This was the most interesting book I've ever despised. Certainly, I have a brain not suited to the exigencies of science. But when he wasn't losing me in a web of convoluted explanation, he was was looking down his nose at me like a curmudgeonly professor who is inordinately piqued that an average undergraduate had the audacity to drop by during office hours and ask a stupid question.

 That said, I learned a lot and, while I did not become a convert to his thesis that science can be as beautiful as poetry, I will admit that, were my brain more suited to the beauty of, say, probability, I would have been in ecstasy while perusing the pages of this tome. In discussing how we discover our world; "... we arrived by being born, and we didn't burst conscious into the world but accumulated awareness gradually through babyhood. The fact that we slowly apprehend our world, rather than suddenly discover it, should not subtract from its wonder." And maybe that's where he lost me. I haven't accumulated enough awareness to see what he sees. And to believe what he believes. But condescension does not encourage me to become more aware. It encourages me to shrug and go back to my music, or my poetry, or my philosophy.

 All of that said, there were several "aha" moments; some "I-never-knew-that-before!" aha, some "I-never-thought-about-it-that-way-before!" aha and some "I-had-totally-forgotten-about-that!" aha.

 Like his analogy about how expansive the earth's past is; "Fling your arms wide in an expansive gesture to span all of evolution from its origin at your left fingertip to today at your right fingertip. All the way across your midline to well past your right shoulder, life consists of nothing but bacteria. Many-celled, invertebrate life flowers somewhere around your right elbow. The dinosaurs originate in the middle of your right palm, and go extinct around your last finger joint. The whole story of Homo sapiens and our predecessor Homo erectus is contained in the thickness of one nail-clipping. As for recorded history; as for the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Jewish patriarchs, the dynasties of Pharohs, the legions of Rome, the Christian Fathers, the Laws of the Medes and Persians which never change; as for Troy and the Greeks, Helen and Achilles and Agamemnon dead; as for Napolean and Hitler, the Beatles and Bill Clinton, they and everyone that knew them are blown away in the dust from one light stroke of a nail file."

 In my opinion, that qualifies as scientific poetry. But that's because it takes an idea and sketches it with metaphor and examples that are accessible and understandable to my way of thinking. And Dawkins, too often, refuses to "stoop" to "that level."

 For example, consider this quote from astrophysicist Chandrasekhar; "... beauty is that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound." Indeed. Of course, I left out the beginning of the quote which talks about math and how it relates to nature. That's not beautiful to me. I understand why it's beautiful to those whose brains process math differently. But my brain does not work that way. My mind responds to a different beauty. Does that make my idea of beauty any less valid? Dawkins would undoubtedly say, "Yes." Then he'd kick me out of his office and grumble discontentedly as he adjusted his suspenders and wandered back to his desk.

 But when Dawkins DOES lower himself to my level and speak my language, he pulls me right in; his discussion on coincidence and how, in our multi-media age, we are more likely to see a pattern where there is none, was eye-opening. And his fascinating riff on the fact that science is an affront to common sense made me smile in satisfaction; "For example, every time you drink a glass of water you are imbibing at least one molecule that passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell ... there are many more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the sea ... solid matter, even a hard diamond, consists almost entirely of empty space."

 Another riff that gave me pause was Dawkins' take on God's covenant with Abraham; "He didn't promise Abraham eternal life as an individual ... But he did promise something else. 'And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly ... and thou shalt be a father of many nations ... And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.' Abraham was left in no doubt that the future lay with his seed, not his individuality. God knew his Darwinism."

 That is what I was looking for in this book. Someone with the title " Professor of the Public Understanding of Science" should really like average, thoughtful humans a bit more than Dawkins seems to. And if one is going to celebrate the diversity of life, one should also celebrate the diversity of ways of looking at life. We can't all think like Dawkins. It is hubris of Dawkins to expect all of us to try. And to belittle us when we fail.

 Rather, he could have made his case for why his way of thinking is a valid and valuable addition to the layers of awareness that allow us to continually find beauty in our universe. But to discount and belittle the other ways of finding beauty was a mistake. He should have calculated that in some sort of equation before he published.

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 Gabrielam13
 135 reviews 24 followers
 April 28, 2019
 Cred că aceasta a devenit cartea mea preferată de la Dawkins. Spre deosebire de toate celalte pe care le-am citit, deși mi s-au părut la fel de interesante din punct de vedere al informațiilor prezentate, "Destrămarea curcubeului" este cea mai filosofică și lirică. Ceea ce, de fapt, este și ceea ce urmărește Dawkins: să prezinte argumente în favoarea poeticiății științei.

 Contrar a ceea ce mulți cred, știința nu distruge magia lumii sau, cum ar spune Blaga, ea nu distruge ”corola de minuni a lumii”. Dimpotrivă. Ea revelă universul din care facem parte în toată măreția lui și expune misterele care ne vin în întâmpinare când încercăm să-l descifrăm. Dar chiar și când aflăm modul cum funcționează fenomenele din jurul nostru, chiar și cele care ne inspiră frumusețe și venerație precum curcubeul și stelele sau mintea umană, răspunsurile științei nu distrug lirismul, ci ele inspiră la fel de multă mirare și sublim ca în fața oricărei opere de artă.

 Dawkins argumentează că Keats și toți ceilalți poeți care gândesc asemenea lui greșesc când îl acuză pe Newton că a distrus magia curcubeului atunci când l-a explicat. Și că daca ei și-ar folosi talentul poetic pentru a transpune în versuri explicația acestor fenomene, tangoul între știință și poezie ar fi cu mult mai frumos decât orice altă explicație inventată …

 Nu pot decât să fiu de acord în totalitate cu această perspectivă a lui Dawkins. Și mie mi se pare că lumea pe care ne-o prezintă știința este una fascinantă și cuceritoare și am fost prinsă de farmecul ei încă de când am descoperit astronomia. Însă dincolo de teza principală a cărții, așa cum ne-a obișnuit mereu autorul, avem șansa și să descoperim și multe idei interesante din universul biologiei, dar și al informaticii și fizicii.

 Închei cu câteva citate care mi se par că sunt cele mai grăitoare pentru mesajul cărții:
 ”Creierul este o masă de materie de circa 1300g, pe care o puteți ține în mână și care poate concepe un univers de o sută de miliarde de ani-lumină în diametru.” Marian C. Diamond

 "Isaac Asimov ofera o ilustrare dramatica: este ca si cum toata materia din univers ar fi un bob de nisip, asezat in mijlocul unei camere goale cu lungimea, inaltimea si latimea de 32 km. Si totusi, in acelasi timp, este ca si cum acel bob unic de nisip a fost pulverizat intr-o mie de milioane de milioane de milioane de fragmente, pentru ca acesta e numarul aproximativ de stele din univers. Acestea sunt unele dintre faptele astronomiei si puteti vedea cat sunt de frumoase."
 popularizarea-stiintei
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 Steve
 79 reviews 23 followers
 October 24, 2010
 Written a few years prior to The God Delusion, this book serves as a useful bridge for anyone familiar with Dawkins's atheist output but unfamiliar with his more scientific titles. His critics often like to portray him as arrogant, hectoring (or that other old chestnut: 'shrill') and overly absorbed with the cold clinical application of the scientific method. Well he may not be cuddly, and I may not agree with his approach to everything, but for the most part I find him genial, honorable and good-natured, and this book - essentially a non-religious celebration of life and the scientific method - displays his warmth and humanity in bucketloads as it reveals how a greater understanding of science enlarges - rather than diminishes - our sense of wonder. This was enlightening, beautifully written and highly recommended. I know I will read it again.
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 Jimmy
 Author 5 books 202 followers
 August 22, 2021
 Dawkins begins by bemoaning the fact that "poets, too many of them and for too long, have overlooked the goldmine of inspiration offered by science." I recently judged a poetry contest based on a science theme. The poems were a pleasure to read because I rarely see such a theme.

 Some lawyers prefer jurors who are clueless about DNA. Defense lawyers want to get their clients off, and prosecutors want to convict someone. Such a shame. Especially when you consider how flawed human visual identification is.

 Children are not only gullible to what their parents tell them, but this "extreme early gullibility is followed by equally obstinate subsequent unshakability." What a "devastating combination" this is. Like the Jesuits used to say, "Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man."

 A psychic game to play: Take a large group. Flip a coin. Those who guess heads or tails right keep standing. Keep doing that until you are left with a "psychic."

 William James once said in 1910: "There are more worms unattached to hooks than impaled upon them; therefore, on the whole, says Nature to her fishy children, bite at every worm and take your chances."

 As much as I love Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins's critique is right on the money and worth reading for lovers of science. Same goes for his critique of Franz De Waal and Margaret Mead.

 Miriam Rothschild speaks of a "worm which lives exclusively under the eyelids of the hippopotamus and feeds upon its tears."

 Marian C. Diamond: "The brain is a three pound mass you can hold in your hand that can conceive of a universe a hundred billion light-years across."
 atheism science
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 Michael
 38 reviews
 July 14, 2012
 As a person unlearned--well, okay, let's be honest, frankly ignorant--in science, I enjoyed this wide-ranging book. Dawkins largely achieves his aim: to show that an understanding of the science of phenomena can create a sense of wonder equal to mythic or poetic metaphor, with a concomitant gain in understanding and an increased desire to know still more and to look askance at delusions that are unsupportable in light of what we know and continue to learn. Not every chapter is strong. The part on bad science metaphors is not as interesting as the rest and serves simply as an attack on a view of evolution on which he disagrees. Those well-versed in science might find passages to carp at. For the interested non-scientist, this book is engaging and a useful primer on many topics. Keats, no mean explorer of knowledge, in spite of his dismissal of Newton's optics as an unpoetic unweaving of the rainbow, would, I would bet, enjoy this book mightily once he became current with the growth of scientific understanding since his time.
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 Animesh
 73 reviews 5 followers
 June 19, 2022
 You know Dawkins is a staunch atheist. He will climb on you if you say you believe in God.. or so I have heard. He is also an accomplished evolutionary scientist as is visible from his other works.

 Can this book change someone who does not find joy in science? I would say no because in the first place this will be picked up by someone who likes if not loves science.

 Can this book change someone who wants to know if he can find joy in science? Assuming that he knows SOME bits of science already.. I would say maybe. The book is particularly enjoyable in the first half and the last chapter where you do get a sense of wonder and amazement but the middle is too technical and frankly difficult to read. The concept of "self-feeding co-evolution" is a must read.

 People believe in superstitions and other mystical abstractions particularly because they find solace in it. People also find solace in music, arts. I know a friend who found solace in reading stories at his lowest points. Science can give you existential crisis. Can I enjoy science like I enjoy music?
 Are there specific things which I should do to enjoy science just like I enjoy listening to music without knowing anything about musical theory? Dawkins does not answer that.

 I wonder what Dawkins thinks about the boom in scientific educational content on the Internet today. On one side there is a lot of pop-sci content that one should stay away from, but there are a lot of other beautiful collaborations between journalists, scientists and mathematicians ( Shout out to Brady and his channels- SixtySymbols, Numberphile, Computerphile, PeriodicVideos, etc.). Man, I wish there existed some book which was coauthored by both Dawkins and Betrand Russell...
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 Kevin
 1,428 reviews 35 followers
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 November 12, 2019
 Enjoyed this book a lot especially the chapters on how humans delude themselves or allow others to delude them, including newspapers that include astrology columns. That seems very fitting for todays world where politicians yell fake news if they don't like the story about themselves. The final chapter is really great as well about memes and language.
 non-fiction philosophy science
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 Mark
 5 reviews 1 follower
 February 27, 2008
 Dawkins makes a strong case for those of us who believe that scientific literacy not only does not have to come at the price of aesthetic appreciation, but can actually enhance it. Put another way, good science inspires good poetry. The sense of wonder we feel when watching the sun set should if anything be enhanced if we are aware of the physics of light reaching our retina, the 93 million miles the light had to travel to reach us, the ability of the light to at times be refracted into a rainbow, etc. Science can also correct bad poetry or metaphors; he does a good job of showing why an understanding of the arbitrary position of stars' light as it reaches us should argue against astrology, and is as unrelenting against numerology, postmodernism, and religious fundamentalism. Anyone who appreciates Bill Bryson will enjoy this book. The author gives one of the most cogent explanations I have read for our propensity to overweight anecdotal, statistically insignificant events.
 My only gripes about the book were his tendency to assume the reader has as much knowledge of and fondness for Keats and Byron as he seems to have, and his apparent impatience for those who lose themselves in their metaphors, looking for meaning in random physical events. I believe only a minority of people can tolerate the anxiety that comes from confronting their smallness in the universe, a universe that if it is ruled by a deity does not apparently need to be (as Stephen Hawkings so aptly illustrated in a Brief History of Time).
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 Gustavo Krieger
 116 reviews 4 followers
 December 12, 2014
 A weak book from Dawkins. Regardless of his ideas being right or wrong, he is a bad writer, and here he is worse than ever. He stumbles from the banal to the sublime, to the complex to the simple, to the popular to the academic without even noticing that. One page you are reading a very important theory and in the next paragraph he goes on telling you about a trivial thing that has happened to him the day before. Sometimes pages and pages are spent trying to explain something not important, and then when the important thing comes, Dawkins treats it as "already explained" and leave it as that.
 Other thing he loves to do, and it's just plain bad writing, is comparing things one with another. As a first step to understand the problem, it's ok, but he dwells too long on metaphors. I.e., comparing the human brain to a computer. He goes on and on and on until there's no more use using the metaphor; it becomes harder and harder to believe in him, and things become ridiculous. The worst part is a link he makes between the evolution of the human brain, memes, and a tango he cannot forget. There's a lot of guessing in this book, too. And some theories are not that credible.
 His criticism of astrology and other spiritual stuff are more or less correct, and it's something important that must be adressed, but he can't write a coherent chapter to express his ideas. He criticises a bit, then talk about other thing, then comes a very complex but short paragraph, then it's a trivial thing again, etc.
 There are some good moments, very few, but in short: very badly written.
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 Vanesa
 61 reviews 33 followers
 February 13, 2018
 Dawkins no perdona a nadie , me encanta !!
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 FusionEight
 103 reviews 1 follower
 June 8, 2022

 My first Dawkins book, and it's pretty decent.


 Dawkins doesn't agree with the relatively common view that science reduces the universe to its mere components, and so sets to talk about superstitions and about how the world really works, without diminishing its beauty and wonder. It's a satisfying science-popularizing book that doesn't stoop low in its explanation.

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 Alissa Thorne
 301 reviews 26 followers
 May 6, 2017
 ﻿I would love to praise Unweaving the Rainbow Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder as a layman's introduction to the wonders of science. The premise of the book is that the scientific view is not the bleak and cold perspective that it has a reputation for. In support of this, the book is chock full of little tidbits that demonstrate the beauty, the elegance, the chaos and the awe-inspiring complexity of the world around us. Dawkins endeavors to make science real to us, to seduce us with its simplicity, to floor us by making the massive tangible, and to tantalize us with the beautiful intricacy that can be seen if you just have the understanding.

 Sadly I can also describe this book as a long and rambling rant about the bountiful and varied thorns in Richard Dawkins' side. Sure, I share the pain of many of those thorns. But even to me, his litany of complaints eventually started to feel like the mean-spirited nit-picking of a cantankerous old man.

 It is tricky to strike a balance between providing harsh criticism of bad ideas while still being respectful to the people who believe them. And yet this is a challenge that skeptics should be uniquely well suited for. I never cease to be amazed when a skeptic work explains the natural human fallacies that tend to lead to a particular faulty conclusion and the mechanism in our brains that make the belief appealing and intuitive... then in the next paragraph, have the audacity to call people who have made these entirely reasonable mistakes idiots or charlatans!

 Excepting perhaps the small choir of skeptics that Dawkins is preaching to, we all know someone who holds a scientifically unsound belief. Even most generally pro-science people hold one or two personal superstitions. Nobody appreciates their friends and family members mocked or accused of malicious intent, and they take it even less kindly when the name-calling is pointed their way. It is a tragic irony that this is what leaves people with a bad taste in their mouth, leading to the very anti-science sentiments that Dawkins is trying to prevent.

 I wish I could recommend this book to friends. I would love to be able to say, "Read this, and maybe you will begin to see why being an atheist is not depressing as you are imagining, but in fact wondrous and hopeful." But I would be ashamed for a friend to read this book, and be subjected to witnessing the cruel ridicule dished out by Dawkins.
 about-science genre-nonfiction
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 Nancy Mills
 380 reviews 27 followers
 December 1, 2019
 Hmph. This one has me all over the place in terms of how much I was liking it at any particular juncture. The final chapter is a solid 5 star essay on its own, an ode to the depth of the human brain, the (probably uniquely human) use of language, metaphor and representational graphics to advance our species' knowledge and create durable memes. My wording, not Dawkins'.
 At times I forgot myself and thought I was reading Stephen Pinker. If you start reading this book and find yourself bored or irritated, at least read the last chapter. It redeems itself.
 As far as the rest of the book, some of it is the usual pompous argument for atheism that I've come to associate with Richard Dawkins. He bogs this reader down with blather regarding "good scientific poetry" vs. "bad scientific poetry " and then proceeds to inflict upon us his own brand of the latter. And not surprisingly (if you've read much Dawkins) he snipes at Stephen Jay Gould ("bad poetry in his hands is all the more damaging because Gould is a graceful writer")
 Nevertheless, between Dawkins' preachy drivel this book contains rich veins of mesmerizing science writing, spanning topics ranging from characteristics of light (hence the name of the book ) to audio perception to DNA evidence. A treat for those of us who love reading about science. Then back he goes to verbally pummeling astrology and other such superstitious nonsense. Really, Richard, you're preaching to the choir here. Chances of the avid consumers of headlines such as "Marilyn Monroe Comes Back as a Lettuce" and "Statue of Elvis Found on Mars" are not lining up to buy your books.
 Dawkins shines when he abandons attacking idiots and picking on colleagues and focuses on actual science:
 Evolutionary biology, symbiosis, the strategy of cuckoos who duck parental duties by manipulating other kinds of birds into raising their kids, our minds' perceptual tricks and so on. Dawkins manages to pack a bunch of intriguing science into this book, which makes it well worth reading. No one writes more lucidly or entertainingly than Richard Dawkins when he is not on his high horse. As noted before, the last chapter alone is worth reading the book for.
 read-science
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 Sauerkirsche
 366 reviews 62 followers
 May 21, 2019
 3,5 Sterne

 Dawkins ist genial wenn es darum geht, wissenschaftliche Themen der Allgemeinheit nahe zu bringen und was vielleicht noch wichtiger ist, naturwissenschaftliche Denkweise und Wertschätzung. Er beschreibt hervorragend den Konflikt zwischen Geistes-, Sozialwissenschaften und Naturwissenschaft. Auch dass die Meinung von Geistes- oder Sozialwissenschaftlern in öffentlichen Diskussionen eher anerkannt und wertgeschätzt wird als die von Naturwissenschaftlern und das sogar bei naturwissenschaftlichen Themen (Stichwort Grüne Gentechnik, Landwirtschaft etc.).
 Er erwähnt auch sehr treffend, dass Naturwissenschaften von manchen Pseudo-Feministinnen als "männlich" und "kalt" bezeichnet werden und Intuition und Glaube als weiblich, was der Selbstbestimmung von Frauen eher schadet als hilft.

 Was mich gestört hat, waren die ständigen Seitenhiebe in Richtung Religion, Mythologie oder auch Phantastik. Es ist absolut in Ordnung wenn er Religionen aus wissenschaftlicher, logischer Sicht als fragwürdig darstellt. Ich persönlich bin Atheistin, lebe jedoch nach der Philosophie jeder wie er glücklich ist, solange er mich nicht bekehren möchte und anderen nicht damit schadet. Mythologie und Phantastik werden von Dawkins ebenfalls diffamiert, was ich etwas übertrieben finde. Mythen haben ihre Bedeutung und maßgeblich zur Entwicklung von verschiedenen Kulturen beigetragen. Ich finde Mythologie faszinierend, auch aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht und bin ein großer Fantasy-Fan, trotz (oder vielleicht auch gerade wegen) naturwissenschaftlichem Studium.
 non-fiction science
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 Abi
 102 reviews 78 followers
 November 15, 2009
 Hmmm, I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand I agree with him wholeheartedly that science and a scientific understanding of natural phenomena is a source of wonder. BUT, I think Dawkins throws the baby out with the bath water to a certain extent. To think of the rainbow in terms of water drops and light waves evokes one sort of beauty. But to think of the rainbow in terms of mythology, as something mysteriously wonderful, evokes quite another, one that is infinitely more suited to literature. Because all literature is, in one way or another, about human beings. Dawkins argues that literature would be much greater if it approached the rainbow in terms of its literal truth. Well, I certainly don't agree with that. Perhaps Keats was foolish to criticise Newton's 'unweaving of the rainbow', but he would have been equally foolish to write a poem devoid of humanity. A myth about a rainbow isn't about the rainbow at all, it's about the people that created the myth. It is perfectly possible to know what a rainbow really is and wonder at its complexity, whilst still being able to switch focus and approach it from a poetic angle, in which the rainbow will mean whatever the author wants it to mean. And that absolutely doesn't mean believing a myth to be TRUE in a real sense.
 20th-century england
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 Ericka Clou
 2,026 reviews 158 followers
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 September 23, 2022
 Admittedly, I didn't finish this book- which is why I didn't rate it. But the thesis that science doesn't diminish the beauty of the world is so obvious to me that it no longer felt valuable to read the second half of a book mostly of Dawkins congratulating himself for how smart he is. I did enjoy the actual description of how the rainbow works though. It's pretty rare for me to quit a book this far through though, so that's not a great sign.
 1990s book-club-dad nonfiction
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 A Man Called Ove
 900 reviews 218 followers
 November 28, 2019
 3.5/5 "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."
 Sometime ago, I liked a book by Dawkins wrote for children - The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True . In each chapter Dawkins beautifully explains one phenomena in a very lucid and loving way. This book is "The Magic of Reality" for adults.
 Dawkins is acerbic and elitist and nihilist, until you finally pick up and read one of his books. His passion and love for science make it such a joy to read. And as for the "elitist" tag, his language is lucid and he comes across as honest. But this book was actually about answering the "nihilist" tag and celebrating science as something that makes life worth living.
 Some of the chapters are spent debunking astrology and other pseudo-science in a very logical way. The chapters explaining DNA, light and sound were superb. I have read a few of his famous books on evolution before, and so the content of some of the chapters were very familiar. Perhaps I would have rated this book higher if it were my first book by him.
 science-sci-fi
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 Nick Davies
 1,502 reviews 40 followers
 August 2, 2020
 Initially this was slightly infuriating. Though Dawkins does make a lot of sense, though I agree with a lot of his views and respect his scientific expertise, though this book does address a very interesting subject (the criticism of science by non-scientists that the detailed logical breakdown of how/why everything works is robbing the world and life of the mystery and magic), at times I felt that the author himself fell in to the trap he was criticising.

 So I had no problem with what Dawkins was saying (some parts - using Fourier equations to estimate the penis size of elephants on musth based on the sine wave of piss stains left on the ground, and the role and evolution of Mixotricha inside termite guts, intracellular parasites of parasites within an insect that operates with a hive mind - particularly interesting) but more with how he was saying it. At times he came over confrontational and like he was ramming his point home (unnecessary for me as a reader who already understood and agreed with his conjecture), and at times he seemed to be throwing in italicised quotes of little relevance (and in doing so appeared more like the flawed misinterpretators of science he was seeking to separate his and most other scientists from).

 Nevertheless, certainly a thought-provoking read - for all that I couldn't stomach reading Dawkins exclusively.
 2020
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 Aracne Mileto
 367 reviews 15 followers
 April 5, 2017
 Siempre es un placer leer a Dawkins, es un escritor que puede simplificar los conceptos más complejos y hacerte disfrutar de temas que a muchos les aburría de jóvenes: biología, química, física, etc (particularmente, yo aún no supero mis problemas con los vectores…).

 Muchos piensan que la ciencia le quita el color a la vida con sus explicaciones complicadas y extensas, intentando arrebatarnos lo brillante y emocionante de lo desconocido. Pues este libro nos demuestra que la ciencia hace de todo menos eso.

 En nuestro pasado, en nuestros genes, y en nuestra mente se esconden las respuestas a preguntas tan básicas como: ¿De dónde venimos?, ¿Cómo evolucionamos? ¿Cómo surgió la vida (no… no fue en 7 días) Y Dawkins explica punto por punto aquella información que no siempre es fácil encontrar, demostrando lo maravilloso que es estar informado, y te anima a seguir buscando más; por qué la ciencia nunca se detiene, siempre hay nuevos misterios que resolver.

 ¿Nunca han leído libros de divulgación científica? ¿alguna vez viste a una paloma supersticiosa? ¿Siempre comentas que el gen gay no existe pero no sabes que rayos es un gen?
 Pues este libro puede ayudarte… y mucho.
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 Chuck A
 29 reviews 1 follower
 March 1, 2021
 The first 6 chapters of this book were great. Classic Dawkins in that he knows how to write to keep a reader engaged and motivated to learn.
 Chapters 7-11 however were a bit of a slog for me. He delved a bit deeper into biology and evolution, which is great, but I had a hard time staying engaged.
 Chapter 12 was the last chapter, and brought it all back together, and ended it off with some great poetry by John Keats.

 Overall, not a terrible book. He talks about the symbiotic relationship that should (but many times doesn’t) exist between poetry and science. The last half is what gives it three stars for me. Not bad, but not my favorite Dawkins book.
 sciency-things
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 Ellison Rhea
 36 reviews 4 followers
 September 10, 2014
 In this mindblowing science-based philosophical text, Dawkins invites the reader to see wonder in a world which, though often counter-intuitive and surprising, invites deep understanding.

 Though Dawkins is a skilled scientist, this text shows that he is equally impressive as a philosopher. In his case, science and philosophy are closely linked-- before beginning this text, I described my anticipation at reading "this Athiestic firecracker of a mind", and my hopes were not disappointed. Dawkins skillfully navigates several areas of science, probability, and new knowledge of human perception to show that we should be in constant awe-- not because of mystery, which may soon be dispelled, but because so much is knowable and percievable. As a person of religion myself (Christian, mostly Protestant), I found that this read closed the gaps to which I'd relegated my God--and caused me to question whether I'd built a faith paradigm that was dependent on and argued from a point of ignorance (how-else-do-you-explain...).* Over all, this was a superbly written text, and I'm thankful for every bit of it.

 A few notes on reading Dawkins: He is a great philsopher, but arguably an even better rhetorician. As a fan of rhetoric myself I was impressed with the deliacy with which he `wooed' a possibly religious audience-- not just with logos, but with ethos and pathos too-- positively quoting C.S. Lewis and sharing a deep concern for his fellow man (languge was usually male, unfortunately). Though to his credit, he seeks to free mankind from the confines of magial religious thought, some of his jabs at religion were neither scientific, fair, or mature. Implicitly equating Elvis sightings with Christian claims of Christ's resurrection; listing off Santa and Baby Jesus in the same category of quaint childhood belief; implying that religious education systems have been intentionally, nefariously designed to exploit the credulity of children-- all of this seems a little beneath someone of his apparent intellectual/philosophical capabilities. I generally avoid Christian literature because of these not-so-subtle jabs at those with opposing worldviews; it is good to know that committed Athiests can be just as underhanded and preachy! However, this was not excessive (Don't want to make your target audience throw the book!) and if you are aware of it and have a good sense of humor, you won't find it too hard to read through.

 Dawkins also had some problematic moral conclusions whenever he ventured outside of his scientific field. For example, he seemed to imply that races had evolved seperately enough to make intermarriage a less-than-ideal situation and didn't clarify oherwise, and declined to address the white-male dominance within science when it would have been only natural to do so (he was lambasting those who completely reject science for that reason, dismissing their concerns almost entirely.) He's great, but keep in mind that this text should not replace readings in ethics or sociology.

 A few quotes:

 (On the Usefulness of Science) "If everything is judged by how `useful' it is-- useful for staying alive, that is-- we are left facing a futile circularity. There must be some added value. At lesst a part of life should be devoted to living that life, not just working to stop it ending." (5)

 "We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways." (7)

 "There are, of course, genuine philosophical difficulties. Is a truth just a so-far-unfalsified hypothesis?... Is anything ultimately true? On the other hand, no philosopher has any trouble using the language of truth when falsely accused of a crime, or when suspecting his wife of adultery." (21)

 "Good science fiction has no dealings with fairy tales, but is premised on the world as an orderly place. There is mystery, but the universe is not frivolous or light-fingered in its changeability.... Science fiction may tinker with the laws of nature, arguably and preferably one law at a time, but it cannot abolish lawfulness itself and remain good science fiction." (29)

 (On Astrological Signs): "...isn't this a form of discriminatory labeling rather like the cultural stereotypes which many of us nowadays find objectionable? I can imagine a Monty Python sketch in which a newspaper publishes a column something like this: `Germans: it is in your nature to be hard-working and methodical.... Spaniards: Your Latin blood may get the better of you...." (119)

 "Skill in weilding metaphors and symbols is oneof the hallmarks of scientific genius." (186)

 "We are alone among the animals in forseeing our end. We are also alone among the animals in being able to say before we die: Yes, this is why it was worth coming into life in the first place." (313)

 *The curious reader may want to know that the answer was yes--this was, in part, the nature of my faith, and to that extent, it has been shaken-- not stirred-- but I also find God to be dynamically present in the elegance of the natural, in the known, and I found my paradigm of God and God's engagement with the world truer for having read Dawkins. I also think my God rather enjoys Dawkin's mind too-- and might even thank him for knocking over a few of the He-shaped dummy-idols we have created over time.
 summer-reading-2014
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 Alexandra
 105 reviews 3 followers
 September 8, 2021
 O privire fascinată asupra minunilor lumii, însoțită de analizele științifice aferente, amănunțite. Pentru cei care preferă nu doar să admire, ci și să disece.
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 Stephen Byrne
 Author 2 books 23 followers
 October 21, 2021
 Another fantastic collection of essays.
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 Tim Webber
 27 reviews 1 follower
 October 20, 2022
 Did Not Finish (decided I have too many potentially better books waiting to be read and life's too short)
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 John Michael Strubhart
 483 reviews 10 followers
 March 31, 2022
 This is a book of mostly opinions and perspectives, although there is a great deal of science to be learned. Dawkins' opinions and perspectives as well as his speculations are certainly well-informed and, as so many have said, he is a wonderful writer. It's a treat to read what he writes, even if you don't understand it. Dawkins addresses many of the metaphors that science writers use and how they are often used correctly and incorrectly to conceptualize and explain scientific ideas. My preference is for a science writer to be clear and concise and to define all the jargon used. But some people need analogies and metaphors make for pretty writing. How does one do it without being misleading though? That's the question. Dawkins makes a lot of good points - most of which I agree with. I find his opinions well-argued, and his speculations are ... well .... very British. Anyway, if you find evolution interesting and you appreciate good writing, you'll enjoy this read.
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 Shane Higgins
 356 reviews
 June 26, 2021
 5 Eloquent Stars
 2021 audiobooks favourites
 ...more
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 Martin Pribble
 12 reviews 19 followers
 February 11, 2013
 This month, while in a Twitter hiatus, I managed to get around to reading a book. Yes, a real book, with paper and pages and a cardboard cover! The book I chose to read is by Dr Richard Dawkins, and this is one that is overlooked in terms of its importance and place in society, having been overshadowed by his more groundbreaking and most famous publications such as “The Blind Watchmaker”, “The Selfish Gene” and of course “The God Delusion.”

 “Unweaving the Rainbow” was originally published in 1998, and apart from some unforeseen advances in science and technology, is as relevant today’s it was when written over ten years ago. The premise of the book, and the origin of the title, stem from a claim by the 19th century poet John Keats, in apparent dismay at Sir Isaac Newton for his discovery and documentation the separation of white light into the visible spectrum, or the rainbow as it is commonly known. Keats claims that Newton destroyed the wonder and poetry of the rainbow by “reducing it to prismatic colours.” Keats’ claim, and claims like it, are often employed as a last ditch attempt in refuting the importance or relevance of science, saying that the deep study of the beautiful can only reduce a wonderful thing, a thing of reverence and astonishment, to a mundane and dull object once fully understood. The extrapolation of this claim seems to be the mystery of the unknown in the form of god, souls, magic and spirituality will be destroyed by the understanding of the underlying principles that create these phenomena within humanity. Of course, this claim stems from a fear that science is, in fact, often correct, and may eventually rid the world of superstition and dogma.

 Dawkins goes to great lengths to “unweave the rainbow” in it’s many guises; From the specific story of Keats and Newton to the charlitanism of new age mysticism, from pseudoscience to bad poetic communication, Dawkins has successfully constructed a case for the wonder and majesty of the natural world, the way things really are. He intersperses the book with pieces of prose and quotes from the arts and science, and shows that superstition and bad judgement do not lie solely within the confines of religion. Of course we knew this to be the case, but to analyse it in this manner really puts a perspective on who we are as a species, and why we believe the unbelievable.

 Much like Michael Shermer’s book “Why People Believe Weird Things”, “Rainbow” gives numerous examples of how the human brain sees the world around it, and how our development as a species is sometimes hindered by our evolution, the very thing that brought us here. Biologically we are riddled with age old hangovers from times past, and socially we are told that science is devoid of wonder. The combination of these two aspects of modern society is that science is seen as a cold and soulless reduction of the universe to just a bunch of numbers on paper. While science can (and I believe will) explain away many of the aspects of life that we see as indescribable or mysterious, as Dawkins argues, this can only enhance our wonder at nature’s intricacies.

 Dawkins, I feel, is always at his strongest when he talks of topics of which he is an expert; biology. When he speaks of religion, he all too often gets caught upon a personal battle of will and wits, and can come across as a less than savoury character. In “Rainbow” however, he successfully walks a thin line between scientific facts and the criticism of the human condition, without entering the territory of ad-hominem insults or personal attacks on individuals. He is neither too critical nor soft on the idiosyncrasies and quirks of human nature. He balances the rightful claim that science can only enhance our understanding of the universe and all it contains with the need for the poetic and the beautiful. This is a point that is all too often overlooked, and this message can only help to move forward any attempts by science to regain its place in the minds of modern humanity, without being seen as a threat to the beauty and appreciation we have for the natural world.
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 Daniel
 595 reviews 42 followers
 March 22, 2012
 Obwohl Richard Dawkins zweifelsfrei zu den genialeren (Evolutions-) Biologen zählt, möchte ich dieses Buch nur einem eingeschränkten Publikum empfehlen. Zwar hat sich der eloquente Engländer inzwischen einen Namen in Sachen Religionskritik gemacht (vermutlich ist er DER Paradeatheist); dieser Umstand alleine macht ihn aber, trotz aller Kontroversen, noch nicht interessant genug um sich als Laie durch dieses Buch zu quälen.

 Nicht falsch verstehen - an und für sich ist es sicherlich interessant. Leider gibt es aber ein paar Kritikpunkte, die das Lesevergnügen unglaublich trüben.

 Da wäre zum Einen, dass man ihm - bei allem Respekt für seine Leistungen! - schon einen gewissen Chauvinismus anmerkt. Wo es um Musik geht wird stets in den höchsten Tönen von "Klassik" gesprochen. In Sachen Poesie spielt er sich als Kenner auf und putzt jede andere Meinung so konsequent herunter, dass man selbst dann skeptisch wird, wenn man eigentlich seiner Meinung war / ist. Mit anderen Worten: Er lässt in diesem Buch so sehr den Gebildeten raushängen, dass es einem schon zum Halse heraushängt.

 Und dann wäre da allgemein seine Neigung nur die Phantasielosigkeit als phantastisch darzustellen. Er hat seinen Standpunkt gegen blinde Religiosität oft genug dargelegt und mit Argumenten untermauert. Dass er es hier aber auf so ziemlich alles ausdehnt, das nicht zu 100% der Realität entspricht, zeugt von beschränkter Geistesgröße, denn ohne Fantasy- und Science-Fiction-Romane wären wohl viele Erfindungen der Menschheitsgeschichte niemals gemacht worden.

 Man denke hierbei an die vielen Erfindungen aus dem Star-Trek-Universum, die Ingenieure in aller Welt so sehr begeisterten, dass wir ihm heute automatische Türen, Handys und vieles mehr zumindest zu einem großen Teil verdanken.

 Nein, wenn Dawkins in diesem Buch über Star Trek, Akte X und alles herzieht, was ein wenig über den nüchternen Realismus hinausgeht, macht er sich - meiner Meinung nach - einer Arroganz schuldig, die ihm seine Gegner in den meisten anderen Punkten zu Unrecht ankreiden.

 Der Ton macht die Musik. Und wenn man in einem Buch nicht nur darauf eingeht wie die Evolution das Wunder des 'Hörens', 'Abstrahierens' und 'Verstehens' ermöglichte, sollte man dabei nicht vergessen, dass man selbst aufpassen sollte, was man sagt und wie man es tut. Vor Allem, wenn man in seinem Werk versucht eine 'Poesie der Wissenschaft' zu beschwören.

 Laien, die sich noch nie mit der Evolutionstheorie beschäftigt haben, können mit diesem Buch bestimmt etwas anfangen. Solche die, wie ich, gewisse Vorkenntnisse haben (Schulbildung ist dazu völlig ausreichend), werden sich streckenweise vermutlich ziemlich langweilen.
 sb-allgemein
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23 reviews16 followers     January 13, 2013   The actual science bits in here are great. Learned heaps about the workings of light and colour, sound and hearing... was even reminded that the idea of "superstitious behavior" in animals is attributed to Skinner (and not, sadly, my own idea). Much geeky excitement experienced all round by yours truly. Dawkins does a fine job of explaining complex ideas clearly and well.That's what was good about Unweaving the Rainbow. Sadly, what feels like way more than half of the book was spent painstakingly trying to argue people out of believing in astrology, ghosts, remote viewing, etc. using logic and scientific fact. Its starts about one third the way in. My problem with this is threefold: 1) Dawkins is assuming that logic and scientific fact would have persuasive power for anyone believing in what he calls "superstition" or "ad hoc magic". (And really, why would it? I think believers would be the first to point out that this sort of thing is beyond the purview of science.) 2) Dawkins assumes that these "deluded" people are reading his book. I can't say for sure, but personally, I would be surprised if a diehard believer in ESP or astrology would be interested in reading Dawkins' explanation of Fraunhofer lines, the electromagnetic spectrum and other fairly hardcore sciencey topics that fill the first third of this book. Seems like a different sort of audience. So he ends up "preaching to the choir" -- and there is something rather uncomfortably self-righteous about this. Not to mention dull. 3) Dawkins (I don't mean to be unkind, but I can't think of any other to state the fact) embarrasses himself when he wanders out of the world of science and into literature and the humanities. Critiques of the scientific accuracy of Wordsworth poems or a fantasy story by Mark Twain are cringe-making. What Dawkins doesn't understand about human psychology is a lot. I think his whole crusade against religion has been a waste of a good scientific mind and has done a lot of damage to the discussion. His aggressive, dismissive and disrespectful approach has only put people on the defensive and set an unfortunate example. I was hoping for a lot more "wonder of science". Instead, I felt like I was getting lectured at length for something I didn't even do. What do I care about astrology?? Anyhow, I was hoping for more wonders-of-science and less railing. Disappointing.  Better books on science and wonder that I'd recommend:  
 
 
 
                    12 reviews60 followers     June 18, 2011   The first half or so was amazing, and the rest was still really interesting (especially the end), if not quite as exhilarating. At the same time, you have to remember that even that powerhouse of scientific poetry, Carl Sagan, had some dry chapters every now and then. Some dryness definitely doesn't make it any less worth the read, and its mild anyway. Overall, this book was extremely enjoyable, and a breeze to get through. 4.5 stars, will probably be 5 on the reread.                  439 reviews9 followers     March 21, 2010   One of the Goodreads reviews on this book relates, simply, that the writer of the review had been on a cruise ship with the author prior to reading the book. When she DID read the book, she regretted that she didn't "do some kind of small violence to his person" while on the cruise with him.In many ways, that sums up my take beautifully. This was the most interesting book I've ever despised. Certainly, I have a brain not suited to the exigencies of science. But when he wasn't losing me in a web of convoluted explanation, he was was looking down his nose at me like a curmudgeonly professor who is inordinately piqued that an average undergraduate had the audacity to drop by during office hours and ask a stupid question. That said, I learned a lot and, while I did not become a convert to his thesis that science can be as beautiful as poetry, I will admit that, were my brain more suited to the beauty of, say, probability, I would have been in ecstasy while perusing the pages of this tome. In discussing how we discover our world; "... we arrived by being born, and we didn't burst conscious into the world but accumulated awareness gradually through babyhood. The fact that we slowly apprehend our world, rather than suddenly discover it, should not subtract from its wonder." And maybe that's where he lost me. I haven't accumulated enough awareness to see what he sees. And to believe what he believes. But condescension does not encourage me to become more aware. It encourages me to shrug and go back to my music, or my poetry, or my philosophy.  All of that said, there were several "aha" moments; some "I-never-knew-that-before!" aha, some "I-never-thought-about-it-that-way-before!" aha and some "I-had-totally-forgotten-about-that!" aha.  Like his analogy about how expansive the earth's past is; "Fling your arms wide in an expansive gesture to span all of evolution from its origin at your left fingertip to today at your right fingertip. All the way across your midline to well past your right shoulder, life consists of nothing but bacteria. Many-celled, invertebrate life flowers somewhere around your right elbow. The dinosaurs originate in the middle of your right palm, and go extinct around your last finger joint. The whole story of Homo sapiens and our predecessor Homo erectus is contained in the thickness of one nail-clipping. As for recorded history; as for the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Jewish patriarchs, the dynasties of Pharohs, the legions of Rome, the Christian Fathers, the Laws of the Medes and Persians which never change; as for Troy and the Greeks, Helen and Achilles and Agamemnon dead; as for Napolean and Hitler, the Beatles and Bill Clinton, they and everyone that knew them are blown away in the dust from one light stroke of a nail file." In my opinion, that qualifies as scientific poetry. But that's because it takes an idea and sketches it with metaphor and examples that are accessible and understandable to my way of thinking. And Dawkins, too often, refuses to "stoop" to "that level." For example, consider this quote from astrophysicist Chandrasekhar; "... beauty is that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound." Indeed. Of course, I left out the beginning of the quote which talks about math and how it relates to nature. That's not beautiful to me. I understand why it's beautiful to those whose brains process math differently. But my brain does not work that way. My mind responds to a different beauty. Does that make my idea of beauty any less valid? Dawkins would undoubtedly say, "Yes." Then he'd kick me out of his office and grumble discontentedly as he adjusted his suspenders and wandered back to his desk. But when Dawkins DOES lower himself to my level and speak my language, he pulls me right in; his discussion on coincidence and how, in our multi-media age, we are more likely to see a pattern where there is none, was eye-opening. And his fascinating riff on the fact that science is an affront to common sense made me smile in satisfaction; "For example, every time you drink a glass of water you are imbibing at least one molecule that passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell ... there are many more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the sea ... solid matter, even a hard diamond, consists almost entirely of empty space."  Another riff that gave me pause was Dawkins' take on God's covenant with Abraham; "He didn't promise Abraham eternal life as an individual ... But he did promise something else. 'And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly ... and thou shalt be a father of many nations ... And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.' Abraham was left in no doubt that the future lay with his seed, not his individuality. God knew his Darwinism." That is what I was looking for in this book. Someone with the title " Professor of the Public Understanding of Science" should really like average, thoughtful humans a bit more than Dawkins seems to. And if one is going to celebrate the diversity of life, one should also celebrate the diversity of ways of looking at life. We can't all think like Dawkins. It is hubris of Dawkins to expect all of us to try. And to belittle us when we fail.  Rather, he could have made his case for why his way of thinking is a valid and valuable addition to the layers of awareness that allow us to continually find beauty in our universe. But to discount and belittle the other ways of finding beauty was a mistake. He should have calculated that in some sort of equation before he published.                   135 reviews24 followers     April 28, 2019   Cred că aceasta a devenit cartea mea preferată de la Dawkins. Spre deosebire de toate celalte pe care le-am citit, deși mi s-au părut la fel de interesante din punct de vedere al informațiilor prezentate, "Destrămarea curcubeului" este cea mai filosofică și lirică. Ceea ce, de fapt, este și ceea ce urmărește Dawkins: să prezinte argumente în favoarea poeticiății științei.Contrar a ceea ce mulți cred, știința nu distruge magia lumii sau, cum ar spune Blaga, ea nu distruge ”corola de minuni a lumii”. Dimpotrivă. Ea revelă universul din care facem parte în toată măreția lui și expune misterele care ne vin în întâmpinare când încercăm să-l descifrăm. Dar chiar și când aflăm modul cum funcționează fenomenele din jurul nostru, chiar și cele care ne inspiră frumusețe și venerație precum curcubeul și stelele sau mintea umană, răspunsurile științei nu distrug lirismul, ci ele inspiră la fel de multă mirare și sublim ca în fața oricărei opere de artă.  Dawkins argumentează că Keats și toți ceilalți poeți care gândesc asemenea lui greșesc când îl acuză pe Newton că a distrus magia curcubeului atunci când l-a explicat. Și că daca ei și-ar folosi talentul poetic pentru a transpune în versuri explicația acestor fenomene, tangoul între știință și poezie ar fi cu mult mai frumos decât orice altă explicație inventată …  Nu pot decât să fiu de acord în totalitate cu această perspectivă a lui Dawkins. Și mie mi se pare că lumea pe care ne-o prezintă știința este una fascinantă și cuceritoare și am fost prinsă de farmecul ei încă de când am descoperit astronomia. Însă dincolo de teza principală a cărții, așa cum ne-a obișnuit mereu autorul, avem șansa și să descoperim și multe idei interesante din universul biologiei, dar și al informaticii și fizicii.  Închei cu câteva citate care mi se par că sunt cele mai grăitoare pentru mesajul cărții: ”Creierul este o masă de materie de circa 1300g, pe care o puteți ține în mână și care poate concepe un univers de o sută de miliarde de ani-lumină în diametru.” Marian C. Diamond "Isaac Asimov ofera o ilustrare dramatica: este ca si cum toata materia din univers ar fi un bob de nisip, asezat in mijlocul unei camere goale cu lungimea, inaltimea si latimea de 32 km. Si totusi, in acelasi timp, este ca si cum acel bob unic de nisip a fost pulverizat intr-o mie de milioane de milioane de milioane de fragmente, pentru ca acesta e numarul aproximativ de stele din univers. Acestea sunt unele dintre faptele astronomiei si puteti vedea cat sunt de frumoase."     popularizarea-stiintei               79 reviews23 followers     October 24, 2010   Written a few years prior to The God Delusion, this book serves as a useful bridge for anyone familiar with Dawkins's atheist output but unfamiliar with his more scientific titles. His critics often like to portray him as arrogant, hectoring (or that other old chestnut: 'shrill') and overly absorbed with the cold clinical application of the scientific method. Well he may not be cuddly, and I may not agree with his approach to everything, but for the most part I find him genial, honorable and good-natured, and this book - essentially a non-religious celebration of life and the scientific method - displays his warmth and humanity in bucketloads as it reveals how a greater understanding of science enlarges - rather than diminishes - our sense of wonder. This was enlightening, beautifully written and highly recommended. I know I will read it again.    favorites science               Author  5 books202 followers     August 22, 2021   Dawkins begins by bemoaning the fact that "poets, too many of them and for too long, have overlooked the goldmine of inspiration offered by science." I recently judged a poetry contest based on a science theme. The poems were a pleasure to read because I rarely see such a theme. Some lawyers prefer jurors who are clueless about DNA. Defense lawyers want to get their clients off, and prosecutors want to convict someone. Such a shame. Especially when you consider how flawed human visual identification is.  Children are not only gullible to what their parents tell them, but this "extreme early gullibility is followed by equally obstinate subsequent unshakability." What a "devastating combination" this is. Like the Jesuits used to say, "Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man."  A psychic game to play: Take a large group. Flip a coin. Those who guess heads or tails right keep standing. Keep doing that until you are left with a "psychic."  William James once said in 1910: "There are more worms unattached to hooks than impaled upon them; therefore, on the whole, says Nature to her fishy children, bite at every worm and take your chances."  As much as I love Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins's critique is right on the money and worth reading for lovers of science. Same goes for his critique of Franz De Waal and Margaret Mead.  Miriam Rothschild speaks of a "worm which lives exclusively under the eyelids of the hippopotamus and feeds upon its tears."  Marian C. Diamond: "The brain is a three pound mass you can hold in your hand that can conceive of a universe a hundred billion light-years across."     atheism science               38 reviews     July 14, 2012   As a person unlearned--well, okay, let's be honest, frankly ignorant--in science, I enjoyed this wide-ranging book. Dawkins largely achieves his aim: to show that an understanding of the science of phenomena can create a sense of wonder equal to mythic or poetic metaphor, with a concomitant gain in understanding and an increased desire to know still more and to look askance at delusions that are unsupportable in light of what we know and continue to learn. Not every chapter is strong. The part on bad science metaphors is not as interesting as the rest and serves simply as an attack on a view of evolution on which he disagrees. Those well-versed in science might find passages to carp at. For the interested non-scientist, this book is engaging and a useful primer on many topics. Keats, no mean explorer of knowledge, in spite of his dismissal of Newton's optics as an unpoetic unweaving of the rainbow, would, I would bet, enjoy this book mightily once he became current with the growth of scientific understanding since his time.                   73 reviews5 followers     June 19, 2022   You know Dawkins is a staunch atheist. He will climb on you if you say you believe in God.. or so I have heard. He is also an accomplished evolutionary scientist as is visible from his other works.Can this book change someone who does not find joy in science? I would say no because in the first place this will be picked up by someone who likes if not loves science.  Can this book change someone who wants to know if he can find joy in science? Assuming that he knows SOME bits of science already.. I would say maybe. The book is particularly enjoyable in the first half and the last chapter where you do get a sense of wonder and amazement but the middle is too technical and frankly difficult to read. The concept of "self-feeding co-evolution" is a must read. People believe in superstitions and other mystical abstractions particularly because they find solace in it. People also find solace in music, arts. I know a friend who found solace in reading stories at his lowest points. Science can give you existential crisis. Can I enjoy science like I enjoy music? Are there specific things which I should do to enjoy science just like I enjoy listening to music without knowing anything about musical theory? Dawkins does not answer that. I wonder what Dawkins thinks about the boom in scientific educational content on the Internet today. On one side there is a lot of pop-sci content that one should stay away from, but there are a lot of other beautiful collaborations between journalists, scientists and mathematicians ( Shout out to Brady and his channels- SixtySymbols, Numberphile, Computerphile, PeriodicVideos, etc.). Man, I wish there existed some book which was coauthored by both Dawkins and Betrand Russell...                   1,428 reviews35 followers      Read  November 12, 2019   Enjoyed this book a lot especially the chapters on how humans delude themselves or allow others to delude them, including newspapers that include astrology columns. That seems very fitting for todays world where politicians yell fake news if they don't like the story about themselves. The final chapter is really great as well about memes and language.     non-fiction philosophy science               5 reviews1 follower     February 27, 2008   Dawkins makes a strong case for those of us who believe that scientific literacy not only does not have to come at the price of aesthetic appreciation, but can actually enhance it. Put another way, good science inspires good poetry. The sense of wonder we feel when watching the sun set should if anything be enhanced if we are aware of the physics of light reaching our retina, the 93 million miles the light had to travel to reach us, the ability of the light to at times be refracted into a rainbow, etc. Science can also correct bad poetry or metaphors; he does a good job of showing why an understanding of the arbitrary position of stars' light as it reaches us should argue against astrology, and is as unrelenting against numerology, postmodernism, and religious fundamentalism. Anyone who appreciates Bill Bryson will enjoy this book. The author gives one of the most cogent explanations I have read for our propensity to overweight anecdotal, statistically insignificant events.My only gripes about the book were his tendency to assume the reader has as much knowledge of and fondness for Keats and Byron as he seems to have, and his apparent impatience for those who lose themselves in their metaphors, looking for meaning in random physical events. I believe only a minority of people can tolerate the anxiety that comes from confronting their smallness in the universe, a universe that if it is ruled by a deity does not apparently need to be (as Stephen Hawkings so aptly illustrated in a Brief History of Time).                  116 reviews4 followers     December 12, 2014   A weak book from Dawkins. Regardless of his ideas being right or wrong, he is a bad writer, and here he is worse than ever. He stumbles from the banal to the sublime, to the complex to the simple, to the popular to the academic without even noticing that. One page you are reading a very important theory and in the next paragraph he goes on telling you about a trivial thing that has happened to him the day before. Sometimes pages and pages are spent trying to explain something not important, and then when the important thing comes, Dawkins treats it as "already explained" and leave it as that.Other thing he loves to do, and it's just plain bad writing, is comparing things one with another. As a first step to understand the problem, it's ok, but he dwells too long on metaphors. I.e., comparing the human brain to a computer. He goes on and on and on until there's no more use using the metaphor; it becomes harder and harder to believe in him, and things become ridiculous. The worst part is a link he makes between the evolution of the human brain, memes, and a tango he cannot forget. There's a lot of guessing in this book, too. And some theories are not that credible. His criticism of astrology and other spiritual stuff are more or less correct, and it's something important that must be adressed, but he can't write a coherent chapter to express his ideas. He criticises a bit, then talk about other thing, then comes a very complex but short paragraph, then it's a trivial thing again, etc.There are some good moments, very few, but in short: very badly written.                    103 reviews1 follower     June 8, 2022     My first Dawkins book, and it's pretty decent.  Dawkins doesn't agree with the relatively common view that science reduces the universe to its mere components, and so sets to talk about superstitions and about how the world really works, without diminishing its beauty and wonder. It's a satisfying science-popularizing book that doesn't stoop low in its explanation.                   301 reviews26 followers     May 6, 2017   ﻿I would love to praise Unweaving the Rainbow Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder as a layman's introduction to the wonders of science. The premise of the book is that the scientific view is not the bleak and cold perspective that it has a reputation for. In support of this, the book is chock full of little tidbits that demonstrate the beauty, the elegance, the chaos and the awe-inspiring complexity of the world around us. Dawkins endeavors to make science real to us, to seduce us with its simplicity, to floor us by making the massive tangible, and to tantalize us with the beautiful intricacy that can be seen if you just have the understanding.Sadly I can also describe this book as a long and rambling rant about the bountiful and varied thorns in Richard Dawkins' side. Sure, I share the pain of many of those thorns. But even to me, his litany of complaints eventually started to feel like the mean-spirited nit-picking of a cantankerous old man. It is tricky to strike a balance between providing harsh criticism of bad ideas while still being respectful to the people who believe them. And yet this is a challenge that skeptics should be uniquely well suited for. I never cease to be amazed when a skeptic work explains the natural human fallacies that tend to lead to a particular faulty conclusion and the mechanism in our brains that make the belief appealing and intuitive... then in the next paragraph, have the audacity to call people who have made these entirely reasonable mistakes idiots or charlatans! Excepting perhaps the small choir of skeptics that Dawkins is preaching to, we all know someone who holds a scientifically unsound belief. Even most generally pro-science people hold one or two personal superstitions. Nobody appreciates their friends and family members mocked or accused of malicious intent, and they take it even less kindly when the name-calling is pointed their way. It is a tragic irony that this is what leaves people with a bad taste in their mouth, leading to the very anti-science sentiments that Dawkins is trying to prevent. I wish I could recommend this book to friends. I would love to be able to say, "Read this, and maybe you will begin to see why being an atheist is not depressing as you are imagining, but in fact wondrous and hopeful." But I would be ashamed for a friend to read this book, and be subjected to witnessing the cruel ridicule dished out by Dawkins.     about-science genre-nonfiction               380 reviews27 followers     December 1, 2019   Hmph. This one has me all over the place in terms of how much I was liking it at any particular juncture. The final chapter is a solid 5 star essay on its own, an ode to the depth of the human brain, the (probably uniquely human) use of language, metaphor and representational graphics to advance our species' knowledge and create durable memes. My wording, not Dawkins'. At times I forgot myself and thought I was reading Stephen Pinker. If you start reading this book and find yourself bored or irritated, at least read the last chapter. It redeems itself.As far as the rest of the book, some of it is the usual pompous argument for atheism that I've come to associate with Richard Dawkins. He bogs this reader down with blather regarding "good scientific poetry" vs. "bad scientific poetry " and then proceeds to inflict upon us his own brand of the latter. And not surprisingly (if you've read much Dawkins) he snipes at Stephen Jay Gould ("bad poetry in his hands is all the more damaging because Gould is a graceful writer") Nevertheless, between Dawkins' preachy drivel this book contains rich veins of mesmerizing science writing, spanning topics ranging from characteristics of light (hence the name of the book ) to audio perception to DNA evidence. A treat for those of us who love reading about science. Then back he goes to verbally pummeling astrology and other such superstitious nonsense. Really, Richard, you're preaching to the choir here. Chances of the avid consumers of headlines such as "Marilyn Monroe Comes Back as a Lettuce" and "Statue of Elvis Found on Mars" are not lining up to buy your books.Dawkins shines when he abandons attacking idiots and picking on colleagues and focuses on actual science: Evolutionary biology, symbiosis, the strategy of cuckoos who duck parental duties by manipulating other kinds of birds into raising their kids, our minds' perceptual tricks and so on. Dawkins manages to pack a bunch of intriguing science into this book, which makes it well worth reading. No one writes more lucidly or entertainingly than Richard Dawkins when he is not on his high horse. As noted before, the last chapter alone is worth reading the book for.    read-science               366 reviews62 followers     May 21, 2019   3,5 SterneDawkins ist genial wenn es darum geht, wissenschaftliche Themen der Allgemeinheit nahe zu bringen und was vielleicht noch wichtiger ist, naturwissenschaftliche Denkweise und Wertschätzung. Er beschreibt hervorragend den Konflikt zwischen Geistes-, Sozialwissenschaften und Naturwissenschaft. Auch dass die Meinung von Geistes- oder Sozialwissenschaftlern in öffentlichen Diskussionen eher anerkannt und wertgeschätzt wird als die von Naturwissenschaftlern und das sogar bei naturwissenschaftlichen Themen (Stichwort Grüne Gentechnik, Landwirtschaft etc.).Er erwähnt auch sehr treffend, dass Naturwissenschaften von manchen Pseudo-Feministinnen als "männlich" und "kalt" bezeichnet werden und Intuition und Glaube als weiblich, was der Selbstbestimmung von Frauen eher schadet als hilft. Was mich gestört hat, waren die ständigen Seitenhiebe in Richtung Religion, Mythologie oder auch Phantastik. Es ist absolut in Ordnung wenn er Religionen aus wissenschaftlicher, logischer Sicht als fragwürdig darstellt. Ich persönlich bin Atheistin, lebe jedoch nach der Philosophie jeder wie er glücklich ist, solange er mich nicht bekehren möchte und anderen nicht damit schadet. Mythologie und Phantastik werden von Dawkins ebenfalls diffamiert, was ich etwas übertrieben finde. Mythen haben ihre Bedeutung und maßgeblich zur Entwicklung von verschiedenen Kulturen beigetragen. Ich finde Mythologie faszinierend, auch aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht und bin ein großer Fantasy-Fan, trotz (oder vielleicht auch gerade wegen) naturwissenschaftlichem Studium.     non-fiction science               102 reviews78 followers     November 15, 2009   Hmmm, I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand I agree with him wholeheartedly that science and a scientific understanding of natural phenomena is a source of wonder. BUT, I think Dawkins throws the baby out with the bath water to a certain extent. To think of the rainbow in terms of water drops and light waves evokes one sort of beauty. But to think of the rainbow in terms of mythology, as something mysteriously wonderful, evokes quite another, one that is infinitely more suited to literature. Because all literature is, in one way or another, about human beings. Dawkins argues that literature would be much greater if it approached the rainbow in terms of its literal truth. Well, I certainly don't agree with that. Perhaps Keats was foolish to criticise Newton's 'unweaving of the rainbow', but he would have been equally foolish to write a poem devoid of humanity. A myth about a rainbow isn't about the rainbow at all, it's about the people that created the myth. It is perfectly possible to know what a rainbow really is and wonder at its complexity, whilst still being able to switch focus and approach it from a poetic angle, in which the rainbow will mean whatever the author wants it to mean. And that absolutely doesn't mean believing a myth to be TRUE in a real sense.    20th-century england               2,026 reviews158 followers      Read  September 23, 2022   Admittedly, I didn't finish this book- which is why I didn't rate it. But the thesis that science doesn't diminish the beauty of the world is so obvious to me that it no longer felt valuable to read the second half of a book mostly of Dawkins congratulating himself for how smart he is. I did enjoy the actual description of how the rainbow works though. It's pretty rare for me to quit a book this far through though, so that's not a great sign.    1990s book-club-dad nonfiction               900 reviews218 followers     November 28, 2019   3.5/5 "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."Sometime ago, I liked a book by Dawkins wrote for children - The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True. In each chapter Dawkins beautifully explains one phenomena in a very lucid and loving way. This book is "The Magic of Reality" for adults.Dawkins is acerbic and elitist and nihilist, until you finally pick up and read one of his books. His passion and love for science make it such a joy to read. And as for the "elitist" tag, his language is lucid and he comes across as honest. But this book was actually about answering the "nihilist" tag and celebrating science as something that makes life worth living.Some of the chapters are spent debunking astrology and other pseudo-science in a very logical way. The chapters explaining DNA, light and sound were superb. I have read a few of his famous books on evolution before, and so the content of some of the chapters were very familiar. Perhaps I would have rated this book higher if it were my first book by him.    science-sci-fi               1,502 reviews40 followers     August 2, 2020   Initially this was slightly infuriating. Though Dawkins does make a lot of sense, though I agree with a lot of his views and respect his scientific expertise, though this book does address a very interesting subject (the criticism of science by non-scientists that the detailed logical breakdown of how/why everything works is robbing the world and life of the mystery and magic), at times I felt that the author himself fell in to the trap he was criticising. So I had no problem with what Dawkins was saying (some parts - using Fourier equations to estimate the penis size of elephants on musth based on the sine wave of piss stains left on the ground, and the role and evolution of Mixotricha inside termite guts, intracellular parasites of parasites within an insect that operates with a hive mind - particularly interesting) but more with how he was saying it. At times he came over confrontational and like he was ramming his point home (unnecessary for me as a reader who already understood and agreed with his conjecture), and at times he seemed to be throwing in italicised quotes of little relevance (and in doing so appeared more like the flawed misinterpretators of science he was seeking to separate his and most other scientists from). Nevertheless, certainly a thought-provoking read - for all that I couldn't stomach reading Dawkins exclusively.     2020               367 reviews15 followers     April 5, 2017   Siempre es un placer leer a Dawkins, es un escritor que puede simplificar los conceptos más complejos y hacerte disfrutar de temas que a muchos les aburría de jóvenes: biología, química, física, etc (particularmente, yo aún no supero mis problemas con los vectores…).Muchos piensan que la ciencia le quita el color a la vida con sus explicaciones complicadas y extensas, intentando arrebatarnos lo brillante y emocionante de lo desconocido. Pues este libro nos demuestra que la ciencia hace de todo menos eso. En nuestro pasado, en nuestros genes, y en nuestra mente se esconden las respuestas a preguntas tan básicas como: ¿De dónde venimos?, ¿Cómo evolucionamos? ¿Cómo surgió la vida (no… no fue en 7 días) Y Dawkins explica punto por punto aquella información que no siempre es fácil encontrar, demostrando lo maravilloso que es estar informado, y te anima a seguir buscando más; por qué la ciencia nunca se detiene, siempre hay nuevos misterios que resolver. ¿Nunca han leído libros de divulgación científica? ¿alguna vez viste a una paloma supersticiosa? ¿Siempre comentas que el gen gay no existe pero no sabes que rayos es un gen?Pues este libro puede ayudarte… y mucho.                   29 reviews1 follower     March 1, 2021   The first 6 chapters of this book were great. Classic Dawkins in that he knows how to write to keep a reader engaged and motivated to learn. Chapters 7-11 however were a bit of a slog for me. He delved a bit deeper into biology and evolution, which is great, but I had a hard time staying engaged. Chapter 12 was the last chapter, and brought it all back together, and ended it off with some great poetry by John Keats.Overall, not a terrible book. He talks about the symbiotic relationship that should (but many times doesn’t) exist between poetry and science. The last half is what gives it three stars for me. Not bad, but not my favorite Dawkins book.      sciency-things               36 reviews4 followers     September 10, 2014   In this mindblowing science-based philosophical text, Dawkins invites the reader to see wonder in a world which, though often counter-intuitive and surprising, invites deep understanding.Though Dawkins is a skilled scientist, this text shows that he is equally impressive as a philosopher. In his case, science and philosophy are closely linked-- before beginning this text, I described my anticipation at reading "this Athiestic firecracker of a mind", and my hopes were not disappointed. Dawkins skillfully navigates several areas of science, probability, and new knowledge of human perception to show that we should be in constant awe-- not because of mystery, which may soon be dispelled, but because so much is knowable and percievable. As a person of religion myself (Christian, mostly Protestant), I found that this read closed the gaps to which I'd relegated my God--and caused me to question whether I'd built a faith paradigm that was dependent on and argued from a point of ignorance (how-else-do-you-explain...).* Over all, this was a superbly written text, and I'm thankful for every bit of it. A few notes on reading Dawkins: He is a great philsopher, but arguably an even better rhetorician. As a fan of rhetoric myself I was impressed with the deliacy with which he `wooed' a possibly religious audience-- not just with logos, but with ethos and pathos too-- positively quoting C.S. Lewis and sharing a deep concern for his fellow man (languge was usually male, unfortunately). Though to his credit, he seeks to free mankind from the confines of magial religious thought, some of his jabs at religion were neither scientific, fair, or mature. Implicitly equating Elvis sightings with Christian claims of Christ's resurrection; listing off Santa and Baby Jesus in the same category of quaint childhood belief; implying that religious education systems have been intentionally, nefariously designed to exploit the credulity of children-- all of this seems a little beneath someone of his apparent intellectual/philosophical capabilities. I generally avoid Christian literature because of these not-so-subtle jabs at those with opposing worldviews; it is good to know that committed Athiests can be just as underhanded and preachy! However, this was not excessive (Don't want to make your target audience throw the book!) and if you are aware of it and have a good sense of humor, you won't find it too hard to read through.  Dawkins also had some problematic moral conclusions whenever he ventured outside of his scientific field. For example, he seemed to imply that races had evolved seperately enough to make intermarriage a less-than-ideal situation and didn't clarify oherwise, and declined to address the white-male dominance within science when it would have been only natural to do so (he was lambasting those who completely reject science for that reason, dismissing their concerns almost entirely.) He's great, but keep in mind that this text should not replace readings in ethics or sociology. A few quotes: (On the Usefulness of Science) "If everything is judged by how `useful' it is-- useful for staying alive, that is-- we are left facing a futile circularity. There must be some added value. At lesst a part of life should be devoted to living that life, not just working to stop it ending." (5) "We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways." (7) "There are, of course, genuine philosophical difficulties. Is a truth just a so-far-unfalsified hypothesis?... Is anything ultimately true? On the other hand, no philosopher has any trouble using the language of truth when falsely accused of a crime, or when suspecting his wife of adultery." (21) "Good science fiction has no dealings with fairy tales, but is premised on the world as an orderly place. There is mystery, but the universe is not frivolous or light-fingered in its changeability.... Science fiction may tinker with the laws of nature, arguably and preferably one law at a time, but it cannot abolish lawfulness itself and remain good science fiction." (29) (On Astrological Signs): "...isn't this a form of discriminatory labeling rather like the cultural stereotypes which many of us nowadays find objectionable? I can imagine a Monty Python sketch in which a newspaper publishes a column something like this: `Germans: it is in your nature to be hard-working and methodical.... Spaniards: Your Latin blood may get the better of you...." (119) "Skill in weilding metaphors and symbols is oneof the hallmarks of scientific genius." (186) "We are alone among the animals in forseeing our end. We are also alone among the animals in being able to say before we die: Yes, this is why it was worth coming into life in the first place." (313)  *The curious reader may want to know that the answer was yes--this was, in part, the nature of my faith, and to that extent, it has been shaken-- not stirred-- but I also find God to be dynamically present in the elegance of the natural, in the known, and I found my paradigm of God and God's engagement with the world truer for having read Dawkins. I also think my God rather enjoys Dawkin's mind too-- and might even thank him for knocking over a few of the He-shaped dummy-idols we have created over time.     summer-reading-2014               105 reviews3 followers     September 8, 2021   O privire fascinată asupra minunilor lumii, însoțită de analizele științifice aferente, amănunțite. Pentru cei care preferă nu doar să admire, ci și să disece.                  Author  2 books23 followers     October 21, 2021   Another fantastic collection of essays.                   27 reviews1 follower     October 20, 2022   Did Not Finish (decided I have too many potentially better books waiting to be read and life's too short)                  483 reviews10 followers     March 31, 2022   This is a book of mostly opinions and perspectives, although there is a great deal of science to be learned. Dawkins' opinions and perspectives as well as his speculations are certainly well-informed and, as so many have said, he is a wonderful writer. It's a treat to read what he writes, even if you don't understand it. Dawkins addresses many of the metaphors that science writers use and how they are often used correctly and incorrectly to conceptualize and explain scientific ideas. My preference is for a science writer to be clear and concise and to define all the jargon used. But some people need analogies and metaphors make for pretty writing. How does one do it without being misleading though? That's the question. Dawkins makes a lot of good points - most of which I agree with. I find his opinions well-argued, and his speculations are ... well .... very British. Anyway, if you find evolution interesting and you appreciate good writing, you'll enjoy this read.                   12 reviews19 followers     February 11, 2013   This month, while in a Twitter hiatus, I managed to get around to reading a book. Yes, a real book, with paper and pages and a cardboard cover! The book I chose to read is by Dr Richard Dawkins, and this is one that is overlooked in terms of its importance and place in society, having been overshadowed by his more groundbreaking and most famous publications such as “The Blind Watchmaker”, “The Selfish Gene” and of course “The God Delusion.”“Unweaving the Rainbow” was originally published in 1998, and apart from some unforeseen advances in science and technology, is as relevant today’s it was when written over ten years ago. The premise of the book, and the origin of the title, stem from a claim by the 19th century poet John Keats, in apparent dismay at Sir Isaac Newton for his discovery and documentation the separation of white light into the visible spectrum, or the rainbow as it is commonly known. Keats claims that Newton destroyed the wonder and poetry of the rainbow by “reducing it to prismatic colours.” Keats’ claim, and claims like it, are often employed as a last ditch attempt in refuting the importance or relevance of science, saying that the deep study of the beautiful can only reduce a wonderful thing, a thing of reverence and astonishment, to a mundane and dull object once fully understood. The extrapolation of this claim seems to be the mystery of the unknown in the form of god, souls, magic and spirituality will be destroyed by the understanding of the underlying principles that create these phenomena within humanity. Of course, this claim stems from a fear that science is, in fact, often correct, and may eventually rid the world of superstition and dogma. Dawkins goes to great lengths to “unweave the rainbow” in it’s many guises; From the specific story of Keats and Newton to the charlitanism of new age mysticism, from pseudoscience to bad poetic communication, Dawkins has successfully constructed a case for the wonder and majesty of the natural world, the way things really are. He intersperses the book with pieces of prose and quotes from the arts and science, and shows that superstition and bad judgement do not lie solely within the confines of religion. Of course we knew this to be the case, but to analyse it in this manner really puts a perspective on who we are as a species, and why we believe the unbelievable. Much like Michael Shermer’s book “Why People Believe Weird Things”, “Rainbow” gives numerous examples of how the human brain sees the world around it, and how our development as a species is sometimes hindered by our evolution, the very thing that brought us here. Biologically we are riddled with age old hangovers from times past, and socially we are told that science is devoid of wonder. The combination of these two aspects of modern society is that science is seen as a cold and soulless reduction of the universe to just a bunch of numbers on paper. While science can (and I believe will) explain away many of the aspects of life that we see as indescribable or mysterious, as Dawkins argues, this can only enhance our wonder at nature’s intricacies. Dawkins, I feel, is always at his strongest when he talks of topics of which he is an expert; biology. When he speaks of religion, he all too often gets caught upon a personal battle of will and wits, and can come across as a less than savoury character. In “Rainbow” however, he successfully walks a thin line between scientific facts and the criticism of the human condition, without entering the territory of ad-hominem insults or personal attacks on individuals. He is neither too critical nor soft on the idiosyncrasies and quirks of human nature. He balances the rightful claim that science can only enhance our understanding of the universe and all it contains with the need for the poetic and the beautiful. This is a point that is all too often overlooked, and this message can only help to move forward any attempts by science to regain its place in the minds of modern humanity, without being seen as a threat to the beauty and appreciation we have for the natural world.                   595 reviews42 followers     March 22, 2012   Obwohl Richard Dawkins zweifelsfrei zu den genialeren (Evolutions-) Biologen zählt, möchte ich dieses Buch nur einem eingeschränkten Publikum empfehlen. Zwar hat sich der eloquente Engländer inzwischen einen Namen in Sachen Religionskritik gemacht (vermutlich ist er DER Paradeatheist); dieser Umstand alleine macht ihn aber, trotz aller Kontroversen, noch nicht interessant genug um sich als Laie durch dieses Buch zu quälen.Nicht falsch verstehen - an und für sich ist es sicherlich interessant. Leider gibt es aber ein paar Kritikpunkte, die das Lesevergnügen unglaublich trüben. Da wäre zum Einen, dass man ihm - bei allem Respekt für seine Leistungen! - schon einen gewissen Chauvinismus anmerkt. Wo es um Musik geht wird stets in den höchsten Tönen von "Klassik" gesprochen. In Sachen Poesie spielt er sich als Kenner auf und putzt jede andere Meinung so konsequent herunter, dass man selbst dann skeptisch wird, wenn man eigentlich seiner Meinung war / ist. Mit anderen Worten: Er lässt in diesem Buch so sehr den Gebildeten raushängen, dass es einem schon zum Halse heraushängt. Und dann wäre da allgemein seine Neigung nur die Phantasielosigkeit als phantastisch darzustellen. Er hat seinen Standpunkt gegen blinde Religiosität oft genug dargelegt und mit Argumenten untermauert. Dass er es hier aber auf so ziemlich alles ausdehnt, das nicht zu 100% der Realität entspricht, zeugt von beschränkter Geistesgröße, denn ohne Fantasy- und Science-Fiction-Romane wären wohl viele Erfindungen der Menschheitsgeschichte niemals gemacht worden. Man denke hierbei an die vielen Erfindungen aus dem Star-Trek-Universum, die Ingenieure in aller Welt so sehr begeisterten, dass wir ihm heute automatische Türen, Handys und vieles mehr zumindest zu einem großen Teil verdanken. Nein, wenn Dawkins in diesem Buch über Star Trek, Akte X und alles herzieht, was ein wenig über den nüchternen Realismus hinausgeht, macht er sich - meiner Meinung nach - einer Arroganz schuldig, die ihm seine Gegner in den meisten anderen Punkten zu Unrecht ankreiden. Der Ton macht die Musik. Und wenn man in einem Buch nicht nur darauf eingeht wie die Evolution das Wunder des 'Hörens', 'Abstrahierens' und 'Verstehens' ermöglichte, sollte man dabei nicht vergessen, dass man selbst aufpassen sollte, was man sagt und wie man es tut. Vor Allem, wenn man in seinem Werk versucht eine 'Poesie der Wissenschaft' zu beschwören. Laien, die sich noch nie mit der Evolutionstheorie beschäftigt haben, können mit diesem Buch bestimmt etwas anfangen. Solche die, wie ich, gewisse Vorkenntnisse haben (Schulbildung ist dazu völlig ausreichend), werden sich streckenweise vermutlich ziemlich langweilen.     sb-allgemein
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31487.Unweaving_the_Rainbow
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 The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene

 Richard Dawkins

 4.11
 9,241 ratings 226 reviews
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 People commonly view evolution as a process of competition between individuals—known as “survival of the fittest”—with the individual representing the “unit of selection.” Richard Dawkins offers a controversial reinterpretation of that idea in The Extended Phenotype, now being reissued to coincide with the publication of the second edition of his highly-acclaimed The Selfish Gene. He proposes that we look at evolution as a battle between genes instead of between whole organisms. We can then view changes in phenotypes—the end products of genes, like eye color or leaf shape, which are usually considered to increase the fitness of an individual—as serving the evolutionary interests of genes.

 Dawkins makes a convincing case that considering one’s body, personality, and environment as a field of combat in a kind of “arms race” between genes fighting to express themselves on a strand of DNA can clarify and extend the idea of survival of the fittest. This influential and controversial book illuminates the complex world of genetics in an engaging, lively manner.
 Genres Science Nonfiction Biology Genetics Popular Science Philosophy Psychology
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 336 pages, Paperback

 First published January 1, 1982

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 Richard Dawkins

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 4.11
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 Infinite Jen
 91 reviews 618 followers
 March 26, 2023
 Picture this: Contemplating the Navier-Stokes equations, (i.e. partial differential equations which describe the motion of fluid substances through the kidney cracker of randy stud horses the world over by treating no jizz, (be it equine, platypii, or giraffine), as inviscid, and thus operating as a parabolic equation - having better analytic properties, at the expense of having less mathematical structure - and telling Euler to go lipsmack a chocolate starfish), and their ability to model approximations of complex phenomena such as weather and the diffusion of Cthulhu's piss into the Pacific Ocean, causes you to begin pleasuring yourself (like any decent mathematician). Whilst getting a little fapidextrous and performing the five knuckle shuffle on the piss pump (eg. voiding the warranty and causing the bald man to puke) you begin, as is your way, to talk dirty to your Alienware 34 QD-OLED (AW3423DW) gaming monitor: "The above considerations apply to the Cauchy problem with the scale-invariant initial data. Can such consideration be taken even further, to some solutions with finite energy obtained by a suitable “truncation at infinity” *grunts* of the scale-invariant initial data? If this is the case, *labored breathing* then we might not only have non-uniqueness for the scale-invariant initial data, but also non-uniqueness for finite-energy initial data, and – in particular – for the Leray-Hopf weak solutions. Moreover, the non-uniqueness would appear right at the borderline of the classes.... HNNNNNNNG! for which uniqueness can be proved via the weak-strong uniqueness theorems mentioned earlier. It is interesting to note the opinion of some prominent mathematicians on the question of the uniqueness of Leray-Hopf weak solut..." And about this time your mother bursts in screaming like a bastard, "PORK CHOP RELATED GREASE FI.... OH MY GODDDDDDD!" Causing your balls to depressurize like the worst Isothermal and Adiabatic Leak Processes of Zeotropic Refrigerant Mixtures, which precipitates a massive stampede of frightened gametes through the escape hatch of your meat thermometer while you scream, "GET OUT OF MY EXTENDED PHENOTYPE MOMMMM!"

 If this has ever happened to you - this is your book.

 Have you ever, while plumb blown in the creek on lead-tainted moonshine pissed from a noisy radiator, grew irate while watching a spider craft a beautiful web and systematically took a sledge hammer to all the toilets in your house, while screaming: “Competence without comprehension makes me sick!”?

 This is your book.

 Dawkins’ is best known for his seminal work: The Selfish Peen, which argued persuasively for the value of the Peen’s-Eye-View of evolution. This is a continuation of The Elfish Dean which concerns itself with extending that concept to better understand how Beavers can be such good engineers without attending classes. How termites, obeying relatively simple local rules, can work together to construct magnificent castles. How spiders can weave silk tapestries of such intense beauty that you wake up to a house riven by porcelain shrapnel. For my money, although less accessible than The Shellfish Gene, this little ditty contains the most exciting ideas that Mr. Dawkins’ has produced since being urinated upon by Nagapies in Sub-Saharan Africa (citation needed). And he agrees.

 This book seeks to expand the Neo-Darwinian synthesis to include not only how genes encode the instructions for producing the proteins necessary for assembling bodies, (the phenotype), but also how they instill instinctual competencies, which instruct parasitic and symbiotic behaviors, catalyze evolutionary arms races, inform mating strategies, and facilitate the construction of fitness enhancing artifacts external to the organism (extended phenotype). This last bit, seeing the reach of the gene extended beyond its normal purview of the physical body, is a real humdinger, and, if taken fully on board, constitutes a paradigmatic panty obliteration. You’ll stand before the grandeur of nature forevermore without recourse to undergarments.

 Unfortunately, a fair amount of the book is dedicated to beating recalcitrant ideologues about the neck and chest for their wishy washy objections. The barest whiff of genetic determinism, and the most timid formulations of evolutionary psychology, send people tumbling down slippery slopes and into seizures of unreason. Perhaps understandably, given how perverse incentives have motivated bad actors to alloy theories of this kind with bullshit political dogmas. Still, it’s important work. Let me assure you that, despite the voluminous amount of confabulatory drivel that has been hurled the man’s way, primarily by people who have only read the title of The Delphic Routine, Dawkins is anything but careless when putting forward these ideas. Lucky for our species that, heretical though they may seem at the time, there exist people who are not satisfied with the low hanging fruit of our wishful preconceptions, and reach instead for truer approximations of the reality we inhabit.

 “Of course genes are not directly visible to selection. Obviously they are selected by virtue of their phenotypic effects, and certainly they can only be said to have phenotypic effects in concert with hundreds of other genes. But it is the thesis of this book that we should not be trapped into assuming that those phenotypic effects are best regarded as being neatly wrapped up in discrete bodies (or other discrete vehicles). The doctrine of the extended phenotype is that the phenotypic effect of a gene (genetic replicator) is best seen as an effect upon the world at large, and only incidentally upon the individual organism—or any other vehicle—in which it happens to sit.” -This Book.

 "That rug really tied the room together, did it not?" -Walter Sobchak.
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 Orhan Pelinkovic
 96 reviews 225 followers
 August 15, 2021
 Genes are replicators and the fundamental unit of natural selection and the individual organism is just a vehicle in order to preserve and pass down these replicators. Therefore, organisms are temporary and perishable, and genes, the basic elements of life, are immortal and continually evolving.

 Dawkins favors individual selection rather than group selection, and the organisms that work in the interest of other organisms are often a result of manipulation where natural selection will impassively favor the behavior traits of the manipulator.

 Hence, we, and other organisms, are a product of a historical sequence of events, in which the inclination of natural selection, through the process of evolution, chooses a superior alternative of a genetic pattern of an organism at that moment available without foreseeing and having in mind the future product of our design.

 But what about the extended phenotype (which was only covered in the last quarter of the book)? Dawkins claims that genes can even reach outside of their organisms. As it is in the case with a bird's-nest or a beavers dam that can be viewed as a functioning extension of the bird's or beaver's body which is there to increase their likelihood of survival and reproduction and behaves like an organ. Namely, the genes are the ones producing this behavior, and as a result, this behavior produces the artifact (bird-nest, beaver dam).

 Also, another example of an extended phenotypic expression is when the genes of a particular parasite induce the modification or thickening of a snail's shell. Furthermore, the far-reaching effects of the genes can be perceived in the "cuckoo's egg" scenario in which the cuckoo's manipulating genes inflict a phenotypic expression on the host's behavior all for the benefit of the cuckoo.

 For many of us, this gene's eye point of view is hard to swallow as we know that genetic determinism is not the whole story of evolution, especially not the exclusive determining factor of behavior. Although, this book is there to give us a new way of perceiving and thinking about natural selection. The book's content could have been better organized but I would still recommend The Extended Phenotype (1982) to anyone interested in biological evolution, but prior to reading it, one best start off with Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (1976) , which can be considered a prequel to this book, and then his The Blind Watchmaker (1986) to get better acquainted with the Darwinian theory and terminology.
 biological-evolution biology genetics
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 Krishan
 59 reviews 17 followers
 January 5, 2014
 The book is a logical continuation of his devastating book The Selfish Gene . Here Dawkins turns his critical eye and razor sharp words to evolutionary views that take the individual organism as the definitive playing field for natural selection to operate.
 Using the gene's eye view of life that he developed so well in The Selfish Gene , he shows that animal artifacts are better understood as objects engineered by natural selection, rather than as by products of the behavior of organisms. He also makes the case that many phenomena incidental to parasitism and symbiosis are better understood if the organism level view of biological agents is abandoned. Dawkins' explores these and similar topics with his characteristic clarity, and the reader is exposed to the full power of evolutionary thinking.
 A quote often seen on the cover of Dawkins' books is "Richard Dawkins climbs mental Everests". This book illustrates the point and then some. Dawkins concise language is without peer in the biological sciences. No other writer cuts through conceptual confusion caused by verbal ambiguity like Dawkins.
 5/5
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 Michael
 28 reviews 6 followers
 May 21, 2021
 Great but fatiguing

 Contrary to Dawkin's most famous "Selfish Gene," this book is much more challenging to read for a non-biologist person. Some parts required me to google terms definitions and problem backgrounds each paragraph, if not line.
 Despite this, the whole reading experience is very satisfying. A lot of new concepts that bring up interesting ideas, numerous facts, and remarkably great language - all of this teams up to build the great book. It's excellent reading for everyone ready to grind through the complexities of material.
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 Peter
 222 reviews
 Read
 March 13, 2011
 The essentials of life's story: Biodiversity is more than a buzzword for ecologists. Variation gives life its grandeur, and Richard Dawkins gives us a description of the workings of variation. Fortunately, with a sharp mind and sharper wit, he has the ability to deliver this portrayal so that nearly everyone can understand it. That's not to say this book is an easy read. Although he delivers his narration as if sitting with you in a quiet study, you may still need to review his words more than once. That's not a challenge or a chore, it's a pleasure.

 Dawkins, unlike other science writers, is forthright in declaring his advocacy in writing this book. It's a refreshing start to his most serious effort. After publication of The Selfish Gene led to a storm of fatuous criticism, Extended Phenotype comes in response with more detail of how the gene manifests itself in the organism and its environment. It's clear that Dawkins' critics, who label him an "Ultra-Darwinist" [whatever that is] haven't read this book. His critics frequently argue that The Selfish Gene doesn't operate in a vacuum, but must deal within some kind of environment, from an individual cell to global scenarios. Dawkins deftly responds to critics in describing how genes rely on their environment for successful replication. If the replication doesn't survive in the environment it finds itself, then it, and perhaps its species, will die out.

 The child's favourite question, "why" is difficult enough for parents and teachers to answer. Yet, as thinking humans we've become trained to deal with that question nearly every context. So well drilled that we consider something for which that question has no answer to be suspicious if not insidious. Part of Dawkins presentation here reiterates that there is no "why" to either the process of evolution nor its results. It isn't predictable, inevitable or reasonable. It's a tough situation to cope with, but Dawkins describes the mechanism with such precision and clarity, we readily understand "how" if not "why" evolution works. We comprehend because Dawkins does such an outstanding job in presenting its mechanics.

 This edition carries three fine finales: Dawkins well thought out bibliography, a glossary, and most prized, indeed, an Afterword by Daniel C. Dennett. If any defense of this book is needed, Dennett is a peerless champion for the task. Dennett's capabilities in logical argument are superbly expressed here. As he's done elsewhere {Darwin's Dangerous Idea], Dennett mourns the lack of orginality and logic among Dawkins' critics. Excepting the more obstinate ones, these seem to be falling by the wayside. It's almost worthwhile reading Dennett's brief essay before starting Dawkins. It would be a gift to readers beyond measure if these two ever collaborated on a book. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

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 Svetlana
 15 reviews 18 followers
 March 21, 2013
 The language of the book cannot be called simple and it takes some efforts to follow the authors reasoning, but these efforts will reap big reward. In process of reading you will experience the happiness of discovers time and again, have finished the book you will get another angle of view of the phenomenon of life. Don't panic, extend your mind.
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 Pink
 537 reviews 562 followers
 December 16, 2014
 I'm sure this is great, but I'm not a scientist and as one of Dawkins least accessible books, this one was overkill. It's an expansion of topics covered in The Selfish Gene, which I'd previously enjoyed, but there was too much detail for me to take in. I'll skip back to some of his later books.
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 Arpit Katre
 29 reviews
 December 27, 2021
 He has a good argument but why he needs to write a whole book on it... you don't read to read whole book to understand the concept the last chapter of its prequel the selfish gene was enough to understand what is the concept of extended phenotype.... the whole book is for people who really want to disprove him or understand his exact reasoning to cone to the conclusion if not its not for you. you can just read summary and that will be enough.
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 Bob Nichols
 943 reviews 328 followers
 August 5, 2014
 In this book, Dawkins picks up his selfish gene theme and extends its influence to organs and systems within the body and then to the external environment. In doing so, Dawkins never strays from his central themes: Genes are in charge, pursuing their self-interest; the body and its behavior is their vehicle; and the germ-line replicator is the unit of selection.

 Dawkins argues* that the gene replicators first begin to transcend their gene-only behavior within the body when they cooperate with other genes for mutual benefit (forming organs and bodily systems) and those genes that work well with other genes are selected through “within body selection”. This is where the selfish gene becomes in effect a cooperative gene, although the gene’s self-interest remains always as the driving force (Dawkins also allows for “outlaw” genes that seek advantage at the expense of other genes).

 Dawkins writes that through behavior, the phenotypic effects of genes “feed back on those genes’ chances of surviving, and as a result gene frequencies change in succeeding generations in adaptive directions.” As I understand it, mutation and alternate forms for each gene (alleles) create a range of variation that natural selection then works on, tossing out options that don’t work and keeping those that do. This argument on the surface appears similar to what Jean Piaget puts forward in his book, Behavior and Evolution. And, in the glossary, Dawkins adds this supporting sentence about evolution’s role in selecting behavior that works: “From the point of view of this book, the significant feature of the Lamarckian theory is the idea that new genetic variation tends to be adaptively directed, rather than ‘random’ (i.e., non-directed) as in the Darwinian theory.”

 This same process extends to phenotype behavior in the environment. Beaver bodies, as collections of selfish genes, build ponds and habitats because they are conducive to gene-level survival within all beavers. This same extension of gene-level behavior applies to bees and termites as well. (Dawkins writes in such a way that bees and termites seem to be specialized cells that operate outside of the body.) Dawkins also adds that this sort of extended behavior within one species is applied toward other species through parasitic, manipulative behavior. In short, Dawkins writes, “We must think of each replicator as the centre of a field of influence on the world at large.”

 After defending his gene replicator as the unit of selection for evolutionary purposes, Dawkins’ last chapter is titled, “Rediscovering the Organism.” This chapter comes across as flat. I can understand Dawkins’ reluctance to support in any shape or form the individual as the unit of selection for evolution. Dawkins states that genes only care about copies of themselves, not about the welfare of the body-vehicle for all the genes. Yet, if the gene’s success depends on the body vehicle’s success as an extended phenotype, then the body vehicles take on a near equal importance. As in any part-whole relationship, there’s a mutual dependence and one is not more important than the other. If the body as the gene’s vehicle is not viable prior to reproduction, then all the genes, so to say, go down with the ship.

 Interestingly, as a side note to his main theme, Dawkins allows for two different strategies for sexual behavior. Both the “faithful” and “philander” models (and a continuum that lies in between?), are variable strategies to move genes into the next generation. If this is true for sex, might this equally apply to genetic-based character types where both self-oriented (manipulative) and other –oriented (cooperative) types are equally valid survival types? Elsewhere (“Twelve Misunderstandings of Kin Selection") he writes, “To stick my neck out a little, it seems to me that, far from genes for altruistic behavior being implausible, it may even be that a majority of behavioural mutations will turn out to be properly describable as either altruistic or selfish.” Recognizing the speculation here, could this be the ground for what seems to be a fairly basic character division between two poles of human nature?

 This is an excellent book. It is strong and stimulating. It would be improved if Dawkins were less preoccupied with defending himself against his detractors, if he better separated his broad points from his technical detail, and if he made clearer distinctions between his criticisms of others and his own positions. Dawkins endlessly cites his previous works, which seems a bit biased when the reader is looking for additional and independent support for what Dawkins is putting forward.

 *Dawkins is writing for the more technically oriented reader. Lay readers do the best they can.
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 Ben
 11 reviews 17 followers
 June 21, 2017
 First half 3*, Second 5*

 This is a good book. Off the back of reading The Selfish Gene, and reading that The Extended Phenotype is Dawkin's favourite of his products, I was expecting big things. From the get-go, the style of the book is a lot more science-heavy—more jargon, more in depth scientific ideas and reasoning, which (as a scientist myself) I enjoyed: Dawkins is terrific at scientific reasoning, and this was a good outing from him, even by his standards.

 The problem with the first half (maybe even more) of the book, is the content. Dawkins spends a very long time addressing criticism from The Selfish Gene, as well as some criticism with his extended phenotype theorem. Genetic determinism, group selection, green beards (etc. etc.) are all delved into in detail. Whilst this is very well done, it shows the age of the book. Almost all of these criticisms are no longer pertinent (which shows how correct Dawkins was at the time, might I add), so some arguments seem a little trivial.

 What the first half lacks, Dawkins makes up for in the second half. The theorem of the extended phenotype is a fantastic way of viewing the impact replicators have on the world, and is almost flawless (plus, Dawkins addresses the few issues that arise with the theorem). He even ends with an optimistic view of life, presumably addressing the sadness (?) that this way of thinking brought at the time.

 Overall, a very good book, but unless you wish to get into the knitty-gritty of many different theories (some very pertinent and some a bit less), you might be best off reading the last few chapters. Alternatively, the summary of the extended phenotype theorem that Dawkins provides in the recent editions of The Selfish Gene might be a good option.
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 ahmad afridi
 139 reviews 151 followers
 September 6, 2022
 This book is not just continuation/explanation of last chapter of Selfish Gene as someone mentioned rather it further explored gene-eye-view of evolution, with his amazing thought experiments and eloquent explanations, interaction of genes with environment and other organisms through their physiological affects and/or artifacts produced during translation of genes. language of this book is more professional than that of selfish gene and needs basic vocabulary of genetics and evolution .

 A must read for anyone interested in Evolution or Darwinism.
 biology-health non-fiction sociology-anthropology
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 Mehul Sharma
 4 reviews
 August 28, 2020
 What a beautiful book. Simple yet radical. A worthy descendant of The Selfish Gene, the book delves into the intricacies and technicalities of gene selectionism and enlarges it into the extended phenotype theory. A truly fascinating read. Dawkins never fails to achieve radicality with simplicity.
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 Dennis Littrell
 1,080 reviews 49 followers
 July 21, 2019
 Difficult but eminently worthwhile

 This is a long and difficult book, although not as long and difficult as it might be if it had been written by somebody without Richard Dawkins' gift for clarity of thought and expression.

 The crux of Dawkins' thesis is expressed early on and much of what follows is a very detailed supporting argument. What he wants us to see is that the "selfish gene" has a reach that extends beyond the confines of the individual organism that houses the gene. The phenotype of our genes is the human organism in all its glory; however the extended phenotype of our genes is not only the human organism but part of the environment in which the organism finds itself. In other words, the gene has the power to influence not only our behavior but the behavior and structure of elements in the world in which we live.

 This thesis is not as striking to me as it has been to many others mainly because I have studied Eastern religious views, and it is a tenant of such views that the distinction between ourselves (the "selfish organism," in Dawkins' terminology) and the environment is an artificial one, an illusion actually. We are part and parcel of all that is around us and within us, and the boundary of our skin is merely functional. We cannot be understood by looking at only our bodies. Dawkins makes the point that looking at a beaver and microscopically examining it and its genes is not sufficient to an understanding of what a beaver is. We have to also consider the dams that the beaver builds, the trees that it gnaws down and even the streams that it dams and turns into lakes.

 Presenting a point of view somewhat at odds with that of Dawkins (and one that I think that Dawkins does not sufficiently appreciate) is Franklin M. Harold in his book, The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Order of Life (2001). He writes, "Organisms process matter and energy as well as information; each represents a dynamic node in a whirlpool of several currents, and self-reproduction is a property of the collective, not of genes.... DNA is a peculiar sort of software, that can only be correctly interpreted by its own unique hardware.... [S]ending aliens the genome of a cat is no substitute for sending the cat itself--complete with mice." (p. 221)

 Dawkins tries to discount the view of those he calls "group selectionists" who see life from a "group benefit" viewpoint. Dawkins has, since writing this book, stepped back from this position to allow that some group selection may take place. I believe some day he may see the world not from a "selfish gene" point of view, and not from a "selfish organism" point of view, but from a "selfish ecosystem" perspective--well, more likely his successors will see this, since the work of a lifetime is not easily amended in one's later years.

 Dawkins gives what he calls "our own 'central theorem' of the extended phenotype" on page 233: "An animal's behaviour tends to maximize the survival of the genes 'for' that behaviour, whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it."

 This is a mouthful. Clearly we can say that the genes of the reed warbler code for behavior that benefits the genes of the cuckoo who has laid its egg in the warbler's nest. This is what Dawkins has in mind. But then arises the question, "how far afield can the phenotype extend?" Here Dawkins gets cautious and writes, "The farthest action at a distance I can think of is a matter of several miles." (p. 233) Note the chosen terminology, "action at a distance." This is from physics of course causing Dawkins to ask if there is "a sharp cut-off" of the genes' reach or "an inverse square law" at work?

 It is here that I believe Dawkins has come so, so close to that which he will not see (or couldn't see then), namely that everything works toward an ecology and that the idea of selfish genes and selfish organisms is a limited view. In truth the reach of the genes should be governed by something like an inverse square law since humans are now reaching beyond the solar system.

 When we look at such great distances we might want to credit the dreaded and verboten "group selection" that Dawkins is at pains to reject. Just as some see our earth as "Gaia," an organism itself, so too might we see those organisms that have the means to survive the destruction of the home planet by migrating to other planets as being selected by group as opposed to other groups who have no such ability. Planet A produces beings that extend beyond their solar system; planet B produces beings that do not. Both planets blow up. Who is "selected" by the (extended) environment and who is not?

 Dawkins is one of the geniuses of science, and I don't mean to argue with the great insights he has brought to biology, but my point is that it is always something of an artificiality to speak of living systems as confined to one level of existence or expression. We may think of earth creatures as being completely separate from the rest of the universe, yet without the sun, 93 million miles away, we would not exist; and come a supernova even many light years away, we will be affected.

 So all is one and one is all in some extended sense. And using the word "selfish" (as Dawkins knows) at any level of life is merely to be anthropomorphic.

 Daniel Dennett, in a new afterword written in 1999, asks if this book is science or philosophy, and he answers both. I agree, and it is science and philosophy of the highest order, aimed equally at the professional and at the educated layperson.

 --Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
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 Max
 8 reviews 1 follower
 June 3, 2021
 Interesting topic but takes a while to get into the actual meat of the argument. The first 3/4 of the book is set up and background information for discussing the extended phenotype. The hypothesis itself is fascinating and is a useful way to look at biology.

 You could read this without a decent amount of biological knowledge but I think it would be quite difficult.
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 Scott Holstad
 Author 22 books 70 followers
 June 10, 2020
 Typical Dawkins. Solid work, possibly great, but I’ve never viewed him as the most scintillating writer. Still, I’ve always viewed his content over his writing style and I find little fault with most any of his content. Definitely recommended.
 science
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 People say my name should be Jeff
 27 reviews 2 followers
 March 24, 2008
 I'd give it 5 stars if I knew enough biology to be able to confirm it (or 1 if I could refute it).
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 Sheng Peng
 152 reviews 18 followers
 January 13, 2017
 2015: Built upon and more advanced than The Selfish Gene. Readers beware!

 2017: Re-read this after re-reading The Selfish Gene. It definitely makes more sense to me this time around.
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 Michael Kress
 Author 0 books 13 followers
 May 25, 2020
 "It doesn't matter if you ever read anything else of mine, please at least read this." -Richard Dawkins
 As someone who has read a lot of Dawkins's books, I wholeheartedly disagree with this request. I can understand his claim that this book is his most unique contribution to science, but the only way this should be your first Dawkins book is if you are already familiar with biological concepts. After all, the book was written for professionals, not laypeople. I started with River out of Eden, an easier one, and, although my mind was blown, I struggled with some of it. It was only after I read a lot of other things that I was ready for this, and it was still hard. The middle of the book was probably the hardest part. I think I got frustrated at some point and put it down, then picked it up again later. I do that a lot. I probably should've just powered through in the first place, because the end of the book references a lot of concepts that he builds on in the beginning. The glossary in the back and I recommend you take note of it and use it frequently instead of Googling the words. I'm sure the glossary terms will be more relevant to the text than Google's version. It's essential to have an understand of terms like "gamete," "germ-line," and other words that he uses. If you don't know these words, you won't understand the book. Another science book I'm reading, Origins, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, has a glossary, so you should check for one if you're reading something like that. Whether you are new to Dawkins or a long-time fan, The Extended Phenotype will probably be difficult, but rewarding if you are willing to put in the time.
 1980s-early rogan-bros science
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 Illya Kalambet
 3 reviews 1 follower
 November 17, 2020
 Ну що ж, я прочитав чергову книгу Річарда Докінза і ось моя "коротка думка" (або ж мем) про цю книгу. У першу чергу маю відзначити, що "Розширений фенотип" це на мою думку найвагоміша книга автора, позаяк це збір усіх його ідей, які стосуються генетики, еволюції та етології. Тут Р. Докінз продовжує і поглиблює те, що розпочав у його найвідомішій книзі і за сумісництвом найкращій науково популярній книзі 20 століття "Егоїстичний ген", яка є своєрідним вступом до розуміння генетики, еволюції та природнього відбору назагал, т��к і своєрідне бачення організму з позиції одиниці генома, себто гена. Ну і також тут автор присвятив свою увагу "мемам", тобто культурним одиницям, які є розширеним фенотипічним ефектом людини ( і так популяризатором цього терміну у масовій культурі є саме Докінз).
 А тепер коротко про саму роботу. Ця книга не рекомендується для людей, які не читали до того вже вище згаданий "Егоїстичний ген" або принаймні ще одну книгу Докінза "Сліпий годинникар" а також тим хто не цікавиться подібною тематикою або вирішив зацікавитися. Справедливо сказати, що "Розширений фенотип" є складною роботою, яка потребує відповідних знань у біології, генетиці, еволюції та природному відборі.
 Не буду лукавити і признаюсь ця книга (як і попередні дві) потребує перечитки адже деякі речі я просто не зміг або не захотів зрозуміти. Але все таки це чергова, чудова книга Річарда Докінза наповнена цікавими ідеями, залізною логікою, ствердними аргумнтами і тонкими жартами. Це та книга, яка хоче, щоб ти в неї повернувся і перечитав щоб ще більше зацікавити і задавати ще більше запитань.
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 Dane Cobain
 Author 18 books 320 followers
 May 18, 2022
 This is one of the denser Richard Dawkins books, at least of the ones that I’ve read. In fact, it was so dense that from time to time, I struggled to wrap my head around the science and to understand what he was talking about.

 That’s not surprising really, considering that the guy’s an evolutionary biologist. He works in a complex area and even though he tries to make what he’s talking about as understandable as he can for the layman, there are a few places where he struggles with it.

 Still, I do feel as though I learned quite a lot, even though I already find it tricky to put my finger on anything specific. That happens a lot when I read Dawkins though, and I’m not sure whether that’s because of his writing style or his subject matter. I don’t mind though, I’m cool with that.

 This one is also one of his earlier books, and so in some ways it feels a little dated, even though I’m sure that the concepts that he talks about still hold up. There’s some really good stuff here, so I was pretty happy to tick this one off, even though it was also a big old brain drain. It can be tough to read books like this because of how in-depth they go.

 Because of that, I ended up switching this out to be a bedtime book. It was a rare example of one that I didn’t switch out because I didn’t enjoy it, but rather that was just such a challenging and taxing read that I preferred to dip in and out of it to read it slowly so that I could properly process what I was reading about. Although as you can probably imagine, I had some pretty unusual dreams. Ha.
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 denudatio_pulpae
 1,406 reviews 30 followers
 January 21, 2024
 „ Fenotyp rozszerzony ” jest kontynuacją i uzupełnieniem „ Samolubnego genu ”. W początkowych rozdziałach autor poszerza swoją koncepcję samolubnego genu, oraz polemizuje z krytycznymi uwagami, jakie wywołała jego poprzednia książka.

 Ostatnie i najciekawsze rozdziały dotyczą fascynującego zjawiska – koncepcji fenotypu rozszerzonego, czyli wpływu genów jednego organizmu na drugi. Dla rozjaśnienia tej koncepcji przytoczę tu jeden z przykładów, jaki Dawkins opisał w swojej książce:

 „ Mnie zależy na ustaleniu kilku tylko przykładów, w których objawy występujące u żywicieli można z dużą pewnością potraktować jako przystosowanie pasożyta. Należy do nich syndrom Piotrusia Pana, charakteryzujący się niechęcią do stania się dorosłym, jaki zaobserwowano u larw Tribolium znajdujących się pod działaniem hormonu juwenilnego produkowanego przez pasożytnicze pierwotniaki. W przypadku takich niewątpliwych przystosować moje wnioski nie mają charakteru spekulacji. Jeśli fizjologiczne lub behawioralne cechy gospodarza są adaptacjami pasożyta, pasożyt musi (lub musiał) posiadać geny modyfikujące cechy żywiciela. Rozszerzony fenotyp rozciąga się poza ciało, a którym zlokalizowane są te geny, i sięga żywych tkanek innego organizmu ”.

 Książka nie należy do tych porywających, wymaga od czytelnika sporej wiedzy biologicznej, ale warta jest poświęconej jej uwagi.
 7/10
 2024 mam-w-domu wiem-że-nic-nie-wiem
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 Carlos Barbosa Poblet
 12 reviews
 April 28, 2024
 Tot i que la idea del fenotipo extendido, torna a ser igual de brutal que la del gen egoista, el llibre no la comença a tractar fins la pàgina 300. Per aquest moitu, tot i considerar-lo revolucionari, no li donc la màxima puntuació. No dic que les primeres 300 siguin innecessàries o dolentes, però un comença el llibre esperant tractar el tema des d'un inici (o com a mínim, un "inici raonable" pel que fa al número de pàgines), i haver d'esperar 300, es fa dur.

 L' autor m'ha tornat a deixar boig. Una altra vegada aconsegueix redefinir conceptes que, en el meu ideari, considerava que eren fixes i clars, com per exemple: Qué es considera fenotip, qué entem per individu, o l'explicació de selecció segons replicadors/ vehicles, és espectacular.

 Per últim, i per no deixar-me a ningú:
 Jo mai mai no he pensat que el fenotip hagués canviat,
 Jo mai mai no he pensat que seria més feliç amb lo explicat.
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 Tien Manh
 36 reviews 2 followers
 July 8, 2018
 Richard Dawkins asks us (again) to try to think of evolution in terms of selfish *genes*.

 The book promotes concepts called replicators (genes, DNA) and vehicles (organisms, groups, species...). Examples are given of how this replicator/gene-centric view of evolution tries to make sense of evolutionary phenomena that otherwise we would have a hard time explaining if we stuck to the traditional, organism-centric view.

 I got to about mid-way through the book, then Dawkins went on a "Lamarckism bash", and some other academic debates regarding (neo?)Darwinism. Not being a scientist myself and having little formal context in evolutionary biology, I got a bit lost. Will retry the latter half of the book in the future!
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 Arnout
 40 reviews
 July 10, 2021
 ''The Selfish Gene' was written for educated lay readers . . . . 'The Extended Phenotype' was written for the professional biologist, but so graceful and lucid is Dawkins's writing that even outsiders who are prepared to exercise their brains vigorously can follow the arguments, and appreciate the subtlety of the issues.'

 As Daniel Dennett suggests in the afterword, the book is, at moments, a cognitively very demanding read. Persistence pays off, however. The concept of the extended phenotype is, just as that of the selfish gene was, revolutionary in the sense that it offers an alternative and better understanding of evolution.
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 Jake Chisausky
 15 reviews 3 followers
 April 23, 2020
 I have picked up and put this book down a few times over the past 5 years, and it took the better part of a biology degree to finally understand it. But well worth the work! Nearly every page was thought-provoking and brought a deeper understanding of how evolution works.
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 Mandes Kates
 4 reviews
 January 14, 2023
 Brilliant

 My first thought after finishing The Extended Phenotype was, "That's obvious." Of course it wasn't obvious before reading the book. My second thought was, "All Dawkins did was change the definition of phenotype." But that is no mean feat and I suspect the definition has stuck. Finally, one of the best, and funniest, parts of the book was the glossary.
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 Harry H.
 8 reviews
 March 8, 2018
 Dawkins is a contemporary genius with fresh perspectives in several fields. Good read.
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 Darjeeling
 339 reviews 37 followers
 October 18, 2022
 Definitely more challenging than the other books by RD that I've read, but he knows how to write, so it's still pretty good.
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 Bob Anderson
 219 reviews 4 followers
 May 8, 2015
 Richard Dawkins here explains his view that the largest unit on which natural selection can reasonably be said to operate is the gene rather than the organism, and explores this idea’s consequences for the standard conceptions of organisms, groups, and selection. The motif he introduces to show this best is a Necker Cube, which is a simple line drawing of all the edges of a cube: when looked at for the first time, it seems to be an overhead view of the cube. But with some visual effort, you can make your brain interpret the exact same stimulus as a view from below. Your two perspectives can be shifted between without many problems at all. This an slightly off analogy, because the two views of the cube have no reason to prefer one over the other, whereas Dawkins clearly believes that his focus on the gene is more proper than some biologists’ focus on the organism. Another analogy: we often hear from nature documentaries and wide-eyed wonderers how harmonious the biological systems of Earth are: how fortunate that some things breathe carbon dioxide and some breathe oxygen, that both cheetah and gazelle are lithe and fast in their dance of predation, that symbiotic pairs of species fill each other’s needs so well.

 But this is an illusion: the different organisms of the planet do not evolve their interplay from any interest in harmony on the part of nature. Rather, given that every other organism already exists, a certain organism will have its various genotypes selected for or against depending on how their expressed phenotypes allow them to be ruthless exploiters and reproducers. Similarly, the genes that make up a genotype are not selected for their harmonious interaction. Instead, at each locus, the alleles that are best able to propagate themselves via their modifications of the expressed phenotype, given their fellow genes, will be selected for. The key difference is that the balance is not driven by a push towards harmony but the ruthless interactions and pushes for self-replication between a myriad of different genes.

 Dawkins pushes this concept far in this book: he explores parasitism, evolutionary arms races, sex ratios, and embryology with an expert’s touch. But by far the most gripping part comes from his title: the extended phenotype is what happens when a gene’s reach extends beyond the physical boundaries of its host organism. A gene can influence the structure of the containing organism, and this surely is a phenotype, but Dawkins gradually pushes this further: a baby bird’s gene influences its parent to feed it, a beaver’s gene pushes it to build a larger dam, and a songbird’s gene summons another bird to come and mate, transferring the risk of travel to that other creature. The most difficult to grasp concept in this book, but in my mind the most fruitful, is the idea that an organism’s behavior tends to increase the success of the gene responsible for that behavior, no matter whether that gene resides in that organism (or indeed even in the same species) or not. While this is a book starting its fourth decade, it still feels very fresh and eye-opening. A word of warning: the book is more technical than various popular books from Dawkins; if you feel like you could tackle a college-level evolutionary biology class you can handle this, though.
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 Nicholas
 323 reviews 13 followers
 October 8, 2008
 An animal's behavior tends to maximize the survival of the genes 'for' that behavior, whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it.

 Well written. Directed at actual biologists. Sometimes hard to understand. I needed more basic biology background.

 The idea is that the phenotypic effects of genes have no reason to stop at the boundaries of the specific individual.


 Quotes:

 "There is a wanton eagerness to misunderstand."

 "When a geneticist speaks of a gene 'for' red eyes in Drosophila, he is not speaking of the cistron which acts as template for the synthesis of the red pigment molecule. He is implicitly saying: there is variation in eye color in the population; other things being equal, a fly with this gene is more likely to have red eyes than a fly without the gene. That is all that we ever mean by a gene 'for' red eyes."

 Evolutionary boundaries on perfection
 pg. 35 "Time lags, Historical constraints, Available genetic variation, Constraints of costs and materials, Imperfections on one level due to selection on another, Mistakes due to environmental unpredictability or 'malevolence'"

 "Life/dinner principle...The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner. The general point here is that for an animal on one side of the arms race the penalty of failure is more severe than for an animal on the other side of the arms race."

 "If the individual manipulator has more to lose by failing to manipulate than the individual victim has to lose by failing to resist manipulation, we should expect to see successful manipulation in nature."

 "What is the optimon?"

 "Workers care for their reproductive siblings who carry germ-line copies of the caring genes."

 "The unit of selection is a function in part of the intensity of selection: the more intense the selection, the more the whole genome tends to hold together as a unit."

 "An active replicator is a chunk of genome that, when compared to its alleles, exerts phenotypic power over its world, sch that its frequency increases or decreases relative to that of its alleles."

 "A vehicle is any unit, discrete enough to seem worth naming, which houses a collection of replicators and which works as a unit for the preservation and propagation of those replicators."

 "The inclusive fitness of an organism is not a property of himself, but a property of his actions or effects. Inclusive fitness is calculated from an individual's own reproductive success plus his effects on the reproductive success of his relatives, each one weighed by the appropriate coefficient of relatedness."

 "The living world can be seen as a network of interlocking fields of replicator power."

 "The significance of the difference between growth and reproduction is that reproduction permits a new beginning, a new developmental cycle and a new organism which may be an improvement, in terms of the fundamental organization of complex structure, over its predecessor."
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The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene (Pop…
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61538.The_Extended_Phenotype
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26053275-brief-candle-in-the-dark
Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science
2015-09-01
Author
<div><div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/155663-david-rubenstein"></a></section><section><p>801 reviews2,503 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2522578298">September 7, 2018</a></section><div><p>Much of this book is autobiographical. Richard Dawkins collects anecdotes from his professional life. He has led a fascinating life, and has become friends with a number of wonderfully intelligent and interesting people. I guess I am a bit jealous of his experiences! Some people think that Dawkins comes off as being arrogant, but I totally disagree. To me, he comes across as a good person, often humble, who admits mistakes yet recognizes his value to science and to society. I find his writing to be inspiring.<p>Dawkins has written a number of books about evolution, and some have become classics. If you are unfamiliar with his books, you may not appreciate many of the references in this book. And, in some of the later chapters he dives into evolution science, which can become rather technical. </p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/155663?shelf=biology">biology</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/155663?shelf=evolution">evolution</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/155663?shelf=memoirs">memoirs</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4177031-troy-blackford"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>23 books2,501 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1416475403">October 14, 2015</a></section><div><p>The fabulous and far more gripping follow up to 'An Appetite for Wonder,' this book chronicles the great biologist's life from the publication of 'The Selfish Gene' on, and it's a very variegated and intriguing life indeed. Sectioned out into themes, it gets better and better as it goes on, and is certainly of interest to anyone who is familiar with the man's work.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5072847-will-ansbacher"></a></section><section><p>297 reviews84 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1407450126">January 1, 2017</a></section><div><p>This is a rather better-constructed book than <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/17924018.An_Appetite_for_Wonder_The_Making_of_a_Scientist">An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist</a>, his autobiography of the first half of his life. In this, he drops the chronological approach and it’s more thematic. It starts as it ends, with a 70th birthday party in his honour, and in between covers his research, public speaking, media presentations, encounters with a diverse range of humanity, and of course his writing.<p>It’s great to read vicariously about a life so rich in experience that he is able to rub shoulders with other world-class scientists, philosophers, Nobel prize-winners and royalty. There is nothing in the way of self-promotion or name-dropping about all this, in fact Dawkins writes about himself and his interactions with others in an amusing and self-deprecating way. Quite the opposite of how he has been maligned as an extremist by so many religious groups. Yes, in his books he can be iconoclastic and a little tiresome when preaching to the converted, but it’s clear from what he says here that he’s more disappointed than angry when the reaction to his arguments is emotional rather than rational.</p><p>As I said, he’s written this thematically rather than chronologically. Thus there are entertaining chapters on his interactions with the media, his publishing ventures (which of course he is most famous for) and his scientific research – again as in the first book, there are several rather endearing vignettes of some quite mundane work with insect life. </p><p> If I had one criticism it would be that rather than describe his life around his writing – how he managed it, what he was thinking, etc - he tends to summarize the main themes of each of his books as though he were reviewing them himself. While it is rather nice to have summaries of the books that I haven’t (yet) read, I read <i>this</i> one to know more about Dawkins, and I didn’t really get that. On the other hand, outside their work, does it really matter that much whether a scientist’s private life is a mess or not? </p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5072847?shelf=autobiographical">autobiographical</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5072847?shelf=science">science</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5072847?shelf=society">society</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/695116-jim"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>6 books2,016 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4721678117">May 19, 2022</a></section><div><p>After reading his earlier autobiography, <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/17924018.An_Appetite_for_Wonder_The_Making_of_a_Scientist">An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist</a>, I wasn't in a rush to read this one, but I'm glad I did. I liked it more since he covers his adult life in roughly chronological order teaching, writing, &amp; lecturing touching on the many wonderful people he's met. Many are quite famous, others are unknown, but his remarks about them were usually quite nice &amp; interesting. He's a lot like my father-in-law, another man I respected immensely. He rarely has anything bad to say about anyone even when they've clashed. Dawkins is always generous with praise where it is due unlike another science book I read recently where the author (Reich) took all the credit for everything. Unlike him, Dawkins seems quite pleased when his students have outpaced him in one respect or another &amp; he often makes much of those who have corrected his mistakes or taken his initial work further. He seems positively delighted when they've outstripped him &amp; that's no mean feat. <p>One of the best bonuses was learning more about his second wife, <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/393238.Lalla_Ward">Lalla Ward</a>, who often alternates narration in Dawkins' audio editions of his books. I hadn't realized she was a leading lady in Dr. Who or that she was so talented in other arts. (She painted a tie for Dawkins &amp; the Queen thought the animal was ugly, although the artwork was good.)</p><p>Dawkins also mentions most of his books &amp; what they cover. It's worth getting a text version of this book for the picture section at the end, but I really enjoyed Dawkins' narration of the audiobook edition. It was very much like a conversation with the great man. Highly recommended.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/695116?shelf=1audio">1audio</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/695116?shelf=2non-fiction">2non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/695116?shelf=biography">biography</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/43365829-sharon-a"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>1 book23 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1430505053">December 29, 2015</a></section><div><p>I feel this book helped me understand Dawkins considerably more than I did previously. It also deepened my appreciation for him and his life's work - in zoology, evolutionary biology, religion, philosophy, and science in society. <p>There is no sign of him being mean-spirited, and I have not seen that from him in his daily life either. I may not always agree with him but he presses me with his arguments to examine why I do not. In that way, he is a great teacher. </p><p>His emotions are simple, direct, and natural, while his intellect is deep and thought is complex. I do not think he will be remembered by history as a bully or strident or insulting (none of which do I think he is); he will be memorialized and regarded for pushing us to think and for challenging society on some topics (and certain people and bad ideas) that REALLY needed to be challenged. </p><p>Other than some long quotes from other sources, and poems that I could do without, this was a good read for those who know Richard Dawkins' work. </p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1249392-mysteryfan"></a></section><section><p>1,564 reviews20 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1353710251">December 18, 2015</a></section><div><p>I received an ARC for this book. The worst part is the illustrations weren't there. I'll have to get the final version just for those. Richard Dawkins is a renowned biologist, atheist, and lecturer. This book is funny, informative, digressive, and both educational and entertaining. It's hard to summarize it otherwise. Some of it is biographical - I didn't know he was married to a former Doctor's Companion and it was fun learning about Oxford pedagogical techniques. I loved his descriptions of scientists he knew and worked with, especially the other Simonyi lecturers. It's a good read.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1249392?shelf=biographies">biographies</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1249392?shelf=nonfiction">nonfiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1249392?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7630145-carl"></a></section><section><p>38 reviews11 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1418921987">November 1, 2015</a></section><div><p>Dawkins second book on his life this one features the later part of his life and goes into his writing books and his lectures. Great writing by one of the best science writers and teachers of how the real world works. Highly recommend for anyone wanting to know how a scientist thinks and explains evolution to the general public. </p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13946677"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>6 books541 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2036336269">August 2, 2017</a></section><div><p>‎‫‏‬<p>This book was better than An Appetite For Wonder, but I think it is just as boring!<br />I enjoy Dawkins on Youtube more than I enjoy his books! I found nothing special in his memoirs, they were just a collection of stories - most of them funny stories - that happened with him. honestly, I got bored reading them most of the time!</p><p><br />‫ ‬<br />That doesn't mean I didn't highlight many inspiring lines. I think even the worst books must have some wise quotes in them that are worth highlighting.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/13946677?shelf=%D8%AE%D9%8A%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D9%84">خيبات-الأمل</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/13946677?shelf=%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1%D8%A7%D8%AA-2017">قراءات-2017</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1394363511">September 17, 2015</a></section><div><p>This book is one of the world most crap-est book very written and i have ever read this books contain nothing but Dawking fairtales and jokes..I hate this book Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science ,This book is not a book because it sucks</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/47075356?shelf=agenda">agenda</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/47075356?shelf=awe">awe</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/47075356?shelf=biology-evolution">biology-evolution</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13384265-moshe-mikanovsky"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>1 book24 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2060848792">July 21, 2017</a></section><div><p>More a memoir than a biography, Dawkins has a way to make me feel right about changes I have made in my life. Even when I don't fully understand the intricate logic or scientific deductions, Dawkins is a pleasure to listen to. Reading his own book, as much posh or old-world-Oxford/British-intellectually as Dawkins might sound, he does his best to explain himself in a plain way. This book has a lot of many different small stories from his experience in the academia, lecturing, public media etc. Splendid!</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/13384265?shelf=audio-book">audio-book</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/13384265?shelf=biography">biography</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8525332-andrew"></a></section><section><p>528 reviews159 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1284957838">June 5, 2015</a></section><div><p>Dear Dr Dawkins FRS, etc. <p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/741167025">Remember how I said, "Fewer biology lessons"</a> in the first volume of your autobiography? If only you had listened. You retain the superb command of language and wit that marked <i>An Appetite For Wonder</i>, and the eccentric stories of scientists - especially of the Oxbridge species - remain appreciated.</p><p>But the long, long final chapter that sums up your chief theories and publications is a little dense for the space allotted and, dare I say in all humility, for the purposes of this book. Which is the endearing, intimate, entertaining, and almost inspiring story of your life.</p><p>But I'd certainly recommend Volume I and the first two-thirds of Volume II to fellow readers.</p><p>Yours, etc.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/29248859-jeff-chay"></a></section><section><p>21 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4726703172">October 9, 2022</a></section><div><p>By turns jovial and poignant, yet always witty and amusing, permeated with a boundless enthusiasm for reason and science. An illuminating portrait of a great man.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/18597947-drosophila"></a></section><section><p>129 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1409779605">December 20, 2015</a></section><div><p>Name-checking <i>
 <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_World_Science_as_a_Candle_in_the_Dark">The Demon-Haunted World</a>
</i> by <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/10538.Carl_Sagan">Carl Sagan</a>, this is in two parts. Part 1 consists of fairly orthodox memoirs. A lot of thanks and quite rambly in places; a few funny stories (not necessarily his own), and some debasing public schoolboy-level innuendo <p>The second part is really an extended post-script to the author's books. This part won't make a large amount of sense unless you have read most of his books already and reasonably well remember their contents. I would include in this the somewhat technical <i>
 <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/61538.The_Extended_Phenotype_The_Long_Reach_of_the_Gene">Extended Phenotype</a>
</i>. Dawkins even encourages prioritising such reading over this volume, and I would tend to agree.</p><p>At university my professors generally thought that Dawkins had a sense of self-importance greater than his actual worth. I don't think this criticism is fair. In my view, Dawkins is always humble and he always praises his colleagues where credit is due. I do however pointedly think many <i>readers</i> ascribe more importance to him than he should be credited for, and for which he would probably be embarrassed to receive. It is as though his fans read his books yet singularly fail to comprehend the historical origins of the concepts presented therein, despite their being very clearly presented with great scientific names attached. So, fans, when Dawkins praises John Maynard Smith, Bill Hamilton, Alan Grafen, Robert Trivers, etc please take note. Dawkins has been very fortunate to work in an environment so richly populated by great minds.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/18597947?shelf=author-born-in-africa">author-born-in-africa</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/18597947?shelf=author-fellow-royal-society">author-fellow-royal-society</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/18597947?shelf=memoir">memoir</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1345046-todd-martin"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>4 books73 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538353838">February 16, 2016</a></section><div><p><i>Brief Candle in the Dark</i> is the red-hot, scandal-filled memoir from the UK’s hottest atheist. From the sex behaviors of wasps to a raunchy prowl through scientific conferences, Dawkins leaves nothing to the imagination in this revealing tell-all filled with juicy gossip and sizzling behind-the-scenes biological action. The book has it all: sex, wasps, Darwin, conferences, education, sex, secrets, neckties, atheism, sex, scientific colleagues, phenotypes, speciation, academic debates and, of course, sex. <p>Sorry, got a little carried away there. But seriously, you can’t have evolution without S.E.X.!!</p><p>Actually the book is Richard Dawkins’ memoir of covering the period from 1976 and the publishing of <i>The Selfish Gene</i> until the present (his life leading up to 1976 is covered in his 2013 memoir <i>An Appetite for Wonder</i>). Dawkins roughly organizes the book chronologically and roughly again by topic, although he frequently digresses onto subjects tangential to that on hand and of course interjects information relating to Darwin and evolution because he is presumably unable to help himself. The controversy that has surrounded him at times never seems to penetrate his dry, English reserve and one is left with the impression of a man with a passion for science, intelligence and discovery of the truths of the world, wherever they may lie. </p><p>Dawkins also recaps what he believes to be his most significant contributions to the field of biology. These mainly involve thought experiments such as: Mt. Improbable, the selfish gene, memes and the extended phenotype which encourage individuals to approach the field with an entirely new mindset. </p><p>Overall the book is good, though not riveting. If you’re wondering what the life of an extremely successful science communicator is like, this book is a good place to start. It makes me wistful for the academic life I never had and rather made me wish I had stuck it out through a PhD.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1345046?shelf=biography">biography</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3246379-j-d"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>4 books21 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1412474854">October 13, 2015</a></section><div><p>It’s always fascinating to read a memoir by a great scientific mind. This book, although plagued by some digressions (recognized at the outset by the author) is no exception, and it gives a tour (a deluxe, limo tour) of the thinking behind a life devoted to Biology and to argue philosophical positions in world which complains a bit too loudly about those who have no faith.<p>Whether you agree or not with Dawkins’ strong stand against organized religion, he has produced some of the best science books for the layman on the late 20th Century. More opinionated and less romantic than Carl Sagan, his work nevertheless dug deep into the area where science and philosophy intermix (I still remember the day I bought The Selfish Gene, a book like no other on his time). Here, we get to learn about Dawkins’ personal life, the enviable lot of some of the smartest people in the world he’s met in his professional journey. We also glance behind the curtains to see what made his writings so influential. This memoir component is the best of this book—plus an odd fascination with poetry I didn’t expect from him.</p><p>The part that’s less easy to go through and gives the reader some “reading pains” is the excessive detail—and the frustrating lack of it, when trying to understand the bulk—one finds about each and every one of his books. For those works I haven’t read, the experience is confusing; for those I did, I wanted to go through them again, to see what I’ve missed. I also cared very little about the books’ many editions and their differences.</p><p>Other than containing some technical material that might’ve been best if left out, this is a worth-reading and unusual memoir, an inner look to and by an influential scientist that calls attention to some of the great debates in science and culture.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3246379?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3246379?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2892211-jason-mills"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>3 books24 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2497311918">August 17, 2018</a></section><div><p>This second volume of Dawkins' memoirs tells of his work in science, his life as an Oxford scholar and his wider career as a writer, broadcaster and public figure. The Prof seems a bit more affably revealing in this volume, telling us a little about his marriages and his daughter, as well his unconcealed irritation with the sometimes obtuse claims of his American counterpart Stephen Jay Gould.<p>There are lots of pleasing academic anecdotes and appealing picture sections; but the long closing section reviewing the themes of his books mostly feels like a retread of old ground.</p><p>Discussion of some of the <i>non</i>-scientific controversies in which he's also been embroiled could have been interesting: the twitter storms; the little media furore over the closure of his web forum; or his later legal spat with that site's manager, to whom Dawkins had once dedicated a book.</p><p>It's a breezy, lively, interesting, though safe, autobiography.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2892211?shelf=biography-and-memoir">biography-and-memoir</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2892211?shelf=contemporary">contemporary</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2892211?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1418762558">October 24, 2015</a></section><div><p>Such an interesting life he's led, dedicated to science and reason. Covers the second half of his life, mid-thirties on. So positive about all the people he's met along the way, with some very specific exceptions, which seems to reflect his general outlook on life. He comes across as very secure and confident about his role in advancing science and the "new atheism" movement, but not overblown or egotistical. Very readable, although I did scan a little of the more intense descriptions of his research towards the end.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4826004?shelf=male">male</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4826004?shelf=memoir-bio">memoir-bio</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4826004?shelf=nonfiction">nonfiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4687167-chris"></a></section><section><p>132 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1425750456">October 26, 2015</a></section><div><p>So much of this book took the form of what I'd imagine having Dawkins as my tutor at Oxford would be like: educational and full of amazing stories about the coolest places and people in the scientific world. But he also spends an exhausting amount of time later in the book talking about his computer programs and I just can't get excited about that part of his life at all. It's ultimately what kept me from giving this book 5 stars. </p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5506324-caroline-smith"></a></section><section><p>118 reviews19 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1422224621">December 4, 2015</a></section><div><p>Putting aside my distaste for Richard Dawkins, the book was engaging, well written, and more personal than his previous memoir. His writing ages well, and there's a reason that he's called one of the best nonfiction writers of our time. <br /></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/32301233-mybookishrants"></a></section><section><p>46 reviews5 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1981329736">May 7, 2017</a></section><div><p>It was encouraging to hear him humility and how he worked with so many great minds to produce the science and literature I've come to know.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/9944562-pooja-kashyap"></a></section><section><p>118 reviews89 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4469853138">April 6, 2022</a></section><div><p>Richard Dawkins is not only a vocal atheist but he is also a popularizer of science and defender of scientific reason. He insists on questioning religious beliefs and faiths. According to him, “faith seems ... to qualify as a kind of mental illness” and “what has ‘theology’ ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody?” <p>I’m a huge fan of his two famous works, <a href="https://techietonics.com/thinking-turf/book-review-the-god-delusion-by-richard-dawkins.html">The God Delusion</a> and <a href="https://techietonics.com/thinking-turf/book-review-selfish-gene-by-richard-dawkins.html">The Selfish Gene</a> and I strongly feel that his books should be a part of every school curriculum.</p><p>Brief Candle in the Dark, is a good book but if one is looking at it as a chronological sequence of episodes, then one needs to give it a second thought. Also, this book is not for readers who are new to Dawkins’ ideas. I’d say, try reading his other works before reading his memoirs, else one might get lost in the ocean of his anecdotes. </p><p>All in all, it is a decent walk through of his last forty years. His gratitude to his colleagues and his enthusiasm for science and learning still shine through clearly. </p><p>Via my blog post: <a href="https://techietonics.com/thinking-turf/book-review-brief-candle-in-the-dark-by-richard-dawkins.html"> Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins</a></p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/9944562?shelf=autobiographies">autobiographies</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/9944562?shelf=nonfiction">nonfiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/9944562?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2747498-arun-divakar"></a></section><section><p>796 reviews368 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1960622746">April 6, 2017</a></section><div><p>There is a clarity of thought that Richard Dawkins possesses that is unmissable in his writings. Whether he is talking about animal behaviour or the pitfalls of organized religion, things are crystal clear from how he articulates it all. The same extends to his books when he explores his own life and what he has been through. This is the second in his series of biographies where the focus is mostly on Dawkins life through his work. A lot of it is about what really goes on in his mind when he is writing, speaking, talking or appearing in the public. As Steven Pinker puts it on the book jacket blurb, it can closely be approximated to eavesdropping on the mind of Dawkins.<p>There isn’t much of new ground that is covered in this book in terms of scientific ideas for it is almost fully about the behind the scenes happenings. Dawkins gives a glimpse of what it means to be a don at Oxford and a time spent living between academic years. The book then proceeds to various arenas of Dawkins’s work – islands where he is doing research, television appearances, Christmas Lectures to kids and so on. Dawkins possesses a dry wit that he sprinkles all along the way as he moves on, it is the kind to give you a little smile at times.</p><p>Not really a fantastic book but provided you like Dawkins, this would be a good addition. Nothing more or less.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7500502-michael-cabus"></a></section><section><p>79 reviews12 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2278057264">February 12, 2018</a></section><div><p>It shines when discussing biology and academia. It becomes boorish and boring when it discusses atheism. It’s not the topic or any offence personally to the idea of atheism, it’s really just that discussing atheism as a philosophy seems superfluous, like a dinner host talking endlessly about the desert they never got round to making. One wants something in its place at least if it will be such a topic. I did however find myself inspired by his relish for scientific inquiry and the brave pursuit of intellectual curiosity. And I added several books to my to read list I would have never heard about before. <p>It is Neil Tyson’s appearance in the book that is most inspiring as a way of understanding education and truth. Tyson’s advocation that educators put the truth out there and communicate that truth with a sensitivity of context is lost on Dawkins at least in this book. And until it’s taken to heart I don’t believe Dawkins will ever be meaningful in the way he wants: to be a force for rational thought. </p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7500502?shelf=on-the-road-again-adventures-in-au">on-the-road-again-adventures-in-au</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7973110-lin-f"></a></section><section><p>230 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2708718925">February 17, 2019</a></section><div><p>I really enjoyed learning about Richard Dawkins's career in science and his anecdotes were quite entertaining. What an interesting journey he's had! Since I've read some of his books already, the last section that reviews their themes was my least favorite, and the reason I knocked it down a star. If I ignored that last section (which is almost 1/3 of the book), then I would have given it 5 stars.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7973110?shelf=2019-nonfiction-books">2019-nonfiction-books</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7199941-campbell"></a></section><section><p>540 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2441596013">May 14, 2019</a></section><div><p>I don't normally comment on books which I've abandoned but, seeing as how I made it to 60%, I feel justified in doing so this time.<p>Mildly interesting at times, this failed however to hold my attention. A blend of anecdote, name-dropping and science none of which somehow stimulated me sufficiently to keep me going until the end.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7199941?shelf=memoir">memoir</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7199941?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/7199941?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/90220915-ziyuanyuana-hits-the-book"></a></section><section><p>800 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5072436866">October 29, 2022</a></section><div><p>The book weaves passages from literature with actual science to offer perspective as to why humans are apt to believe what might appear unbelievable. These are very similar to some of the literary devices Dawkins uses here as well.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/90220915?shelf=aaa-0-all-books-read-2022">aaa-0-all-books-read-2022</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/90220915?shelf=bba-2-read-non-fiction">bba-2-read-non-fiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4024817-otto-lehto"></a></section><section><p>434 reviews156 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1524902415">January 25, 2016</a></section><div><p>The surprisingly punctual follow-up to Appetite for Wonder is a more scattershot, fragmented and unpolished affair. Instead of proceeding linearly or chronologically, it proceeds with arbitrary jumps and sudden right angles. That makes it the lesser of the two autobiographical books. <p>Nonetheless, many of its stories and memories are quite interesting indeed - come as they do from such an interesting career - and Dawkins's excellent prose is found here, too, in abundance, only occasionally mired down by vitriol against God or Gould (Stephen Jay) - the two people (well, one person and one non-entity) that Old Dick can't quite disguise his professional enmity towards. </p><p>And although he doesn't always come off as exactly amicable or avuncular, there is humour (acerbic) and wit (biting) aplenty. The social charms of the Oxford gentleman are still there, hidden beneath the convincing garb of a twitter troll and a Darwinian grand wizard. Magic can be found on the dry pages of this enlightening and oddly stimulating (must be the Dick talking) book about the religiously anti-religious life of someone who fought all his life against the sheer stupidity of believing in anything that cannot be explained, explored or experienced (usually by Old Dick himself; or if not him, Mr. Darwin; or if not him, Mr. Hitchens; or if not him, screw it!).</p><p>I most enjoyed the anecdotes about scientific conferences and backroom dinners, where fierce debates between obscure schools of embryology would strike their swords (and pens) against each other. I also thoroughly enjoyed the extensive discussion of the Extended Phenotype and its central message, which today seems more timely than ever, when we explore the limits of evolution. Old Dick's background as a computer programmer is perfectly fitted (by God?) to understand DNA.</p><p>Some of the bits we've heard before, like the boring tirades against God and the repeated quotations from the Selfish Gene, and the editor could have used a proper deus ex machina to smash Old Dick's self-pleasuring outings into a more concise mess, but what's here is nothing to fear - IF nature and society won't scare you into being a superstitious fool, a slave to your genetic/memetic code. There is beauty and pageantry in the scientific worldview, and Old Dick knows his way around the majestic palaces and lofty soliloquies and the gaping abysses and the terrible tremors of it all.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section></section></article></div></div>||||I|||| * Home
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 Richard Dawkins' Memoirs #2

 Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science

 Richard Dawkins

 3.84
 1,454 ratings 177 reviews
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 In this hugely entertaining sequel to the New York Times bestselling memoir An Appetite for Wonder , Richard Dawkins delves deeply into his intellectual life spent kick-starting new conversations about science, culture, and religion and writing yet another of the most audacious and widely read books of the twentieth century— The God Delusion .

 Called “one of the best nonfiction writers alive today” (Stephen Pinker) and a “prize-fighter” (Nature), Richard Dawkins cheerfully, mischievously, looks back on a lifetime of tireless intellectual adventure and engagement. Exploring the halls of intellectual inquiry and stardom he encountered after the publication of his seminal work, The Selfish Gene ; affectionately lampooning the world of academia, publishing, and television; and studding the pages with funny stories about the great men and women he’s known, Dawkins offers a candid look at the events and ideas that encouraged him to shift his attention to the intersection of culture, religion, and science. He also invites the reader to look more closely at the brilliant succession of ten influential books that grew naturally out of his busy life, highlighting the ideas that connect them and excavating their origins.

 On the publication of his tenth book, the smash hit, The God Delusion , a “resounding trumpet blast for truth” (Matt Ridley), Richard Dawkins was catapulted from mere intellectual stardom into a circle of celebrity thinkers dubbed, “The New Atheists”—including Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.

 Throughout A Brief Candle in the Dark , Dawkins shares with us his infectious sense of wonder at the natural world, his enjoyment of the absurdities of human interaction, and his bracing awareness of life’s brevity: all of which have made a deep imprint on our culture.
 Genres Science Biography Nonfiction Memoir Audiobook Autobiography Biology
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 456 pages, Hardcover

 First published September 1, 2015

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 Richard Dawkins

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 3.84
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 David Rubenstein
 801 reviews 2,503 followers
 September 7, 2018
 Much of this book is autobiographical. Richard Dawkins collects anecdotes from his professional life. He has led a fascinating life, and has become friends with a number of wonderfully intelligent and interesting people. I guess I am a bit jealous of his experiences! Some people think that Dawkins comes off as being arrogant, but I totally disagree. To me, he comes across as a good person, often humble, who admits mistakes yet recognizes his value to science and to society. I find his writing to be inspiring.

 Dawkins has written a number of books about evolution, and some have become classics. If you are unfamiliar with his books, you may not appreciate many of the references in this book. And, in some of the later chapters he dives into evolution science, which can become rather technical.
 biology evolution memoirs
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 Troy Blackford
 Author 23 books 2,501 followers
 October 14, 2015
 The fabulous and far more gripping follow up to 'An Appetite for Wonder,' this book chronicles the great biologist's life from the publication of 'The Selfish Gene' on, and it's a very variegated and intriguing life indeed. Sectioned out into themes, it gets better and better as it goes on, and is certainly of interest to anyone who is familiar with the man's work.
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 Will Ansbacher
 297 reviews 84 followers
 January 1, 2017
 This is a rather better-constructed book than An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist , his autobiography of the first half of his life. In this, he drops the chronological approach and it’s more thematic. It starts as it ends, with a 70th birthday party in his honour, and in between covers his research, public speaking, media presentations, encounters with a diverse range of humanity, and of course his writing.

 It’s great to read vicariously about a life so rich in experience that he is able to rub shoulders with other world-class scientists, philosophers, Nobel prize-winners and royalty. There is nothing in the way of self-promotion or name-dropping about all this, in fact Dawkins writes about himself and his interactions with others in an amusing and self-deprecating way. Quite the opposite of how he has been maligned as an extremist by so many religious groups. Yes, in his books he can be iconoclastic and a little tiresome when preaching to the converted, but it’s clear from what he says here that he’s more disappointed than angry when the reaction to his arguments is emotional rather than rational.

 As I said, he’s written this thematically rather than chronologically. Thus there are entertaining chapters on his interactions with the media, his publishing ventures (which of course he is most famous for) and his scientific research – again as in the first book, there are several rather endearing vignettes of some quite mundane work with insect life.

 If I had one criticism it would be that rather than describe his life around his writing – how he managed it, what he was thinking, etc - he tends to summarize the main themes of each of his books as though he were reviewing them himself. While it is rather nice to have summaries of the books that I haven’t (yet) read, I read this one to know more about Dawkins, and I didn’t really get that. On the other hand, outside their work, does it really matter that much whether a scientist’s private life is a mess or not?
 autobiographical science society
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 Jim
 Author 6 books 2,016 followers
 May 19, 2022
 After reading his earlier autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist , I wasn't in a rush to read this one, but I'm glad I did. I liked it more since he covers his adult life in roughly chronological order teaching, writing, & lecturing touching on the many wonderful people he's met. Many are quite famous, others are unknown, but his remarks about them were usually quite nice & interesting. He's a lot like my father-in-law, another man I respected immensely. He rarely has anything bad to say about anyone even when they've clashed. Dawkins is always generous with praise where it is due unlike another science book I read recently where the author (Reich) took all the credit for everything. Unlike him, Dawkins seems quite pleased when his students have outpaced him in one respect or another & he often makes much of those who have corrected his mistakes or taken his initial work further. He seems positively delighted when they've outstripped him & that's no mean feat.

 One of the best bonuses was learning more about his second wife, Lalla Ward , who often alternates narration in Dawkins' audio editions of his books. I hadn't realized she was a leading lady in Dr. Who or that she was so talented in other arts. (She painted a tie for Dawkins & the Queen thought the animal was ugly, although the artwork was good.)

 Dawkins also mentions most of his books & what they cover. It's worth getting a text version of this book for the picture section at the end, but I really enjoyed Dawkins' narration of the audiobook edition. It was very much like a conversation with the great man. Highly recommended.
 1audio 2non-fiction biography
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 Sharon A.
 Author 1 book 23 followers
 December 29, 2015
 I feel this book helped me understand Dawkins considerably more than I did previously. It also deepened my appreciation for him and his life's work - in zoology, evolutionary biology, religion, philosophy, and science in society.

 There is no sign of him being mean-spirited, and I have not seen that from him in his daily life either. I may not always agree with him but he presses me with his arguments to examine why I do not. In that way, he is a great teacher.

 His emotions are simple, direct, and natural, while his intellect is deep and thought is complex. I do not think he will be remembered by history as a bully or strident or insulting (none of which do I think he is); he will be memorialized and regarded for pushing us to think and for challenging society on some topics (and certain people and bad ideas) that REALLY needed to be challenged.

 Other than some long quotes from other sources, and poems that I could do without, this was a good read for those who know Richard Dawkins' work.
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 Mysteryfan
 1,564 reviews 20 followers
 December 18, 2015
 I received an ARC for this book. The worst part is the illustrations weren't there. I'll have to get the final version just for those. Richard Dawkins is a renowned biologist, atheist, and lecturer. This book is funny, informative, digressive, and both educational and entertaining. It's hard to summarize it otherwise. Some of it is biographical - I didn't know he was married to a former Doctor's Companion and it was fun learning about Oxford pedagogical techniques. I loved his descriptions of scientists he knew and worked with, especially the other Simonyi lecturers. It's a good read.
 biographies nonfiction science
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 Ria Bella
 4 reviews 1 follower
 September 16, 2015
 Crap Book ever written
 BOOOO DAWKINS
 fiction propaganda
 7 likes
 17 comments
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 Carl
 38 reviews 11 followers
 November 1, 2015
 Dawkins second book on his life this one features the later part of his life and goes into his writing books and his lectures. Great writing by one of the best science writers and teachers of how the real world works. Highly recommend for anyone wanting to know how a scientist thinks and explains evolution to the general public.
 6 likes
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 MOHSIN
 1 review 4 followers
 September 16, 2015
 Crap Book to Learn something.
 fake false fiction
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 عماد العتيلي
 Author 6 books 541 followers
 August 2, 2017
 ‎‫‏‬


 This book was better than An Appetite For Wonder, but I think it is just as boring!
 I enjoy Dawkins on Youtube more than I enjoy his books! I found nothing special in his memoirs, they were just a collection of stories - most of them funny stories - that happened with him. honestly, I got bored reading them most of the time!


 ‫ ‬
 That doesn't mean I didn't highlight many inspiring lines. I think even the worst books must have some wise quotes in them that are worth highlighting.
 خيبات-الأمل قراءات-2017
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 Nicole
 6 reviews
 September 17, 2015
 This book is one of the world most crap-est book very written and i have ever read this books contain nothing but Dawking fairtales and jokes..I hate this book Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science ,This book is not a book because it sucks
 agenda awe biology-evolution
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 Moshe Mikanovsky
 Author 1 book 24 followers
 July 21, 2017
 More a memoir than a biography, Dawkins has a way to make me feel right about changes I have made in my life. Even when I don't fully understand the intricate logic or scientific deductions, Dawkins is a pleasure to listen to. Reading his own book, as much posh or old-world-Oxford/British-intellectually as Dawkins might sound, he does his best to explain himself in a plain way. This book has a lot of many different small stories from his experience in the academia, lecturing, public media etc. Splendid!
 audio-book biography
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 Andrew
 528 reviews 159 followers
 June 5, 2015
 Dear Dr Dawkins FRS, etc.

 Remember how I said, "Fewer biology lessons" in the first volume of your autobiography? If only you had listened. You retain the superb command of language and wit that marked An Appetite For Wonder , and the eccentric stories of scientists - especially of the Oxbridge species - remain appreciated.

 But the long, long final chapter that sums up your chief theories and publications is a little dense for the space allotted and, dare I say in all humility, for the purposes of this book. Which is the endearing, intimate, entertaining, and almost inspiring story of your life.

 But I'd certainly recommend Volume I and the first two-thirds of Volume II to fellow readers.

 Yours, etc.
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 Salmonxt
 2 reviews 7 followers
 September 18, 2015
 worst book
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 Jeff Chay
 21 reviews 1 follower
 October 9, 2022
 By turns jovial and poignant, yet always witty and amusing, permeated with a boundless enthusiasm for reason and science. An illuminating portrait of a great man.
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 DrosoPHila
 129 reviews
 December 20, 2015
 Name-checking The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan , this is in two parts. Part 1 consists of fairly orthodox memoirs. A lot of thanks and quite rambly in places; a few funny stories (not necessarily his own), and some debasing public schoolboy-level innuendo describing his wife "Lalla reclining in a punt while I poled her romantically up the Cherwell". Really!?!

 The second part is really an extended post-script to the author's books. This part won't make a large amount of sense unless you have read most of his books already and reasonably well remember their contents. I would include in this the somewhat technical Extended Phenotype . Dawkins even encourages prioritising such reading over this volume, and I would tend to agree.

 At university my professors generally thought that Dawkins had a sense of self-importance greater than his actual worth. I don't think this criticism is fair. In my view, Dawkins is always humble and he always praises his colleagues where credit is due. I do however pointedly think many readers ascribe more importance to him than he should be credited for, and for which he would probably be embarrassed to receive. It is as though his fans read his books yet singularly fail to comprehend the historical origins of the concepts presented therein, despite their being very clearly presented with great scientific names attached. So, fans, when Dawkins praises John Maynard Smith, Bill Hamilton, Alan Grafen, Robert Trivers, etc please take note. Dawkins has been very fortunate to work in an environment so richly populated by great minds.
 author-born-in-africa author-fellow-royal-society memoir
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 Todd Martin
 Author 4 books 73 followers
 February 16, 2016
 Brief Candle in the Dark is the red-hot, scandal-filled memoir from the UK’s hottest atheist. From the sex behaviors of wasps to a raunchy prowl through scientific conferences, Dawkins leaves nothing to the imagination in this revealing tell-all filled with juicy gossip and sizzling behind-the-scenes biological action. The book has it all: sex, wasps, Darwin, conferences, education, sex, secrets, neckties, atheism, sex, scientific colleagues, phenotypes, speciation, academic debates and, of course, sex.

 Sorry, got a little carried away there. But seriously, you can’t have evolution without S.E.X.!!

 Actually the book is Richard Dawkins’ memoir of covering the period from 1976 and the publishing of The Selfish Gene until the present (his life leading up to 1976 is covered in his 2013 memoir An Appetite for Wonder ). Dawkins roughly organizes the book chronologically and roughly again by topic, although he frequently digresses onto subjects tangential to that on hand and of course interjects information relating to Darwin and evolution because he is presumably unable to help himself. The controversy that has surrounded him at times never seems to penetrate his dry, English reserve and one is left with the impression of a man with a passion for science, intelligence and discovery of the truths of the world, wherever they may lie.

 Dawkins also recaps what he believes to be his most significant contributions to the field of biology. These mainly involve thought experiments such as: Mt. Improbable, the selfish gene, memes and the extended phenotype which encourage individuals to approach the field with an entirely new mindset.

 Overall the book is good, though not riveting. If you’re wondering what the life of an extremely successful science communicator is like, this book is a good place to start. It makes me wistful for the academic life I never had and rather made me wish I had stuck it out through a PhD.
 biography
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 J.D.
 Author 4 books 21 followers
 October 13, 2015
 It’s always fascinating to read a memoir by a great scientific mind. This book, although plagued by some digressions (recognized at the outset by the author) is no exception, and it gives a tour (a deluxe, limo tour) of the thinking behind a life devoted to Biology and to argue philosophical positions in world which complains a bit too loudly about those who have no faith.

 Whether you agree or not with Dawkins’ strong stand against organized religion, he has produced some of the best science books for the layman on the late 20th Century. More opinionated and less romantic than Carl Sagan, his work nevertheless dug deep into the area where science and philosophy intermix (I still remember the day I bought The Selfish Gene, a book like no other on his time). Here, we get to learn about Dawkins’ personal life, the enviable lot of some of the smartest people in the world he’s met in his professional journey. We also glance behind the curtains to see what made his writings so influential. This memoir component is the best of this book—plus an odd fascination with poetry I didn’t expect from him.

 The part that’s less easy to go through and gives the reader some “reading pains” is the excessive detail—and the frustrating lack of it, when trying to understand the bulk—one finds about each and every one of his books. For those works I haven’t read, the experience is confusing; for those I did, I wanted to go through them again, to see what I’ve missed. I also cared very little about the books’ many editions and their differences.

 Other than containing some technical material that might’ve been best if left out, this is a worth-reading and unusual memoir, an inner look to and by an influential scientist that calls attention to some of the great debates in science and culture.
 non-fiction science
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 Jason Mills
 Author 3 books 24 followers
 August 17, 2018
 This second volume of Dawkins' memoirs tells of his work in science, his life as an Oxford scholar and his wider career as a writer, broadcaster and public figure. The Prof seems a bit more affably revealing in this volume, telling us a little about his marriages and his daughter, as well his unconcealed irritation with the sometimes obtuse claims of his American counterpart Stephen Jay Gould.

 There are lots of pleasing academic anecdotes and appealing picture sections; but the long closing section reviewing the themes of his books mostly feels like a retread of old ground.

 Discussion of some of the non -scientific controversies in which he's also been embroiled could have been interesting: the twitter storms; the little media furore over the closure of his web forum; or his later legal spat with that site's manager, to whom Dawkins had once dedicated a book.

 It's a breezy, lively, interesting, though safe, autobiography.
 biography-and-memoir contemporary non-fiction
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 Kirsten
 437 reviews
 October 24, 2015
 Such an interesting life he's led, dedicated to science and reason. Covers the second half of his life, mid-thirties on. So positive about all the people he's met along the way, with some very specific exceptions, which seems to reflect his general outlook on life. He comes across as very secure and confident about his role in advancing science and the "new atheism" movement, but not overblown or egotistical. Very readable, although I did scan a little of the more intense descriptions of his research towards the end.
 male memoir-bio nonfiction
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 Chris
 132 reviews 1 follower
 October 26, 2015
 So much of this book took the form of what I'd imagine having Dawkins as my tutor at Oxford would be like: educational and full of amazing stories about the coolest places and people in the scientific world. But he also spends an exhausting amount of time later in the book talking about his computer programs and I just can't get excited about that part of his life at all. It's ultimately what kept me from giving this book 5 stars.
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 Caroline Smith
 118 reviews 19 followers
 December 4, 2015
 Putting aside my distaste for Richard Dawkins, the book was engaging, well written, and more personal than his previous memoir. His writing ages well, and there's a reason that he's called one of the best nonfiction writers of our time.
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 mybookishrants
 46 reviews 5 followers
 May 7, 2017
 It was encouraging to hear him humility and how he worked with so many great minds to produce the science and literature I've come to know.
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 Pooja Kashyap
 118 reviews 89 followers
 April 6, 2022
 Richard Dawkins is not only a vocal atheist but he is also a popularizer of science and defender of scientific reason. He insists on questioning religious beliefs and faiths. According to him, “faith seems ... to qualify as a kind of mental illness” and “what has ‘theology’ ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody?”

 I’m a huge fan of his two famous works, The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene and I strongly feel that his books should be a part of every school curriculum.

 Brief Candle in the Dark, is a good book but if one is looking at it as a chronological sequence of episodes, then one needs to give it a second thought. Also, this book is not for readers who are new to Dawkins’ ideas. I’d say, try reading his other works before reading his memoirs, else one might get lost in the ocean of his anecdotes.

 All in all, it is a decent walk through of his last forty years. His gratitude to his colleagues and his enthusiasm for science and learning still shine through clearly.

 Via my blog post: Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins
 autobiographies nonfiction science
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 Arun Divakar
 796 reviews 368 followers
 April 6, 2017
 There is a clarity of thought that Richard Dawkins possesses that is unmissable in his writings. Whether he is talking about animal behaviour or the pitfalls of organized religion, things are crystal clear from how he articulates it all. The same extends to his books when he explores his own life and what he has been through. This is the second in his series of biographies where the focus is mostly on Dawkins life through his work. A lot of it is about what really goes on in his mind when he is writing, speaking, talking or appearing in the public. As Steven Pinker puts it on the book jacket blurb, it can closely be approximated to eavesdropping on the mind of Dawkins.

 There isn’t much of new ground that is covered in this book in terms of scientific ideas for it is almost fully about the behind the scenes happenings. Dawkins gives a glimpse of what it means to be a don at Oxford and a time spent living between academic years. The book then proceeds to various arenas of Dawkins’s work – islands where he is doing research, television appearances, Christmas Lectures to kids and so on. Dawkins possesses a dry wit that he sprinkles all along the way as he moves on, it is the kind to give you a little smile at times.

 Not really a fantastic book but provided you like Dawkins, this would be a good addition. Nothing more or less.
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 Michael Cabus
 79 reviews 12 followers
 February 12, 2018
 It shines when discussing biology and academia. It becomes boorish and boring when it discusses atheism. It’s not the topic or any offence personally to the idea of atheism, it’s really just that discussing atheism as a philosophy seems superfluous, like a dinner host talking endlessly about the desert they never got round to making. One wants something in its place at least if it will be such a topic. I did however find myself inspired by his relish for scientific inquiry and the brave pursuit of intellectual curiosity. And I added several books to my to read list I would have never heard about before.

 It is Neil Tyson’s appearance in the book that is most inspiring as a way of understanding education and truth. Tyson’s advocation that educators put the truth out there and communicate that truth with a sensitivity of context is lost on Dawkins at least in this book. And until it’s taken to heart I don’t believe Dawkins will ever be meaningful in the way he wants: to be a force for rational thought.
 on-the-road-again-adventures-in-au
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 Lin F
 230 reviews
 February 17, 2019
 I really enjoyed learning about Richard Dawkins's career in science and his anecdotes were quite entertaining. What an interesting journey he's had! Since I've read some of his books already, the last section that reviews their themes was my least favorite, and the reason I knocked it down a star. If I ignored that last section (which is almost 1/3 of the book), then I would have given it 5 stars.
 2019-nonfiction-books
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 Campbell
 540 reviews
 May 14, 2019
 I don't normally comment on books which I've abandoned but, seeing as how I made it to 60%, I feel justified in doing so this time.

 Mildly interesting at times, this failed however to hold my attention. A blend of anecdote, name-dropping and science none of which somehow stimulated me sufficiently to keep me going until the end.
 memoir non-fiction science
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 Ziyuanyuana Hits the Book.
 800 reviews 1 follower
 October 29, 2022
 The book weaves passages from literature with actual science to offer perspective as to why humans are apt to believe what might appear unbelievable. These are very similar to some of the literary devices Dawkins uses here as well.
 aaa-0-all-books-read-2022 bba-2-read-non-fiction
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 Otto Lehto
 434 reviews 156 followers
 January 25, 2016
 The surprisingly punctual follow-up to Appetite for Wonder is a more scattershot, fragmented and unpolished affair. Instead of proceeding linearly or chronologically, it proceeds with arbitrary jumps and sudden right angles. That makes it the lesser of the two autobiographical books.

 Nonetheless, many of its stories and memories are quite interesting indeed - come as they do from such an interesting career - and Dawkins's excellent prose is found here, too, in abundance, only occasionally mired down by vitriol against God or Gould (Stephen Jay) - the two people (well, one person and one non-entity) that Old Dick can't quite disguise his professional enmity towards.

 And although he doesn't always come off as exactly amicable or avuncular, there is humour (acerbic) and wit (biting) aplenty. The social charms of the Oxford gentleman are still there, hidden beneath the convincing garb of a twitter troll and a Darwinian grand wizard. Magic can be found on the dry pages of this enlightening and oddly stimulating (must be the Dick talking) book about the religiously anti-religious life of someone who fought all his life against the sheer stupidity of believing in anything that cannot be explained, explored or experienced (usually by Old Dick himself; or if not him, Mr. Darwin; or if not him, Mr. Hitchens; or if not him, screw it!).

 I most enjoyed the anecdotes about scientific conferences and backroom dinners, where fierce debates between obscure schools of embryology would strike their swords (and pens) against each other. I also thoroughly enjoyed the extensive discussion of the Extended Phenotype and its central message, which today seems more timely than ever, when we explore the limits of evolution. Old Dick's background as a computer programmer is perfectly fitted (by God?) to understand DNA.

 Some of the bits we've heard before, like the boring tirades against God and the repeated quotations from the Selfish Gene, and the editor could have used a proper deus ex machina to smash Old Dick's self-pleasuring outings into a more concise mess, but what's here is nothing to fear - IF nature and society won't scare you into being a superstitious fool, a slave to your genetic/memetic code. There is beauty and pageantry in the scientific worldview, and Old Dick knows his way around the majestic palaces and lofty soliloquies and the gaping abysses and the terrible tremors of it all.
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801 reviews2,503 followers     September 7, 2018   Much of this book is autobiographical. Richard Dawkins collects anecdotes from his professional life. He has led a fascinating life, and has become friends with a number of wonderfully intelligent and interesting people. I guess I am a bit jealous of his experiences! Some people think that Dawkins comes off as being arrogant, but I totally disagree. To me, he comes across as a good person, often humble, who admits mistakes yet recognizes his value to science and to society. I find his writing to be inspiring.Dawkins has written a number of books about evolution, and some have become classics. If you are unfamiliar with his books, you may not appreciate many of the references in this book. And, in some of the later chapters he dives into evolution science, which can become rather technical.      biology evolution memoirs               Author  23 books2,501 followers     October 14, 2015   The fabulous and far more gripping follow up to 'An Appetite for Wonder,' this book chronicles the great biologist's life from the publication of 'The Selfish Gene' on, and it's a very variegated and intriguing life indeed. Sectioned out into themes, it gets better and better as it goes on, and is certainly of interest to anyone who is familiar with the man's work.                  297 reviews84 followers     January 1, 2017   This is a rather better-constructed book than An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, his autobiography of the first half of his life. In this, he drops the chronological approach and it’s more thematic. It starts as it ends, with a 70th birthday party in his honour, and in between covers his research, public speaking, media presentations, encounters with a diverse range of humanity, and of course his writing.It’s great to read vicariously about a life so rich in experience that he is able to rub shoulders with other world-class scientists, philosophers, Nobel prize-winners and royalty. There is nothing in the way of self-promotion or name-dropping about all this, in fact Dawkins writes about himself and his interactions with others in an amusing and self-deprecating way. Quite the opposite of how he has been maligned as an extremist by so many religious groups. Yes, in his books he can be iconoclastic and a little tiresome when preaching to the converted, but it’s clear from what he says here that he’s more disappointed than angry when the reaction to his arguments is emotional rather than rational. As I said, he’s written this thematically rather than chronologically. Thus there are entertaining chapters on his interactions with the media, his publishing ventures (which of course he is most famous for) and his scientific research – again as in the first book, there are several rather endearing vignettes of some quite mundane work with insect life.   If I had one criticism it would be that rather than describe his life around his writing – how he managed it, what he was thinking, etc - he tends to summarize the main themes of each of his books as though he were reviewing them himself. While it is rather nice to have summaries of the books that I haven’t (yet) read, I read this one to know more about Dawkins, and I didn’t really get that. On the other hand, outside their work, does it really matter that much whether a scientist’s private life is a mess or not?      autobiographical science society               Author  6 books2,016 followers     May 19, 2022   After reading his earlier autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, I wasn't in a rush to read this one, but I'm glad I did. I liked it more since he covers his adult life in roughly chronological order teaching, writing, &amp; lecturing touching on the many wonderful people he's met. Many are quite famous, others are unknown, but his remarks about them were usually quite nice &amp; interesting. He's a lot like my father-in-law, another man I respected immensely. He rarely has anything bad to say about anyone even when they've clashed. Dawkins is always generous with praise where it is due unlike another science book I read recently where the author (Reich) took all the credit for everything. Unlike him, Dawkins seems quite pleased when his students have outpaced him in one respect or another &amp; he often makes much of those who have corrected his mistakes or taken his initial work further. He seems positively delighted when they've outstripped him &amp; that's no mean feat. One of the best bonuses was learning more about his second wife, Lalla Ward, who often alternates narration in Dawkins' audio editions of his books. I hadn't realized she was a leading lady in Dr. Who or that she was so talented in other arts. (She painted a tie for Dawkins &amp; the Queen thought the animal was ugly, although the artwork was good.) Dawkins also mentions most of his books &amp; what they cover. It's worth getting a text version of this book for the picture section at the end, but I really enjoyed Dawkins' narration of the audiobook edition. It was very much like a conversation with the great man. Highly recommended.     1audio 2non-fiction biography               Author  1 book23 followers     December 29, 2015   I feel this book helped me understand Dawkins considerably more than I did previously. It also deepened my appreciation for him and his life's work - in zoology, evolutionary biology, religion, philosophy, and science in society. There is no sign of him being mean-spirited, and I have not seen that from him in his daily life either. I may not always agree with him but he presses me with his arguments to examine why I do not. In that way, he is a great teacher.  His emotions are simple, direct, and natural, while his intellect is deep and thought is complex. I do not think he will be remembered by history as a bully or strident or insulting (none of which do I think he is); he will be memorialized and regarded for pushing us to think and for challenging society on some topics (and certain people and bad ideas) that REALLY needed to be challenged.  Other than some long quotes from other sources, and poems that I could do without, this was a good read for those who know Richard Dawkins' work.                    1,564 reviews20 followers     December 18, 2015   I received an ARC for this book. The worst part is the illustrations weren't there. I'll have to get the final version just for those. Richard Dawkins is a renowned biologist, atheist, and lecturer. This book is funny, informative, digressive, and both educational and entertaining. It's hard to summarize it otherwise. Some of it is biographical - I didn't know he was married to a former Doctor's Companion and it was fun learning about Oxford pedagogical techniques. I loved his descriptions of scientists he knew and worked with, especially the other Simonyi lecturers. It's a good read.    biographies nonfiction science               38 reviews11 followers     November 1, 2015   Dawkins second book on his life this one features the later part of his life and goes into his writing books and his lectures. Great writing by one of the best science writers and teachers of how the real world works. Highly recommend for anyone wanting to know how a scientist thinks and explains evolution to the general public.                   Author  6 books541 followers     August 2, 2017   ‎‫‏‬This book was better than An Appetite For Wonder, but I think it is just as boring!I enjoy Dawkins on Youtube more than I enjoy his books! I found nothing special in his memoirs, they were just a collection of stories - most of them funny stories - that happened with him. honestly, I got bored reading them most of the time!  ‫ ‬That doesn't mean I didn't highlight many inspiring lines. I think even the worst books must have some wise quotes in them that are worth highlighting.     خيبات-الأمل قراءات-2017           September 17, 2015   This book is one of the world most crap-est book very written and i have ever read this books contain nothing but Dawking fairtales and jokes..I hate this book Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science ,This book is not a book because it sucks    agenda awe biology-evolution               Author  1 book24 followers     July 21, 2017   More a memoir than a biography, Dawkins has a way to make me feel right about changes I have made in my life. Even when I don't fully understand the intricate logic or scientific deductions, Dawkins is a pleasure to listen to. Reading his own book, as much posh or old-world-Oxford/British-intellectually as Dawkins might sound, he does his best to explain himself in a plain way. This book has a lot of many different small stories from his experience in the academia, lecturing, public media etc. Splendid!    audio-book biography               528 reviews159 followers     June 5, 2015   Dear Dr Dawkins FRS, etc.  Remember how I said, "Fewer biology lessons" in the first volume of your autobiography? If only you had listened. You retain the superb command of language and wit that marked An Appetite For Wonder, and the eccentric stories of scientists - especially of the Oxbridge species - remain appreciated. But the long, long final chapter that sums up your chief theories and publications is a little dense for the space allotted and, dare I say in all humility, for the purposes of this book. Which is the endearing, intimate, entertaining, and almost inspiring story of your life. But I'd certainly recommend Volume I and the first two-thirds of Volume II to fellow readers. Yours, etc.                   21 reviews1 follower     October 9, 2022   By turns jovial and poignant, yet always witty and amusing, permeated with a boundless enthusiasm for reason and science. An illuminating portrait of a great man.                  129 reviews     December 20, 2015   Name-checking 
 The Demon-Haunted World
 by Carl Sagan, this is in two parts. Part 1 consists of fairly orthodox memoirs. A lot of thanks and quite rambly in places; a few funny stories (not necessarily his own), and some debasing public schoolboy-level innuendo The second part is really an extended post-script to the author's books. This part won't make a large amount of sense unless you have read most of his books already and reasonably well remember their contents. I would include in this the somewhat technical 
 Extended Phenotype
. Dawkins even encourages prioritising such reading over this volume, and I would tend to agree. At university my professors generally thought that Dawkins had a sense of self-importance greater than his actual worth. I don't think this criticism is fair. In my view, Dawkins is always humble and he always praises his colleagues where credit is due. I do however pointedly think many readers ascribe more importance to him than he should be credited for, and for which he would probably be embarrassed to receive. It is as though his fans read his books yet singularly fail to comprehend the historical origins of the concepts presented therein, despite their being very clearly presented with great scientific names attached. So, fans, when Dawkins praises John Maynard Smith, Bill Hamilton, Alan Grafen, Robert Trivers, etc please take note. Dawkins has been very fortunate to work in an environment so richly populated by great minds.     author-born-in-africa author-fellow-royal-society memoir               Author  4 books73 followers     February 16, 2016    Brief Candle in the Dark is the red-hot, scandal-filled memoir from the UK’s hottest atheist. From the sex behaviors of wasps to a raunchy prowl through scientific conferences, Dawkins leaves nothing to the imagination in this revealing tell-all filled with juicy gossip and sizzling behind-the-scenes biological action. The book has it all: sex, wasps, Darwin, conferences, education, sex, secrets, neckties, atheism, sex, scientific colleagues, phenotypes, speciation, academic debates and, of course, sex. Sorry, got a little carried away there. But seriously, you can’t have evolution without S.E.X.!! Actually the book is Richard Dawkins’ memoir of covering the period from 1976 and the publishing of The Selfish Gene until the present (his life leading up to 1976 is covered in his 2013 memoir An Appetite for Wonder). Dawkins roughly organizes the book chronologically and roughly again by topic, although he frequently digresses onto subjects tangential to that on hand and of course interjects information relating to Darwin and evolution because he is presumably unable to help himself. The controversy that has surrounded him at times never seems to penetrate his dry, English reserve and one is left with the impression of a man with a passion for science, intelligence and discovery of the truths of the world, wherever they may lie.  Dawkins also recaps what he believes to be his most significant contributions to the field of biology. These mainly involve thought experiments such as: Mt. Improbable, the selfish gene, memes and the extended phenotype which encourage individuals to approach the field with an entirely new mindset.  Overall the book is good, though not riveting. If you’re wondering what the life of an extremely successful science communicator is like, this book is a good place to start. It makes me wistful for the academic life I never had and rather made me wish I had stuck it out through a PhD.     biography               Author  4 books21 followers     October 13, 2015   It’s always fascinating to read a memoir by a great scientific mind. This book, although plagued by some digressions (recognized at the outset by the author) is no exception, and it gives a tour (a deluxe, limo tour) of the thinking behind a life devoted to Biology and to argue philosophical positions in world which complains a bit too loudly about those who have no faith.Whether you agree or not with Dawkins’ strong stand against organized religion, he has produced some of the best science books for the layman on the late 20th Century. More opinionated and less romantic than Carl Sagan, his work nevertheless dug deep into the area where science and philosophy intermix (I still remember the day I bought The Selfish Gene, a book like no other on his time). Here, we get to learn about Dawkins’ personal life, the enviable lot of some of the smartest people in the world he’s met in his professional journey. We also glance behind the curtains to see what made his writings so influential. This memoir component is the best of this book—plus an odd fascination with poetry I didn’t expect from him. The part that’s less easy to go through and gives the reader some “reading pains” is the excessive detail—and the frustrating lack of it, when trying to understand the bulk—one finds about each and every one of his books. For those works I haven’t read, the experience is confusing; for those I did, I wanted to go through them again, to see what I’ve missed. I also cared very little about the books’ many editions and their differences. Other than containing some technical material that might’ve been best if left out, this is a worth-reading and unusual memoir, an inner look to and by an influential scientist that calls attention to some of the great debates in science and culture.     non-fiction science               Author  3 books24 followers     August 17, 2018   This second volume of Dawkins' memoirs tells of his work in science, his life as an Oxford scholar and his wider career as a writer, broadcaster and public figure. The Prof seems a bit more affably revealing in this volume, telling us a little about his marriages and his daughter, as well his unconcealed irritation with the sometimes obtuse claims of his American counterpart Stephen Jay Gould.There are lots of pleasing academic anecdotes and appealing picture sections; but the long closing section reviewing the themes of his books mostly feels like a retread of old ground. Discussion of some of the non-scientific controversies in which he's also been embroiled could have been interesting: the twitter storms; the little media furore over the closure of his web forum; or his later legal spat with that site's manager, to whom Dawkins had once dedicated a book. It's a breezy, lively, interesting, though safe, autobiography.     biography-and-memoir contemporary non-fiction           October 24, 2015   Such an interesting life he's led, dedicated to science and reason. Covers the second half of his life, mid-thirties on. So positive about all the people he's met along the way, with some very specific exceptions, which seems to reflect his general outlook on life. He comes across as very secure and confident about his role in advancing science and the "new atheism" movement, but not overblown or egotistical. Very readable, although I did scan a little of the more intense descriptions of his research towards the end.    male memoir-bio nonfiction               132 reviews1 follower     October 26, 2015   So much of this book took the form of what I'd imagine having Dawkins as my tutor at Oxford would be like: educational and full of amazing stories about the coolest places and people in the scientific world. But he also spends an exhausting amount of time later in the book talking about his computer programs and I just can't get excited about that part of his life at all. It's ultimately what kept me from giving this book 5 stars.                   118 reviews19 followers     December 4, 2015   Putting aside my distaste for Richard Dawkins, the book was engaging, well written, and more personal than his previous memoir. His writing ages well, and there's a reason that he's called one of the best nonfiction writers of our time.                    46 reviews5 followers     May 7, 2017   It was encouraging to hear him humility and how he worked with so many great minds to produce the science and literature I've come to know.                  118 reviews89 followers     April 6, 2022   Richard Dawkins is not only a vocal atheist but he is also a popularizer of science and defender of scientific reason. He insists on questioning religious beliefs and faiths. According to him, “faith seems ... to qualify as a kind of mental illness” and “what has ‘theology’ ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody?” I’m a huge fan of his two famous works, The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene and I strongly feel that his books should be a part of every school curriculum. Brief Candle in the Dark, is a good book but if one is looking at it as a chronological sequence of episodes, then one needs to give it a second thought. Also, this book is not for readers who are new to Dawkins’ ideas. I’d say, try reading his other works before reading his memoirs, else one might get lost in the ocean of his anecdotes.  All in all, it is a decent walk through of his last forty years. His gratitude to his colleagues and his enthusiasm for science and learning still shine through clearly.  Via my blog post:  Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins      autobiographies nonfiction science               796 reviews368 followers     April 6, 2017   There is a clarity of thought that Richard Dawkins possesses that is unmissable in his writings. Whether he is talking about animal behaviour or the pitfalls of organized religion, things are crystal clear from how he articulates it all. The same extends to his books when he explores his own life and what he has been through. This is the second in his series of biographies where the focus is mostly on Dawkins life through his work. A lot of it is about what really goes on in his mind when he is writing, speaking, talking or appearing in the public. As Steven Pinker puts it on the book jacket blurb, it can closely be approximated to eavesdropping on the mind of Dawkins.There isn’t much of new ground that is covered in this book in terms of scientific ideas for it is almost fully about the behind the scenes happenings. Dawkins gives a glimpse of what it means to be a don at Oxford and a time spent living between academic years. The book then proceeds to various arenas of Dawkins’s work – islands where he is doing research, television appearances, Christmas Lectures to kids and so on. Dawkins possesses a dry wit that he sprinkles all along the way as he moves on, it is the kind to give you a little smile at times. Not really a fantastic book but provided you like Dawkins, this would be a good addition. Nothing more or less.                   79 reviews12 followers     February 12, 2018   It shines when discussing biology and academia. It becomes boorish and boring when it discusses atheism. It’s not the topic or any offence personally to the idea of atheism, it’s really just that discussing atheism as a philosophy seems superfluous, like a dinner host talking endlessly about the desert they never got round to making. One wants something in its place at least if it will be such a topic. I did however find myself inspired by his relish for scientific inquiry and the brave pursuit of intellectual curiosity. And I added several books to my to read list I would have never heard about before. It is Neil Tyson’s appearance in the book that is most inspiring as a way of understanding education and truth. Tyson’s advocation that educators put the truth out there and communicate that truth with a sensitivity of context is lost on Dawkins at least in this book. And until it’s taken to heart I don’t believe Dawkins will ever be meaningful in the way he wants: to be a force for rational thought.      on-the-road-again-adventures-in-au               230 reviews     February 17, 2019   I really enjoyed learning about Richard Dawkins's career in science and his anecdotes were quite entertaining. What an interesting journey he's had! Since I've read some of his books already, the last section that reviews their themes was my least favorite, and the reason I knocked it down a star. If I ignored that last section (which is almost 1/3 of the book), then I would have given it 5 stars.    2019-nonfiction-books               540 reviews     May 14, 2019   I don't normally comment on books which I've abandoned but, seeing as how I made it to 60%, I feel justified in doing so this time.Mildly interesting at times, this failed however to hold my attention. A blend of anecdote, name-dropping and science none of which somehow stimulated me sufficiently to keep me going until the end.     memoir non-fiction science               800 reviews1 follower     October 29, 2022   The book weaves passages from literature with actual science to offer perspective as to why humans are apt to believe what might appear unbelievable. These are very similar to some of the literary devices Dawkins uses here as well.    aaa-0-all-books-read-2022 bba-2-read-non-fiction               434 reviews156 followers     January 25, 2016   The surprisingly punctual follow-up to Appetite for Wonder is a more scattershot, fragmented and unpolished affair. Instead of proceeding linearly or chronologically, it proceeds with arbitrary jumps and sudden right angles. That makes it the lesser of the two autobiographical books. Nonetheless, many of its stories and memories are quite interesting indeed - come as they do from such an interesting career - and Dawkins's excellent prose is found here, too, in abundance, only occasionally mired down by vitriol against God or Gould (Stephen Jay) - the two people (well, one person and one non-entity) that Old Dick can't quite disguise his professional enmity towards.  And although he doesn't always come off as exactly amicable or avuncular, there is humour (acerbic) and wit (biting) aplenty. The social charms of the Oxford gentleman are still there, hidden beneath the convincing garb of a twitter troll and a Darwinian grand wizard. Magic can be found on the dry pages of this enlightening and oddly stimulating (must be the Dick talking) book about the religiously anti-religious life of someone who fought all his life against the sheer stupidity of believing in anything that cannot be explained, explored or experienced (usually by Old Dick himself; or if not him, Mr. Darwin; or if not him, Mr. Hitchens; or if not him, screw it!). I most enjoyed the anecdotes about scientific conferences and backroom dinners, where fierce debates between obscure schools of embryology would strike their swords (and pens) against each other. I also thoroughly enjoyed the extensive discussion of the Extended Phenotype and its central message, which today seems more timely than ever, when we explore the limits of evolution. Old Dick's background as a computer programmer is perfectly fitted (by God?) to understand DNA. Some of the bits we've heard before, like the boring tirades against God and the repeated quotations from the Selfish Gene, and the editor could have used a proper deus ex machina to smash Old Dick's self-pleasuring outings into a more concise mess, but what's here is nothing to fear - IF nature and society won't scare you into being a superstitious fool, a slave to your genetic/memetic code. There is beauty and pageantry in the scientific worldview, and Old Dick knows his way around the majestic palaces and lofty soliloquies and the gaping abysses and the terrible tremors of it all.
Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26053275-brief-candle-in-the-dark
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/174713.The_Lessons_of_History
The Lessons of History
2023-01-01
Author
<div><div><p></p><h3>Friends &amp; Following </h3><p></p></div><div><p>Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,417 reviews</p><div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/14046996-roy-lotz"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>1 book8,092 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1315503852">November 30, 2019</a></section><div><p>I am having trouble articulating the complex mix of opinions and emotions that I’ve formed around Durant. Several times I have come away from his books disappointed; and yet I continue to read them. One reason he fascinates me is that he is a species of American which is now almost entirely extinct: a product of the ‘Great Books’ paradigm in American higher education. <p>	As far as I can tell, this paradigm in education was first popularized in 1909, when Charles W. Eliot released his Harvard Classics—the so-called Five-Foot Shelf—which consisted of 51 volumes of classic works from western history. The spirit of this idea was later epitomized in the Book-of-the-Month club, about which Bertrand Russell, writing in 1930, penned his famous line: “There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”</p><p>	It was certainly a different time. The philosopher George Santayana and the historian Arnold Toynbee were bestselling authors, both featured on the cover of <i>Time</i> magazine. Will Durant, whose prose style strikes the modern ear as purple and grandiloquent, created a publishing sensation with his <i>Story of Civilization</i>, a series which totals four million words and ten thousand pages. And the monstrously big, 54-volume <i>Great Books of the Western World</i> sold thousands of copies—thousands!—even though it included works of Alexandrian astronomy, Greek mathematics, and German metaphysics, among other difficult material. One suspects that the bragging motive was the operative one in the majority of these purchases.</p><p>	The spirit of the ‘Great Books’ paradigm is that of idolatry towards European intellectual history. The tone of its advocates often sound ludicrously reverential, such as this excerpt from a speech delivered on the occasion of the release of the Great Books series: “This is more than a set of books, and more than a liberal education. <i>Great Books of the Western World</i> is an act of piety. Here are the sources of our being. Here is our heritage. This is the West. This is its meaning for mankind.” As two World Wars wracked the European continent, and as the fear of communism and nuclear war covered the Western world with gloom, perhaps it is unsurprising to see American intellectuals and laypeople positioning themselves as the heirs of European civilization.</p><p>	This idea held sway for a long time in American Universities, and perhaps is not altogether dead. The swan songs of this pedagogical philosophy can be heard in Allan Bloom’s <i>The Closing of the American Mind</i> (1987) and in Harold Bloom’s <i>The Western Canon</i> (1994), wherein both authors lament and eulogize the disappearance of the ‘Great Books’ from American universities.</p><p>	Educated at Columbia during the heyday of this phenomenon, Durant was formed by the ‘Great Books’ ethos, and perhaps was one of its most eloquent proponents. And it strikes me now that, in Durant’s writings, one finds both the virtues and the vices of the ‘Great Books’ idea illustrated with extreme precision. </p><p>	Durant was broadminded and well-rounded; he could write ably about a multitude of subjects. He was tolerant, kindly, witty, and had a firm belief in human progress and achievement. His prose style was superb—a model of clarity and grace—which he used in his quest to disseminate as widely as possible the fruits of “Civilization” (his all-inclusive term for everything good in society). Neither a genius nor a scholar, Durant was an enthusiast: he was able to write so wonderfully about historical figures because he genuinely loved and revered them; in fact, he almost literally worshiped them, as he himself admitted.</p><p>	But he also had many weaknesses. First, the ‘Great Books’ mindset caused Durant to concentrate his attention overmuch on the high-points in cultural achievement. One gets an extremely skewed picture of European history if one focuses solely on the greatest thinkers and artists. Of course, it is pleasant to contemplate these individuals, which is partly why Durant’s books are so fun to read; but such exclusive concentration also produces a kind of Pollyannish attitude, where history is seen through rose-tinted glasses, and persecutions, wars, and bigotry are not given their due—and the banality of daily life is wholly sidestepped.</p><p>	A related consequence of the ‘Great Books’ attitude is a somewhat reactionary mindset. Since Durant so often equates the old with the good, tradition with right, age with quality, he can be remarkably, and sometimes stupidly, conservative. For example, whenever Durant writes of sexual mores, he comes across as a moralizing Sunday-school teacher. For Durant, promiscuity is immoral, and homosexuality a sin. Long-term, faithful heterosexual marriages are the mark of ‘civilization’. Because Durant never justifies this opinion—a habit of his—I can only conclude that this was mere prejudice on his part.</p><p>	Another obvious result of the ‘Great Books’ philosophy is elitism. Durant frequently mentions in this book that talent is unequally distributed; and because of this “natural inequality of man,” the stupid majority are destined forever to toil under the dominance of the intelligent minority. Now, of course I would not disagree that people are differently endowed from birth with various aptitudes. But I am very far from believing that the inequality which we see throughout history and which persists today is simply the result of the “skill” of the wealthy and powerful. Rather, I agree with Gibbon, that “The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society without a hope of emerging from their obscurity.”</p><p>	The ‘Great Books’ program also has the shortcoming of emphasizing breadth over depth. Durant certainly embodies this. Although he can write about many subjects, he is an expert on none of them; and this lack of serious expertise prevented him from advancing the state of knowledge in any field. Durant’s ideology also privileges the transmission of old ideas rather than the creation of new ones. After all, if one worships the past, there is little motivation to re-imagine the future. Moreover, the ‘Great Books’ doctrine stressed reputation at the expense of rigor. Ideas are praised for their lasting influence, their grandness of scope, their contribution to a long-standing debate—but not for their accuracy. In Durant, this produced a man who often cared more about whether an idea was beautiful or interesting rather than whether it was true.</p><p>	Fueling this tendency is another shibboleth of the ‘Great Books’ school: that simply by reading the greatest books of the ages, one could purge oneself of all provincial prejudices and look upon history as from a timeless perspective. Durant seems to think this way, as the very title of this book shows: <i>The Lessons of History</i>. These conclusions are not his own theses, not his own ideas—but lessons, which Durant can gather from the fabric of history as easily as a child can infer the lesson from a fairytale. It goes without saying that this is nonsense. Durant looked at history and found his own prejudices; and this book is merely a collection of them. </p><p>	I am sure you are wearied by this litany of accusations and complaints, so I will only mention in passing the other distinctive sins of this ‘Great Books’ mindset—namely, its glorification of Europe, and only Western Europe, at the expense of the rest of the world, as well as its underrepresentation of women and minorities. This is wonderfully illustrated in Durant's plan of the <i>Story of Civilization</i>, wherein he dedicates one volume to all of Asia, and the rest of the eleven volumes to Europe (and none to South America or to Africa). </p><p>	At this point you may be wondering, “If Durant has so many faults, which you are apparently so acutely aware of, why are you reading so much of him?” Well, this has to do with my own history. At the end of my time in college, vaguely feeling that the education I received was not worth half of what I paid for it, I picked up Allan Bloom’s <i>Closing of the American Mind</i>. This book had a profound effect on me. Bloom seemed to articulate my dissatisfaction with my education, as well point me in the direction where it could be rectified. As soon as I finished, I looked up the list of the <i>Great Books of the Western World</i>, and dove in.</p><p>	Now, despite all of the faults I listed above, I must still admit that one receives a stupendous education by reading the books recommended in the program. I read rabidly, desperately, doing my best to make up for lost time; and whatever may be my intellectual shortcomings now—and they are many—I am at least far better off than I was before I began. But of course I still have not read all of these hoary books—there are a lot!—and this is partly why I’m interested in Will Durant: for in him, I can see the end result of my own educational project.</p><p>	Unfortunately, while Durant was truly an excellent writer, for the reasons I discussed above, he was a poor thinker. This slim volume, the fruits of a massive research project, is a collection of vague homilies, baseless theorizing, and unsupported claims. It is incredible and a bit depressing that so much learning could produce so little insight. I still think I have much to learn from Durant and the other proponents of the ‘Great Books’ school—as well as from the books themselves, of course. But now, hopefully, after sorting through Durant’s writings, I will be better able to separate the good from the bad, the worthless from the valuable; for I do think, after all, that there is something essentially precious in the idea.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/14046996?shelf=americana">americana</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/14046996?shelf=one-damn-thing-after-another">one-damn-thing-after-another</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7773489-jameson"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>10 books50 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/801449647">December 27, 2013</a></section><div><p>I inherited much of my father’s library many years ago, including the entire eleven volume Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant. Included in the set was the single slim volume they wrote afterward by way of an introduction, The Lessons of History. Over the years I have frequently dipped into individual volumes of the main text for research, but I never read any entire volume until my wife came bouncing into my office one evening and thrust The Lessons of History under my nose and said, “Read this chapter!” I read it, and immediately wondered why the hell I hadn’t read the whole thing long ago. I have now rectified that. Not the whole eleven volume set, but I have read that one-volume introduction and I was blown away by it.<p>The Lessons of History is intended to be both an introduction and a survey of human history as a product of the human experience, of man’s essential evolutionary nature. The Durant’s do not judge; they do not say this system is better than that, or peace is better than war. They do not even bang the drum of George Santayana’s often misquoted maxim: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” What they do stress is that man will, in fact, continuously repeat the past because he cannot help himself. Man has evolved to be a particular organism with particular needs and desires and drives and responses and those are the things that influence his behavior, over and over again throughout the millennia. It will be many a long day before the lion evolves into a critter capable of lying down with the lamb, and it will be just as long before man evolves into a critter not driven by, “acquisitiveness, pugnacity, and pride.”</p><p>So what The Story of Civilization chronicles, and The Lessons of History summarizes, is the sequence of patterns of behavior that have been repeated continuously since the first known civilization(s), with “civilization” being defined as a social order that promotes cultural creation. But it is the laws of evolution that limit civilization, so that man’s natural instincts of competition (for food, mates, power), selection (some men will always have better competitive skills than others, and so there will always be inequality), and reproduction (influenced, obviously, by competition and selection) will always be the limiting factors that cause a civilization to rise and fall. And the rise and fall of civilizations—all civilizations that have been or are yet to come—is a given. None will last forever, and the speed with which they appear and vanish can depend on a variety of factors: geological, climatological, biological, or even political. Do you doubt that last one? Consider Communism. Primitive communism, meaning a society based on communal sharing, actually worked in hunter/gatherer societies that were constantly on the move pursuing game, but those are precisely the societies that have neither the leisure nor the wherewithal to pursue the cultural creation that defines a civilization. The moment a society depends on continuous labor to feed itself with provision for the future (as in agriculture, for example, as opposed to hunting and gathering) selection comes into play, along with its concomitant concept of private property (this patch of earth is more fertile and productive than that patch) with some men being more successful than others, and communism ceases to be an effective tool for societal survival. After all, if everything is going to be shared equally, I might as well just kick back here a take nap and let you do the heavy lifting.</p><p>Competition between individuals means I run faster, fight harder, or outwit you. In a society, that translates into war, and since man is what he is, wars will continue as long as man exists. To quote the Durants (writing in 1968): “In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.” The only silver lining in that dark cloud is that war does stimulate the tool-using animal’s creative impulses, and occasionally those instruments designed for destruction are converted to creative and beneficial uses. Reproduction among individuals means, well, I hardly think we need go there, but in a society, it means pretty much that he who has the most children wins, which goes a long way to explaining why there are currently 7,132,780,410 people on earth, and that number will be over 7,132,800,000 before I finish this review.</p><p>But it was the repetitive evolution of different political structures that really caught my eye. The Durants used China under Wang An-shih (1068-85 AD) as an example of the failure of socialism. Wang An-shih decided the state should own and control everything, commerce, industry, agriculture, and “[succor] the working classes [by] preventing them from being ground into the dust by the rich.” For a while, everything was hunky-dory, with great feats of engineering, pensions for the elderly and unemployed, an overhaul of the educational system, governmental boards in every district to administer every damn thing in the world. Sounds a little like America today, doesn’t it? But it fell apart (the Durants cite as reasons high taxes, an enormous army, and bureaucratic corruption, also much like America today), as socialism always has throughout all of history because, to quote the late Margaret Thatcher, “Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.” That’s me quoting her, obviously, not the Durants. Instead, they wrote: “The experience of the past leaves little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity.”</p><p>As I was reading all this, I happened to watch the movie, Meet John Doe, with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, and its theme of Christ’s message in today’s world, and I started thinking about America today. In the movie, the success of the John Doe Clubs that spring up across the nation is due to people and communities coming together to create work for their less fortunate neighbors. Not once in the movie is there any mention of a handout or any form of money given away as opposed to earned. </p><p>The Lessons of History stresses that selection and the inevitable superiority of some people means that there will always be inequality, but not necessarily inequity. There are two forms of equality that no society can ignore without fatal consequences: equality under the law; and equal opportunity for education, because education provides the opportunity for every man to rise according to his ability. However, even if the law and educational opportunity are available for all, if the gap between rich and poor widens too much, and if there is no bridge of middleclass with which the poor can hope to overcome that gap, violent redistribution of wealth will inevitably occur. It’s one of the lessons of history.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/901936-danger-kallisti"></a></section><section><p>59 reviews26 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/15290990">February 13, 2008</a></section><div><p>The first thing to understand about this book is that it was written by old people. By this, I don’t even mean that they were chronologically enhanced; more that they were trapped by that inflexible mindset which places tradition and an intense desire for belonging above a natural exploration of reality.<p>The Durants were either intelligent people trying to reconcile their minds to the demands of the culture in which they were raised, or abject liars attempting to politick their way onto the bookshelves of the prosaic postwar American public. The doublespeak and contradictory statements make the book read like a Kerry speech.</p><p>One can’t simultaneously say that greed and hoarding are positive human behaviors and praise the charitable throughout history for their generosity, or say that fear and respect for one’s elders goes hand in hand with true creativity and individuality.</p><p>This isn’t thinking, it’s highly-skilled, well-educated apery. No wonder my father enjoys it so much, since he too is no more (and probably considerably less) than the average street kid or drug dealer. This is philosophy in its cheapest and most generic form.</p><p>In the same way that they say statistics will be used to support any point, it would seem that 3500 years of chaotic human behavior may be used in the same manner. Like anything created by mainstream Western, Judeo-Christian culture, this book seeks only to preserve the foundations upon which it was built.</p><p>I also saw a great deal of reactionary sentiment against the “upstart” 1960s youth culture. <br />A great deal of time is spent lamenting the decay of morality and religion (even when they, themselves agree that these things are false societal constructs designed to keep power in the hands of those in control, and not natural or even particularly healthy attributes of mankind).</p><p>	<i>
 “Is democracy responsible for the current debasement of art? The debasement, of course, is not unquestioned; it is a matter of subjective judgment; and those of us who shudder at its excesses – its meaningless blotches of color [Pollack?], its collages of debris [pop art?], its Babels of cacophony [rock music?] – are doubtless imprisoned in our past and dull to the courage of experiment. The producers of such nonsense are appealing not to the general public – which scorns them as lunatics, degenerates, or charlatans – but to gullible middle-class purchasers who are hypnotized by auctioneers and are thrilled by the new, however deformed.”
</i></p><p>As is shown repeatedly throughout the book, the Durants believe that the only art worthy of the title is the realism of Renaissance painters, the stark geometry of Greek architecture, or the predictable mathematics of classical music. While I won’t disagree that there were certainly some artists of these eras, for the most part those who are considered by the traditionally “educated” to be great artists are truly no more than great technicians, capable of great dexterity and numerical understanding. In my mind, true art is deconstruction of all that the “educated” human mind holds true and certain. It is that which brings one back to the deeper, eternal, animal nature, which creates an anarchy of the soul and frees the viewer from the constraints attached by society. It is that which is capable of undoing the indoctrination of life in the modern world and creating a direct channel between the Chaos Mind and the human spirit. </p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/901936?shelf=crap-just-crap">crap-just-crap</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/42133960-peiman-e-iran"></a></section><section><p>1,394 reviews674 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4735210999">May 20, 2022</a></section><div><p>‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، در این ریویو تصمیم گرفتم تا از سرتاسرِ این کتابِ ارزشمند، جملاتی را به انتخاب برایِ شما دوستانِ خردگرا و اهلِ کتاب، بنویسم<br />---------------------------------------<br />‎ولتر میگوید: تاریخ در کل مجموعه ای از جنایات، حماقتها و ناکامی هایِ نوعِ بشر است<br />***********************************<br />‎آیا گذشته سراسر تکرارِ ملالت بارِ خطاهایی است که آینده محکوم به ارتکابِ آن در میدانی وسیع تر و مقیاسی بزرگتر است؟<br />***********************************<br />‎بخش عمدهٔ تاریخ، حدس و فرض است و بقیهٔ آن تعصب..... شواهدِ چندگونه و مورخانِ متعصب و مغرض، بیانِ وقایع تاریخی در گذشته را به نوعی تیره و مبهم ساخته است و شاید پایبندی به مسائل دینی و اعتقاداتِ مذهبی و حتی میهن پرستی این دسته از مورخان، دلیلی بر این موضوع باشد و این مورخان در انتخابِ مطالب و ظریف کاری هایِ توصیفی تمایلاتِ پنهانِ خویش را فاش میسازند<br />***********************************<br />‎زمانِ حال، همان طومارِ گذشته است که برای اجرا شدن بسته شده است و گذشته همان طومارِ حال است که برایِ شناخته شدن گسترده شده است<br />***********************************<br />‎آزادی و برابری هر دو دشمنانِ سوگند خورده و دیرینهٔ یکدیگرند. هنگامی که یکی از این دو برتر باشد و غالب شود، دیگری میمیرد.. اگر انسانها آزادانه به حالِ خود رها شوند، نابرابری های ذاتیشان به صورتِ تصاعدی افزایش میابد، همانطور که در انگلستان و آمریکای سدهٔ نوزدهم شاهدِ این موضوع بودیم.. از سویِ دیگر برای مهار نابرابری باید آزادی قربانی شود، همانطور که در روسیه پس از سال ۱۹۱۷ این موضوع را شاهد بودیم.. نابرابری حتی در شرایطِ سرکوب نیز رشد میکند کسی که زیر حدِ وسط قرار دارد، خواهانِ برابری است و کسی که از استعدادِ برتر بهره مند است، خواهانِ آزادی میباشد و سرانجام همان کسانی که در سطحِ بالا بوده و استعدادی برتر دارند، به خواستهٔ خویش میرسند<br />***********************************<br />‎اگر تولیدِ مثلِ انسان، بر موجودیِ مواد غذایی بچربد، طبیعت برای برقرار ساختن موازنه، سه عامل در اختیار دارد: قحطی، بیماری همه گیر و جنگ<br />***********************************<br />‎کمک های نقدی و مادی به فقرا، آنها را به ازدواج های بی هنگام و بچه دار شدنِ بی حساب تشویق میکند و چنین چیزی در هر سرزمینی مشکل ایجاد میکند، چراکه نرخِ زایش از نرخِ مرگ پیشی میگیرد و افزایشِ مصرفِ موادِ غذایی و منابعِ طبیعی، هر نوع طرقی در تولیدِ مواد غذایی و دیگر مواردِ مورد نیاز برای زندگی را خنثی خواهد کرد<br />***********************************<br />‎این نژاد نیست که تمدن را به وجود می آورد، بلکه این تمدن است که ملت ها را میسازد.. به عبارت دیگر، اوضاع و احوالِ جغرافیایی، اقتصادی و سیاسی، فرهنگ را میسازد و فرهنگ نیز گونهٔ خاص انسان را می آفریند<br />***********************************<br />‎آگاهی از تاریخ به ما می آموزد که تمدن، حاصل همکاری و تعاونی است که تقریباً همهٔ انسانها در آن سهم داشته اند.. تمدن میراثِ مشترکِ ماست و همهٔ ما مدیون تمدن هستیم<br />***********************************<br />‎بنایِ اجتماع بر پایهٔ آرمانها و آرزوهایِ انسانها نیست، بلکه بر بنیانِ طبیعتِ آنهاست و ساختار فطریِ انسانها یعنی همان امیال، غرایز و عواطف، قوانینِ اساسیِ کشورها را یکی پس از دیگری، رقم میزند<br />***********************************<br />‎شورشیان هنگامِ پیروزی، همان شیوه هایی را بکار میبندند که خود همواره عمل به آنها را از جانبِ قدرتها و حکومتهایِ برکنار و خلع شده، محکوم میساختند<br />***********************************<br />‎قوانینِ اخلاقی، در طولِ تاریخ به دلیلِ انطباق با شرایطِ تاریخی و زیست محیطی، در تغییر و دگرگونی بوده است.. ستیزه گری، خونریزی، حرص و طمع و آمادگیِ جنسی، در تنازعِ بقا، امتیاز محسوب میشد.. احتمالاً هر فرومایگی و شرارتی، در برخی از سرزمینها و در روزگارانی، یک نوع فضیلت و خصلتی در خورِ ادامهٔ حیاتِ فرد، خانواده و یا یک اجتماع به شمار می آمد... زشت کاری هایِ آدمی، میراثِ روزگارِ ترقیِ اوست، نه داغِ ننگِ ایامِ سقوط<br />***********************************<br />‎به نظر نمیرسد که دین با اخلاق، رابطه ای داشته باشد.. همانطور که لوکرتیوس، فیلسوفِ رومی گفته است، این ترس بود که خدایان را آفرید.. ترس از نیروهایِ مخفی در زمین، رودها، دریاها، درختان، بادها و آسمان و بسیاری از حوادثِ طبیعی.. پرستش و خشنود کردنِ این نیروها با دادنِ هدایا و قربانی، یا سحر و افسون و دعا، دین را به وجود آورد.. تنها زمانی که خادمانِ دین، این ترسها و نیایش ها را به حمایت از قانون و اخلاق به کار انداختند، دین به صورتِ نیرویِ حیاتی دولتها و رقیبِ آنها درآمد.. دین به مردم گفت که دستوراتِ اخلاقی و قوانین را خدا یا خدایان وضع کرده اند.. در طولِ تاریخ ادیان و مذاهب در خدمتِ حکومتها و دولتها بوده اند و از این راه سودِ زیادی نصیبِ روحانیون و ملاها در کلیساها و مساجد شده است<br />***********************************<br />‎قدرتهایِ دینی و روحانیون در طولِ تاریخ اصلاحات اندکی در دین و مذهب هایِ مختلف انجام داده اند، ولی شجاعتِ این را ندارند تا برخی از اصولِ دینی و داستانها و معجزه هایِ مذهبی را که عقل و خردِ انسانی به آنها میخندد را تغییر دهند، چراکه اینگونه تغییرها موجبِ رنجشِ میلیونها پیرو مذهبی و آدمهایی میشود که به خرافات و موهوماتِ الهام بخش و تسلّی دهنده در کتبِ مقدس دل بسته اند<br />***********************************<br />‎سازش میانِ دین و فلسفه و دانش ممکن نیست.. مگر آنکه فلاسفه و خردگرایان اعلام کنند برای خدمتِ اخلاقیِ پایگاه هایِ دینی و مذهبی همچون کلیسا و کنیسه و مسجد، جایگزینی نیافته اند و از سوی دیگر ادیان و مذاهب نیز آزادی در تفکر و اندیشه و خردگرایی را به رسمیت بشناسد<br />***********************************<br />‎تاریخ قدرتِ آفرینش و حیات بخشِ طبیعت را به عنوانِ خدا میشناسد و اعتقادی به خدایِ واحد و علیم و رحیم ندارد.. زمین لرزه، طوفان، گردباد، سیل، بیماری و دیگر بلایاها و جنایات و جنگها، همگی نشان دهندهٔ سرنوشتی کور یا بی طرف خواهد بود که پدیده هایِ تصادفی و اتفاقی آن را خیلی از مردم از سرِ انگارهٔ نظم، عظمت، جمال یا تعالی میخوانند... حتی اگر تاریخ پشتیبانِ یک نوع الهیات باشد، این الهیات از نوعِ آیینِ مانی و حتی زرتشت خواهد بود.. یعنی نوعی جوهرِ اهورایی با جوهرِ اهریمنی مدام با یکدیگر در نبرد هستند تا بر جهان و موجوداتِ آن همچون انسانها، تسلط پیدا کنند.. از نگاهِ طبیعت و تاریخ، خوب یعنی آنچه ادامهٔ حیات میدهد و بد یعنی آنچه از میان میرود.. پس عالم هستی نه تعصبی به پیامبران دارد و نه در بر علیه و زیانِ کسی همچون چنگیزخان مغول، کاری انجام میدهد<br />***********************************<br />‎رشد و پیشرفتِ دانش و خردِ انسانی و همچنین آگاهیِ فزایندهٔ انسان از جایگاهِ بسیار کوچک و حقیرش در این جهانِ بسیار بزرگ، به کاهشِ باورهایِ دینی، شتاب بخشیده است.. به همین دلیل است که فرانسیس بیکن گفت: علم و دانش، دینِ انسانِ رهایی یافتهٔ عصرِ جدید است<br />***********************************<br />‎تا زمانی که در جهان فقر و تنگدستی وجود دارد، خدایان نیز وجود خواهند داشت<br />***********************************<br />‎انقلابِ صنعتی، همراهِ خود، دموکراسی، آزادی زنان، تنظیم خانواده، سوسیالیسم، رهایی ادبیات از وابستگی به حمایتِ اشرافیت، جایگزینی رئالیسم با رمانتیسم در داستانسرایی و بالاخره تفسیرِ اقتصادیِ تاریخ را به همراه آورد<br />***********************************<br />‎کسانی که میتوانند دیگران را به خدمتِ خویش درآورند، آنانی را به خدمت میگیرند که تنها قادرند بر اشیا مسلط شوند.. و انسانهایی که قادرند بر پول تسلط داشته باشند، بر همه سلطه دارند<br />***********************************<br />‎در حالتِ عادی و درکل،انسانها را بر حسبِ استعدادِ خود برایِ تولید میسنجند. البته جز در زمان جنگ که در آن با معیارِ استعداد در تخریب و کشتار و انهدام سنجیده میشوند<br />***********************************<br />‎از آنجا که انسان شیفتهٔ آزادی است و آزادیِ افراد در جامعه مستلزمِ قواعدی برای رفتار است، ب��ابراین نخستین شرطِ آزادی، محدودیتِ آن است.. اگر آزادی مطلق و بی بند و بار گردد، خود در هرج و مرج تباه خواهد شد.. پس نخستین وظیفهٔ حکومت، برقراری نظم و انضباط است<br />***********************************<br />‎تاریخ ثابت کرده که حکومت از نوعِ پادشاهی و سلطنت، سازگارترین نوعِ حکومت با طبیعتِ انسانهاست.. اگر بنا باشد دربارهٔ اشکالِ حکومت بر حسبِ رواج و عمرِ آنها قضاوت کنیم، باید نشانِ افتخار را به سلطنت و پادشاهی بدهیم<br />***********************************<br />‎حکومتِ اشراف، تنها پرورشگاهِ کشورداری نیست، بلکه مخزن و اسبابِ انتقالِ فرهنگ، منش ها، معیارها و سلیقه ها نیز میباشد و از این طریق در برابرِ جوش و خروشِ و طغیان هایِ اجتماعی، ناهنجاری هایِ هنری و یا تغییراتِ ناگهانی در نظامِ اخلاقی، در حکمِ سدی محکم و محافظ عمل میکند.. ببینید از انقلابِ فرانسه به بعد، چه بر سرِ اخلاقیات، آداب، سبکها و هنر آمده است<br />***********************************<br />‎بسیاری از انقلابها بر علیه حکومتِ پادشاهی و روی کار آمدنِ دموکراسی، آثار مخرب داشته است و باعث روی کار آمدنِ نوکیسه ها و عقب مانده ها شده است.. به یکباره گسستن از گذشته، یعنی تحریکِ جنونی که پی آمدِ آن، اختلالاتِ شدید یا فلجِ عمومیِ جامعه است.. از آنجا که سلامتِ روانیِ انسان وابسته به تداومِ حافظهٔ اوست، سلامتِ روانِ جامعه نیز وابسته به تداومِ سنتهایِ آن است<br />***********************************<br />‎افلاطون میگوید: دیکتاتوری طبعاً از دموکراسی سرچشمه میگیرد و خشن ترین شکلِ ظلم و برده داری از افراطی ترین شکلِ آزادی ساخته میشود<br />***********************************<br />‎معمولاً، آزادی اقتصادی در میانِ اقشارِ متوسط جامعه، کم شده و کاهش میابد و از سوی دیگر آزادی سیاسی به صورتِ تظاهری، تسلی بخش این گروه از مردم میشود.. نباید چنین مسائلی را تماماً ناشی از انحراف و فسادِ ثروتمندان بدانیم، بلکه این موضوع از جبری بودنِ توسعهٔ اقتصادی و طبیعتِ انسان، سرچشمه میگیرد.. هرچه بر پیچیدگیِ اقتصادی افزوده شود، به استعدادِ برتر امتیازِ عالی تری تعلق میگیرد و تمرکزِ ثروت و مسئولیت و قدرتِ سیاسی را تشدید میکند<br />***********************************<br />‎دموکراسی از سایرِ روش هایِ حکومت داری دشوارتر است، زیرا وسیع ترین پراکنش و پراکندگیِ تعقل و اندیشه را میطلبد و هنگامی که ما مردم خود را به حکومت میرسانیم، از یاد میبریم که خویش را عاقل سازیم... تعلیم و تربیت توسعه یافته، اما قدرتِ باروریِ مردمِ ساده و عوام پیوسته مانعِ بزرگی بر سرِ راهِ گسترشِ تعقل و خردمندی بوده است... جهل و نادانی را تنها به این دلیل که فراوان ترین چیز است، نباید بر تختِ قدرت نشاند<br />***********************************<br />‎حقِ رسیدن به منصب و قدرت، جزوِ حقوقِ انسان به شمار نمی آید، اما حقِ انسان است که برای رسیدن به منصب و قدرت در هر راهی که به استعداد و لیاقت او امکانِ پرورش و آزمایش میدهد، گام بردارد... نباید فراموش کنیم که حق، هدیهٔ طبیعت یا آسمان نیست، بلکه امتیازی است که بخاطرِ منافعِ گروه به فرد داده میشود<br />***********************************<br />‎اگر اقتصادِ آزاد قادر نباشد به همان شایستگی که ثروت را ایجاد کرده است، آن را توزیع کند، راهِ دیکتاتوری به رویِ هرکس که بتواند به دیگران وعدهٔ اطمینان بخشِ تأمینِ زندگی را بدهد، گشوده خواهد بود و حکومتی نظامی، تحتِ انواعِ اصطلاح هایِ فریبنده، جهانِ آزاد را فرا خواهد گرفت<br />***********************************<br />‎نظمِ جهانی، با توافقِ دولتمردان و حکومتها حاصل نمیشود، بلکه از راه پیروزیِ بسیار قاطع یکی از قدرتهایِ بزرگ که قادر است قانونِ بین المللی را دیکته و اجرا کند، بدست خواهد آمد<br />***********************************<br />‎تمدن یعنی نظمی اجتماعی که تعالی بخشِ آفرینشِ فرهنگی است.. نظمی سیاسی که عادتها، اخلاقیات و قانون، آن را تأمین میکند.. و در نهایت نظمی است اقتصادی که با تداومِ تولید و مبادله، برقرار میشود.. تمدن آفرینشِ فرهنگی است که در پرتو آزادی و امکانات برای آفریدن، تجربه، تفسیر و آزمایش و باروری باورها، ادبیات، منش ها و هنرها، صورت میگیرد... تمدن رشتهٔ درهم تنیده و زودگسلِ روابطِ انسانی است که دشوار بافته میشود و آسان نابود میگردد<br />***********************************<br />‎اگر ما امروز پیشرفت کرده ایم، به این خاطر نیست که ما سالمتر، بهتر یا عاقل تر از انسانهای گذشته هستیم، بلکه سبب آن است که بر میراثی غنی تر و بر سطحِ عالی ترِ بنیانی که تراکمِ دانش و هنر آن را به صورتِ تکیه گاه و حفاظ وجودی ما بالا میبرد، دیده گشوده ایم.. این میراث رشد میکند و انسانی که آن را دریافت میکند نیز به همان نسبت رشد و پیشرفت میکند<br />***********************************<br />‎آن انسانی سعادتمند است که قبل از مرگ، تا آنجا که میتواند از میراث تمدن خوشه چینی کند و آن را به فرزندانِ خود منتقل سازد.. چنین انسانی تا واپسین دمِ حیات مدیون و شاکرِ این میراثِ زوال ناپذیر خواهد بود و میداند که این میراث پرورانندهٔ ما انسانها و حیاتِ جاویدِ ماست<br />-----------------------------------------<br />‎امیدوارم این ریویو برایِ شما دوستانِ هوشی وار، مفید بوده باشه<br />‎«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/42133960?shelf=%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%B1%DB%8C%D8%AE%DB%8C">تاریخی</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/42133960?shelf=%D9%81%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%81%D9%87">فلسفه</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7031625-lori-tian-sailiata"></a></section><section><p>242 reviews30 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1140648382">December 29, 2014</a></section><div><p>The audio version is delightful. It enhances the original text with interviews that are relevant to each section. The intimacy between Will and Ariel is a treat. Their playful arm wrestling over ideas and concepts makes for a better interview. Sure, their world view is older...although he was a radical of his time. But even for the faults, it's a delight to linger in his mind. And an honor to be in the presence of Ariel's spirit.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2352995-nawal-al-qussyer"></a></section><section><p>167 reviews2,080 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/121431137">December 2, 2015</a></section><div><p><a href="http://domo3.us/blog/?p=858">http://domo3.us/blog/?p=858</a><p>كنت قد قررت أن أعطي الكتاب نجمتين .. لكن آخر فصل قلب موازين الكتب واخترت أن أقيمه ب ثلاث نجمات .. <br />قام ويل وزوجته ارييل بتأليف هذا الكتاب بعد انتهائهم من تأليف ونشر كتاب قصة الحضارة الضخم وكأنه في رحلته عبر التاريخ يقدم دروسا مستفادة وعبر من التاريخ الذي يكرر نفسه بصورته العامة.. يتكون الكتاب من ١٣ فصلا مختلفة الطول.. يعنون الفصول بعامل أو عنصر في حياة الانسان وعلاقته بالتاريخ وما قدم عبر العصور السالفة:<br />-ألوان من الحيرة<br />-التاريخ والأرض<br />-البيولوجيا والتاريخ<br />-العرق والتاريخ<br />-الشخصية والتاريخ<br />-الأخلاق والتاريخ<br />-الدين والتاريخ<br />-الاقتصاد والتاريخ<br />-الاشتراكية والتاريخ<br />-الحكومة والحرب<br />-التاريخ والحرب<br />-التطور والتحلل<br />-هل التقدم حقيقي<br />-وينتهي الكتاب بالهوامش..</p><p>الفصل الأخير حقيقة هو ما حرضني على التفكير أكثر بين فصول الكتاب.. إذ أنه يقدم تساؤلات كفيلة بجعلك تعيد النظر إلى واقعك وارتباطه بالتاريخ وعلاقته بالمستقبل.. تشكل وجهة نظرك للحضارة من جانب آخر ووجهة نظر تاريخية تؤمن بأن الحضارة تولد وقد تموت أو تركد.. وعملية التقدم هي نقل الحضارة إلى كل جيل عبر التعليم والوعي.. والوراثة في مسألة الحضارة شيء باطل.. فالحضارة لاتورث.</p><p>قبل أن أبدي ملاحظاتي على الكتاب أود أن أشكر المترجم.. أعتبر ترجمته من أفضل التراجم التي قرأتها.. واضحة ،ميسرة وغير ركيكة على الإطلاق.. كما كان جهده رائع إذ أضاف بعض الهوامش والتعريفات لبعض الاشخاص الذين تم ذكرهم في الكتاب وقد لايكونون معروفين لديك، فتكلف المترجم مشكورا بتوضيح بعض النقاط لأن الكتاب يبدو لي موجه شخصيا للغرب الذين هم على علم ببعض المسميات والتاريخ الاغريقي وشخوصه و و و .</p><p>الفصول الأولى جميلة لكني أرى أن الكتاب يضعف من المنتصف حتى قبل الفصل الأخير.. في هذا الكتاب وعلى مدى رحلته المبسطة للتاريخ عرفت أن البشر حين يطلقون العنان لأنفسهم ورغباتهم يصبحون وحوشا.. يتعطشون للملك والثراء ولو كان على حساب الآخرين.. يقتلون.. يفرضون أحكاما مستبدة ولايهمهم إطلاقا طبقاتا لفقراء والضعفاء وكم ستتسبب لهم هذه الاحكام من قمع وطحن ! أول درس من التاريخ أن الإنسان مرعب إذا صب اهتمامه في المال والملك ..</p><p>في نظري الكاتب يحتاج إلى نظرة إسلامية أعمق تهذب بعض نظرياته.. هناك بعض وجهات النظر والأفكار التي طرحها لا أتفق معاها إطلاقا وأشعر أن هناك أحكام تطلق من واقعه وبيئته فلاتعُمم.. لا أعرف لمَ لكني فعلا شعرت أنه بحاجة إلى نظرة إسلامية. مثلا في جدول العادات للإنسان شعرت بأن هناك مغالطات مثل النوم لايعتبر سلبيا! إلا إذا كان زائدا عن الحد.. وكذلك المغازلة ليست شيء ايجابي على إطلاقها..</p><p>وهناك نقطة نبه لها المترجم أيضا.. يقول ديورانت أن اليهود أعطوا محمد -والنصارى ايضا- شيء مهم لرسالته وكتابه.. يقصد أن رسولنا الكريم اقتبس من التوراة أو من التراث اليهودي.. ولمثل هذا أقول أنه ينظر للأمر بزاوية واحدة ولم يجرب أن يتعمق في النظرة الاسلامية كما تعمق في تاريخ الإغريق! فليس من المعقول أن يكون رجل مثل ويل باحث وقارئ ومؤرخ يعتقد أن القرآن إنما هو اقتباس من التوراة.. القرآن وحي وهذه النظرة أساءت لي وستسيء لكل مسلم.. اليهود والنصارى لم يعطوا شيء لرسولنا الكريم.. القرآن وحي من الله.. واليهود إن كان لايعلم فهم من أشهر الناس في تكتمهم على العلم وحوادث النبوة..</p><p>في الكتاب نقطة ذكرها في فصل التاريخ والدين.. أنه قامت حروب على رجال الدين والكنيسة والتشدد ونبذ العقل الذي حصل في العصور الوسطى وهذا مايحدث الآن لدينا.. وإن استمر الوضع أخشى ان يكون الدين لدينا شيء يضيق وليس يوسع.. ولكم أن تلاحظوا الوضع الحالي من كثرة الهجوم على المتدينين وعلى أسلوبهم وأقصد من لمتدينين النوع المتشدد جدا .. لاحظوا كثرة الهجوم مثل مسلسل طاش ماطاش وغيره حتى من بعض الدعاة أنفسهم.. ربما يتطور هذا النقد إلى هجوم شرس فيجب ان يعي رجال الدين ان الدين أوسع من نظرتهم الضيقة وأن لايتحدثوا باسم الدين في كل نظراتهم الشخصية المتشددة .. وإلا سيزداد الهجوم وسينبذ الدين سنون طوال بسبب مافعلوه.. تماما كما حصل في العصور الوسطى والتخلف الكنسي.. وهذا من دروس التاريخ العظيمة..</p><p>الدرس الذي يجب أن نستفيد منه هو إصلاحات صولون في أثينا.. إصلاحاته التي أنقذت أثينا من الثورة والدمار والتي لم تستغرق سوا جيلا واحدا! ولذلك يقول ويل : “الآثار التي تحدثها الثورة يمكن تحققها بدونها، من خلال الدفع التدريجي للتطورات الاقتصادية”.. فالثورة ليست دائما حل ..</p><p>يسمي ويل الكتاب دروس من التاريخ بينما كان يجب أن يسميه دروس من التاريخ الاوروبي والاغريقي والامريكي .. لأني أجد تجاهل و اغفال شديد لتاريخ الحضارة الاسلامية وركز على التاريخ الاوروبي والامريكي.. ولم يذكر تجربة الدول الاسلامية على الاطلاق ! بينم�� استمرت دول الخلافة الإسلامية لأكثر من ١٠٠٠ سنة! إجحافه هذا غير معقول..</p><p>من ماخرجت به وأراه صحيح جدا من دروس التاريخ أن النظام عندما يورث للأبناء أو للعائلة سيتولد استبداد أو جهل من الحكام أنفسهم.. بينما لا بديل لنظام اختيار الأجدر.. وهو ما أثبت فعاليته عبر التاريخ.. وللحكم الاسلامي في أوله أكبر دليل في الخلافات الراشدة.</p><p>قدم لفتة جميلة جدا عن الفن الهابط الذي نراه اليوم وعلاقته بالديموقراطية.. بتعليل منطقي رأيت فيه الكثير من الصحة والاسقاط على الواقع..</p><p>الفصل الأخير هو أجمل ما في الكتاب في نظري.. لأنه يطرح تساؤلات واشكاليات عن التقدم .. وهل وضعنا ا��ح��لي أفضل من سابقنا ولم في كل مرة نتمنى العودة للماضي وحياة الاجداد ولابطأ مع أننا نعيش فس عالم سرعتته مضاعفة في كل شيء.. الكتاب جدير بقراءة المهتمين بالتاريخ.. لكن الكتاب طبعا عمل بشري بحت يحتوي الكثير من النقص وعدم وجود رؤية أشمل وأكثر حيادية للتاريخ.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2352995?shelf=50-books-in-2010-project">50-books-in-2010-project</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/72322011-mohamed"></a></section><section><p>391 reviews195 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3228147549">July 12, 2021</a></section><div><p>يعرض ديورانت بعض الأفكار العامة عن التاريخ و تأثره ببعض العوامل كالبيولوجيا والأخلاق والدين والأقتصاد<br />!! الأفكار في معظمها جيدة لكن بعض الأفكار تعكس انحيازاته فهو مثلا يرى أن إسرائيل دولة حضارية تغلبت على عوائق كثيرة طبيعية و بشرية </p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/72322011?shelf=p8-storytel">p8-storytel</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1419384201">October 18, 2015</a></section><div><p>What a thoroughly disagreeable book. Filled with conclusory opinionated claptrap unsupported by historical evidence. Racist and homophobic.<p>For example, "only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality" or "All strong characters and peoples are race conscious, and are instinctively averse to marriage outside their own racial group." or "...sin had flourished in every age...Even our generation has not yet rivaled the popularity of homosexualism in ancient Greece or Rome...". or ..."intelligence is perpetually retarted by the fertility of the simple."</p><p>It goes one and and on and on, notwithstanding the fact that text is only 102 pages. </p><p>Totally puts the lie to the authors' statement in the Preface in which they state that "our aim is not originality but inclusiveness; we offer a survey of human experience, not a personal revelation."</p><p>While it is true they are not "original" (there are lots of fuzzy thinking bigots in the world) they are certainly not inclusive and the "personal revelation" they do, in fact, reveal is ugly and repulsive. </p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1617139?shelf=history">history</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1617139?shelf=philosophy">philosophy</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1617139?shelf=politics">politics</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/64621419-dennis"></a></section><section><p>652 reviews252 followers</p></section></div><section><section><p><b>Shelved as 'dnf'</b></p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3623914627">March 6, 2022</a></section><div><p>Always difficult to say whether it makes sense to read such an old book about human history. I enjoyed it in the beginning, but soon some doubts crept in. At some point it became a back and forth between enjoying and disliking the text; nicely illustrated by the following paragraph:<blockquote>
 <i>Intellect is therefore a vital force in history, but it can also be a dissolvent and destructive power. Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.</i>
</blockquote><p>What a rollercoaster. I think the main problem here is just that this is a book written by old people with a dated perspective.</p><p>I could look past this— to some extent. But a book of merely 120 pages of course is not going to provide a comprehensive overview of human history. And this is also not what this book is about. It’s about what we have learned from all of it (hence the title). And I’m not sure it makes sense for me to read such a book when it was written by someone that, in my humble opinion, doesn’t understand human nature. This table here of positive and negative human instincts was the nail in the coffin:</p><p><br /><br /></p><p>DNF at 24%</p><p>I did read the last chapter, though, because a GR-friend of mine said it would be good; and it was. But I think I’d prefer to read a book written by someone with a more modern view on humanity and human history.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/64621419?shelf=history">history</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/64621419?shelf=philosophical">philosophical</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/70110205-nazanin"></a></section><section><p>104 reviews4 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2232224570">May 18, 2018</a></section><div><p>ظاهرا دورانت ها این کتاب را در جریان بازخوانی "تاریخ تمدن" نگاشته اند و به بررسی تاریخ در پیوند با موضوعاتی از قبیل زمین، اخلاق، دین، اقتصاد و ... و تاثیر این مسائل بر تاریخ و بالعکس پرداخته اند و در نهایت رشد و زوال و پیشرفت انسان و تمدن در گذرگاه زمان و تاریخ را واکاوی کرده اند <p>اگر مثل من تاریخ تمدن را نخوانده اید و مطمئن هم نیستید که اصولا روزی آن اثر را خواهید خواند یا خیر شاید این کتاب، به عنوان پیش درآمد یا دست کم چکیده ای از دیدگاه های یکی از فیلسوفان و محققان بزرگ، گزینه مناسبی باشد <br />البته برای من در حکم یک کتاب شکوهمند و فوق العاده نبود اما خب جملات و مطالب ارزشمند و تامل برانگیزی در آن مطرح شده بود که حتما و حتما ارزش یکبار خوانده شدن را خواهد داشت. [خودم هم بعدها باید یک بار دیگر مرورش کنم] اما عنوانِ کتاب شاید جالب تر از هر مساله ای باشد : "درس های تاریخ" که همزمان موضوعی ست هم جدی و هم به گمانم شوخی! به راستی چقدر از تاریخ درس گرفته شده و می شود؟؟؟</p><p>به قول خود ویل دورانت تاریخ تکرار می شود، تاریخ در مقیاسی وسیع تر تکرار می شود...</p><p>و اصولا اگر از تاریخ درس گرفته می شد آیا باز هم چنین خونسرد و جدی و بی رحم تکرار می شد؟</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/957634-daniel-clausen"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>9 books455 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3212463915">January 16, 2022</a></section><div><p>This book is over 50 years old. In some ways, the book now lives in the shadows of more recent classics, such as Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and Yuval Noah Harari's "21 Lessons for the 21st Century." In these more contemporary books, we are also called to look at the lessons of history. In these books, too, we are called on to be skeptical and hesitant in making sense out of the often nonsense of history. "History is so indifferently rich that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances." (p. 97). But each of these books owes something to this book -- Will and Ariel Durant's "The Lessons of History."<p>In one hundred pages, the authors cover such topics as religion, race, war, economics, decay, and progress. Though the chapters are often no longer than a few pages, the breadth of the analysis is the entirety of human history. Often, the tone of the chapters is unabashedly speculative and whimsical. The prose often reaches for something close to poetry. And through this poetry, we can come to see our own circumstances as the recurrence of an old problem in a new garb. </p><p>Perhaps the most contentious issue of the book -- and perhaps the one that makes it the most dated -- is how it deals with human nature. In this book, the recurrence of certain types of events is ascribed to human nature and the human condition. History, the authors write, “is a fragment of biology” (p. 18). Scholars with a more constructivist approach would probably take issue with analyses based on sweeping generalizations about human nature, that our primitive mental hardwiring can be seen as an essential cause for the reoccurrences of history. And yet, we can find sympathetic books in Richard Dawkins’s "The Selfish Gene" and Steven Pinker’s "The Blank Slate". And even modern historians like Yuval Noah Harari ground their understanding of history in the actions of humans as only slightly more evolved primates. </p><p>Perhaps it's the greatest value is its last chapter, which casts a skeptical gaze on progress and technology. That skepticism is even more valuable in these times when the internet and social media have unleashed a torrent of unintentional negative externalities in the form of fake news and tribalism. Skeptically, the authors conclude that while decay is a recurrent theme in history, the progress of civilizations can survive through education. “Consider education not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates and reigns...but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible to as many as possible” (p. 101). </p><p>So, then, why go back to a book written over 50 years ago. One good reason is that the book has withstood the test of time. Though the volume is short (about 100 pages), compact, self-consciously hesitant about its findings, it has withstood the test of time and continues to find its way onto reading lists as varied as scholastic and practical. The book has moments where it is very specifically a product of its time. It worries, for example, about the contest between capitalism and socialism. Yet, its very datedness gives it value as a lesson in trying to deal with contemporary problems through a historical gaze. It offers us a chance to back-test two historians' attempts to make sense of their modern times through history. Their insights, while highly qualified, seems relevant to our current moment. </p><p>Finally, in its style, the book offers a modern example of how scholars might try to attempt to come up with their own lessons. Most chapters are only a few pages, the whole book is about one hundred pages, and the book manages to make its points with minimal amounts of references. </p><p>Sometimes for taking on big questions of our time, we don't need overly complicated tools. We can leave our extensive reading and numerous references in the background as we apply our knowledge in a concise and humble way. Perhaps that is a historical lesson from this book too. </p><p>If we apply our deep knowledge in a concise and humble way, perhaps our own words can survive for fifty years.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/957634?shelf=books-of-2020">books-of-2020</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/957634?shelf=books-of-2022">books-of-2022</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/42172950-ashok-krishna"></a></section><section><p>333 reviews51 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1779032287">October 14, 2016</a></section><div><p>‘<b>History repeats itself</b>’, ‘<b>Those who don’t learn from history are forced to repeat it</b>’ – these are two of the quips about which I had been curious for so long. Is it possible that we humans are living a cycle all through our lives? Are we repeating the same things, events and experiences that our ancestors once went through? Are we humans, so-called most intelligent species of this planet, so inept at learning from our past that we go through the same pains and pleasures, events and experiences that keep staring at our face from the annals?<p>I was seeking answers to these questions and when Amazon ‘recommended’ this book to me, I gladly accepted. Will and Ariel Durant, the author couple, are renowned for their contribution to the field of History and ‘The Story of Civilization’, a series of eleven volumes in Western history, is their magnum opus. And, when they offer to summarize all their learning in a little book, you can’t help grabbing the same with both hands. I am glad I did.</p><p>In this book, Will and Ariel, categorize lessons of the past under various faculties. The evolution of mankind, the overcoming of geological obstacles, the biological evolution and multiplication into innumerable life forms, racial and ethnic diversities, the development of our ethics and morals, the loosening grip of religion on our conscience, growth of economics, socialism, wars and the various forms of governments. They end the book by discussing whether we have progressed by learning our lessons wisely from our past or are we running around in circles. The whole book makes not just an interesting read but worthy of some deep contemplation too.</p><p>The book is written in a plain, pragmatic and unostentatious manner. They don’t claim to know it all, but acknowledge that history is just a collection of varying perspectives, depending on our cultural, religious, social background and understanding. Also, they present a neutral stance on our past, without nurturing a tender nostalgia for our past while having bleak fears about the future, or going gaga about the modern times while dismissing the past as full of darkness and barbaric beings. </p><p>The past is full of lessons for those who want to learn, and the lessons are neither hard, nor bitter. We get what we seek from our past. If you’re looking for hope, it is full of it. If you are pessimistic about human history, then past offers an abundance of excuses for that too. It is all up to us to wisely choose lessons that suit us, learn from them, use the wisdom to sail through our present, while building a rich heritage for the future generations for whom we will soon be pages of history. </p><p>A lovely introduction into the various facets of human history and a book that no history-buff should miss!</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5512945-heather-campbell"></a></section><section><p>14 reviews15 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/193629026">August 29, 2011</a></section><div><p>I'm giving this book a high rating no because I agree with it. But it is important to see where historiography was at in the 60's. Durants' main point is that the strong,tenacious, breeding society will win the day and that the world will only unite as one when aliens attack us. This is the antithesis of what Jesus taught. Also Gandhi. They also say the monarchy is the most stable successful form of government and that the church is important only because it serve as a personal behavior moderator and a societal babysitter. They put no importance in spirituality, forgiveness or hope. What a bleak picture they paint for the world. The frightening thing is that this is what history teaches. I do like the chapter they write explaining social Darwinism. They make the case for it pretty well and the person who read the book before me ate it up. Highlighted lines everywhere. Scary. But the Durants end the chapter with a short plea to treat each individual based on their merits. But since they seem so Darwinian in their view of humanity I don't see why they would try to distance themselves fromthe social application of his work. They do it weakly. Historiographers need to read this. It's part of our heritage as historians. I'm grateful I was not taught to think this way in graduate school although I got some of it growing up at home and in certain religious interpretations obsessed with knowing who could wield God's power and who could not based on inheritance. My educators (church and school) encouraged me to hold tightly to ideals of humane living, tolerance, and hope for a better future. If I had the Durants as teachers, I'd slit my wrists. </p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/28134808-farah-firdaus"></a></section><section><p>580 reviews204 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2973593133">September 17, 2019</a></section><div><p>Pultizer Prize-winning historians Will and Ariel Durant spent their entire lives studying and writing about history. The Lessons of History is a distillation of all of their works and lessons learned in one, short 120-pages book. They presented a crux on how history events are affected/related by/with several factors/themes. The factors/themes include biology, race, morals, religion, economics, government and war and several examples were quoted to support their conclusion. It's short, concise, profound and poetic in parts. What follows is some of my favorite takeaways from the book: <p><b>
 <i>1. So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it — perhaps as much more as the roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.</i></b></p><p><b><i>2. Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign. Education has spread, but intelligence is perpetually retarded by the fertility of the simple.  A cynic remarked that "you mustn't enthrone ignorance just because there is so much of it."  However, ignorance is not long enthroned, for it lends itself to the manipulation by the forces that mold public opinion.  It may be true, as Lincoln supposed, that "you can't fool all the people all the time," but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.</i></b></p><p><b><i>3. Since inequality grows in an expanding economy, a society may find itself divided between a cultured minority and a majority of men and women too unfortunate by nature or circumstance to inherit or develop standards of excellence and taste.  As this majority grows it acts as a cultural drag upon the minority; its ways of speech, dress, recreation, feeling, judgment, and thought spread upward, and internal barbarization by the majority is part of the price that the minority pays for its control of educational and economic opportunity.</i></b></p><p><b><i>4. Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.</i></b></p><b>
</b></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/28134808?shelf=classis-modern-classics">classis-modern-classics</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/28134808?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/136494867-peiman"></a></section><section><p>229 reviews36 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4846605815">July 17, 2022</a></section><div><p> در عین کم حجم بودن پربار و جالبه. کتاب شامل 13 فصله که توی هر کدوم یک مسئله تاثیر گذار روی تاریخ و تمدن رو بررسی میکنه. مثلا تاریخ و نژاد، تاریخ و اخلاق، تاریخ و دین و به همین شکل موضوعات مختلف. برای شخص من بخش اقتصاد و همچنین حکومت در درجه ی اول و بخش جنگ بعد از اون از جذاب ترین بخش ها بودن. نکته ی مهم توی این کتاب نگاه کاملا بی طرف نویسنده به مطالب و بیان ساده ی نظراتش هست. قطعا این کتاب رو به بقیه توصیه میکنم.ه</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/136494867?shelf=american">american</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/136494867?shelf=history">history</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/136494867?shelf=nonfiction">nonfiction</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/101938044-jin"></a></section><section><p>588 reviews109 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3585145088">October 7, 2020</a></section><div><p>Der Titel sagt eigentlich schon worauf das Buch hinaus will: Die Autoren fassen die 5000 Jahre Menschheitsgeschichte auf vergleichsweise wenigen Seiten zusammen und kategorisieren dabei die Geschichte in verschiedenen Bereichen wie "Rasse", Moral oder Krieg. <p><i>Ist es möglich, dass "Geschichte sinnlos ist", dass sie uns nichts lehrt und dass die unermessliche Vergangenheit nur das mühsame Einstudieren der Fehler war, die die Zukunft auf einer größeren Bühne und in größerem Maßstab zu machen bestimmt ist?</i></p><p>Lustiger Weise hatte ich heute eine kurze Diskussion über Geschichte. Geschichte ist für viele staubtrocken, unlustig und zu fad. Viele denken, dass es sich nur um Fakten handelt, dabei ist es noch so viel mehr! Es ist nicht nur so, dass man aus vergangenem lernen kann, sondern es gibt auch Hoffnung auf die Zukunft, auf eine bessere Welt. Ich liebe wie das Buch abschließt und die Geschichte als Erbe und Wachstum, etwas worauf Mensch stolz sein kann, bezeichnet. <br />Ich wünschte mir wirklich sehr, dass man an der Schule Geschichte nicht mehr nach Chronologie unterrichten würde, sondern nach anderen Kriterien wie in diesem Buch zusammengefasst. Das würde so vieles im Unterricht ändern und viel mehr Interesse wecken. </p><p><i>Unser Ziel ist nicht Originalität, sondern Inklusivität</i></p><p>Ich hatte richtig viel Spaß beim Lesen und habe das Buch in wenigen Stunden durchgelesen. Man muss im Kopf behalten, dass diese Version die Erstveröffentlichung von 1968 ist, somit natürlich nicht mehr alles korrekt ist und manches sogar schon sehr altmodisch wirkt. Aber trotz allem kann man aus den verschiedenen Interpretationen und Sichtweisen einiges lernen. <br />Es war mehr wie eine Zusammenfassung der Geschichte mit Kommentaren von einem alten Professor, der vor Begeisterung der Geschichte strotzt und hier und da Anekdoten zu erzählen hat. </p><p>Für professionelle Kenner der Menschheitsgeschichte mag dieses Buch nicht ausreichend sein, weil es einfach zu kurz ist um tiefer in die Materie einzudringen. Aber für jemand wie mich, der von der Geschichte fasziniert ist, bereits einiges kennt, aber noch lange kein Profi ist, war das genau richtig. Ich konnte gerade noch dem roten Faden folgen und war sehr amüsiert von seiner literarischen Reise durch die Menschheit. </p><p>** Dieses Buch wurde mir über NetGalley als E-Book zur Verfügung gestellt **</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/47464693">July 11, 2009</a></section><div><p>A Curiosity.<p>I liked it, not because I agreed with it, but because<br />it is such a rarity and an oddity.</p><p>How often are historians brave enough or rash enough to <br />take on the job/challenge of offering "a survey of human experience"<br />as Will and Ariel Durant say in their preface.<br />Even if you disagree with or query their views, it makes you wonder what you yourself believe and think and whether you can justify it with facts and figures.<br />You may not agree with much of this book, or then you may.<br />But you will be stimulated by and alerted to everything it says because of the aims the authors have set themselves.</p><p>My copy is scrawled with notes and underlinings, exclamation marks and mini-essays. I am as curious to reread it for these as I am for the printed text. <br />How much have I changed???</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1466146?shelf=americana">americana</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1466146?shelf=history">history</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/26055396-sense-of-history"></a></section><section><p>356 reviews389 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1100101592">November 1, 2020</a></section><div><p>This is a very remarkable book. Will Durant, an American philosopher and historian, together with his wife Ariel wrote a world history in 11 volumes, published between 1935 and 1975. This booklet is an attempt to summarize what they learned from this experience. <p>In the introduction Durant warns that it is a very subjective view, and above all departing from the doubt whether we really can learn something from history: "<i>only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed. </i>". This laconic way of writing is very typical of this work. The Durants, despite their doubts, do not hesitate to posit some very confident assertions, especially in his first chapter: "<i>Life is selection. We are all born unfree and UNEQUAL"/" Heaven and utopia are buckets in a well: when one goes down the other goes up! When religion declines Communism grows</i>". These are just a few examples, but they immediately make clear that the Durants also are children of their time: in many instances they state that the world in the year 1968 clearly is in moral decline (homosexuality is explicitly mentioned as an example), that the degradation of authority has become overpowering and that modern art is a total aberration. All very conservative-reactionary, indeed. But in other places they are very cautious and nuanced: they're not sure if war is always justified, or whether religion plays a useful role in society, etc.</p><p>In short, the Durants can not be pinned down to just one stance. They have a complex, quirky look on history, with sometimes really interesting views. For example, according to them, progress is not really measurable, because depending on what criterion or angle you choose. But progress lies for them in that you can build on previous generations and civilizations, and in that respect we are better off than ever. All in all, an interesting booklet, but you have to take into account the personal view of the authors. <br />(rating 2.5 stars)</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/26055396?shelf=civilizations">civilizations</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/26055396?shelf=global-history">global-history</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/26055396?shelf=philosophy-of-history">philosophy-of-history</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/30094118-mohammad-ali-shamekhi"></a></section><section><p>1,096 reviews233 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1623879144">April 29, 2016</a></section><div><p><br /><b>با ارفاق سه ستاره</b><p>ویل دورانت در این کتاب نظراتش رو صادقانه و بدون پیچیدگی در مورد مضامین مختلف بیان کرده. اما اون <b>چیزی که حداقل برای من در این کتاب جالب تر بود اشارات تاریخیشه</b>. طبیعتا کسی که از حرف های تاریخی ویل دورانت در این کتاب مطلع باشه، کتاب چیز خاصی نداره سوای همون جامعیت ویل دورانتی و قضاوت تقریبا عادلانه - اینکه سعی می کنه دو طرف قضیه رو باز کنه. ولی اصلا نباید انتظار یه آدم عمیق و فلسفی رو ازش داشت. به هر حال <b>همینکه ذهن آدم با بعضی پرسش ها روبرو بشه خودش یه مزیته</b></p><p>دو فصل "سوسیالیسم و تاریخ" و "نژاد و تاریخ" برای من از نظر اطلاعات تاریخیش جالب تر بود</p><p>حاشیه: مضمون « بی عدالتی والا* » ی کالون مفهوم جالبی بود کلا<br />حاشیه ی دو: جفا است اگه همه جا صرفا بگم ویل دورانت، و از آریل حرفی نزنم. همه ی ویل ها رو همراه آریل لحاظ کنید</p><p>* Sublime Injustice</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/30094118?shelf=%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%B1%DB%8C%D8%AE">تاریخ</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/30094118?shelf=%D8%AC%D9%86%DA%AF">جنگ</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/30094118?shelf=%D8%B3%DB%8C%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AA">سیاست</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8866166-fatima-mohamady"></a></section><section><p>363 reviews79 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3217478275">March 4, 2020</a></section><div><p><br />من فترة كنت وضعته على القائمة لكن لفكرتي عنه من كونه عمل متخصص وصعب وسيحتاج وقتاً للقراءة وتركيز؛ قررت تأجيله، بشكل ما حدث قبل أيام أن اقترح بعض الأصدقاء أن نبدأ قراءة جماعية نناقش بعدها ما نقرأ فاقترعنا وكانت نتيجة القرعة هذا الكتاب، لتنقله من قائمة الانتظار الأبدية إلى القراءة الفعلية..<br />بدأ الكتاب بتقديم خفيف جداً وعام ما شكل عامل جذب ، ثم بدأ يتسلسل في طروحاته، وهو عبارة عن مجموعة مقالات أو قراءات تربط التاريخ بالعديد من المفاهيم الأساسية كالدين والاقتصاد والأخلاق والسياسة والعلم وغيرها، كلها مقدمة في إطار تاريخي أشبه بمنحنى ممثل لوجودها من خلال نماذج عملية من مختلف الأزمنة والأماكن.. لن يسعني تصنيفه -إضافة لفشلي الشخصي في موضوع التصنيف- لتشعبه وشموليته.. فهو اعتمد على وضع النظرية بشكل عام من ثم التدليل عليها بأمثلة من الواقع التاريخي وأحياناً الحديث بالشكل الذي يخدم الطرح الأساسي ويوضحه، واتساع نطاق المواضيع المطروحة يجعل حصره في مسمى واحد صعب.. فيه علم اجتماع وفلسفة وسياسة واقتصاد وتاريخ وكثير من المجالات المطروقة..<br />الغريب كان -بالنسبة لفكرتي المسبقة عنه- السخرية التي تطل أحياناً وإن كانت في كلمات بسيطة لكنها أضفت متعة وخفة على النص وخاصة في في الأجزاء التي ا��تمد فيها أسلوب المقارنة..أيضاً الروابط التي استنتجتها بين الكثير من الأفكار المقدمة في الكتاب مع أخرى ألفتها في نصوص آخرين مثل فروم وباومان وساراماجو في كهفه كانت كما العادة مصدر جذب وإثارة للاهتمام..<br />أنا شخصياً مقتنعة أن جزءاً أساسياً من أفضلية وعظمة القراءة يكمن في المتعة، حتى في أكثر الكتب ثقلاً وتخصصاً، فالمتعة تكمن أحياناً في فكرة أو في أسلوب طرحها أو في أي شيء يمنح الكاتب القدرة على إدهاش قرائه، وهذا كتاب أدهشني واستمتعت به بأكثر مما توقعت بمراحل، حتى في أكثر أجزائه تعقيداً والتي أعدت قراءتها مرتين وثلاثة.. ويسعدني جداً أني خرجت منه بالكثير من الهو��مش والخطوط والاقتباسات وعلامات التعجب والاستفهام، ولكل ذلك أو أكثر بفرح طفولي عظيم..<br />ممتنة للطف الترجمة وقدرتها على إيصال المحتوى بهذا القدر من السلاسة المحببة جداً جداً.. <br /></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/8866166?shelf=%D8%A5%D8%B5%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA_%D8%B9%D8%B5%D9%8A%D8%B1">إصدارات_عصير</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/8866166?shelf=%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA">بدايات</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/8866166?shelf=%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%AE">تاريخ</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/33650304-candle"></a></section><section><p>1,231 reviews669 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4142483535">July 29, 2021</a></section><div><p><br />.<br />ويليام جيمس ديورانت لمن لا يعرفه هو فيلسوف ومؤرخ وكاتب أمريكي، اشتهر بكتابه «قصة الحضارة»، ومن المجلد الحادي عشر في كتاب«قصة الحضارة». انطلق ديورانت مع زوجته ارييل، بتدوين الملاحظات التي واكبت رحلة التوثيق تلك، فنتج عنها هذا الكتاب الذي بين أيدينا( دروس من التاريخ) والذي يقدم به ديورانت وزوجته أهم ما واكب تطور التاريخ في ٥٠٠٠ سنة.<p>قُسم الكتاب إلى إثنى عشر فصلا، تناولا الزوجان من خلالها تطورات حضارة الجنس البشري، والجغرافيا والحروب، والأوضاع السياسية والاجتماعية وتأثير هذا على النفس البشرية، والأعراق والشخصيات والأخلاق، كما تطرقا إلى الدين بفصلٍ خاص وقد كان هذا بالفعل أكثر الفصول تشويقًا ومتعة.</p><p>هذا الكتاب مختلف كونه لا يتبنى فكرة واحدة كما اعتدنا على كتب التاريخ أن تفعل، لكنه من أروع الكتب التي قرأتها على الإطلاق نظرًا لتعدد الأفكار والتي لا يجمعها سوى صفة البحث والتقصي الموجودة لدى ديورانت.</p><p>ماذا بعد القراءة؟<br />على مستوى شخصي تعتبر قراءة التاريخ مرهقة لي،ولا أجد لنفسي ميلاً نحوها ذلك لأني مؤمنة -بسبب كل ما نراه اليوم من تشويه للحقائق- باحتمالية أن يكون جزءا كبير من التاريخ الذي نعرفه ضرب من الوهم والإدعاء.</p><p>ثامن أفضل كتاب في قائمة الـtop 10 للكتب التي قرأتها من أصل 1257 ولله الحمد.</p><p>#أبجدية_فرح 5/5 🌷📚<br />‏#candleflame23bookreviews<br />#دروس_من_التاريخ #ويليام_جيمس_ديورانت<br />#ستوري_تيل</p><p>[image error]</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/33650304?shelf=favorites">favorites</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/33650304?shelf=top-10">top-10</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/33650304?shelf=%D9%83%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%A8-%D8%B5%D9%88%D8%AA%D9%8A">كتاب-صوتي</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13946677"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>6 books541 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1119287344">December 25, 2014</a></section><div><p> <p>كتاب جميل وبسيط .. وصغير!</p><p>وربما أن صِغَر حجمه هو ما أضفى عليه جمالاً زائداً :)</p><p>ويل ديورانت وزوجته آرييل هما، بلا شك، من العقول الضخمة التي لا يملك الواحد منا إلا أن يحترمها ويجلّها – وإن اختلف معها في مواضع يسيرة.</p><p> </p><p>لست هنا في معرض تقييم للكتاب .. فهو باختصار كتاب ممتع إلى حد ما (لا يخلو من الملل والرتابة ..!!) وهو استخلاص للدروس والعِبر من رائعة ديورانت الشهيرة "قصّة الحضارة" – التي أتمنى أن أقرأها خلال السنة القادمة 2015 :)</p><p> </p><p>هنا سأورد بعض ما أعجبني من اقتباسات تستحق الذكر:</p><p><b>١] إن العلم محايد. فهو مستعد للقتل كما هو مستعد للشفاء. وهو مستعد للهدم أكثر من استعداده للبناء. وفي بعض الأحيان أُحِسّ أن أسلافنا في العصور الوسطى وعصر النهضة، عندما اهتمّوا بالأدب والفن والأسطورة أكثر من العلم والقوة، كانوا أحكم منّا. نحن الذين اهتممنا بالآليات على حساب الأهداف والغايات. </b></p><p><b>٢] وليست الثورة الحقيقية الوحيدة الا تنوير العقل وتحسين الشخصية، وليس التحرير الحقيقي الوحيد الا تحرير الفرد، وليس الثوريون الحقيقيون إلا الفلاسفة والقديسيين.</b></p><p><b>٣] ومعظم التاريخ ظن وتخمين والبقية الباقية تحامل وهوى</b></p><p><b>٤] ولا يمكن لإنسان واحد مهما كان عبقرياً او عالماً ان يصل في حياته الى درجة اكتمال الفهم التي تتيح له الحكم المضمون على عادات المجتمع ومؤسساته ورفضها لان هذه العادات والمؤسسات تمثل حكمة الاجيال بعد قرون من التجريب في معمل التاريخ.</b></p><p><b>٥] وقد تداوي الاباحية الجنسية نفسها من خلال افراطها ذاته ، وقد يعيش اطفالنا الذين تحرروا من المراسي حتى يروا سيادة النظام والتواضع ، فارتداء الملابس سيكون اكثر اغراءاً من العري.</b></p><p><b>٦] وان اول شرط من شروط الحرية هو تقييدها ، ولو جعلناها مطلقة لماتت من الفوضى</b></p><p><b>٧] ولا شك ان الدكتاتورية تنشأ من الديموقراطية ، كما ان اخطر انواع الطغيان والعبودية ينشأ من اشد اشكال الحرية تطرفاً <b></b></b></p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/13946677?shelf=%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1%D8%A7%D8%AA-2014">قراءات-2014</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/96955799-dragos-p-traru"></a></section><section><p>51 reviews2,446 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3300934977">May 17, 2020</a></section><div><p>O carte cum ar spune marele Gică Hagi așa și așa bună, de la doi oameni care au și ei un Pulitzer în sacoșă. O carte despre istoria care se repetă, dar doar într-un mod general. În sensul că da, civilizațiile se nasc, cresc și apoi apun, dispar, dar nu fac ca noi, ca românii, ci transmit mai departe experiența lor, cunoștințele, îmbogățindu-i astfel pe cei care vin din urmă. O concluzie a autorilor care nu îmi place deloc ar fi aceea că pacea e o stare nenaturală a omenirii. Și că suntem făcuți pentru a concura unii cu alții: pentru mâncare, pentru pământ, pentru adăpost și așa mai departe. Și de-aia ne-am adunat în triburi și apoi în state. Și că putem să ieșim din starea asta de război doar dacă ne vom trezi în fața unui inamic comun, care să ne facă să ne unim. Cum este acest coronavirus, care, iată, reușește să ne aducă împreună, chiar dacă ne ține izolați unii de alții. <br />Dar câteva idei foarte mișto sunt de găsit în cartea asta: de pildă, că democrația este cea mai bună formă de guvernământ, dar e fragilă și cere o populație educată. Sau că socialismul poate funcționa dacă este împerecheat cu capitalismul. Ori că e cum nu se poate mai naturală concentrarea bogăției în mâinile câtorva, de aceea e nevoie de intervenția statelor pentru o justă redistribuire. A, și faptul că valorile etice sunt un produs al condițiilor istorice și se schimbă în timp. Că de-aia nu mai e ok acum să-i dai unei femei cu bâta în cap și s-o duci la tine în peșteră, unde să-ți faci treaba cu ea. Deși unii mai încearcă. <br />Și sunt multe exemple faine din istorie în carte. Cum ziceam, așa și așa bună. Spre foarte bună. <br /></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/96955799?shelf=istorie">istorie</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/23224678-raya"></a></section><section><p>757 reviews1,295 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4587292727">March 15, 2022</a></section><div><p>"التاريخ – أكثر من أي شيء آخر - هو تكوين وتسجيل هذا التراث، والتقدم هو تزايد وفرته وحفظه ونقله واستخدامه. لهؤلاء منا الذين لا يدرسون التاريخ كمنذر ومذكّر بجرائم الإنسان وحماقاته فحسب، ولكن – أيضاً- كتذكير مشجع للأرواح الخلاّقة، لا يعود الماضي غرفة محبطة من الأهوال؛ إنما يصبح مدينة سماوية، دولة فسيحة للعقل، ما زال يعيش ويتحدث ويتغنى بها الرهبان، ورجال الدولة، والمخترعون، والعلماء، والشعراء، والفنانون، والموسيقيون، والمحبون، والفلاسفة. لن يتفجع المؤرخ لعدم قدرتنا على إيجاد أي معنى في الوجود الإنساني إلا الذي نضعه نحن، ليكن هذا شيئاً نفخر به، أننا نضع بأنفسنا معنى لحياتنا، وأن هذا المعنى يتخطى حدود الموت في بعض الأحيان. لو أن رجلاً محظوظاً كفاية، فإنه سيمكن من تحصيل أكبر قدر من تراث حضارته قبل موته وينقله لأولاده. ولآخر نفس عمره سيظل دائماً ممتناً لهذه التركة التي لا تنضب، مستحضراً أنها أمنا المغذية وحياتنا الممتدة."</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/33820835-adam-meade"></a></section><section><p>17 reviews6 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1649898961">May 26, 2016</a></section><div><p>Brilliant! The Durant's offer a bird's-eye view of human civilization and distill for us the principles and common threads that bind different peoples separated chronologically by thousands of years yet whom differ little to none in the passions and desires that motivate them. I can't recall reading any other book that had such a low length-to-substance ratio. It weighs in at only around 120 pages, but nearly every sentence seems pregnant with deep insights and wisdom that is as relevant today as it was millennia ago. I believe that anyone with a high school education and an open mind will reap tremendous wisdom from their words, though the more preliminary knowledge of history and the sciences one possesses, the more they will benefit from it.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/33820835?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/82894263-henning"></a></section><section><p>103 reviews31 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3553300652">September 18, 2020</a></section><div><p>My extremely high expectations were not met for this book. I guess ~120 pages are just not enough for so many years of history. I felt lost a couple times.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/82894263?shelf=history">history</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/82894263?shelf=nonfiction">nonfiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13716226-murtaza"></a></section><section><p>664 reviews3,402 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3522785485">August 30, 2020</a></section><div><p>Will and Ariel Durant were part of that great age of American writers who helped popularize history and philosophy. People all over the world, including myself, owe them a debt of gratitude for bringing knowledge down from its ivory towers to enrich the life of the common man. They wrote a lot and knew a lot, and this slim book is intended as some kind of summation of the ultimate lessons that they'd gleaned from a lifetime of study. Is there a consistent thread that unites the study of history? Unfortunately, it doesn't really seem like it. Except for the apparent pattern of inequality and redistribution that characterizes human societies. The book is eloquently written at times and concludes on an upbeat note about the solace of studying history: having an eternal city bustling with great souls that can always be visited in mind. Other than that though, the lessons of history seen in totality appear to be quite flexible and subjective.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2297974-judith"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>14 books102 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2386321972">May 9, 2018</a></section><div><p>The premise and the introduction sounded interesting, but soon I could not take it anymore: almost every second page asserts that Whites, Teutons or Catholics are the stronger group and therefore rule in all parts of the world or will soon rule (e.g. Catholics soon dominating Protestants in America due to greater virtue). Also, contraceptives, vaccinations and public schools are of the devil because they hinder evolution / the dominance of the strongest, and countries that have too much of the afore-mentioned must be overrun or conquered by more virile countries in order to stop the slide backwards. VOMIT-INDUCING</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2297974?shelf=politics-etc">politics-etc</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4668755-arash"></a></section><section><p>61 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2245595930">February 10, 2018</a></section><section><div><p><br />دموکراسى از همه انواع حکومت‏ها دشوارتر است، زیرا وسیع‏ترین پراکنش تعقل را مى‏طلبد، و هنگامى که ما مردم خود را به حکومت مى‏رساندیم از یاد بردیم که خویش را عاقل سازیم. تعلیم و تربیت توسعه یافته، اما قدرت بارورى مردم ساده و عوام پیوسته مانع از گسترش تعقل شده است. یکى از کلبیون تذکر داد که «جهل را تنها به این علت که فراوان‏ترین چیز است بر تخت منشانید»، اما دیرزمانى است که جهل بر تخت قرار ندارد، زیرا خود را در اختیار نیروهاى سازنده افکار عمومى قرار مى‏دهد تا بازیچه ایشان شود. شاید همان گونه که لینکلن اعتقاد داشت «نمى‏توان همه را براى همیشه فریفت»، اما مى‏توان عده مورد نیاز را براى تکیه‏زدن بر مسند حکومت کشورى بزرگ فریفت.<p>در سرعت سه هزار کیلومتر در ساعت میمون‏هاى شلوارپوشى بیش نیستیم و با روزگارى که پیاده مى‏رفتیم فرقى نکرده‏ایم.</p><p>مورخ از این‏که نمى‏تواند در حیات انسان معنایى غیر از آن‏که خود انسان به آن داده است، بیابد، تأسف نخواهد خورد؛ بگذارید از این که ما خود به حیاتمان معنا و مفهوم مى‏بخشیم، و گاه این معنا بر مرگ غالب مى‏��ود، احساس غرور کنیم.</p><p>ممکن است در جوامع پیشرفته تمرکز ثروت به جایى برسد که قدرتِ عددى فقیران بسیار هماورد و رقیب قدرتِ استعداد اغنیاىِ اندک گردد، آن گاه این تعادل ناپایدار وضعى حاد و بحرانى به وجود مى‏آورد، که تاریخ با دو حالتِ متضادِ توزیع مجدد ثروت به دست قانون، یا تولیدِ فقر به دست انقلاب، با آن روبه‏رو شده است.</p><p>این ها گزیده‌ای از جملاتی بود که در این کتاب نظرم رو جلب کرد، و البته تنها جملاتی نبود که می‌تونست در اینجا ذکر بشه. ویل دورانت در این کتاب در فصول مختلف راجع به مسایلی مثل اقتصاد، دین، حکومت، اخلاق و ... صحبت می‌کنه. ویل دورانت در هر فصل برای بیان دیدگاه خودش شاهد مثال‌هایی رو تقریبا به شکل تیتر وار از تاریخ میاره، بنابراین انتظار دیدن مطالب تاریخی مفصل از این کتاب نداشته باشید. اما می‌شه گفت دیدن دنیا (و تاریخ) از دید ویل دورانت واقعا خوب و لذت بخش هست.</p></p></div><div><p>This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.</p></div></section><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/877064-lowell"></a></section><section><p>164 reviews9 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/175396937">June 10, 2011</a></section><div><p>I first heard of Will and Ariel Durant in 2004 when reading a message by Jeffrey R. Holland, then President of Brigham Young University:<p><i>No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.</i></p><p>This passage (which comes from this book) still strikes me as powerful, and is just one of countless great quotes from this book. Will and Ariel Durant wrote the 11-volume "Story of Civilization", and afterwards sought to briefly some of the patterns that occur, regardless of time and setting. While I intend to read the entire series, I just purchased The Harvard Classics collection. Prudence says I should work through that before buying another massive collection. </p><p>Despite only 100 pages and published 43 years ago (1968), I consider their work priceless. And unlike the majority of other history books, it's ENJOYABLE to read.</p><p>Other GoodReads and Amazon.com reviews discuss the content more effectively that I would be able to, so I'll end here. :)</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section></section></article></div></div><p>Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,417 reviews</p></div>||||I|||| * Home
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 قصة الحضارة #3-4

 The Lessons of History

 Will Durant , Ariel Durant

 4.09
 14,768 ratings 1,417 reviews
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 In this illuminating and thoughtful book, Will and Ariel Durant have succeeded in distilling for the reader the accumulated store of knowledge and experience from their four decades of work on the ten monumental volumes of "The Story of Civilization." The result is a survey of human history, full of dazzling insights into the nature of human experience, the evolution of civilization, the culture of man. With the completion of their life's work they look back and ask what history has to say about the nature, the conduct and the prospects of man, seeking in the great lives, the great ideas, the great events of the past for the meaning of man's long journey through war, conquest and creation - and for the great themes that can help us to understand our own era.

 To the Durants, history is "not merely a warning reminder of man's follies and crimes, but also an encouraging remembrance of generative souls ... a spacious country of the mind wherein a thousand saints, statesman, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing..."

 Designed to accompany the ten-volume set of "The Story of Civilization, The Lessons of History" is, in its own right, a profound and original work of history and philosophy.

 Genres History Nonfiction Philosophy Politics World History Historical Science
 ...more

 119 pages, Hardcover

 First published January 1, 1968

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 Will Durant

 416 books 2,474 followers
 William James Durant was a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for the 11-volume The Story of Civilization, written in collaboration with his wife Ariel and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for his book, The Story of Philosophy, written in 1926, which was considered "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy."

 They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1967 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.

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 Roy Lotz
 Author 1 book 8,092 followers
 November 30, 2019
 I am having trouble articulating the complex mix of opinions and emotions that I’ve formed around Durant. Several times I have come away from his books disappointed; and yet I continue to read them. One reason he fascinates me is that he is a species of American which is now almost entirely extinct: a product of the ‘Great Books’ paradigm in American higher education.

 As far as I can tell, this paradigm in education was first popularized in 1909, when Charles W. Eliot released his Harvard Classics—the so-called Five-Foot Shelf—which consisted of 51 volumes of classic works from western history. The spirit of this idea was later epitomized in the Book-of-the-Month club, about which Bertrand Russell, writing in 1930, penned his famous line: “There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”

 It was certainly a different time. The philosopher George Santayana and the historian Arnold Toynbee were bestselling authors, both featured on the cover of Time magazine. Will Durant, whose prose style strikes the modern ear as purple and grandiloquent, created a publishing sensation with his Story of Civilization , a series which totals four million words and ten thousand pages. And the monstrously big, 54-volume Great Books of the Western World sold thousands of copies—thousands!—even though it included works of Alexandrian astronomy, Greek mathematics, and German metaphysics, among other difficult material. One suspects that the bragging motive was the operative one in the majority of these purchases.

 The spirit of the ‘Great Books’ paradigm is that of idolatry towards European intellectual history. The tone of its advocates often sound ludicrously reverential, such as this excerpt from a speech delivered on the occasion of the release of the Great Books series: “This is more than a set of books, and more than a liberal education. Great Books of the Western World is an act of piety. Here are the sources of our being. Here is our heritage. This is the West. This is its meaning for mankind.” As two World Wars wracked the European continent, and as the fear of communism and nuclear war covered the Western world with gloom, perhaps it is unsurprising to see American intellectuals and laypeople positioning themselves as the heirs of European civilization.

 This idea held sway for a long time in American Universities, and perhaps is not altogether dead. The swan songs of this pedagogical philosophy can be heard in Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon (1994), wherein both authors lament and eulogize the disappearance of the ‘Great Books’ from American universities.

 Educated at Columbia during the heyday of this phenomenon, Durant was formed by the ‘Great Books’ ethos, and perhaps was one of its most eloquent proponents. And it strikes me now that, in Durant’s writings, one finds both the virtues and the vices of the ‘Great Books’ idea illustrated with extreme precision.

 Durant was broadminded and well-rounded; he could write ably about a multitude of subjects. He was tolerant, kindly, witty, and had a firm belief in human progress and achievement. His prose style was superb—a model of clarity and grace—which he used in his quest to disseminate as widely as possible the fruits of “Civilization” (his all-inclusive term for everything good in society). Neither a genius nor a scholar, Durant was an enthusiast: he was able to write so wonderfully about historical figures because he genuinely loved and revered them; in fact, he almost literally worshiped them, as he himself admitted.

 But he also had many weaknesses. First, the ‘Great Books’ mindset caused Durant to concentrate his attention overmuch on the high-points in cultural achievement. One gets an extremely skewed picture of European history if one focuses solely on the greatest thinkers and artists. Of course, it is pleasant to contemplate these individuals, which is partly why Durant’s books are so fun to read; but such exclusive concentration also produces a kind of Pollyannish attitude, where history is seen through rose-tinted glasses, and persecutions, wars, and bigotry are not given their due—and the banality of daily life is wholly sidestepped.

 A related consequence of the ‘Great Books’ attitude is a somewhat reactionary mindset. Since Durant so often equates the old with the good, tradition with right, age with quality, he can be remarkably, and sometimes stupidly, conservative. For example, whenever Durant writes of sexual mores, he comes across as a moralizing Sunday-school teacher. For Durant, promiscuity is immoral, and homosexuality a sin. Long-term, faithful heterosexual marriages are the mark of ‘civilization’. Because Durant never justifies this opinion—a habit of his—I can only conclude that this was mere prejudice on his part.

 Another obvious result of the ‘Great Books’ philosophy is elitism. Durant frequently mentions in this book that talent is unequally distributed; and because of this “natural inequality of man,” the stupid majority are destined forever to toil under the dominance of the intelligent minority. Now, of course I would not disagree that people are differently endowed from birth with various aptitudes. But I am very far from believing that the inequality which we see throughout history and which persists today is simply the result of the “skill” of the wealthy and powerful. Rather, I agree with Gibbon, that “The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society without a hope of emerging from their obscurity.”

 The ‘Great Books’ program also has the shortcoming of emphasizing breadth over depth. Durant certainly embodies this. Although he can write about many subjects, he is an expert on none of them; and this lack of serious expertise prevented him from advancing the state of knowledge in any field. Durant’s ideology also privileges the transmission of old ideas rather than the creation of new ones. After all, if one worships the past, there is little motivation to re-imagine the future. Moreover, the ‘Great Books’ doctrine stressed reputation at the expense of rigor. Ideas are praised for their lasting influence, their grandness of scope, their contribution to a long-standing debate—but not for their accuracy. In Durant, this produced a man who often cared more about whether an idea was beautiful or interesting rather than whether it was true.

 Fueling this tendency is another shibboleth of the ‘Great Books’ school: that simply by reading the greatest books of the ages, one could purge oneself of all provincial prejudices and look upon history as from a timeless perspective. Durant seems to think this way, as the very title of this book shows: The Lessons of History . These conclusions are not his own theses, not his own ideas—but lessons, which Durant can gather from the fabric of history as easily as a child can infer the lesson from a fairytale. It goes without saying that this is nonsense. Durant looked at history and found his own prejudices; and this book is merely a collection of them.

 I am sure you are wearied by this litany of accusations and complaints, so I will only mention in passing the other distinctive sins of this ‘Great Books’ mindset—namely, its glorification of Europe, and only Western Europe, at the expense of the rest of the world, as well as its underrepresentation of women and minorities. This is wonderfully illustrated in Durant's plan of the Story of Civilization , wherein he dedicates one volume to all of Asia, and the rest of the eleven volumes to Europe (and none to South America or to Africa).

 At this point you may be wondering, “If Durant has so many faults, which you are apparently so acutely aware of, why are you reading so much of him?” Well, this has to do with my own history. At the end of my time in college, vaguely feeling that the education I received was not worth half of what I paid for it, I picked up Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind . This book had a profound effect on me. Bloom seemed to articulate my dissatisfaction with my education, as well point me in the direction where it could be rectified. As soon as I finished, I looked up the list of the Great Books of the Western World , and dove in.

 Now, despite all of the faults I listed above, I must still admit that one receives a stupendous education by reading the books recommended in the program. I read rabidly, desperately, doing my best to make up for lost time; and whatever may be my intellectual shortcomings now—and they are many—I am at least far better off than I was before I began. But of course I still have not read all of these hoary books—there are a lot!—and this is partly why I’m interested in Will Durant: for in him, I can see the end result of my own educational project.

 Unfortunately, while Durant was truly an excellent writer, for the reasons I discussed above, he was a poor thinker. This slim volume, the fruits of a massive research project, is a collection of vague homilies, baseless theorizing, and unsupported claims. It is incredible and a bit depressing that so much learning could produce so little insight. I still think I have much to learn from Durant and the other proponents of the ‘Great Books’ school—as well as from the books themselves, of course. But now, hopefully, after sorting through Durant’s writings, I will be better able to separate the good from the bad, the worthless from the valuable; for I do think, after all, that there is something essentially precious in the idea.
 americana one-damn-thing-after-another
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 Jameson
 Author 10 books 50 followers
 December 27, 2013
 I inherited much of my father’s library many years ago, including the entire eleven volume Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant. Included in the set was the single slim volume they wrote afterward by way of an introduction, The Lessons of History. Over the years I have frequently dipped into individual volumes of the main text for research, but I never read any entire volume until my wife came bouncing into my office one evening and thrust The Lessons of History under my nose and said, “Read this chapter!” I read it, and immediately wondered why the hell I hadn’t read the whole thing long ago. I have now rectified that. Not the whole eleven volume set, but I have read that one-volume introduction and I was blown away by it.

 The Lessons of History is intended to be both an introduction and a survey of human history as a product of the human experience, of man’s essential evolutionary nature. The Durant’s do not judge; they do not say this system is better than that, or peace is better than war. They do not even bang the drum of George Santayana’s often misquoted maxim: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” What they do stress is that man will, in fact, continuously repeat the past because he cannot help himself. Man has evolved to be a particular organism with particular needs and desires and drives and responses and those are the things that influence his behavior, over and over again throughout the millennia. It will be many a long day before the lion evolves into a critter capable of lying down with the lamb, and it will be just as long before man evolves into a critter not driven by, “acquisitiveness, pugnacity, and pride.”

 So what The Story of Civilization chronicles, and The Lessons of History summarizes, is the sequence of patterns of behavior that have been repeated continuously since the first known civilization(s), with “civilization” being defined as a social order that promotes cultural creation. But it is the laws of evolution that limit civilization, so that man’s natural instincts of competition (for food, mates, power), selection (some men will always have better competitive skills than others, and so there will always be inequality), and reproduction (influenced, obviously, by competition and selection) will always be the limiting factors that cause a civilization to rise and fall. And the rise and fall of civilizations—all civilizations that have been or are yet to come—is a given. None will last forever, and the speed with which they appear and vanish can depend on a variety of factors: geological, climatological, biological, or even political. Do you doubt that last one? Consider Communism. Primitive communism, meaning a society based on communal sharing, actually worked in hunter/gatherer societies that were constantly on the move pursuing game, but those are precisely the societies that have neither the leisure nor the wherewithal to pursue the cultural creation that defines a civilization. The moment a society depends on continuous labor to feed itself with provision for the future (as in agriculture, for example, as opposed to hunting and gathering) selection comes into play, along with its concomitant concept of private property (this patch of earth is more fertile and productive than that patch) with some men being more successful than others, and communism ceases to be an effective tool for societal survival. After all, if everything is going to be shared equally, I might as well just kick back here a take nap and let you do the heavy lifting.

 Competition between individuals means I run faster, fight harder, or outwit you. In a society, that translates into war, and since man is what he is, wars will continue as long as man exists. To quote the Durants (writing in 1968): “In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.” The only silver lining in that dark cloud is that war does stimulate the tool-using animal’s creative impulses, and occasionally those instruments designed for destruction are converted to creative and beneficial uses. Reproduction among individuals means, well, I hardly think we need go there, but in a society, it means pretty much that he who has the most children wins, which goes a long way to explaining why there are currently 7,132,780,410 people on earth, and that number will be over 7,132,800,000 before I finish this review.

 But it was the repetitive evolution of different political structures that really caught my eye. The Durants used China under Wang An-shih (1068-85 AD) as an example of the failure of socialism. Wang An-shih decided the state should own and control everything, commerce, industry, agriculture, and “[succor] the working classes [by] preventing them from being ground into the dust by the rich.” For a while, everything was hunky-dory, with great feats of engineering, pensions for the elderly and unemployed, an overhaul of the educational system, governmental boards in every district to administer every damn thing in the world. Sounds a little like America today, doesn’t it? But it fell apart (the Durants cite as reasons high taxes, an enormous army, and bureaucratic corruption, also much like America today), as socialism always has throughout all of history because, to quote the late Margaret Thatcher, “Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.” That’s me quoting her, obviously, not the Durants. Instead, they wrote: “The experience of the past leaves little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity.”

 As I was reading all this, I happened to watch the movie, Meet John Doe, with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, and its theme of Christ’s message in today’s world, and I started thinking about America today. In the movie, the success of the John Doe Clubs that spring up across the nation is due to people and communities coming together to create work for their less fortunate neighbors. Not once in the movie is there any mention of a handout or any form of money given away as opposed to earned.

 The Lessons of History stresses that selection and the inevitable superiority of some people means that there will always be inequality, but not necessarily inequity. There are two forms of equality that no society can ignore without fatal consequences: equality under the law; and equal opportunity for education, because education provides the opportunity for every man to rise according to his ability. However, even if the law and educational opportunity are available for all, if the gap between rich and poor widens too much, and if there is no bridge of middleclass with which the poor can hope to overcome that gap, violent redistribution of wealth will inevitably occur. It’s one of the lessons of history.
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 Danger Kallisti
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 February 13, 2008
 The first thing to understand about this book is that it was written by old people. By this, I don’t even mean that they were chronologically enhanced; more that they were trapped by that inflexible mindset which places tradition and an intense desire for belonging above a natural exploration of reality.

 The Durants were either intelligent people trying to reconcile their minds to the demands of the culture in which they were raised, or abject liars attempting to politick their way onto the bookshelves of the prosaic postwar American public. The doublespeak and contradictory statements make the book read like a Kerry speech.

 One can’t simultaneously say that greed and hoarding are positive human behaviors and praise the charitable throughout history for their generosity, or say that fear and respect for one’s elders goes hand in hand with true creativity and individuality.

 This isn’t thinking, it’s highly-skilled, well-educated apery. No wonder my father enjoys it so much, since he too is no more (and probably considerably less) than the average street kid or drug dealer. This is philosophy in its cheapest and most generic form.

 In the same way that they say statistics will be used to support any point, it would seem that 3500 years of chaotic human behavior may be used in the same manner. Like anything created by mainstream Western, Judeo-Christian culture, this book seeks only to preserve the foundations upon which it was built.

 I also saw a great deal of reactionary sentiment against the “upstart” 1960s youth culture.
 A great deal of time is spent lamenting the decay of morality and religion (even when they, themselves agree that these things are false societal constructs designed to keep power in the hands of those in control, and not natural or even particularly healthy attributes of mankind).

 “Is democracy responsible for the current debasement of art? The debasement, of course, is not unquestioned; it is a matter of subjective judgment; and those of us who shudder at its excesses – its meaningless blotches of color [Pollack?], its collages of debris [pop art?], its Babels of cacophony [rock music?] – are doubtless imprisoned in our past and dull to the courage of experiment. The producers of such nonsense are appealing not to the general public – which scorns them as lunatics, degenerates, or charlatans – but to gullible middle-class purchasers who are hypnotized by auctioneers and are thrilled by the new, however deformed.”

 As is shown repeatedly throughout the book, the Durants believe that the only art worthy of the title is the realism of Renaissance painters, the stark geometry of Greek architecture, or the predictable mathematics of classical music. While I won’t disagree that there were certainly some artists of these eras, for the most part those who are considered by the traditionally “educated” to be great artists are truly no more than great technicians, capable of great dexterity and numerical understanding. In my mind, true art is deconstruction of all that the “educated” human mind holds true and certain. It is that which brings one back to the deeper, eternal, animal nature, which creates an anarchy of the soul and frees the viewer from the constraints attached by society. It is that which is capable of undoing the indoctrination of life in the modern world and creating a direct channel between the Chaos Mind and the human spirit.
 crap-just-crap
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 Peiman E iran
 1,394 reviews 674 followers
 May 20, 2022
 ‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، در این ریویو تصمیم گرفتم تا از سرتاسرِ این کتابِ ارزشمند، جملاتی را به انتخاب برایِ شما دوستانِ خردگرا و اهلِ کتاب، بنویسم
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 ‎ولتر میگوید: تاریخ در کل مجموعه ای از جنایات، حماقتها و ناکامی هایِ نوعِ بشر است
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 ‎آیا گذشته سراسر تکرارِ ملالت بارِ خطاهایی است که آینده محکوم به ارتکابِ آن در میدانی وسیع تر و مقیاسی بزرگتر است؟
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 ‎بخش عمدهٔ تاریخ، حدس و فرض است و بقیهٔ آن تعصب..... شواهدِ چندگونه و مورخانِ متعصب و مغرض، بیانِ وقایع تاریخی در گذشته را به نوعی تیره و مبهم ساخته است و شاید پایبندی به مسائل دینی و اعتقاداتِ مذهبی و حتی میهن پرستی این دسته از مورخان، دلیلی بر این موضوع باشد و این مورخان در انتخابِ مطالب و ظریف کاری هایِ توصیفی تمایلاتِ پنهانِ خویش را فاش میسازند
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 ‎زمانِ حال، همان طومارِ گذشته است که برای اجرا شدن بسته شده است و گذشته همان طومارِ حال است که برایِ شناخته شدن گسترده شده است
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 ‎آزادی و برابری هر دو دشمنانِ سوگند خورده و دیرینهٔ یکدیگرند. هنگامی که یکی از این دو برتر باشد و غالب شود، دیگری میمیرد.. اگر انسانها آزادانه به حالِ خود رها شوند، نابرابری های ذاتیشان به صورتِ تصاعدی افزایش میابد، همانطور که در انگلستان و آمریکای سدهٔ نوزدهم شاهدِ این موضوع بودیم.. از سویِ دیگر برای مهار نابرابری باید آزادی قربانی شود، همانطور که در روسیه پس از سال ۱۹۱۷ این موضوع را شاهد بودیم.. نابرابری حتی در شرایطِ سرکوب نیز رشد میکند کسی که زیر حدِ وسط قرار دارد، خواهانِ برابری است و کسی که از استعدادِ برتر بهره مند است، خواهانِ آزادی میباشد و سرانجام همان کسانی که در سطحِ بالا بوده و استعدادی برتر دارند، به خواستهٔ خویش میرسند
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 ‎اگر تولیدِ مثلِ انسان، بر موجودیِ مواد غذایی بچربد، طبیعت برای برقرار ساختن موازنه، سه عامل در اختیار دارد: قحطی، بیماری همه گیر و جنگ
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 ‎کمک های نقدی و مادی به فقرا، آنها را به ازدواج های بی هنگام و بچه دار شدنِ بی حساب تشویق میکند و چنین چیزی در هر سرزمینی مشکل ایجاد میکند، چراکه نرخِ زایش از نرخِ مرگ پیشی میگیرد و افزایشِ مصرفِ موادِ غذایی و منابعِ طبیعی، هر نوع طرقی در تولیدِ مواد غذایی و دیگر مواردِ مورد نیاز برای زندگی را خنثی خواهد کرد
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 ‎این نژاد نیست که تمدن را به وجود می آورد، بلکه این تمدن است که ملت ها را میسازد.. به عبارت دیگر، اوضاع و احوالِ جغرافیایی، اقتصادی و سیاسی، فرهنگ را میسازد و فرهنگ نیز گونهٔ خاص انسان را می آفریند
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 ‎آگاهی از تاریخ به ما می آموزد که تمدن، حاصل همکاری و تعاونی است که تقریباً همهٔ انسانها در آن سهم داشته اند.. تمدن میراثِ مشترکِ ماست و همهٔ ما مدیون تمدن هستیم
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 ‎بنایِ اجتماع بر پایهٔ آرمانها و آرزوهایِ انسانها نیست، بلکه بر بنیانِ طبیعتِ آنهاست و ساختار فطریِ انسانها یعنی همان امیال، غرایز و عواطف، قوانینِ اساسیِ کشورها را یکی پس از دیگری، رقم میزند
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 ‎شورشیان هنگامِ پیروزی، همان شیوه هایی را بکار میبندند که خود همواره عمل به آنها را از جانبِ قدرتها و حکومتهایِ برکنار و خلع شده، محکوم میساختند
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 ‎قوانینِ اخلاقی، در طولِ تاریخ به دلیلِ انطباق با شرایطِ تاریخی و زیست محیطی، در تغییر و دگرگونی بوده است.. ستیزه گری، خونریزی، حرص و طمع و آمادگیِ جنسی، در تنازعِ بقا، امتیاز محسوب میشد.. احتمالاً هر فرومایگی و شرارتی، در برخی از سرزمینها و در روزگارانی، یک نوع فضیلت و خصلتی در خورِ ادامهٔ حیاتِ فرد، خانواده و یا یک اجتماع به شمار می آمد... زشت کاری هایِ آدمی، میراثِ روزگارِ ترقیِ اوست، نه داغِ ننگِ ایامِ سقوط
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 ‎به نظر نمیرسد که دین با اخلاق، رابطه ای داشته باشد.. همانطور که لوکرتیوس، فیلسوفِ رومی گفته است، این ترس بود که خدایان را آفرید.. ترس از نیروهایِ مخفی در زمین، رودها، دریاها، درختان، بادها و آسمان و بسیاری از حوادثِ طبیعی.. پرستش و خشنود کردنِ این نیروها با دادنِ هدایا و قربانی، یا سحر و افسون و دعا، دین را به وجود آورد.. تنها زمانی که خادمانِ دین، این ترسها و نیایش ها را به حمایت از قانون و اخلاق به کار انداختند، دین به صورتِ نیرویِ حیاتی دولتها و رقیبِ آنها درآمد.. دین به مردم گفت که دستوراتِ اخلاقی و قوانین را خدا یا خدایان وضع کرده اند.. در طولِ تاریخ ادیان و مذاهب در خدمتِ حکومتها و دولتها بوده اند و از این راه سودِ زیادی نصیبِ روحانیون و ملاها در کلیساها و مساجد شده است
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 ‎قدرتهایِ دینی و روحانیون در طولِ تاریخ اصلاحات اندکی در دین و مذهب هایِ مختلف انجام داده اند، ولی شجاعتِ این را ندارند تا برخی از اصولِ دینی و داستانها و معجزه هایِ مذهبی را که عقل و خردِ انسانی به آنها میخندد را تغییر دهند، چراکه اینگونه تغییرها موجبِ رنجشِ میلیونها پیرو مذهبی و آدمهایی میشود که به خرافات و موهوماتِ الهام بخش و تسلّی دهنده در کتبِ مقدس دل بسته اند
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 ‎سازش میانِ دین و فلسفه و دانش ممکن نیست.. مگر آنکه فلاسفه و خردگرایان اعلام کنند برای خدمتِ اخلاقیِ پایگاه هایِ دینی و مذهبی همچون کلیسا و کنیسه و مسجد، جایگزینی نیافته اند و از سوی دیگر ادیان و مذاهب نیز آزادی در تفکر و اندیشه و خردگرایی را به رسمیت بشناسد
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 ‎تاریخ قدرتِ آفرینش و حیات بخشِ طبیعت را به عنوانِ خدا میشناسد و اعتقادی به خدایِ واحد و علیم و رحیم ندارد.. زمین لرزه، طوفان، گردباد، سیل، بیماری و دیگر بلایاها و جنایات و جنگها، همگی نشان دهندهٔ سرنوشتی کور یا بی طرف خواهد بود که پدیده هایِ تصادفی و اتفاقی آن را خیلی از مردم از سرِ انگارهٔ نظم، عظمت، جمال یا تعالی میخوانند... حتی اگر تاریخ پشتیبانِ یک نوع الهیات باشد، این الهیات از نوعِ آیینِ مانی و حتی زرتشت خواهد بود.. یعنی نوعی جوهرِ اهورایی با جوهرِ اهریمنی مدام با یکدیگر در نبرد هستند تا بر جهان و موجوداتِ آن همچون انسانها، تسلط پیدا کنند.. از نگاهِ طبیعت و تاریخ، خوب یعنی آنچه ادامهٔ حیات میدهد و بد یعنی آنچه از میان میرود.. پس عالم هستی نه تعصبی به پیامبران دارد و نه در بر علیه و زیانِ کسی همچون چنگیزخان مغول، کاری انجام میدهد
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 ‎رشد و پیشرفتِ دانش و خردِ انسانی و همچنین آگاهیِ فزایندهٔ انسان از جایگاهِ بسیار کوچک و حقیرش در این جهانِ بسیار بزرگ، به کاهشِ باورهایِ دینی، شتاب بخشیده است.. به همین دلیل است که فرانسیس بیکن گفت: علم و دانش، دینِ انسانِ رهایی یافتهٔ عصرِ جدید است
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 ‎تا زمانی که در جهان فقر و تنگدستی وجود دارد، خدایان نیز وجود خواهند داشت
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 ‎انقلابِ صنعتی، همراهِ خود، دموکراسی، آزادی زنان، تنظیم خانواده، سوسیالیسم، رهایی ادبیات از وابستگی به حمایتِ اشرافیت، جایگزینی رئالیسم با رمانتیسم در داستانسرایی و بالاخره تفسیرِ اقتصادیِ تاریخ را به همراه آورد
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 ‎کسانی که میتوانند دیگران را به خدمتِ خویش درآورند، آنانی را به خدمت میگیرند که تنها قادرند بر اشیا مسلط شوند.. و انسانهایی که قادرند بر پول تسلط داشته باشند، بر همه سلطه دارند
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 ‎در حالتِ عادی و درکل،انسانها را بر حسبِ استعدادِ خود برایِ تولید میسنجند. البته جز در زمان جنگ که در آن با معیارِ استعداد در تخریب و کشتار و انهدام سنجیده میشوند
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 ‎از آنجا که انسان شیفتهٔ آزادی است و آزادیِ افراد در جامعه مستلزمِ قواعدی برای رفتار است، ب��ابراین نخستین شرطِ آزادی، محدودیتِ آن است.. اگر آزادی مطلق و بی بند و بار گردد، خود در هرج و مرج تباه خواهد شد.. پس نخستین وظیفهٔ حکومت، برقراری نظم و انضباط است
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 ‎تاریخ ثابت کرده که حکومت از نوعِ پادشاهی و سلطنت، سازگارترین نوعِ حکومت با طبیعتِ انسانهاست.. اگر بنا باشد دربارهٔ اشکالِ حکومت بر حسبِ رواج و عمرِ آنها قضاوت کنیم، باید نشانِ افتخار را به سلطنت و پادشاهی بدهیم
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 ‎حکومتِ اشراف، تنها پرورشگاهِ کشورداری نیست، بلکه مخزن و اسبابِ انتقالِ فرهنگ، منش ها، معیارها و سلیقه ها نیز میباشد و از این طریق در برابرِ جوش و خروشِ و طغیان هایِ اجتماعی، ناهنجاری هایِ هنری و یا تغییراتِ ناگهانی در نظامِ اخلاقی، در حکمِ سدی محکم و محافظ عمل میکند.. ببینید از انقلابِ فرانسه به بعد، چه بر سرِ اخلاقیات، آداب، سبکها و هنر آمده است
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 ‎بسیاری از انقلابها بر علیه حکومتِ پادشاهی و روی کار آمدنِ دموکراسی، آثار مخرب داشته است و باعث روی کار آمدنِ نوکیسه ها و عقب مانده ها شده است.. به یکباره گسستن از گذشته، یعنی تحریکِ جنونی که پی آمدِ آن، اختلالاتِ شدید یا فلجِ عمومیِ جامعه است.. از آنجا که سلامتِ روانیِ انسان وابسته به تداومِ حافظهٔ اوست، سلامتِ روانِ جامعه نیز وابسته به تداومِ سنتهایِ آن است
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 ‎افلاطون میگوید: دیکتاتوری طبعاً از دموکراسی سرچشمه میگیرد و خشن ترین شکلِ ظلم و برده داری از افراطی ترین شکلِ آزادی ساخته میشود
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 ‎معمولاً، آزادی اقتصادی در میانِ اقشارِ متوسط جامعه، کم شده و کاهش میابد و از سوی دیگر آزادی سیاسی به صورتِ تظاهری، تسلی بخش این گروه از مردم میشود.. نباید چنین مسائلی را تماماً ناشی از انحراف و فسادِ ثروتمندان بدانیم، بلکه این موضوع از جبری بودنِ توسعهٔ اقتصادی و طبیعتِ انسان، سرچشمه میگیرد.. هرچه بر پیچیدگیِ اقتصادی افزوده شود، به استعدادِ برتر امتیازِ عالی تری تعلق میگیرد و تمرکزِ ثروت و مسئولیت و قدرتِ سیاسی را تشدید میکند
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 ‎دموکراسی از سایرِ روش هایِ حکومت داری دشوارتر است، زیرا وسیع ترین پراکنش و پراکندگیِ تعقل و اندیشه را میطلبد و هنگامی که ما مردم خود را به حکومت میرسانیم، از یاد میبریم که خویش را عاقل سازیم... تعلیم و تربیت توسعه یافته، اما قدرتِ باروریِ مردمِ ساده و عوام پیوسته مانعِ بزرگی بر سرِ راهِ گسترشِ تعقل و خردمندی بوده است... جهل و نادانی را تنها به این دلیل که فراوان ترین چیز است، نباید بر تختِ قدرت نشاند
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 ‎حقِ رسیدن به منصب و قدرت، جزوِ حقوقِ انسان به شمار نمی آید، اما حقِ انسان است که برای رسیدن به منصب و قدرت در هر راهی که به استعداد و لیاقت او امکانِ پرورش و آزمایش میدهد، گام بردارد... نباید فراموش کنیم که حق، هدیهٔ طبیعت یا آسمان نیست، بلکه امتیازی است که بخاطرِ منافعِ گروه به فرد داده میشود
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 ‎اگر اقتصادِ آزاد قادر نباشد به همان شایستگی که ثروت را ایجاد کرده است، آن را توزیع کند، راهِ دیکتاتوری به رویِ هرکس که بتواند به دیگران وعدهٔ اطمینان بخشِ تأمینِ زندگی را بدهد، گشوده خواهد بود و حکومتی نظامی، تحتِ انواعِ اصطلاح هایِ فریبنده، جهانِ آزاد را فرا خواهد گرفت
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 ‎نظمِ جهانی، با توافقِ دولتمردان و حکومتها حاصل نمیشود، بلکه از راه پیروزیِ بسیار قاطع یکی از قدرتهایِ بزرگ که قادر است قانونِ بین المللی را دیکته و اجرا کند، بدست خواهد آمد
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 ‎تمدن یعنی نظمی اجتماعی که تعالی بخشِ آفرینشِ فرهنگی است.. نظمی سیاسی که عادتها، اخلاقیات و قانون، آن را تأمین میکند.. و در نهایت نظمی است اقتصادی که با تداومِ تولید و مبادله، برقرار میشود.. تمدن آفرینشِ فرهنگی است که در پرتو آزادی و امکانات برای آفریدن، تجربه، تفسیر و آزمایش و باروری باورها، ادبیات، منش ها و هنرها، صورت میگیرد... تمدن رشتهٔ درهم تنیده و زودگسلِ روابطِ انسانی است که دشوار بافته میشود و آسان نابود میگردد
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 ‎اگر ما امروز پیشرفت کرده ایم، به این خاطر نیست که ما سالمتر، بهتر یا عاقل تر از انسانهای گذشته هستیم، بلکه سبب آن است که بر میراثی غنی تر و بر سطحِ عالی ترِ بنیانی که تراکمِ دانش و هنر آن را به صورتِ تکیه گاه و حفاظ وجودی ما بالا میبرد، دیده گشوده ایم.. این میراث رشد میکند و انسانی که آن را دریافت میکند نیز به همان نسبت رشد و پیشرفت میکند
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 ‎آن انسانی سعادتمند است که قبل از مرگ، تا آنجا که میتواند از میراث تمدن خوشه چینی کند و آن را به فرزندانِ خود منتقل سازد.. چنین انسانی تا واپسین دمِ حیات مدیون و شاکرِ این میراثِ زوال ناپذیر خواهد بود و میداند که این میراث پرورانندهٔ ما انسانها و حیاتِ جاویدِ ماست
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 ‎امیدوارم این ریویو برایِ شما دوستانِ هوشی وار، مفید بوده باشه
 ‎«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»
 تاریخی فلسفه
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 Lori Tian Sailiata
 242 reviews 30 followers
 December 29, 2014
 The audio version is delightful. It enhances the original text with interviews that are relevant to each section. The intimacy between Will and Ariel is a treat. Their playful arm wrestling over ideas and concepts makes for a better interview. Sure, their world view is older...although he was a radical of his time. But even for the faults, it's a delight to linger in his mind. And an honor to be in the presence of Ariel's spirit.
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 Nawal Al-Qussyer
 167 reviews 2,080 followers
 December 2, 2015
 http://domo3.us/blog/?p=858

 كنت قد قررت أن أعطي الكتاب نجمتين .. لكن آخر فصل قلب موازين الكتب واخترت أن أقيمه ب ثلاث نجمات ..
 قام ويل وزوجته ارييل بتأليف هذا الكتاب بعد انتهائهم من تأليف ونشر كتاب قصة الحضارة الضخم وكأنه في رحلته عبر التاريخ يقدم دروسا مستفادة وعبر من التاريخ الذي يكرر نفسه بصورته العامة.. يتكون الكتاب من ١٣ فصلا مختلفة الطول.. يعنون الفصول بعامل أو عنصر في حياة الانسان وعلاقته بالتاريخ وما قدم عبر العصور السالفة:
 -ألوان من الحيرة
 -التاريخ والأرض
 -البيولوجيا والتاريخ
 -العرق والتاريخ
 -الشخصية والتاريخ
 -الأخلاق والتاريخ
 -الدين والتاريخ
 -الاقتصاد والتاريخ
 -الاشتراكية والتاريخ
 -الحكومة والحرب
 -التاريخ والحرب
 -التطور والتحلل
 -هل التقدم حقيقي
 -وينتهي الكتاب بالهوامش..

 الفصل الأخير حقيقة هو ما حرضني على التفكير أكثر بين فصول الكتاب.. إذ أنه يقدم تساؤلات كفيلة بجعلك تعيد النظر إلى واقعك وارتباطه بالتاريخ وعلاقته بالمستقبل.. تشكل وجهة نظرك للحضارة من جانب آخر ووجهة نظر تاريخية تؤمن بأن الحضارة تولد وقد تموت أو تركد.. وعملية التقدم هي نقل الحضارة إلى كل جيل عبر التعليم والوعي.. والوراثة في مسألة الحضارة شيء باطل.. فالحضارة لاتورث.

 قبل أن أبدي ملاحظاتي على الكتاب أود أن أشكر المترجم.. أعتبر ترجمته من أفضل التراجم التي قرأتها.. واضحة ،ميسرة وغير ركيكة على الإطلاق.. كما كان جهده رائع إذ أضاف بعض الهوامش والتعريفات لبعض الاشخاص الذين تم ذكرهم في الكتاب وقد لايكونون معروفين لديك، فتكلف المترجم مشكورا بتوضيح بعض النقاط لأن الكتاب يبدو لي موجه شخصيا للغرب الذين هم على علم ببعض المسميات والتاريخ الاغريقي وشخوصه و و و .

 الفصول الأولى جميلة لكني أرى أن الكتاب يضعف من المنتصف حتى قبل الفصل الأخير.. في هذا الكتاب وعلى مدى رحلته المبسطة للتاريخ عرفت أن البشر حين يطلقون العنان لأنفسهم ورغباتهم يصبحون وحوشا.. يتعطشون للملك والثراء ولو كان على حساب الآخرين.. يقتلون.. يفرضون أحكاما مستبدة ولايهمهم إطلاقا طبقاتا لفقراء والضعفاء وكم ستتسبب لهم هذه الاحكام من قمع وطحن ! أول درس من التاريخ أن الإنسان مرعب إذا صب اهتمامه في المال والملك ..

 في نظري الكاتب يحتاج إلى نظرة إسلامية أعمق تهذب بعض نظرياته.. هناك بعض وجهات النظر والأفكار التي طرحها لا أتفق معاها إطلاقا وأشعر أن هناك أحكام تطلق من واقعه وبيئته فلاتعُمم.. لا أعرف لمَ لكني فعلا شعرت أنه بحاجة إلى نظرة إسلامية. مثلا في جدول العادات للإنسان شعرت بأن هناك مغالطات مثل النوم لايعتبر سلبيا! إلا إذا كان زائدا عن الحد.. وكذلك المغازلة ليست شيء ايجابي على إطلاقها..

 وهناك نقطة نبه لها المترجم أيضا.. يقول ديورانت أن اليهود أعطوا محمد -والنصارى ايضا- شيء مهم لرسالته وكتابه.. يقصد أن رسولنا الكريم اقتبس من التوراة أو من التراث اليهودي.. ولمثل هذا أقول أنه ينظر للأمر بزاوية واحدة ولم يجرب أن يتعمق في النظرة الاسلامية كما تعمق في تاريخ الإغريق! فليس من المعقول أن يكون رجل مثل ويل باحث وقارئ ومؤرخ يعتقد أن القرآن إنما هو اقتباس من التوراة.. القرآن وحي وهذه النظرة أساءت لي وستسيء لكل مسلم.. اليهود والنصارى لم يعطوا شيء لرسولنا الكريم.. القرآن وحي من الله.. واليهود إن كان لايعلم فهم من أشهر الناس في تكتمهم على العلم وحوادث النبوة..

 في الكتاب نقطة ذكرها في فصل التاريخ والدين.. أنه قامت حروب على رجال الدين والكنيسة والتشدد ونبذ العقل الذي حصل في العصور الوسطى وهذا مايحدث الآن لدينا.. وإن استمر الوضع أخشى ان يكون الدين لدينا شيء يضيق وليس يوسع.. ولكم أن تلاحظوا الوضع الحالي من كثرة الهجوم على المتدينين وعلى أسلوبهم وأقصد من لمتدينين النوع المتشدد جدا .. لاحظوا كثرة الهجوم مثل مسلسل طاش ماطاش وغيره حتى من بعض الدعاة أنفسهم.. ربما يتطور هذا النقد إلى هجوم شرس فيجب ان يعي رجال الدين ان الدين أوسع من نظرتهم الضيقة وأن لايتحدثوا باسم الدين في كل نظراتهم الشخصية المتشددة .. وإلا سيزداد الهجوم وسينبذ الدين سنون طوال بسبب مافعلوه.. تماما كما حصل في العصور الوسطى والتخلف الكنسي.. وهذا من دروس التاريخ العظيمة..

 الدرس الذي يجب أن نستفيد منه هو إصلاحات صولون في أثينا.. إصلاحاته التي أنقذت أثينا من الثورة والدمار والتي لم تستغرق سوا جيلا واحدا! ولذلك يقول ويل : “الآثار التي تحدثها الثورة يمكن تحققها بدونها، من خلال الدفع التدريجي للتطورات الاقتصادية”.. فالثورة ليست دائما حل ..

 يسمي ويل الكتاب دروس من التاريخ بينما كان يجب أن يسميه دروس من التاريخ الاوروبي والاغريقي والامريكي .. لأني أجد تجاهل و اغفال شديد لتاريخ الحضارة الاسلامية وركز على التاريخ الاوروبي والامريكي.. ولم يذكر تجربة الدول الاسلامية على الاطلاق ! بينم�� استمرت دول الخلافة الإسلامية لأكثر من ١٠٠٠ سنة! إجحافه هذا غير معقول..

 من ماخرجت به وأراه صحيح جدا من دروس التاريخ أن النظام عندما يورث للأبناء أو للعائلة سيتولد استبداد أو جهل من الحكام أنفسهم.. بينما لا بديل لنظام اختيار الأجدر.. وهو ما أثبت فعاليته عبر التاريخ.. وللحكم الاسلامي في أوله أكبر دليل في الخلافات الراشدة.

 قدم لفتة جميلة جدا عن الفن الهابط الذي نراه اليوم وعلاقته بالديموقراطية.. بتعليل منطقي رأيت فيه الكثير من الصحة والاسقاط على الواقع..

 الفصل الأخير هو أجمل ما في الكتاب في نظري.. لأنه يطرح تساؤلات واشكاليات عن التقدم .. وهل وضعنا ا��ح��لي أفضل من سابقنا ولم في كل مرة نتمنى العودة للماضي وحياة الاجداد ولابطأ مع أننا نعيش فس عالم سرعتته مضاعفة في كل شيء.. الكتاب جدير بقراءة المهتمين بالتاريخ.. لكن الكتاب طبعا عمل بشري بحت يحتوي الكثير من النقص وعدم وجود رؤية أشمل وأكثر حيادية للتاريخ.

 50-books-in-2010-project
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 Mohamed
 391 reviews 195 followers
 July 12, 2021
 يعرض ديورانت بعض الأفكار العامة عن التاريخ و تأثره ببعض العوامل كالبيولوجيا والأخلاق والدين والأقتصاد
 !! الأفكار في معظمها جيدة لكن بعض الأفكار تعكس انحيازاته فهو مثلا يرى أن إسرائيل دولة حضارية تغلبت على عوائق كثيرة طبيعية و بشرية
 p8-storytel
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 Roger
 220 reviews 1 follower
 October 18, 2015
 What a thoroughly disagreeable book. Filled with conclusory opinionated claptrap unsupported by historical evidence. Racist and homophobic.

 For example, "only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality" or "All strong characters and peoples are race conscious, and are instinctively averse to marriage outside their own racial group." or "...sin had flourished in every age...Even our generation has not yet rivaled the popularity of homosexualism in ancient Greece or Rome...". or ..."intelligence is perpetually retarted by the fertility of the simple."

 It goes one and and on and on, notwithstanding the fact that text is only 102 pages.

 Totally puts the lie to the authors' statement in the Preface in which they state that "our aim is not originality but inclusiveness; we offer a survey of human experience, not a personal revelation."

 While it is true they are not "original" (there are lots of fuzzy thinking bigots in the world) they are certainly not inclusive and the "personal revelation" they do, in fact, reveal is ugly and repulsive.
 history philosophy politics
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 Dennis
 652 reviews 252 followers
 Shelved as 'dnf'
 March 6, 2022
 Always difficult to say whether it makes sense to read such an old book about human history. I enjoyed it in the beginning, but soon some doubts crept in. At some point it became a back and forth between enjoying and disliking the text; nicely illustrated by the following paragraph:

 Intellect is therefore a vital force in history, but it can also be a dissolvent and destructive power. Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.


 What a rollercoaster. I think the main problem here is just that this is a book written by old people with a dated perspective.

 I could look past this— to some extent. But a book of merely 120 pages of course is not going to provide a comprehensive overview of human history. And this is also not what this book is about. It’s about what we have learned from all of it (hence the title). And I’m not sure it makes sense for me to read such a book when it was written by someone that, in my humble opinion, doesn’t understand human nature. This table here of positive and negative human instincts was the nail in the coffin:





 DNF at 24%

 I did read the last chapter, though, because a GR-friend of mine said it would be good; and it was. But I think I’d prefer to read a book written by someone with a more modern view on humanity and human history.
 history philosophical
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 Nazanin
 104 reviews 4 followers
 May 18, 2018
 ظاهرا دورانت ها این کتاب را در جریان بازخوانی "تاریخ تمدن" نگاشته اند و به بررسی تاریخ در پیوند با موضوعاتی از قبیل زمین، اخلاق، دین، اقتصاد و ... و تاثیر این مسائل بر تاریخ و بالعکس پرداخته اند و در نهایت رشد و زوال و پیشرفت انسان و تمدن در گذرگاه زمان و تاریخ را واکاوی کرده اند

 اگر مثل من تاریخ تمدن را نخوانده اید و مطمئن هم نیستید که اصولا روزی آن اثر را خواهید خواند یا خیر شاید این کتاب، به عنوان پیش درآمد یا دست کم چکیده ای از دیدگاه های یکی از فیلسوفان و محققان بزرگ، گزینه مناسبی باشد
 البته برای من در حکم یک کتاب شکوهمند و فوق العاده نبود اما خب جملات و مطالب ارزشمند و تامل برانگیزی در آن مطرح شده بود که حتما و حتما ارزش یکبار خوانده شدن را خواهد داشت. [خودم هم بعدها باید یک بار دیگر مرورش کنم] اما عنوانِ کتاب شاید جالب تر از هر مساله ای باشد : "درس های تاریخ" که همزمان موضوعی ست هم جدی و هم به گمانم شوخی! به راستی چقدر از تاریخ درس گرفته شده و می شود؟؟؟

 به قول خود ویل دورانت تاریخ تکرار می شود، تاریخ در مقیاسی وسیع تر تکرار می شود...

 و اصولا اگر از تاریخ درس گرفته می شد آیا باز هم چنین خونسرد و جدی و بی رحم تکرار می شد؟
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 Daniel Clausen
 Author 9 books 455 followers
 January 16, 2022
 This book is over 50 years old. In some ways, the book now lives in the shadows of more recent classics, such as Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and Yuval Noah Harari's "21 Lessons for the 21st Century." In these more contemporary books, we are also called to look at the lessons of history. In these books, too, we are called on to be skeptical and hesitant in making sense out of the often nonsense of history. "History is so indifferently rich that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances." (p. 97). But each of these books owes something to this book -- Will and Ariel Durant's "The Lessons of History."

 In one hundred pages, the authors cover such topics as religion, race, war, economics, decay, and progress. Though the chapters are often no longer than a few pages, the breadth of the analysis is the entirety of human history. Often, the tone of the chapters is unabashedly speculative and whimsical. The prose often reaches for something close to poetry. And through this poetry, we can come to see our own circumstances as the recurrence of an old problem in a new garb.

 Perhaps the most contentious issue of the book -- and perhaps the one that makes it the most dated -- is how it deals with human nature. In this book, the recurrence of certain types of events is ascribed to human nature and the human condition. History, the authors write, “is a fragment of biology” (p. 18). Scholars with a more constructivist approach would probably take issue with analyses based on sweeping generalizations about human nature, that our primitive mental hardwiring can be seen as an essential cause for the reoccurrences of history. And yet, we can find sympathetic books in Richard Dawkins’s "The Selfish Gene" and Steven Pinker’s "The Blank Slate". And even modern historians like Yuval Noah Harari ground their understanding of history in the actions of humans as only slightly more evolved primates.

 Perhaps it's the greatest value is its last chapter, which casts a skeptical gaze on progress and technology. That skepticism is even more valuable in these times when the internet and social media have unleashed a torrent of unintentional negative externalities in the form of fake news and tribalism. Skeptically, the authors conclude that while decay is a recurrent theme in history, the progress of civilizations can survive through education. “Consider education not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates and reigns...but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible to as many as possible” (p. 101).

 So, then, why go back to a book written over 50 years ago. One good reason is that the book has withstood the test of time. Though the volume is short (about 100 pages), compact, self-consciously hesitant about its findings, it has withstood the test of time and continues to find its way onto reading lists as varied as scholastic and practical. The book has moments where it is very specifically a product of its time. It worries, for example, about the contest between capitalism and socialism. Yet, its very datedness gives it value as a lesson in trying to deal with contemporary problems through a historical gaze. It offers us a chance to back-test two historians' attempts to make sense of their modern times through history. Their insights, while highly qualified, seems relevant to our current moment.

 Finally, in its style, the book offers a modern example of how scholars might try to attempt to come up with their own lessons. Most chapters are only a few pages, the whole book is about one hundred pages, and the book manages to make its points with minimal amounts of references.

 Sometimes for taking on big questions of our time, we don't need overly complicated tools. We can leave our extensive reading and numerous references in the background as we apply our knowledge in a concise and humble way. Perhaps that is a historical lesson from this book too.

 If we apply our deep knowledge in a concise and humble way, perhaps our own words can survive for fifty years.
 books-of-2020 books-of-2022
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 Ashok Krishna
 333 reviews 51 followers
 October 14, 2016
 ‘ History repeats itself ’, ‘ Those who don’t learn from history are forced to repeat it ’ – these are two of the quips about which I had been curious for so long. Is it possible that we humans are living a cycle all through our lives? Are we repeating the same things, events and experiences that our ancestors once went through? Are we humans, so-called most intelligent species of this planet, so inept at learning from our past that we go through the same pains and pleasures, events and experiences that keep staring at our face from the annals?

 I was seeking answers to these questions and when Amazon ‘recommended’ this book to me, I gladly accepted. Will and Ariel Durant, the author couple, are renowned for their contribution to the field of History and ‘The Story of Civilization’, a series of eleven volumes in Western history, is their magnum opus. And, when they offer to summarize all their learning in a little book, you can’t help grabbing the same with both hands. I am glad I did.

 In this book, Will and Ariel, categorize lessons of the past under various faculties. The evolution of mankind, the overcoming of geological obstacles, the biological evolution and multiplication into innumerable life forms, racial and ethnic diversities, the development of our ethics and morals, the loosening grip of religion on our conscience, growth of economics, socialism, wars and the various forms of governments. They end the book by discussing whether we have progressed by learning our lessons wisely from our past or are we running around in circles. The whole book makes not just an interesting read but worthy of some deep contemplation too.

 The book is written in a plain, pragmatic and unostentatious manner. They don’t claim to know it all, but acknowledge that history is just a collection of varying perspectives, depending on our cultural, religious, social background and understanding. Also, they present a neutral stance on our past, without nurturing a tender nostalgia for our past while having bleak fears about the future, or going gaga about the modern times while dismissing the past as full of darkness and barbaric beings.

 The past is full of lessons for those who want to learn, and the lessons are neither hard, nor bitter. We get what we seek from our past. If you’re looking for hope, it is full of it. If you are pessimistic about human history, then past offers an abundance of excuses for that too. It is all up to us to wisely choose lessons that suit us, learn from them, use the wisdom to sail through our present, while building a rich heritage for the future generations for whom we will soon be pages of history.

 A lovely introduction into the various facets of human history and a book that no history-buff should miss!
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 Heather Campbell
 14 reviews 15 followers
 August 29, 2011
 I'm giving this book a high rating no because I agree with it. But it is important to see where historiography was at in the 60's. Durants' main point is that the strong,tenacious, breeding society will win the day and that the world will only unite as one when aliens attack us. This is the antithesis of what Jesus taught. Also Gandhi. They also say the monarchy is the most stable successful form of government and that the church is important only because it serve as a personal behavior moderator and a societal babysitter. They put no importance in spirituality, forgiveness or hope. What a bleak picture they paint for the world. The frightening thing is that this is what history teaches. I do like the chapter they write explaining social Darwinism. They make the case for it pretty well and the person who read the book before me ate it up. Highlighted lines everywhere. Scary. But the Durants end the chapter with a short plea to treat each individual based on their merits. But since they seem so Darwinian in their view of humanity I don't see why they would try to distance themselves fromthe social application of his work. They do it weakly. Historiographers need to read this. It's part of our heritage as historians. I'm grateful I was not taught to think this way in graduate school although I got some of it growing up at home and in certain religious interpretations obsessed with knowing who could wield God's power and who could not based on inheritance. My educators (church and school) encouraged me to hold tightly to ideals of humane living, tolerance, and hope for a better future. If I had the Durants as teachers, I'd slit my wrists.
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 Farah Firdaus
 580 reviews 204 followers
 September 17, 2019
 Pultizer Prize-winning historians Will and Ariel Durant spent their entire lives studying and writing about history. The Lessons of History is a distillation of all of their works and lessons learned in one, short 120-pages book. They presented a crux on how history events are affected/related by/with several factors/themes. The factors/themes include biology, race, morals, religion, economics, government and war and several examples were quoted to support their conclusion. It's short, concise, profound and poetic in parts. What follows is some of my favorite takeaways from the book:

 1. So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it — perhaps as much more as the roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.

 2. Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign. Education has spread, but intelligence is perpetually retarded by the fertility of the simple. A cynic remarked that "you mustn't enthrone ignorance just because there is so much of it." However, ignorance is not long enthroned, for it lends itself to the manipulation by the forces that mold public opinion. It may be true, as Lincoln supposed, that "you can't fool all the people all the time," but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.

 3. Since inequality grows in an expanding economy, a society may find itself divided between a cultured minority and a majority of men and women too unfortunate by nature or circumstance to inherit or develop standards of excellence and taste. As this majority grows it acts as a cultural drag upon the minority; its ways of speech, dress, recreation, feeling, judgment, and thought spread upward, and internal barbarization by the majority is part of the price that the minority pays for its control of educational and economic opportunity.

 4. Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.
 classis-modern-classics non-fiction
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 Peiman
 229 reviews 36 followers
 July 17, 2022
 در عین کم حجم بودن پربار و جالبه. کتاب شامل 13 فصله که توی هر کدوم یک مسئله تاثیر گذار روی تاریخ و تمدن رو بررسی میکنه. مثلا تاریخ و نژاد، تاریخ و اخلاق، تاریخ و دین و به همین شکل موضوعات مختلف. برای شخص من بخش اقتصاد و همچنین حکومت در درجه ی اول و بخش جنگ بعد از اون از جذاب ترین بخش ها بودن. نکته ی مهم توی این کتاب نگاه کاملا بی طرف نویسنده به مطالب و بیان ساده ی نظراتش هست. قطعا این کتاب رو به بقیه توصیه میکنم.ه
 american history nonfiction
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 Jin
 588 reviews 109 followers
 October 7, 2020
 Der Titel sagt eigentlich schon worauf das Buch hinaus will: Die Autoren fassen die 5000 Jahre Menschheitsgeschichte auf vergleichsweise wenigen Seiten zusammen und kategorisieren dabei die Geschichte in verschiedenen Bereichen wie "Rasse", Moral oder Krieg.

 Ist es möglich, dass "Geschichte sinnlos ist", dass sie uns nichts lehrt und dass die unermessliche Vergangenheit nur das mühsame Einstudieren der Fehler war, die die Zukunft auf einer größeren Bühne und in größerem Maßstab zu machen bestimmt ist?

 Lustiger Weise hatte ich heute eine kurze Diskussion über Geschichte. Geschichte ist für viele staubtrocken, unlustig und zu fad. Viele denken, dass es sich nur um Fakten handelt, dabei ist es noch so viel mehr! Es ist nicht nur so, dass man aus vergangenem lernen kann, sondern es gibt auch Hoffnung auf die Zukunft, auf eine bessere Welt. Ich liebe wie das Buch abschließt und die Geschichte als Erbe und Wachstum, etwas worauf Mensch stolz sein kann, bezeichnet.
 Ich wünschte mir wirklich sehr, dass man an der Schule Geschichte nicht mehr nach Chronologie unterrichten würde, sondern nach anderen Kriterien wie in diesem Buch zusammengefasst. Das würde so vieles im Unterricht ändern und viel mehr Interesse wecken.

 Unser Ziel ist nicht Originalität, sondern Inklusivität

 Ich hatte richtig viel Spaß beim Lesen und habe das Buch in wenigen Stunden durchgelesen. Man muss im Kopf behalten, dass diese Version die Erstveröffentlichung von 1968 ist, somit natürlich nicht mehr alles korrekt ist und manches sogar schon sehr altmodisch wirkt. Aber trotz allem kann man aus den verschiedenen Interpretationen und Sichtweisen einiges lernen.
 Es war mehr wie eine Zusammenfassung der Geschichte mit Kommentaren von einem alten Professor, der vor Begeisterung der Geschichte strotzt und hier und da Anekdoten zu erzählen hat.

 Für professionelle Kenner der Menschheitsgeschichte mag dieses Buch nicht ausreichend sein, weil es einfach zu kurz ist um tiefer in die Materie einzudringen. Aber für jemand wie mich, der von der Geschichte fasziniert ist, bereits einiges kennt, aber noch lange kein Profi ist, war das genau richtig. Ich konnte gerade noch dem roten Faden folgen und war sehr amüsiert von seiner literarischen Reise durch die Menschheit.

 ** Dieses Buch wurde mir über NetGalley als E-Book zur Verfügung gestellt **
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 Wayne
 485 reviews 136 followers
 July 11, 2009
 A Curiosity.

 I liked it, not because I agreed with it, but because
 it is such a rarity and an oddity.

 How often are historians brave enough or rash enough to
 take on the job/challenge of offering "a survey of human experience"
 as Will and Ariel Durant say in their preface.
 Even if you disagree with or query their views, it makes you wonder what you yourself believe and think and whether you can justify it with facts and figures.
 You may not agree with much of this book, or then you may.
 But you will be stimulated by and alerted to everything it says because of the aims the authors have set themselves.

 My copy is scrawled with notes and underlinings, exclamation marks and mini-essays. I am as curious to reread it for these as I am for the printed text.
 How much have I changed???

 americana history
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 Sense of History
 356 reviews 389 followers
 November 1, 2020
 This is a very remarkable book. Will Durant, an American philosopher and historian, together with his wife Ariel wrote a world history in 11 volumes, published between 1935 and 1975. This booklet is an attempt to summarize what they learned from this experience.

 In the introduction Durant warns that it is a very subjective view, and above all departing from the doubt whether we really can learn something from history: " only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed. ". This laconic way of writing is very typical of this work. The Durants, despite their doubts, do not hesitate to posit some very confident assertions, especially in his first chapter: " Life is selection. We are all born unfree and UNEQUAL"/" Heaven and utopia are buckets in a well: when one goes down the other goes up! When religion declines Communism grows ". These are just a few examples, but they immediately make clear that the Durants also are children of their time: in many instances they state that the world in the year 1968 clearly is in moral decline (homosexuality is explicitly mentioned as an example), that the degradation of authority has become overpowering and that modern art is a total aberration. All very conservative-reactionary, indeed. But in other places they are very cautious and nuanced: they're not sure if war is always justified, or whether religion plays a useful role in society, etc.

 In short, the Durants can not be pinned down to just one stance. They have a complex, quirky look on history, with sometimes really interesting views. For example, according to them, progress is not really measurable, because depending on what criterion or angle you choose. But progress lies for them in that you can build on previous generations and civilizations, and in that respect we are better off than ever. All in all, an interesting booklet, but you have to take into account the personal view of the authors.
 (rating 2.5 stars)
 civilizations global-history philosophy-of-history
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 Mohammad Ali Shamekhi
 1,096 reviews 233 followers
 April 29, 2016

 با ارفاق سه ستاره

 ویل دورانت در این کتاب نظراتش رو صادقانه و بدون پیچیدگی در مورد مضامین مختلف بیان کرده. اما اون چیزی که حداقل برای من در این کتاب جالب تر بود اشارات تاریخیشه . طبیعتا کسی که از حرف های تاریخی ویل دورانت در این کتاب مطلع باشه، کتاب چیز خاصی نداره سوای همون جامعیت ویل دورانتی و قضاوت تقریبا عادلانه - اینکه سعی می کنه دو طرف قضیه رو باز کنه. ولی اصلا نباید انتظار یه آدم عمیق و فلسفی رو ازش داشت. به هر حال همینکه ذهن آدم با بعضی پرسش ها روبرو بشه خودش یه مزیته

 دو فصل "سوسیالیسم و تاریخ" و "نژاد و تاریخ" برای من از نظر اطلاعات تاریخیش جالب تر بود

 حاشیه: مضمون « بی عدالتی والا* » ی کالون مفهوم جالبی بود کلا
 حاشیه ی دو: جفا است اگه همه جا صرفا بگم ویل دورانت، و از آریل حرفی نزنم. همه ی ویل ها رو همراه آریل لحاظ کنید

 * Sublime Injustice
 تاریخ جنگ سیاست
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 Fatima Mohamady..
 363 reviews 79 followers
 March 4, 2020

 من فترة كنت وضعته على القائمة لكن لفكرتي عنه من كونه عمل متخصص وصعب وسيحتاج وقتاً للقراءة وتركيز؛ قررت تأجيله، بشكل ما حدث قبل أيام أن اقترح بعض الأصدقاء أن نبدأ قراءة جماعية نناقش بعدها ما نقرأ فاقترعنا وكانت نتيجة القرعة هذا الكتاب، لتنقله من قائمة الانتظار الأبدية إلى القراءة الفعلية..
 بدأ الكتاب بتقديم خفيف جداً وعام ما شكل عامل جذب ، ثم بدأ يتسلسل في طروحاته، وهو عبارة عن مجموعة مقالات أو قراءات تربط التاريخ بالعديد من المفاهيم الأساسية كالدين والاقتصاد والأخلاق والسياسة والعلم وغيرها، كلها مقدمة في إطار تاريخي أشبه بمنحنى ممثل لوجودها من خلال نماذج عملية من مختلف الأزمنة والأماكن.. لن يسعني تصنيفه -إضافة لفشلي الشخصي في موضوع التصنيف- لتشعبه وشموليته.. فهو اعتمد على وضع النظرية بشكل عام من ثم التدليل عليها بأمثلة من الواقع التاريخي وأحياناً الحديث بالشكل الذي يخدم الطرح الأساسي ويوضحه، واتساع نطاق المواضيع المطروحة يجعل حصره في مسمى واحد صعب.. فيه علم اجتماع وفلسفة وسياسة واقتصاد وتاريخ وكثير من المجالات المطروقة..
 الغريب كان -بالنسبة لفكرتي المسبقة عنه- السخرية التي تطل أحياناً وإن كانت في كلمات بسيطة لكنها أضفت متعة وخفة على النص وخاصة في في الأجزاء التي ا��تمد فيها أسلوب المقارنة..أيضاً الروابط التي استنتجتها بين الكثير من الأفكار المقدمة في الكتاب مع أخرى ألفتها في نصوص آخرين مثل فروم وباومان وساراماجو في كهفه كانت كما العادة مصدر جذب وإثارة للاهتمام..
 أنا شخصياً مقتنعة أن جزءاً أساسياً من أفضلية وعظمة القراءة يكمن في المتعة، حتى في أكثر الكتب ثقلاً وتخصصاً، فالمتعة تكمن أحياناً في فكرة أو في أسلوب طرحها أو في أي شيء يمنح الكاتب القدرة على إدهاش قرائه، وهذا كتاب أدهشني واستمتعت به بأكثر مما توقعت بمراحل، حتى في أكثر أجزائه تعقيداً والتي أعدت قراءتها مرتين وثلاثة.. ويسعدني جداً أني خرجت منه بالكثير من الهو��مش والخطوط والاقتباسات وعلامات التعجب والاستفهام، ولكل ذلك أو أكثر بفرح طفولي عظيم..
 ممتنة للطف الترجمة وقدرتها على إيصال المحتوى بهذا القدر من السلاسة المحببة جداً جداً..
 إصدارات_عصير بدايات تاريخ
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 Candle
 1,231 reviews 669 followers
 July 29, 2021

 .
 ويليام جيمس ديورانت لمن لا يعرفه هو فيلسوف ومؤرخ وكاتب أمريكي، اشتهر بكتابه «قصة الحضارة»، ومن المجلد الحادي عشر في كتاب«قصة الحضارة». انطلق ديورانت مع زوجته ارييل، بتدوين الملاحظات التي واكبت رحلة التوثيق تلك، فنتج عنها هذا الكتاب الذي بين أيدينا( دروس من التاريخ) والذي يقدم به ديورانت وزوجته أهم ما واكب تطور التاريخ في ٥٠٠٠ سنة.

 قُسم الكتاب إلى إثنى عشر فصلا، تناولا الزوجان من خلالها تطورات حضارة الجنس البشري، والجغرافيا والحروب، والأوضاع السياسية والاجتماعية وتأثير هذا على النفس البشرية، والأعراق والشخصيات والأخلاق، كما تطرقا إلى الدين بفصلٍ خاص وقد كان هذا بالفعل أكثر الفصول تشويقًا ومتعة.

 هذا الكتاب مختلف كونه لا يتبنى فكرة واحدة كما اعتدنا على كتب التاريخ أن تفعل، لكنه من أروع الكتب التي قرأتها على الإطلاق نظرًا لتعدد الأفكار والتي لا يجمعها سوى صفة البحث والتقصي الموجودة لدى ديورانت.

 ماذا بعد القراءة؟
 على مستوى شخصي تعتبر قراءة التاريخ مرهقة لي،ولا أجد لنفسي ميلاً نحوها ذلك لأني مؤمنة -بسبب كل ما نراه اليوم من تشويه للحقائق- باحتمالية أن يكون جزءا كبير من التاريخ الذي نعرفه ضرب من الوهم والإدعاء.

 ثامن أفضل كتاب في قائمة الـtop 10 للكتب التي قرأتها من أصل 1257 ولله الحمد.

 #أبجدية_فرح 5/5 🌷📚
 ‏#candleflame23bookreviews
 #دروس_من_التاريخ #ويليام_جيمس_ديورانت
 #ستوري_تيل

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 عماد العتيلي
 Author 6 books 541 followers
 December 25, 2014


 كتاب جميل وبسيط .. وصغير!

 وربما أن صِغَر حجمه هو ما أضفى عليه جمالاً زائداً :)

 ويل ديورانت وزوجته آرييل هما، بلا شك، من العقول الضخمة التي لا يملك الواحد منا إلا أن يحترمها ويجلّها – وإن اختلف معها في مواضع يسيرة.



 لست هنا في معرض تقييم للكتاب .. فهو باختصار كتاب ممتع إلى حد ما (لا يخلو من الملل والرتابة ..!!) وهو استخلاص للدروس والعِبر من رائعة ديورانت الشهيرة "قصّة الحضارة" – التي أتمنى أن أقرأها خلال السنة القادمة 2015 :)



 هنا سأورد بعض ما أعجبني من اقتباسات تستحق الذكر:

 ١] إن العلم محايد. فهو مستعد للقتل كما هو مستعد للشفاء. وهو مستعد للهدم أكثر من استعداده للبناء. وفي بعض الأحيان أُحِسّ أن أسلافنا في العصور الوسطى وعصر النهضة، عندما اهتمّوا بالأدب والفن والأسطورة أكثر من العلم والقوة، كانوا أحكم منّا. نحن الذين اهتممنا بالآليات على حساب الأهداف والغايات.

 ٢] وليست الثورة الحقيقية الوحيدة الا تنوير العقل وتحسين الشخصية، وليس التحرير الحقيقي الوحيد الا تحرير الفرد، وليس الثوريون الحقيقيون إلا الفلاسفة والقديسيين.

 ٣] ومعظم التاريخ ظن وتخمين والبقية الباقية تحامل وهوى

 ٤] ولا يمكن لإنسان واحد مهما كان عبقرياً او عالماً ان يصل في حياته الى درجة اكتمال الفهم التي تتيح له الحكم المضمون على عادات المجتمع ومؤسساته ورفضها لان هذه العادات والمؤسسات تمثل حكمة الاجيال بعد قرون من التجريب في معمل التاريخ.

 ٥] وقد تداوي الاباحية الجنسية نفسها من خلال افراطها ذاته ، وقد يعيش اطفالنا الذين تحرروا من المراسي حتى يروا سيادة النظام والتواضع ، فارتداء الملابس سيكون اكثر اغراءاً من العري.

 ٦] وان اول شرط من شروط الحرية هو تقييدها ، ولو جعلناها مطلقة لماتت من الفوضى

 ٧] ولا شك ان الدكتاتورية تنشأ من الديموقراطية ، كما ان اخطر انواع الطغيان والعبودية ينشأ من اشد اشكال الحرية تطرفاً
 قراءات-2014
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 Dragos Pătraru
 51 reviews 2,446 followers
 May 17, 2020
 O carte cum ar spune marele Gică Hagi așa și așa bună, de la doi oameni care au și ei un Pulitzer în sacoșă. O carte despre istoria care se repetă, dar doar într-un mod general. În sensul că da, civilizațiile se nasc, cresc și apoi apun, dispar, dar nu fac ca noi, ca românii, ci transmit mai departe experiența lor, cunoștințele, îmbogățindu-i astfel pe cei care vin din urmă. O concluzie a autorilor care nu îmi place deloc ar fi aceea că pacea e o stare nenaturală a omenirii. Și că suntem făcuți pentru a concura unii cu alții: pentru mâncare, pentru pământ, pentru adăpost și așa mai departe. Și de-aia ne-am adunat în triburi și apoi în state. Și că putem să ieșim din starea asta de război doar dacă ne vom trezi în fața unui inamic comun, care să ne facă să ne unim. Cum este acest coronavirus, care, iată, reușește să ne aducă împreună, chiar dacă ne ține izolați unii de alții.
 Dar câteva idei foarte mișto sunt de găsit în cartea asta: de pildă, că democrația este cea mai bună formă de guvernământ, dar e fragilă și cere o populație educată. Sau că socialismul poate funcționa dacă este împerecheat cu capitalismul. Ori că e cum nu se poate mai naturală concentrarea bogăției în mâinile câtorva, de aceea e nevoie de intervenția statelor pentru o justă redistribuire. A, și faptul că valorile etice sunt un produs al condițiilor istorice și se schimbă în timp. Că de-aia nu mai e ok acum să-i dai unei femei cu bâta în cap și s-o duci la tine în peșteră, unde să-ți faci treaba cu ea. Deși unii mai încearcă.
 Și sunt multe exemple faine din istorie în carte. Cum ziceam, așa și așa bună. Spre foarte bună.
 istorie
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 Raya راية
 757 reviews 1,295 followers
 March 15, 2022
 "التاريخ – أكثر من أي شيء آخر - هو تكوين وتسجيل هذا التراث، والتقدم هو تزايد وفرته وحفظه ونقله واستخدامه. لهؤلاء منا الذين لا يدرسون التاريخ كمنذر ومذكّر بجرائم الإنسان وحماقاته فحسب، ولكن – أيضاً- كتذكير مشجع للأرواح الخلاّقة، لا يعود الماضي غرفة محبطة من الأهوال؛ إنما يصبح مدينة سماوية، دولة فسيحة للعقل، ما زال يعيش ويتحدث ويتغنى بها الرهبان، ورجال الدولة، والمخترعون، والعلماء، والشعراء، والفنانون، والموسيقيون، والمحبون، والفلاسفة. لن يتفجع المؤرخ لعدم قدرتنا على إيجاد أي معنى في الوجود الإنساني إلا الذي نضعه نحن، ليكن هذا شيئاً نفخر به، أننا نضع بأنفسنا معنى لحياتنا، وأن هذا المعنى يتخطى حدود الموت في بعض الأحيان. لو أن رجلاً محظوظاً كفاية، فإنه سيمكن من تحصيل أكبر قدر من تراث حضارته قبل موته وينقله لأولاده. ولآخر نفس عمره سيظل دائماً ممتناً لهذه التركة التي لا تنضب، مستحضراً أنها أمنا المغذية وحياتنا الممتدة."
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 Adam Meade
 17 reviews 6 followers
 May 26, 2016
 Brilliant! The Durant's offer a bird's-eye view of human civilization and distill for us the principles and common threads that bind different peoples separated chronologically by thousands of years yet whom differ little to none in the passions and desires that motivate them. I can't recall reading any other book that had such a low length-to-substance ratio. It weighs in at only around 120 pages, but nearly every sentence seems pregnant with deep insights and wisdom that is as relevant today as it was millennia ago. I believe that anyone with a high school education and an open mind will reap tremendous wisdom from their words, though the more preliminary knowledge of history and the sciences one possesses, the more they will benefit from it.
 non-fiction
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 Henning
 103 reviews 31 followers
 September 18, 2020
 My extremely high expectations were not met for this book. I guess ~120 pages are just not enough for so many years of history. I felt lost a couple times.
 history nonfiction
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 Murtaza
 664 reviews 3,402 followers
 August 30, 2020
 Will and Ariel Durant were part of that great age of American writers who helped popularize history and philosophy. People all over the world, including myself, owe them a debt of gratitude for bringing knowledge down from its ivory towers to enrich the life of the common man. They wrote a lot and knew a lot, and this slim book is intended as some kind of summation of the ultimate lessons that they'd gleaned from a lifetime of study. Is there a consistent thread that unites the study of history? Unfortunately, it doesn't really seem like it. Except for the apparent pattern of inequality and redistribution that characterizes human societies. The book is eloquently written at times and concludes on an upbeat note about the solace of studying history: having an eternal city bustling with great souls that can always be visited in mind. Other than that though, the lessons of history seen in totality appear to be quite flexible and subjective.
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 Judith
 Author 14 books 102 followers
 May 9, 2018
 The premise and the introduction sounded interesting, but soon I could not take it anymore: almost every second page asserts that Whites, Teutons or Catholics are the stronger group and therefore rule in all parts of the world or will soon rule (e.g. Catholics soon dominating Protestants in America due to greater virtue). Also, contraceptives, vaccinations and public schools are of the devil because they hinder evolution / the dominance of the strongest, and countries that have too much of the afore-mentioned must be overrun or conquered by more virile countries in order to stop the slide backwards. VOMIT-INDUCING
 politics-etc
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 Arash
 61 reviews
 February 10, 2018

 دموکراسى از همه انواع حکومت‏ها دشوارتر است، زیرا وسیع‏ترین پراکنش تعقل را مى‏طلبد، و هنگامى که ما مردم خود را به حکومت مى‏رساندیم از یاد بردیم که خویش را عاقل سازیم. تعلیم و تربیت توسعه یافته، اما قدرت بارورى مردم ساده و عوام پیوسته مانع از گسترش تعقل شده است. یکى از کلبیون تذکر داد که «جهل را تنها به این علت که فراوان‏ترین چیز است بر تخت منشانید»، اما دیرزمانى است که جهل بر تخت قرار ندارد، زیرا خود را در اختیار نیروهاى سازنده افکار عمومى قرار مى‏دهد تا بازیچه ایشان شود. شاید همان گونه که لینکلن اعتقاد داشت «نمى‏توان همه را براى همیشه فریفت»، اما مى‏توان عده مورد نیاز را براى تکیه‏زدن بر مسند حکومت کشورى بزرگ فریفت.


 در سرعت سه هزار کیلومتر در ساعت میمون‏هاى شلوارپوشى بیش نیستیم و با روزگارى که پیاده مى‏رفتیم فرقى نکرده‏ایم.


 مورخ از این‏که نمى‏تواند در حیات انسان معنایى غیر از آن‏که خود انسان به آن داده است، بیابد، تأسف نخواهد خورد؛ بگذارید از این که ما خود به حیاتمان معنا و مفهوم مى‏بخشیم، و گاه این معنا بر مرگ غالب مى‏��ود، احساس غرور کنیم.


 ممکن است در جوامع پیشرفته تمرکز ثروت به جایى برسد که قدرتِ عددى فقیران بسیار هماورد و رقیب قدرتِ استعداد اغنیاىِ اندک گردد، آن گاه این تعادل ناپایدار وضعى حاد و بحرانى به وجود مى‏آورد، که تاریخ با دو حالتِ متضادِ توزیع مجدد ثروت به دست قانون، یا تولیدِ فقر به دست انقلاب، با آن روبه‏رو شده است.


 این ها گزیده‌ای از جملاتی بود که در این کتاب نظرم رو جلب کرد، و البته تنها جملاتی نبود که می‌تونست در اینجا ذکر بشه. ویل دورانت در این کتاب در فصول مختلف راجع به مسایلی مثل اقتصاد، دین، حکومت، اخلاق و ... صحبت می‌کنه. ویل دورانت در هر فصل برای بیان دیدگاه خودش شاهد مثال‌هایی رو تقریبا به شکل تیتر وار از تاریخ میاره، بنابراین انتظار دیدن مطالب تاریخی مفصل از این کتاب نداشته باشید. اما می‌شه گفت دیدن دنیا (و تاریخ) از دید ویل دورانت واقعا خوب و لذت بخش هست.
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 Lowell
 164 reviews 9 followers
 June 10, 2011
 I first heard of Will and Ariel Durant in 2004 when reading a message by Jeffrey R. Holland, then President of Brigham Young University:

 No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.

 This passage (which comes from this book) still strikes me as powerful, and is just one of countless great quotes from this book. Will and Ariel Durant wrote the 11-volume "Story of Civilization", and afterwards sought to briefly some of the patterns that occur, regardless of time and setting. While I intend to read the entire series, I just purchased The Harvard Classics collection. Prudence says I should work through that before buying another massive collection.

 Despite only 100 pages and published 43 years ago (1968), I consider their work priceless. And unlike the majority of other history books, it's ENJOYABLE to read.

 Other GoodReads and Amazon.com reviews discuss the content more effectively that I would be able to, so I'll end here. :)
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Friends &amp; Following      Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,417 reviews          Author  1 book8,092 followers     November 30, 2019   I am having trouble articulating the complex mix of opinions and emotions that I’ve formed around Durant. Several times I have come away from his books disappointed; and yet I continue to read them. One reason he fascinates me is that he is a species of American which is now almost entirely extinct: a product of the ‘Great Books’ paradigm in American higher education. 	As far as I can tell, this paradigm in education was first popularized in 1909, when Charles W. Eliot released his Harvard Classics—the so-called Five-Foot Shelf—which consisted of 51 volumes of classic works from western history. The spirit of this idea was later epitomized in the Book-of-the-Month club, about which Bertrand Russell, writing in 1930, penned his famous line: “There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” 	It was certainly a different time. The philosopher George Santayana and the historian Arnold Toynbee were bestselling authors, both featured on the cover of Time magazine. Will Durant, whose prose style strikes the modern ear as purple and grandiloquent, created a publishing sensation with his Story of Civilization, a series which totals four million words and ten thousand pages. And the monstrously big, 54-volume Great Books of the Western World sold thousands of copies—thousands!—even though it included works of Alexandrian astronomy, Greek mathematics, and German metaphysics, among other difficult material. One suspects that the bragging motive was the operative one in the majority of these purchases. 	The spirit of the ‘Great Books’ paradigm is that of idolatry towards European intellectual history. The tone of its advocates often sound ludicrously reverential, such as this excerpt from a speech delivered on the occasion of the release of the Great Books series: “This is more than a set of books, and more than a liberal education. Great Books of the Western World is an act of piety. Here are the sources of our being. Here is our heritage. This is the West. This is its meaning for mankind.” As two World Wars wracked the European continent, and as the fear of communism and nuclear war covered the Western world with gloom, perhaps it is unsurprising to see American intellectuals and laypeople positioning themselves as the heirs of European civilization. 	This idea held sway for a long time in American Universities, and perhaps is not altogether dead. The swan songs of this pedagogical philosophy can be heard in Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon (1994), wherein both authors lament and eulogize the disappearance of the ‘Great Books’ from American universities. 	Educated at Columbia during the heyday of this phenomenon, Durant was formed by the ‘Great Books’ ethos, and perhaps was one of its most eloquent proponents. And it strikes me now that, in Durant’s writings, one finds both the virtues and the vices of the ‘Great Books’ idea illustrated with extreme precision.  	Durant was broadminded and well-rounded; he could write ably about a multitude of subjects. He was tolerant, kindly, witty, and had a firm belief in human progress and achievement. His prose style was superb—a model of clarity and grace—which he used in his quest to disseminate as widely as possible the fruits of “Civilization” (his all-inclusive term for everything good in society). Neither a genius nor a scholar, Durant was an enthusiast: he was able to write so wonderfully about historical figures because he genuinely loved and revered them; in fact, he almost literally worshiped them, as he himself admitted. 	But he also had many weaknesses. First, the ‘Great Books’ mindset caused Durant to concentrate his attention overmuch on the high-points in cultural achievement. One gets an extremely skewed picture of European history if one focuses solely on the greatest thinkers and artists. Of course, it is pleasant to contemplate these individuals, which is partly why Durant’s books are so fun to read; but such exclusive concentration also produces a kind of Pollyannish attitude, where history is seen through rose-tinted glasses, and persecutions, wars, and bigotry are not given their due—and the banality of daily life is wholly sidestepped. 	A related consequence of the ‘Great Books’ attitude is a somewhat reactionary mindset. Since Durant so often equates the old with the good, tradition with right, age with quality, he can be remarkably, and sometimes stupidly, conservative. For example, whenever Durant writes of sexual mores, he comes across as a moralizing Sunday-school teacher. For Durant, promiscuity is immoral, and homosexuality a sin. Long-term, faithful heterosexual marriages are the mark of ‘civilization’. Because Durant never justifies this opinion—a habit of his—I can only conclude that this was mere prejudice on his part. 	Another obvious result of the ‘Great Books’ philosophy is elitism. Durant frequently mentions in this book that talent is unequally distributed; and because of this “natural inequality of man,” the stupid majority are destined forever to toil under the dominance of the intelligent minority. Now, of course I would not disagree that people are differently endowed from birth with various aptitudes. But I am very far from believing that the inequality which we see throughout history and which persists today is simply the result of the “skill” of the wealthy and powerful. Rather, I agree with Gibbon, that “The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society without a hope of emerging from their obscurity.” 	The ‘Great Books’ program also has the shortcoming of emphasizing breadth over depth. Durant certainly embodies this. Although he can write about many subjects, he is an expert on none of them; and this lack of serious expertise prevented him from advancing the state of knowledge in any field. Durant’s ideology also privileges the transmission of old ideas rather than the creation of new ones. After all, if one worships the past, there is little motivation to re-imagine the future. Moreover, the ‘Great Books’ doctrine stressed reputation at the expense of rigor. Ideas are praised for their lasting influence, their grandness of scope, their contribution to a long-standing debate—but not for their accuracy. In Durant, this produced a man who often cared more about whether an idea was beautiful or interesting rather than whether it was true. 	Fueling this tendency is another shibboleth of the ‘Great Books’ school: that simply by reading the greatest books of the ages, one could purge oneself of all provincial prejudices and look upon history as from a timeless perspective. Durant seems to think this way, as the very title of this book shows: The Lessons of History. These conclusions are not his own theses, not his own ideas—but lessons, which Durant can gather from the fabric of history as easily as a child can infer the lesson from a fairytale. It goes without saying that this is nonsense. Durant looked at history and found his own prejudices; and this book is merely a collection of them.  	I am sure you are wearied by this litany of accusations and complaints, so I will only mention in passing the other distinctive sins of this ‘Great Books’ mindset—namely, its glorification of Europe, and only Western Europe, at the expense of the rest of the world, as well as its underrepresentation of women and minorities. This is wonderfully illustrated in Durant's plan of the Story of Civilization, wherein he dedicates one volume to all of Asia, and the rest of the eleven volumes to Europe (and none to South America or to Africa).  	At this point you may be wondering, “If Durant has so many faults, which you are apparently so acutely aware of, why are you reading so much of him?” Well, this has to do with my own history. At the end of my time in college, vaguely feeling that the education I received was not worth half of what I paid for it, I picked up Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. This book had a profound effect on me. Bloom seemed to articulate my dissatisfaction with my education, as well point me in the direction where it could be rectified. As soon as I finished, I looked up the list of the Great Books of the Western World, and dove in. 	Now, despite all of the faults I listed above, I must still admit that one receives a stupendous education by reading the books recommended in the program. I read rabidly, desperately, doing my best to make up for lost time; and whatever may be my intellectual shortcomings now—and they are many—I am at least far better off than I was before I began. But of course I still have not read all of these hoary books—there are a lot!—and this is partly why I’m interested in Will Durant: for in him, I can see the end result of my own educational project. 	Unfortunately, while Durant was truly an excellent writer, for the reasons I discussed above, he was a poor thinker. This slim volume, the fruits of a massive research project, is a collection of vague homilies, baseless theorizing, and unsupported claims. It is incredible and a bit depressing that so much learning could produce so little insight. I still think I have much to learn from Durant and the other proponents of the ‘Great Books’ school—as well as from the books themselves, of course. But now, hopefully, after sorting through Durant’s writings, I will be better able to separate the good from the bad, the worthless from the valuable; for I do think, after all, that there is something essentially precious in the idea.     americana one-damn-thing-after-another               Author  10 books50 followers     December 27, 2013   I inherited much of my father’s library many years ago, including the entire eleven volume Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant. Included in the set was the single slim volume they wrote afterward by way of an introduction, The Lessons of History. Over the years I have frequently dipped into individual volumes of the main text for research, but I never read any entire volume until my wife came bouncing into my office one evening and thrust The Lessons of History under my nose and said, “Read this chapter!” I read it, and immediately wondered why the hell I hadn’t read the whole thing long ago. I have now rectified that. Not the whole eleven volume set, but I have read that one-volume introduction and I was blown away by it.The Lessons of History is intended to be both an introduction and a survey of human history as a product of the human experience, of man’s essential evolutionary nature. The Durant’s do not judge; they do not say this system is better than that, or peace is better than war. They do not even bang the drum of George Santayana’s often misquoted maxim: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” What they do stress is that man will, in fact, continuously repeat the past because he cannot help himself. Man has evolved to be a particular organism with particular needs and desires and drives and responses and those are the things that influence his behavior, over and over again throughout the millennia. It will be many a long day before the lion evolves into a critter capable of lying down with the lamb, and it will be just as long before man evolves into a critter not driven by, “acquisitiveness, pugnacity, and pride.” So what The Story of Civilization chronicles, and The Lessons of History summarizes, is the sequence of patterns of behavior that have been repeated continuously since the first known civilization(s), with “civilization” being defined as a social order that promotes cultural creation. But it is the laws of evolution that limit civilization, so that man’s natural instincts of competition (for food, mates, power), selection (some men will always have better competitive skills than others, and so there will always be inequality), and reproduction (influenced, obviously, by competition and selection) will always be the limiting factors that cause a civilization to rise and fall. And the rise and fall of civilizations—all civilizations that have been or are yet to come—is a given. None will last forever, and the speed with which they appear and vanish can depend on a variety of factors: geological, climatological, biological, or even political. Do you doubt that last one? Consider Communism. Primitive communism, meaning a society based on communal sharing, actually worked in hunter/gatherer societies that were constantly on the move pursuing game, but those are precisely the societies that have neither the leisure nor the wherewithal to pursue the cultural creation that defines a civilization. The moment a society depends on continuous labor to feed itself with provision for the future (as in agriculture, for example, as opposed to hunting and gathering) selection comes into play, along with its concomitant concept of private property (this patch of earth is more fertile and productive than that patch) with some men being more successful than others, and communism ceases to be an effective tool for societal survival. After all, if everything is going to be shared equally, I might as well just kick back here a take nap and let you do the heavy lifting. Competition between individuals means I run faster, fight harder, or outwit you. In a society, that translates into war, and since man is what he is, wars will continue as long as man exists. To quote the Durants (writing in 1968): “In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.” The only silver lining in that dark cloud is that war does stimulate the tool-using animal’s creative impulses, and occasionally those instruments designed for destruction are converted to creative and beneficial uses. Reproduction among individuals means, well, I hardly think we need go there, but in a society, it means pretty much that he who has the most children wins, which goes a long way to explaining why there are currently 7,132,780,410 people on earth, and that number will be over 7,132,800,000 before I finish this review. But it was the repetitive evolution of different political structures that really caught my eye. The Durants used China under Wang An-shih (1068-85 AD) as an example of the failure of socialism. Wang An-shih decided the state should own and control everything, commerce, industry, agriculture, and “[succor] the working classes [by] preventing them from being ground into the dust by the rich.” For a while, everything was hunky-dory, with great feats of engineering, pensions for the elderly and unemployed, an overhaul of the educational system, governmental boards in every district to administer every damn thing in the world. Sounds a little like America today, doesn’t it? But it fell apart (the Durants cite as reasons high taxes, an enormous army, and bureaucratic corruption, also much like America today), as socialism always has throughout all of history because, to quote the late Margaret Thatcher, “Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.” That’s me quoting her, obviously, not the Durants. Instead, they wrote: “The experience of the past leaves little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity.” As I was reading all this, I happened to watch the movie, Meet John Doe, with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, and its theme of Christ’s message in today’s world, and I started thinking about America today. In the movie, the success of the John Doe Clubs that spring up across the nation is due to people and communities coming together to create work for their less fortunate neighbors. Not once in the movie is there any mention of a handout or any form of money given away as opposed to earned.  The Lessons of History stresses that selection and the inevitable superiority of some people means that there will always be inequality, but not necessarily inequity. There are two forms of equality that no society can ignore without fatal consequences: equality under the law; and equal opportunity for education, because education provides the opportunity for every man to rise according to his ability. However, even if the law and educational opportunity are available for all, if the gap between rich and poor widens too much, and if there is no bridge of middleclass with which the poor can hope to overcome that gap, violent redistribution of wealth will inevitably occur. It’s one of the lessons of history.                   59 reviews26 followers     February 13, 2008   The first thing to understand about this book is that it was written by old people. By this, I don’t even mean that they were chronologically enhanced; more that they were trapped by that inflexible mindset which places tradition and an intense desire for belonging above a natural exploration of reality.The Durants were either intelligent people trying to reconcile their minds to the demands of the culture in which they were raised, or abject liars attempting to politick their way onto the bookshelves of the prosaic postwar American public. The doublespeak and contradictory statements make the book read like a Kerry speech. One can’t simultaneously say that greed and hoarding are positive human behaviors and praise the charitable throughout history for their generosity, or say that fear and respect for one’s elders goes hand in hand with true creativity and individuality. This isn’t thinking, it’s highly-skilled, well-educated apery. No wonder my father enjoys it so much, since he too is no more (and probably considerably less) than the average street kid or drug dealer. This is philosophy in its cheapest and most generic form. In the same way that they say statistics will be used to support any point, it would seem that 3500 years of chaotic human behavior may be used in the same manner. Like anything created by mainstream Western, Judeo-Christian culture, this book seeks only to preserve the foundations upon which it was built. I also saw a great deal of reactionary sentiment against the “upstart” 1960s youth culture. A great deal of time is spent lamenting the decay of morality and religion (even when they, themselves agree that these things are false societal constructs designed to keep power in the hands of those in control, and not natural or even particularly healthy attributes of mankind). 	
 “Is democracy responsible for the current debasement of art? The debasement, of course, is not unquestioned; it is a matter of subjective judgment; and those of us who shudder at its excesses – its meaningless blotches of color [Pollack?], its collages of debris [pop art?], its Babels of cacophony [rock music?] – are doubtless imprisoned in our past and dull to the courage of experiment. The producers of such nonsense are appealing not to the general public – which scorns them as lunatics, degenerates, or charlatans – but to gullible middle-class purchasers who are hypnotized by auctioneers and are thrilled by the new, however deformed.”
  As is shown repeatedly throughout the book, the Durants believe that the only art worthy of the title is the realism of Renaissance painters, the stark geometry of Greek architecture, or the predictable mathematics of classical music. While I won’t disagree that there were certainly some artists of these eras, for the most part those who are considered by the traditionally “educated” to be great artists are truly no more than great technicians, capable of great dexterity and numerical understanding. In my mind, true art is deconstruction of all that the “educated” human mind holds true and certain. It is that which brings one back to the deeper, eternal, animal nature, which creates an anarchy of the soul and frees the viewer from the constraints attached by society. It is that which is capable of undoing the indoctrination of life in the modern world and creating a direct channel between the Chaos Mind and the human spirit.      crap-just-crap               1,394 reviews674 followers     May 20, 2022   ‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، در این ریویو تصمیم گرفتم تا از سرتاسرِ این کتابِ ارزشمند، جملاتی را به انتخاب برایِ شما دوستانِ خردگرا و اهلِ کتاب، بنویسم---------------------------------------‎ولتر میگوید: تاریخ در کل مجموعه ای از جنایات، حماقتها و ناکامی هایِ نوعِ بشر است***********************************‎آیا گذشته سراسر تکرارِ ملالت بارِ خطاهایی است که آینده محکوم به ارتکابِ آن در میدانی وسیع تر و مقیاسی بزرگتر است؟***********************************‎بخش عمدهٔ تاریخ، حدس و فرض است و بقیهٔ آن تعصب..... شواهدِ چندگونه و مورخانِ متعصب و مغرض، بیانِ وقایع تاریخی در گذشته را به نوعی تیره و مبهم ساخته است و شاید پایبندی به مسائل دینی و اعتقاداتِ مذهبی و حتی میهن پرستی این دسته از مورخان، دلیلی بر این موضوع باشد و این مورخان در انتخابِ مطالب و ظریف کاری هایِ توصیفی تمایلاتِ پنهانِ خویش را فاش میسازند***********************************‎زمانِ حال، همان طومارِ گذشته است که برای اجرا شدن بسته شده است و گذشته همان طومارِ حال است که برایِ شناخته شدن گسترده شده است***********************************‎آزادی و برابری هر دو دشمنانِ سوگند خورده و دیرینهٔ یکدیگرند. هنگامی که یکی از این دو برتر باشد و غالب شود، دیگری میمیرد.. اگر انسانها آزادانه به حالِ خود رها شوند، نابرابری های ذاتیشان به صورتِ تصاعدی افزایش میابد، همانطور که در انگلستان و آمریکای سدهٔ نوزدهم شاهدِ این موضوع بودیم.. از سویِ دیگر برای مهار نابرابری باید آزادی قربانی شود، همانطور که در روسیه پس از سال ۱۹۱۷ این موضوع را شاهد بودیم.. نابرابری حتی در شرایطِ سرکوب نیز رشد میکند کسی که زیر حدِ وسط قرار دارد، خواهانِ برابری است و کسی که از استعدادِ برتر بهره مند است، خواهانِ آزادی میباشد و سرانجام همان کسانی که در سطحِ بالا بوده و استعدادی برتر دارند، به خواستهٔ خویش میرسند***********************************‎اگر تولیدِ مثلِ انسان، بر موجودیِ مواد غذایی بچربد، طبیعت برای برقرار ساختن موازنه، سه عامل در اختیار دارد: قحطی، بیماری همه گیر و جنگ***********************************‎کمک های نقدی و مادی به فقرا، آنها را به ازدواج های بی هنگام و بچه دار شدنِ بی حساب تشویق میکند و چنین چیزی در هر سرزمینی مشکل ایجاد میکند، چراکه نرخِ زایش از نرخِ مرگ پیشی میگیرد و افزایشِ مصرفِ موادِ غذایی و منابعِ طبیعی، هر نوع طرقی در تولیدِ مواد غذایی و دیگر مواردِ مورد نیاز برای زندگی را خنثی خواهد کرد***********************************‎این نژاد نیست که تمدن را به وجود می آورد، بلکه این تمدن است که ملت ها را میسازد.. به عبارت دیگر، اوضاع و احوالِ جغرافیایی، اقتصادی و سیاسی، فرهنگ را میسازد و فرهنگ نیز گونهٔ خاص انسان را می آفریند***********************************‎آگاهی از تاریخ به ما می آموزد که تمدن، حاصل همکاری و تعاونی است که تقریباً همهٔ انسانها در آن سهم داشته اند.. تمدن میراثِ مشترکِ ماست و همهٔ ما مدیون تمدن هستیم***********************************‎بنایِ اجتماع بر پایهٔ آرمانها و آرزوهایِ انسانها نیست، بلکه بر بنیانِ طبیعتِ آنهاست و ساختار فطریِ انسانها یعنی همان امیال، غرایز و عواطف، قوانینِ اساسیِ کشورها را یکی پس از دیگری، رقم میزند***********************************‎شورشیان هنگامِ پیروزی، همان شیوه هایی را بکار میبندند که خود همواره عمل به آنها را از جانبِ قدرتها و حکومتهایِ برکنار و خلع شده، محکوم میساختند***********************************‎قوانینِ اخلاقی، در طولِ تاریخ به دلیلِ انطباق با شرایطِ تاریخی و زیست محیطی، در تغییر و دگرگونی بوده است.. ستیزه گری، خونریزی، حرص و طمع و آمادگیِ جنسی، در تنازعِ بقا، امتیاز محسوب میشد.. احتمالاً هر فرومایگی و شرارتی، در برخی از سرزمینها و در روزگارانی، یک نوع فضیلت و خصلتی در خورِ ادامهٔ حیاتِ فرد، خانواده و یا یک اجتماع به شمار می آمد... زشت کاری هایِ آدمی، میراثِ روزگارِ ترقیِ اوست، نه داغِ ننگِ ایامِ سقوط***********************************‎به نظر نمیرسد که دین با اخلاق، رابطه ای داشته باشد.. همانطور که لوکرتیوس، فیلسوفِ رومی گفته است، این ترس بود که خدایان را آفرید.. ترس از نیروهایِ مخفی در زمین، رودها، دریاها، درختان، بادها و آسمان و بسیاری از حوادثِ طبیعی.. پرستش و خشنود کردنِ این نیروها با دادنِ هدایا و قربانی، یا سحر و افسون و دعا، دین را به وجود آورد.. تنها زمانی که خادمانِ دین، این ترسها و نیایش ها را به حمایت از قانون و اخلاق به کار انداختند، دین به صورتِ نیرویِ حیاتی دولتها و رقیبِ آنها درآمد.. دین به مردم گفت که دستوراتِ اخلاقی و قوانین را خدا یا خدایان وضع کرده اند.. در طولِ تاریخ ادیان و مذاهب در خدمتِ حکومتها و دولتها بوده اند و از این راه سودِ زیادی نصیبِ روحانیون و ملاها در کلیساها و مساجد شده است***********************************‎قدرتهایِ دینی و روحانیون در طولِ تاریخ اصلاحات اندکی در دین و مذهب هایِ مختلف انجام داده اند، ولی شجاعتِ این را ندارند تا برخی از اصولِ دینی و داستانها و معجزه هایِ مذهبی را که عقل و خردِ انسانی به آنها میخندد را تغییر دهند، چراکه اینگونه تغییرها موجبِ رنجشِ میلیونها پیرو مذهبی و آدمهایی میشود که به خرافات و موهوماتِ الهام بخش و تسلّی دهنده در کتبِ مقدس دل بسته اند***********************************‎سازش میانِ دین و فلسفه و دانش ممکن نیست.. مگر آنکه فلاسفه و خردگرایان اعلام کنند برای خدمتِ اخلاقیِ پایگاه هایِ دینی و مذهبی همچون کلیسا و کنیسه و مسجد، جایگزینی نیافته اند و از سوی دیگر ادیان و مذاهب نیز آزادی در تفکر و اندیشه و خردگرایی را به رسمیت بشناسد***********************************‎تاریخ قدرتِ آفرینش و حیات بخشِ طبیعت را به عنوانِ خدا میشناسد و اعتقادی به خدایِ واحد و علیم و رحیم ندارد.. زمین لرزه، طوفان، گردباد، سیل، بیماری و دیگر بلایاها و جنایات و جنگها، همگی نشان دهندهٔ سرنوشتی کور یا بی طرف خواهد بود که پدیده هایِ تصادفی و اتفاقی آن را خیلی از مردم از سرِ انگارهٔ نظم، عظمت، جمال یا تعالی میخوانند... حتی اگر تاریخ پشتیبانِ یک نوع الهیات باشد، این الهیات از نوعِ آیینِ مانی و حتی زرتشت خواهد بود.. یعنی نوعی جوهرِ اهورایی با جوهرِ اهریمنی مدام با یکدیگر در نبرد هستند تا بر جهان و موجوداتِ آن همچون انسانها، تسلط پیدا کنند.. از نگاهِ طبیعت و تاریخ، خوب یعنی آنچه ادامهٔ حیات میدهد و بد یعنی آنچه از میان میرود.. پس عالم هستی نه تعصبی به پیامبران دارد و نه در بر علیه و زیانِ کسی همچون چنگیزخان مغول، کاری انجام میدهد***********************************‎رشد و پیشرفتِ دانش و خردِ انسانی و همچنین آگاهیِ فزایندهٔ انسان از جایگاهِ بسیار کوچک و حقیرش در این جهانِ بسیار بزرگ، به کاهشِ باورهایِ دینی، شتاب بخشیده است.. به همین دلیل است که فرانسیس بیکن گفت: علم و دانش، دینِ انسانِ رهایی یافتهٔ عصرِ جدید است***********************************‎تا زمانی که در جهان فقر و تنگدستی وجود دارد، خدایان نیز وجود خواهند داشت***********************************‎انقلابِ صنعتی، همراهِ خود، دموکراسی، آزادی زنان، تنظیم خانواده، سوسیالیسم، رهایی ادبیات از وابستگی به حمایتِ اشرافیت، جایگزینی رئالیسم با رمانتیسم در داستانسرایی و بالاخره تفسیرِ اقتصادیِ تاریخ را به همراه آورد***********************************‎کسانی که میتوانند دیگران را به خدمتِ خویش درآورند، آنانی را به خدمت میگیرند که تنها قادرند بر اشیا مسلط شوند.. و انسانهایی که قادرند بر پول تسلط داشته باشند، بر همه سلطه دارند***********************************‎در حالتِ عادی و درکل،انسانها را بر حسبِ استعدادِ خود برایِ تولید میسنجند. البته جز در زمان جنگ که در آن با معیارِ استعداد در تخریب و کشتار و انهدام سنجیده میشوند***********************************‎از آنجا که انسان شیفتهٔ آزادی است و آزادیِ افراد در جامعه مستلزمِ قواعدی برای رفتار است، ب��ابراین نخستین شرطِ آزادی، محدودیتِ آن است.. اگر آزادی مطلق و بی بند و بار گردد، خود در هرج و مرج تباه خواهد شد.. پس نخستین وظیفهٔ حکومت، برقراری نظم و انضباط است***********************************‎تاریخ ثابت کرده که حکومت از نوعِ پادشاهی و سلطنت، سازگارترین نوعِ حکومت با طبیعتِ انسانهاست.. اگر بنا باشد دربارهٔ اشکالِ حکومت بر حسبِ رواج و عمرِ آنها قضاوت کنیم، باید نشانِ افتخار را به سلطنت و پادشاهی بدهیم***********************************‎حکومتِ اشراف، تنها پرورشگاهِ کشورداری نیست، بلکه مخزن و اسبابِ انتقالِ فرهنگ، منش ها، معیارها و سلیقه ها نیز میباشد و از این طریق در برابرِ جوش و خروشِ و طغیان هایِ اجتماعی، ناهنجاری هایِ هنری و یا تغییراتِ ناگهانی در نظامِ اخلاقی، در حکمِ سدی محکم و محافظ عمل میکند.. ببینید از انقلابِ فرانسه به بعد، چه بر سرِ اخلاقیات، آداب، سبکها و هنر آمده است***********************************‎بسیاری از انقلابها بر علیه حکومتِ پادشاهی و روی کار آمدنِ دموکراسی، آثار مخرب داشته است و باعث روی کار آمدنِ نوکیسه ها و عقب مانده ها شده است.. به یکباره گسستن از گذشته، یعنی تحریکِ جنونی که پی آمدِ آن، اختلالاتِ شدید یا فلجِ عمومیِ جامعه است.. از آنجا که سلامتِ روانیِ انسان وابسته به تداومِ حافظهٔ اوست، سلامتِ روانِ جامعه نیز وابسته به تداومِ سنتهایِ آن است***********************************‎افلاطون میگوید: دیکتاتوری طبعاً از دموکراسی سرچشمه میگیرد و خشن ترین شکلِ ظلم و برده داری از افراطی ترین شکلِ آزادی ساخته میشود***********************************‎معمولاً، آزادی اقتصادی در میانِ اقشارِ متوسط جامعه، کم شده و کاهش میابد و از سوی دیگر آزادی سیاسی به صورتِ تظاهری، تسلی بخش این گروه از مردم میشود.. نباید چنین مسائلی را تماماً ناشی از انحراف و فسادِ ثروتمندان بدانیم، بلکه این موضوع از جبری بودنِ توسعهٔ اقتصادی و طبیعتِ انسان، سرچشمه میگیرد.. هرچه بر پیچیدگیِ اقتصادی افزوده شود، به استعدادِ برتر امتیازِ عالی تری تعلق میگیرد و تمرکزِ ثروت و مسئولیت و قدرتِ سیاسی را تشدید میکند***********************************‎دموکراسی از سایرِ روش هایِ حکومت داری دشوارتر است، زیرا وسیع ترین پراکنش و پراکندگیِ تعقل و اندیشه را میطلبد و هنگامی که ما مردم خود را به حکومت میرسانیم، از یاد میبریم که خویش را عاقل سازیم... تعلیم و تربیت توسعه یافته، اما قدرتِ باروریِ مردمِ ساده و عوام پیوسته مانعِ بزرگی بر سرِ راهِ گسترشِ تعقل و خردمندی بوده است... جهل و نادانی را تنها به این دلیل که فراوان ترین چیز است، نباید بر تختِ قدرت نشاند***********************************‎حقِ رسیدن به منصب و قدرت، جزوِ حقوقِ انسان به شمار نمی آید، اما حقِ انسان است که برای رسیدن به منصب و قدرت در هر راهی که به استعداد و لیاقت او امکانِ پرورش و آزمایش میدهد، گام بردارد... نباید فراموش کنیم که حق، هدیهٔ طبیعت یا آسمان نیست، بلکه امتیازی است که بخاطرِ منافعِ گروه به فرد داده میشود***********************************‎اگر اقتصادِ آزاد قادر نباشد به همان شایستگی که ثروت را ایجاد کرده است، آن را توزیع کند، راهِ دیکتاتوری به رویِ هرکس که بتواند به دیگران وعدهٔ اطمینان بخشِ تأمینِ زندگی را بدهد، گشوده خواهد بود و حکومتی نظامی، تحتِ انواعِ اصطلاح هایِ فریبنده، جهانِ آزاد را فرا خواهد گرفت***********************************‎نظمِ جهانی، با توافقِ دولتمردان و حکومتها حاصل نمیشود، بلکه از راه پیروزیِ بسیار قاطع یکی از قدرتهایِ بزرگ که قادر است قانونِ بین المللی را دیکته و اجرا کند، بدست خواهد آمد***********************************‎تمدن یعنی نظمی اجتماعی که تعالی بخشِ آفرینشِ فرهنگی است.. نظمی سیاسی که عادتها، اخلاقیات و قانون، آن را تأمین میکند.. و در نهایت نظمی است اقتصادی که با تداومِ تولید و مبادله، برقرار میشود.. تمدن آفرینشِ فرهنگی است که در پرتو آزادی و امکانات برای آفریدن، تجربه، تفسیر و آزمایش و باروری باورها، ادبیات، منش ها و هنرها، صورت میگیرد... تمدن رشتهٔ درهم تنیده و زودگسلِ روابطِ انسانی است که دشوار بافته میشود و آسان نابود میگردد***********************************‎اگر ما امروز پیشرفت کرده ایم، به این خاطر نیست که ما سالمتر، بهتر یا عاقل تر از انسانهای گذشته هستیم، بلکه سبب آن است که بر میراثی غنی تر و بر سطحِ عالی ترِ بنیانی که تراکمِ دانش و هنر آن را به صورتِ تکیه گاه و حفاظ وجودی ما بالا میبرد، دیده گشوده ایم.. این میراث رشد میکند و انسانی که آن را دریافت میکند نیز به همان نسبت رشد و پیشرفت میکند***********************************‎آن انسانی سعادتمند است که قبل از مرگ، تا آنجا که میتواند از میراث تمدن خوشه چینی کند و آن را به فرزندانِ خود منتقل سازد.. چنین انسانی تا واپسین دمِ حیات مدیون و شاکرِ این میراثِ زوال ناپذیر خواهد بود و میداند که این میراث پرورانندهٔ ما انسانها و حیاتِ جاویدِ ماست-----------------------------------------‎امیدوارم این ریویو برایِ شما دوستانِ هوشی وار، مفید بوده باشه‎«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»    تاریخی فلسفه               242 reviews30 followers     December 29, 2014   The audio version is delightful. It enhances the original text with interviews that are relevant to each section. The intimacy between Will and Ariel is a treat. Their playful arm wrestling over ideas and concepts makes for a better interview. Sure, their world view is older...although he was a radical of his time. But even for the faults, it's a delight to linger in his mind. And an honor to be in the presence of Ariel's spirit.                  167 reviews2,080 followers     December 2, 2015    http://domo3.us/blog/?p=858 كنت قد قررت أن أعطي الكتاب نجمتين .. لكن آخر فصل قلب موازين الكتب واخترت أن أقيمه ب ثلاث نجمات .. قام ويل وزوجته ارييل بتأليف هذا الكتاب بعد انتهائهم من تأليف ونشر كتاب قصة الحضارة الضخم وكأنه في رحلته عبر التاريخ يقدم دروسا مستفادة وعبر من التاريخ الذي يكرر نفسه بصورته العامة.. يتكون الكتاب من ١٣ فصلا مختلفة الطول.. يعنون الفصول بعامل أو عنصر في حياة الانسان وعلاقته بالتاريخ وما قدم عبر العصور السالفة:-ألوان من الحيرة-التاريخ والأرض-البيولوجيا والتاريخ-العرق والتاريخ-الشخصية والتاريخ-الأخلاق والتاريخ-الدين والتاريخ-الاقتصاد والتاريخ-الاشتراكية والتاريخ-الحكومة والحرب-التاريخ والحرب-التطور والتحلل-هل التقدم حقيقي-وينتهي الكتاب بالهوامش.. الفصل الأخير حقيقة هو ما حرضني على التفكير أكثر بين فصول الكتاب.. إذ أنه يقدم تساؤلات كفيلة بجعلك تعيد النظر إلى واقعك وارتباطه بالتاريخ وعلاقته بالمستقبل.. تشكل وجهة نظرك للحضارة من جانب آخر ووجهة نظر تاريخية تؤمن بأن الحضارة تولد وقد تموت أو تركد.. وعملية التقدم هي نقل الحضارة إلى كل جيل عبر التعليم والوعي.. والوراثة في مسألة الحضارة شيء باطل.. فالحضارة لاتورث. قبل أن أبدي ملاحظاتي على الكتاب أود أن أشكر المترجم.. أعتبر ترجمته من أفضل التراجم التي قرأتها.. واضحة ،ميسرة وغير ركيكة على الإطلاق.. كما كان جهده رائع إذ أضاف بعض الهوامش والتعريفات لبعض الاشخاص الذين تم ذكرهم في الكتاب وقد لايكونون معروفين لديك، فتكلف المترجم مشكورا بتوضيح بعض النقاط لأن الكتاب يبدو لي موجه شخصيا للغرب الذين هم على علم ببعض المسميات والتاريخ الاغريقي وشخوصه و و و . الفصول الأولى جميلة لكني أرى أن الكتاب يضعف من المنتصف حتى قبل الفصل الأخير.. في هذا الكتاب وعلى مدى رحلته المبسطة للتاريخ عرفت أن البشر حين يطلقون العنان لأنفسهم ورغباتهم يصبحون وحوشا.. يتعطشون للملك والثراء ولو كان على حساب الآخرين.. يقتلون.. يفرضون أحكاما مستبدة ولايهمهم إطلاقا طبقاتا لفقراء والضعفاء وكم ستتسبب لهم هذه الاحكام من قمع وطحن ! أول درس من التاريخ أن الإنسان مرعب إذا صب اهتمامه في المال والملك .. في نظري الكاتب يحتاج إلى نظرة إسلامية أعمق تهذب بعض نظرياته.. هناك بعض وجهات النظر والأفكار التي طرحها لا أتفق معاها إطلاقا وأشعر أن هناك أحكام تطلق من واقعه وبيئته فلاتعُمم.. لا أعرف لمَ لكني فعلا شعرت أنه بحاجة إلى نظرة إسلامية. مثلا في جدول العادات للإنسان شعرت بأن هناك مغالطات مثل النوم لايعتبر سلبيا! إلا إذا كان زائدا عن الحد.. وكذلك المغازلة ليست شيء ايجابي على إطلاقها.. وهناك نقطة نبه لها المترجم أيضا.. يقول ديورانت أن اليهود أعطوا محمد -والنصارى ايضا- شيء مهم لرسالته وكتابه.. يقصد أن رسولنا الكريم اقتبس من التوراة أو من التراث اليهودي.. ولمثل هذا أقول أنه ينظر للأمر بزاوية واحدة ولم يجرب أن يتعمق في النظرة الاسلامية كما تعمق في تاريخ الإغريق! فليس من المعقول أن يكون رجل مثل ويل باحث وقارئ ومؤرخ يعتقد أن القرآن إنما هو اقتباس من التوراة.. القرآن وحي وهذه النظرة أساءت لي وستسيء لكل مسلم.. اليهود والنصارى لم يعطوا شيء لرسولنا الكريم.. القرآن وحي من الله.. واليهود إن كان لايعلم فهم من أشهر الناس في تكتمهم على العلم وحوادث النبوة.. في الكتاب نقطة ذكرها في فصل التاريخ والدين.. أنه قامت حروب على رجال الدين والكنيسة والتشدد ونبذ العقل الذي حصل في العصور الوسطى وهذا مايحدث الآن لدينا.. وإن استمر الوضع أخشى ان يكون الدين لدينا شيء يضيق وليس يوسع.. ولكم أن تلاحظوا الوضع الحالي من كثرة الهجوم على المتدينين وعلى أسلوبهم وأقصد من لمتدينين النوع المتشدد جدا .. لاحظوا كثرة الهجوم مثل مسلسل طاش ماطاش وغيره حتى من بعض الدعاة أنفسهم.. ربما يتطور هذا النقد إلى هجوم شرس فيجب ان يعي رجال الدين ان الدين أوسع من نظرتهم الضيقة وأن لايتحدثوا باسم الدين في كل نظراتهم الشخصية المتشددة .. وإلا سيزداد الهجوم وسينبذ الدين سنون طوال بسبب مافعلوه.. تماما كما حصل في العصور الوسطى والتخلف الكنسي.. وهذا من دروس التاريخ العظيمة.. الدرس الذي يجب أن نستفيد منه هو إصلاحات صولون في أثينا.. إصلاحاته التي أنقذت أثينا من الثورة والدمار والتي لم تستغرق سوا جيلا واحدا! ولذلك يقول ويل : “الآثار التي تحدثها الثورة يمكن تحققها بدونها، من خلال الدفع التدريجي للتطورات الاقتصادية”.. فالثورة ليست دائما حل .. يسمي ويل الكتاب دروس من التاريخ بينما كان يجب أن يسميه دروس من التاريخ الاوروبي والاغريقي والامريكي .. لأني أجد تجاهل و اغفال شديد لتاريخ الحضارة الاسلامية وركز على التاريخ الاوروبي والامريكي.. ولم يذكر تجربة الدول الاسلامية على الاطلاق ! بينم�� استمرت دول الخلافة الإسلامية لأكثر من ١٠٠٠ سنة! إجحافه هذا غير معقول.. من ماخرجت به وأراه صحيح جدا من دروس التاريخ أن النظام عندما يورث للأبناء أو للعائلة سيتولد استبداد أو جهل من الحكام أنفسهم.. بينما لا بديل لنظام اختيار الأجدر.. وهو ما أثبت فعاليته عبر التاريخ.. وللحكم الاسلامي في أوله أكبر دليل في الخلافات الراشدة. قدم لفتة جميلة جدا عن الفن الهابط الذي نراه اليوم وعلاقته بالديموقراطية.. بتعليل منطقي رأيت فيه الكثير من الصحة والاسقاط على الواقع.. الفصل الأخير هو أجمل ما في الكتاب في نظري.. لأنه يطرح تساؤلات واشكاليات عن التقدم .. وهل وضعنا ا��ح��لي أفضل من سابقنا ولم في كل مرة نتمنى العودة للماضي وحياة الاجداد ولابطأ مع أننا نعيش فس عالم سرعتته مضاعفة في كل شيء.. الكتاب جدير بقراءة المهتمين بالتاريخ.. لكن الكتاب طبعا عمل بشري بحت يحتوي الكثير من النقص وعدم وجود رؤية أشمل وأكثر حيادية للتاريخ.     50-books-in-2010-project               391 reviews195 followers     July 12, 2021   يعرض ديورانت بعض الأفكار العامة عن التاريخ و تأثره ببعض العوامل كالبيولوجيا والأخلاق والدين والأقتصاد!! الأفكار في معظمها جيدة لكن بعض الأفكار تعكس انحيازاته فهو مثلا يرى أن إسرائيل دولة حضارية تغلبت على عوائق كثيرة طبيعية و بشرية     p8-storytel           October 18, 2015   What a thoroughly disagreeable book. Filled with conclusory opinionated claptrap unsupported by historical evidence. Racist and homophobic.For example, "only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality" or "All strong characters and peoples are race conscious, and are instinctively averse to marriage outside their own racial group." or "...sin had flourished in every age...Even our generation has not yet rivaled the popularity of homosexualism in ancient Greece or Rome...". or ..."intelligence is perpetually retarted by the fertility of the simple." It goes one and and on and on, notwithstanding the fact that text is only 102 pages.  Totally puts the lie to the authors' statement in the Preface in which they state that "our aim is not originality but inclusiveness; we offer a survey of human experience, not a personal revelation." While it is true they are not "original" (there are lots of fuzzy thinking bigots in the world) they are certainly not inclusive and the "personal revelation" they do, in fact, reveal is ugly and repulsive.      history philosophy politics               652 reviews252 followers      Shelved as 'dnf'  March 6, 2022   Always difficult to say whether it makes sense to read such an old book about human history. I enjoyed it in the beginning, but soon some doubts crept in. At some point it became a back and forth between enjoying and disliking the text; nicely illustrated by the following paragraph:
 Intellect is therefore a vital force in history, but it can also be a dissolvent and destructive power. Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.
 What a rollercoaster. I think the main problem here is just that this is a book written by old people with a dated perspective. I could look past this— to some extent. But a book of merely 120 pages of course is not going to provide a comprehensive overview of human history. And this is also not what this book is about. It’s about what we have learned from all of it (hence the title). And I’m not sure it makes sense for me to read such a book when it was written by someone that, in my humble opinion, doesn’t understand human nature. This table here of positive and negative human instincts was the nail in the coffin:     DNF at 24% I did read the last chapter, though, because a GR-friend of mine said it would be good; and it was. But I think I’d prefer to read a book written by someone with a more modern view on humanity and human history.     history philosophical               104 reviews4 followers     May 18, 2018   ظاهرا دورانت ها این کتاب را در جریان بازخوانی "تاریخ تمدن" نگاشته اند و به بررسی تاریخ در پیوند با موضوعاتی از قبیل زمین، اخلاق، دین، اقتصاد و ... و تاثیر این مسائل بر تاریخ و بالعکس پرداخته اند و در نهایت رشد و زوال و پیشرفت انسان و تمدن در گذرگاه زمان و تاریخ را واکاوی کرده اند اگر مثل من تاریخ تمدن را نخوانده اید و مطمئن هم نیستید که اصولا روزی آن اثر را خواهید خواند یا خیر شاید این کتاب، به عنوان پیش درآمد یا دست کم چکیده ای از دیدگاه های یکی از فیلسوفان و محققان بزرگ، گزینه مناسبی باشد البته برای من در حکم یک کتاب شکوهمند و فوق العاده نبود اما خب جملات و مطالب ارزشمند و تامل برانگیزی در آن مطرح شده بود که حتما و حتما ارزش یکبار خوانده شدن را خواهد داشت. [خودم هم بعدها باید یک بار دیگر مرورش کنم] اما عنوانِ کتاب شاید جالب تر از هر مساله ای باشد : "درس های تاریخ" که همزمان موضوعی ست هم جدی و هم به گمانم شوخی! به راستی چقدر از تاریخ درس گرفته شده و می شود؟؟؟ به قول خود ویل دورانت تاریخ تکرار می شود، تاریخ در مقیاسی وسیع تر تکرار می شود... و اصولا اگر از تاریخ درس گرفته می شد آیا باز هم چنین خونسرد و جدی و بی رحم تکرار می شد؟                   Author  9 books455 followers     January 16, 2022   This book is over 50 years old. In some ways, the book now lives in the shadows of more recent classics, such as Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and Yuval Noah Harari's "21 Lessons for the 21st Century." In these more contemporary books, we are also called to look at the lessons of history. In these books, too, we are called on to be skeptical and hesitant in making sense out of the often nonsense of history. "History is so indifferently rich that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances." (p. 97). But each of these books owes something to this book -- Will and Ariel Durant's "The Lessons of History."In one hundred pages, the authors cover such topics as religion, race, war, economics, decay, and progress. Though the chapters are often no longer than a few pages, the breadth of the analysis is the entirety of human history. Often, the tone of the chapters is unabashedly speculative and whimsical. The prose often reaches for something close to poetry. And through this poetry, we can come to see our own circumstances as the recurrence of an old problem in a new garb.  Perhaps the most contentious issue of the book -- and perhaps the one that makes it the most dated -- is how it deals with human nature. In this book, the recurrence of certain types of events is ascribed to human nature and the human condition. History, the authors write, “is a fragment of biology” (p. 18). Scholars with a more constructivist approach would probably take issue with analyses based on sweeping generalizations about human nature, that our primitive mental hardwiring can be seen as an essential cause for the reoccurrences of history. And yet, we can find sympathetic books in Richard Dawkins’s "The Selfish Gene" and Steven Pinker’s "The Blank Slate". And even modern historians like Yuval Noah Harari ground their understanding of history in the actions of humans as only slightly more evolved primates.  Perhaps it's the greatest value is its last chapter, which casts a skeptical gaze on progress and technology. That skepticism is even more valuable in these times when the internet and social media have unleashed a torrent of unintentional negative externalities in the form of fake news and tribalism. Skeptically, the authors conclude that while decay is a recurrent theme in history, the progress of civilizations can survive through education. “Consider education not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates and reigns...but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible to as many as possible” (p. 101).  So, then, why go back to a book written over 50 years ago. One good reason is that the book has withstood the test of time. Though the volume is short (about 100 pages), compact, self-consciously hesitant about its findings, it has withstood the test of time and continues to find its way onto reading lists as varied as scholastic and practical. The book has moments where it is very specifically a product of its time. It worries, for example, about the contest between capitalism and socialism. Yet, its very datedness gives it value as a lesson in trying to deal with contemporary problems through a historical gaze. It offers us a chance to back-test two historians' attempts to make sense of their modern times through history. Their insights, while highly qualified, seems relevant to our current moment.  Finally, in its style, the book offers a modern example of how scholars might try to attempt to come up with their own lessons. Most chapters are only a few pages, the whole book is about one hundred pages, and the book manages to make its points with minimal amounts of references.  Sometimes for taking on big questions of our time, we don't need overly complicated tools. We can leave our extensive reading and numerous references in the background as we apply our knowledge in a concise and humble way. Perhaps that is a historical lesson from this book too.  If we apply our deep knowledge in a concise and humble way, perhaps our own words can survive for fifty years.     books-of-2020 books-of-2022               333 reviews51 followers     October 14, 2016   ‘History repeats itself’, ‘Those who don’t learn from history are forced to repeat it’ – these are two of the quips about which I had been curious for so long. Is it possible that we humans are living a cycle all through our lives? Are we repeating the same things, events and experiences that our ancestors once went through? Are we humans, so-called most intelligent species of this planet, so inept at learning from our past that we go through the same pains and pleasures, events and experiences that keep staring at our face from the annals?I was seeking answers to these questions and when Amazon ‘recommended’ this book to me, I gladly accepted. Will and Ariel Durant, the author couple, are renowned for their contribution to the field of History and ‘The Story of Civilization’, a series of eleven volumes in Western history, is their magnum opus. And, when they offer to summarize all their learning in a little book, you can’t help grabbing the same with both hands. I am glad I did. In this book, Will and Ariel, categorize lessons of the past under various faculties. The evolution of mankind, the overcoming of geological obstacles, the biological evolution and multiplication into innumerable life forms, racial and ethnic diversities, the development of our ethics and morals, the loosening grip of religion on our conscience, growth of economics, socialism, wars and the various forms of governments. They end the book by discussing whether we have progressed by learning our lessons wisely from our past or are we running around in circles. The whole book makes not just an interesting read but worthy of some deep contemplation too. The book is written in a plain, pragmatic and unostentatious manner. They don’t claim to know it all, but acknowledge that history is just a collection of varying perspectives, depending on our cultural, religious, social background and understanding. Also, they present a neutral stance on our past, without nurturing a tender nostalgia for our past while having bleak fears about the future, or going gaga about the modern times while dismissing the past as full of darkness and barbaric beings.  The past is full of lessons for those who want to learn, and the lessons are neither hard, nor bitter. We get what we seek from our past. If you’re looking for hope, it is full of it. If you are pessimistic about human history, then past offers an abundance of excuses for that too. It is all up to us to wisely choose lessons that suit us, learn from them, use the wisdom to sail through our present, while building a rich heritage for the future generations for whom we will soon be pages of history.  A lovely introduction into the various facets of human history and a book that no history-buff should miss!                   14 reviews15 followers     August 29, 2011   I'm giving this book a high rating no because I agree with it. But it is important to see where historiography was at in the 60's. Durants' main point is that the strong,tenacious, breeding society will win the day and that the world will only unite as one when aliens attack us. This is the antithesis of what Jesus taught. Also Gandhi. They also say the monarchy is the most stable successful form of government and that the church is important only because it serve as a personal behavior moderator and a societal babysitter. They put no importance in spirituality, forgiveness or hope. What a bleak picture they paint for the world. The frightening thing is that this is what history teaches. I do like the chapter they write explaining social Darwinism. They make the case for it pretty well and the person who read the book before me ate it up. Highlighted lines everywhere. Scary. But the Durants end the chapter with a short plea to treat each individual based on their merits. But since they seem so Darwinian in their view of humanity I don't see why they would try to distance themselves fromthe social application of his work. They do it weakly. Historiographers need to read this. It's part of our heritage as historians. I'm grateful I was not taught to think this way in graduate school although I got some of it growing up at home and in certain religious interpretations obsessed with knowing who could wield God's power and who could not based on inheritance. My educators (church and school) encouraged me to hold tightly to ideals of humane living, tolerance, and hope for a better future. If I had the Durants as teachers, I'd slit my wrists.                   580 reviews204 followers     September 17, 2019   Pultizer Prize-winning historians Will and Ariel Durant spent their entire lives studying and writing about history. The Lessons of History is a distillation of all of their works and lessons learned in one, short 120-pages book. They presented a crux on how history events are affected/related by/with several factors/themes. The factors/themes include biology, race, morals, religion, economics, government and war and several examples were quoted to support their conclusion. It's short, concise, profound and poetic in parts. What follows is some of my favorite takeaways from the book:  
 1. So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it — perhaps as much more as the roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.     2. Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign. Education has spread, but intelligence is perpetually retarded by the fertility of the simple.  A cynic remarked that "you mustn't enthrone ignorance just because there is so much of it."  However, ignorance is not long enthroned, for it lends itself to the manipulation by the forces that mold public opinion.  It may be true, as Lincoln supposed, that "you can't fool all the people all the time," but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.     3. Since inequality grows in an expanding economy, a society may find itself divided between a cultured minority and a majority of men and women too unfortunate by nature or circumstance to inherit or develop standards of excellence and taste.  As this majority grows it acts as a cultural drag upon the minority; its ways of speech, dress, recreation, feeling, judgment, and thought spread upward, and internal barbarization by the majority is part of the price that the minority pays for its control of educational and economic opportunity.     4. Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.   
     classis-modern-classics non-fiction               229 reviews36 followers     July 17, 2022    در عین کم حجم بودن پربار و جالبه. کتاب شامل 13 فصله که توی هر کدوم یک مسئله تاثیر گذار روی تاریخ و تمدن رو بررسی میکنه. مثلا تاریخ و نژاد، تاریخ و اخلاق، تاریخ و دین و به همین شکل موضوعات مختلف. برای شخص من بخش اقتصاد و همچنین حکومت در درجه ی اول و بخش جنگ بعد از اون از جذاب ترین بخش ها بودن. نکته ی مهم توی این کتاب نگاه کاملا بی طرف نویسنده به مطالب و بیان ساده ی نظراتش هست. قطعا این کتاب رو به بقیه توصیه میکنم.ه    american history nonfiction               588 reviews109 followers     October 7, 2020   Der Titel sagt eigentlich schon worauf das Buch hinaus will: Die Autoren fassen die 5000 Jahre Menschheitsgeschichte auf vergleichsweise wenigen Seiten zusammen und kategorisieren dabei die Geschichte in verschiedenen Bereichen wie "Rasse", Moral oder Krieg.  Ist es möglich, dass "Geschichte sinnlos ist", dass sie uns nichts lehrt und dass die unermessliche Vergangenheit nur das mühsame Einstudieren der Fehler war, die die Zukunft auf einer größeren Bühne und in größerem Maßstab zu machen bestimmt ist?  Lustiger Weise hatte ich heute eine kurze Diskussion über Geschichte. Geschichte ist für viele staubtrocken, unlustig und zu fad. Viele denken, dass es sich nur um Fakten handelt, dabei ist es noch so viel mehr! Es ist nicht nur so, dass man aus vergangenem lernen kann, sondern es gibt auch Hoffnung auf die Zukunft, auf eine bessere Welt. Ich liebe wie das Buch abschließt und die Geschichte als Erbe und Wachstum, etwas worauf Mensch stolz sein kann, bezeichnet. Ich wünschte mir wirklich sehr, dass man an der Schule Geschichte nicht mehr nach Chronologie unterrichten würde, sondern nach anderen Kriterien wie in diesem Buch zusammengefasst. Das würde so vieles im Unterricht ändern und viel mehr Interesse wecken.   Unser Ziel ist nicht Originalität, sondern Inklusivität  Ich hatte richtig viel Spaß beim Lesen und habe das Buch in wenigen Stunden durchgelesen. Man muss im Kopf behalten, dass diese Version die Erstveröffentlichung von 1968 ist, somit natürlich nicht mehr alles korrekt ist und manches sogar schon sehr altmodisch wirkt. Aber trotz allem kann man aus den verschiedenen Interpretationen und Sichtweisen einiges lernen. Es war mehr wie eine Zusammenfassung der Geschichte mit Kommentaren von einem alten Professor, der vor Begeisterung der Geschichte strotzt und hier und da Anekdoten zu erzählen hat.  Für professionelle Kenner der Menschheitsgeschichte mag dieses Buch nicht ausreichend sein, weil es einfach zu kurz ist um tiefer in die Materie einzudringen. Aber für jemand wie mich, der von der Geschichte fasziniert ist, bereits einiges kennt, aber noch lange kein Profi ist, war das genau richtig. Ich konnte gerade noch dem roten Faden folgen und war sehr amüsiert von seiner literarischen Reise durch die Menschheit.  ** Dieses Buch wurde mir über NetGalley als E-Book zur Verfügung gestellt **               July 11, 2009   A Curiosity.I liked it, not because I agreed with it, but becauseit is such a rarity and an oddity. How often are historians brave enough or rash enough to take on the job/challenge of offering "a survey of human experience"as Will and Ariel Durant say in their preface.Even if you disagree with or query their views, it makes you wonder what you yourself believe and think and whether you can justify it with facts and figures.You may not agree with much of this book, or then you may.But you will be stimulated by and alerted to everything it says because of the aims the authors have set themselves. My copy is scrawled with notes and underlinings, exclamation marks and mini-essays. I am as curious to reread it for these as I am for the printed text. How much have I changed???     americana history               356 reviews389 followers     November 1, 2020   This is a very remarkable book. Will Durant, an American philosopher and historian, together with his wife Ariel wrote a world history in 11 volumes, published between 1935 and 1975. This booklet is an attempt to summarize what they learned from this experience. In the introduction Durant warns that it is a very subjective view, and above all departing from the doubt whether we really can learn something from history: "only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed. ". This laconic way of writing is very typical of this work. The Durants, despite their doubts, do not hesitate to posit some very confident assertions, especially in his first chapter: "Life is selection. We are all born unfree and UNEQUAL"/" Heaven and utopia are buckets in a well: when one goes down the other goes up! When religion declines Communism grows". These are just a few examples, but they immediately make clear that the Durants also are children of their time: in many instances they state that the world in the year 1968 clearly is in moral decline (homosexuality is explicitly mentioned as an example), that the degradation of authority has become overpowering and that modern art is a total aberration. All very conservative-reactionary, indeed. But in other places they are very cautious and nuanced: they're not sure if war is always justified, or whether religion plays a useful role in society, etc. In short, the Durants can not be pinned down to just one stance. They have a complex, quirky look on history, with sometimes really interesting views. For example, according to them, progress is not really measurable, because depending on what criterion or angle you choose. But progress lies for them in that you can build on previous generations and civilizations, and in that respect we are better off than ever. All in all, an interesting booklet, but you have to take into account the personal view of the authors. (rating 2.5 stars)     civilizations global-history philosophy-of-history               1,096 reviews233 followers     April 29, 2016     با ارفاق سه ستاره ویل دورانت در این کتاب نظراتش رو صادقانه و بدون پیچیدگی در مورد مضامین مختلف بیان کرده. اما اون چیزی که حداقل برای من در این کتاب جالب تر بود اشارات تاریخیشه. طبیعتا کسی که از حرف های تاریخی ویل دورانت در این کتاب مطلع باشه، کتاب چیز خاصی نداره سوای همون جامعیت ویل دورانتی و قضاوت تقریبا عادلانه - اینکه سعی می کنه دو طرف قضیه رو باز کنه. ولی اصلا نباید انتظار یه آدم عمیق و فلسفی رو ازش داشت. به هر حال همینکه ذهن آدم با بعضی پرسش ها روبرو بشه خودش یه مزیته  دو فصل "سوسیالیسم و تاریخ" و "نژاد و تاریخ" برای من از نظر اطلاعات تاریخیش جالب تر بود حاشیه: مضمون « بی عدالتی والا* » ی کالون مفهوم جالبی بود کلاحاشیه ی دو: جفا است اگه همه جا صرفا بگم ویل دورانت، و از آریل حرفی نزنم. همه ی ویل ها رو همراه آریل لحاظ کنید * Sublime Injustice     تاریخ جنگ سیاست               363 reviews79 followers     March 4, 2020    من فترة كنت وضعته على القائمة لكن لفكرتي عنه من كونه عمل متخصص وصعب وسيحتاج وقتاً للقراءة وتركيز؛ قررت تأجيله، بشكل ما حدث قبل أيام أن اقترح بعض الأصدقاء أن نبدأ قراءة جماعية نناقش بعدها ما نقرأ فاقترعنا وكانت نتيجة القرعة هذا الكتاب، لتنقله من قائمة الانتظار الأبدية إلى القراءة الفعلية..بدأ الكتاب بتقديم خفيف جداً وعام ما شكل عامل جذب ، ثم بدأ يتسلسل في طروحاته، وهو عبارة عن مجموعة مقالات أو قراءات تربط التاريخ بالعديد من المفاهيم الأساسية كالدين والاقتصاد والأخلاق والسياسة والعلم وغيرها، كلها مقدمة في إطار تاريخي أشبه بمنحنى ممثل لوجودها من خلال نماذج عملية من مختلف الأزمنة والأماكن.. لن يسعني تصنيفه -إضافة لفشلي الشخصي في موضوع التصنيف- لتشعبه وشموليته.. فهو اعتمد على وضع النظرية بشكل عام من ثم التدليل عليها بأمثلة من الواقع التاريخي وأحياناً الحديث بالشكل الذي يخدم الطرح الأساسي ويوضحه، واتساع نطاق المواضيع المطروحة يجعل حصره في مسمى واحد صعب.. فيه علم اجتماع وفلسفة وسياسة واقتصاد وتاريخ وكثير من المجالات المطروقة..الغريب كان -بالنسبة لفكرتي المسبقة عنه- السخرية التي تطل أحياناً وإن كانت في كلمات بسيطة لكنها أضفت متعة وخفة على النص وخاصة في في الأجزاء التي ا��تمد فيها أسلوب المقارنة..أيضاً الروابط التي استنتجتها بين الكثير من الأفكار المقدمة في الكتاب مع أخرى ألفتها في نصوص آخرين مثل فروم وباومان وساراماجو في كهفه كانت كما العادة مصدر جذب وإثارة للاهتمام..أنا شخصياً مقتنعة أن جزءاً أساسياً من أفضلية وعظمة القراءة يكمن في المتعة، حتى في أكثر الكتب ثقلاً وتخصصاً، فالمتعة تكمن أحياناً في فكرة أو في أسلوب طرحها أو في أي شيء يمنح الكاتب القدرة على إدهاش قرائه، وهذا كتاب أدهشني واستمتعت به بأكثر مما توقعت بمراحل، حتى في أكثر أجزائه تعقيداً والتي أعدت قراءتها مرتين وثلاثة.. ويسعدني جداً أني خرجت منه بالكثير من الهو��مش والخطوط والاقتباسات وعلامات التعجب والاستفهام، ولكل ذلك أو أكثر بفرح طفولي عظيم..ممتنة للطف الترجمة وقدرتها على إيصال المحتوى بهذا القدر من السلاسة المحببة جداً جداً..      إصدارات_عصير بدايات تاريخ               1,231 reviews669 followers     July 29, 2021    .ويليام جيمس ديورانت لمن لا يعرفه هو فيلسوف ومؤرخ وكاتب أمريكي، اشتهر بكتابه «قصة الحضارة»، ومن المجلد الحادي عشر في كتاب«قصة الحضارة». انطلق ديورانت مع زوجته ارييل، بتدوين الملاحظات التي واكبت رحلة التوثيق تلك، فنتج عنها هذا الكتاب الذي بين أيدينا( دروس من التاريخ) والذي يقدم به ديورانت وزوجته أهم ما واكب تطور التاريخ في ٥٠٠٠ سنة.قُسم الكتاب إلى إثنى عشر فصلا، تناولا الزوجان من خلالها تطورات حضارة الجنس البشري، والجغرافيا والحروب، والأوضاع السياسية والاجتماعية وتأثير هذا على النفس البشرية، والأعراق والشخصيات والأخلاق، كما تطرقا إلى الدين بفصلٍ خاص وقد كان هذا بالفعل أكثر الفصول تشويقًا ومتعة. هذا الكتاب مختلف كونه لا يتبنى فكرة واحدة كما اعتدنا على كتب التاريخ أن تفعل، لكنه من أروع الكتب التي قرأتها على الإطلاق نظرًا لتعدد الأفكار والتي لا يجمعها سوى صفة البحث والتقصي الموجودة لدى ديورانت. ماذا بعد القراءة؟على مستوى شخصي تعتبر قراءة التاريخ مرهقة لي،ولا أجد لنفسي ميلاً نحوها ذلك لأني مؤمنة -بسبب كل ما نراه اليوم من تشويه للحقائق- باحتمالية أن يكون جزءا كبير من التاريخ الذي نعرفه ضرب من الوهم والإدعاء. ثامن أفضل كتاب في قائمة الـtop 10 للكتب التي قرأتها من أصل 1257 ولله الحمد. #أبجدية_فرح 5/5 🌷📚‏#candleflame23bookreviews#دروس_من_التاريخ #ويليام_جيمس_ديورانت#ستوري_تيل [image error]     favorites top-10 كتاب-صوتي               Author  6 books541 followers     December 25, 2014    كتاب جميل وبسيط .. وصغير! وربما أن صِغَر حجمه هو ما أضفى عليه جمالاً زائداً :) ويل ديورانت وزوجته آرييل هما، بلا شك، من العقول الضخمة التي لا يملك الواحد منا إلا أن يحترمها ويجلّها – وإن اختلف معها في مواضع يسيرة.   لست هنا في معرض تقييم للكتاب .. فهو باختصار كتاب ممتع إلى حد ما (لا يخلو من الملل والرتابة ..!!) وهو استخلاص للدروس والعِبر من رائعة ديورانت الشهيرة "قصّة الحضارة" – التي أتمنى أن أقرأها خلال السنة القادمة 2015 :)   هنا سأورد بعض ما أعجبني من اقتباسات تستحق الذكر:  ١] إن العلم محايد. فهو مستعد للقتل كما هو مستعد للشفاء. وهو مستعد للهدم أكثر من استعداده للبناء. وفي بعض الأحيان أُحِسّ أن أسلافنا في العصور الوسطى وعصر النهضة، عندما اهتمّوا بالأدب والفن والأسطورة أكثر من العلم والقوة، كانوا أحكم منّا. نحن الذين اهتممنا بالآليات على حساب الأهداف والغايات.    ٢] وليست الثورة الحقيقية الوحيدة الا تنوير العقل وتحسين الشخصية، وليس التحرير الحقيقي الوحيد الا تحرير الفرد، وليس الثوريون الحقيقيون إلا الفلاسفة والقديسيين.   ٣] ومعظم التاريخ ظن وتخمين والبقية الباقية تحامل وهوى   ٤] ولا يمكن لإنسان واحد مهما كان عبقرياً او عالماً ان يصل في حياته الى درجة اكتمال الفهم التي تتيح له الحكم المضمون على عادات المجتمع ومؤسساته ورفضها لان هذه العادات والمؤسسات تمثل حكمة الاجيال بعد قرون من التجريب في معمل التاريخ.   ٥] وقد تداوي الاباحية الجنسية نفسها من خلال افراطها ذاته ، وقد يعيش اطفالنا الذين تحرروا من المراسي حتى يروا سيادة النظام والتواضع ، فارتداء الملابس سيكون اكثر اغراءاً من العري.   ٦] وان اول شرط من شروط الحرية هو تقييدها ، ولو جعلناها مطلقة لماتت من الفوضى   ٧] ولا شك ان الدكتاتورية تنشأ من الديموقراطية ، كما ان اخطر انواع الطغيان والعبودية ينشأ من اشد اشكال الحرية تطرفاً         قراءات-2014               51 reviews2,446 followers     May 17, 2020   O carte cum ar spune marele Gică Hagi așa și așa bună, de la doi oameni care au și ei un Pulitzer în sacoșă. O carte despre istoria care se repetă, dar doar într-un mod general. În sensul că da, civilizațiile se nasc, cresc și apoi apun, dispar, dar nu fac ca noi, ca românii, ci transmit mai departe experiența lor, cunoștințele, îmbogățindu-i astfel pe cei care vin din urmă. O concluzie a autorilor care nu îmi place deloc ar fi aceea că pacea e o stare nenaturală a omenirii. Și că suntem făcuți pentru a concura unii cu alții: pentru mâncare, pentru pământ, pentru adăpost și așa mai departe. Și de-aia ne-am adunat în triburi și apoi în state. Și că putem să ieșim din starea asta de război doar dacă ne vom trezi în fața unui inamic comun, care să ne facă să ne unim. Cum este acest coronavirus, care, iată, reușește să ne aducă împreună, chiar dacă ne ține izolați unii de alții. Dar câteva idei foarte mișto sunt de găsit în cartea asta: de pildă, că democrația este cea mai bună formă de guvernământ, dar e fragilă și cere o populație educată. Sau că socialismul poate funcționa dacă este împerecheat cu capitalismul. Ori că e cum nu se poate mai naturală concentrarea bogăției în mâinile câtorva, de aceea e nevoie de intervenția statelor pentru o justă redistribuire. A, și faptul că valorile etice sunt un produs al condițiilor istorice și se schimbă în timp. Că de-aia nu mai e ok acum să-i dai unei femei cu bâta în cap și s-o duci la tine în peșteră, unde să-ți faci treaba cu ea. Deși unii mai încearcă. Și sunt multe exemple faine din istorie în carte. Cum ziceam, așa și așa bună. Spre foarte bună.      istorie               757 reviews1,295 followers     March 15, 2022   "التاريخ – أكثر من أي شيء آخر - هو تكوين وتسجيل هذا التراث، والتقدم هو تزايد وفرته وحفظه ونقله واستخدامه. لهؤلاء منا الذين لا يدرسون التاريخ كمنذر ومذكّر بجرائم الإنسان وحماقاته فحسب، ولكن – أيضاً- كتذكير مشجع للأرواح الخلاّقة، لا يعود الماضي غرفة محبطة من الأهوال؛ إنما يصبح مدينة سماوية، دولة فسيحة للعقل، ما زال يعيش ويتحدث ويتغنى بها الرهبان، ورجال الدولة، والمخترعون، والعلماء، والشعراء، والفنانون، والموسيقيون، والمحبون، والفلاسفة. لن يتفجع المؤرخ لعدم قدرتنا على إيجاد أي معنى في الوجود الإنساني إلا الذي نضعه نحن، ليكن هذا شيئاً نفخر به، أننا نضع بأنفسنا معنى لحياتنا، وأن هذا المعنى يتخطى حدود الموت في بعض الأحيان. لو أن رجلاً محظوظاً كفاية، فإنه سيمكن من تحصيل أكبر قدر من تراث حضارته قبل موته وينقله لأولاده. ولآخر نفس عمره سيظل دائماً ممتناً لهذه التركة التي لا تنضب، مستحضراً أنها أمنا المغذية وحياتنا الممتدة."                  17 reviews6 followers     May 26, 2016   Brilliant! The Durant's offer a bird's-eye view of human civilization and distill for us the principles and common threads that bind different peoples separated chronologically by thousands of years yet whom differ little to none in the passions and desires that motivate them. I can't recall reading any other book that had such a low length-to-substance ratio. It weighs in at only around 120 pages, but nearly every sentence seems pregnant with deep insights and wisdom that is as relevant today as it was millennia ago. I believe that anyone with a high school education and an open mind will reap tremendous wisdom from their words, though the more preliminary knowledge of history and the sciences one possesses, the more they will benefit from it.    non-fiction               103 reviews31 followers     September 18, 2020   My extremely high expectations were not met for this book. I guess ~120 pages are just not enough for so many years of history. I felt lost a couple times.    history nonfiction               664 reviews3,402 followers     August 30, 2020   Will and Ariel Durant were part of that great age of American writers who helped popularize history and philosophy. People all over the world, including myself, owe them a debt of gratitude for bringing knowledge down from its ivory towers to enrich the life of the common man. They wrote a lot and knew a lot, and this slim book is intended as some kind of summation of the ultimate lessons that they'd gleaned from a lifetime of study. Is there a consistent thread that unites the study of history? Unfortunately, it doesn't really seem like it. Except for the apparent pattern of inequality and redistribution that characterizes human societies. The book is eloquently written at times and concludes on an upbeat note about the solace of studying history: having an eternal city bustling with great souls that can always be visited in mind. Other than that though, the lessons of history seen in totality appear to be quite flexible and subjective.                  Author  14 books102 followers     May 9, 2018   The premise and the introduction sounded interesting, but soon I could not take it anymore: almost every second page asserts that Whites, Teutons or Catholics are the stronger group and therefore rule in all parts of the world or will soon rule (e.g. Catholics soon dominating Protestants in America due to greater virtue). Also, contraceptives, vaccinations and public schools are of the devil because they hinder evolution / the dominance of the strongest, and countries that have too much of the afore-mentioned must be overrun or conquered by more virile countries in order to stop the slide backwards. VOMIT-INDUCING    politics-etc               61 reviews     February 10, 2018     دموکراسى از همه انواع حکومت‏ها دشوارتر است، زیرا وسیع‏ترین پراکنش تعقل را مى‏طلبد، و هنگامى که ما مردم خود را به حکومت مى‏رساندیم از یاد بردیم که خویش را عاقل سازیم. تعلیم و تربیت توسعه یافته، اما قدرت بارورى مردم ساده و عوام پیوسته مانع از گسترش تعقل شده است. یکى از کلبیون تذکر داد که «جهل را تنها به این علت که فراوان‏ترین چیز است بر تخت منشانید»، اما دیرزمانى است که جهل بر تخت قرار ندارد، زیرا خود را در اختیار نیروهاى سازنده افکار عمومى قرار مى‏دهد تا بازیچه ایشان شود. شاید همان گونه که لینکلن اعتقاد داشت «نمى‏توان همه را براى همیشه فریفت»، اما مى‏توان عده مورد نیاز را براى تکیه‏زدن بر مسند حکومت کشورى بزرگ فریفت.در سرعت سه هزار کیلومتر در ساعت میمون‏هاى شلوارپوشى بیش نیستیم و با روزگارى که پیاده مى‏رفتیم فرقى نکرده‏ایم. مورخ از این‏که نمى‏تواند در حیات انسان معنایى غیر از آن‏که خود انسان به آن داده است، بیابد، تأسف نخواهد خورد؛ بگذارید از این که ما خود به حیاتمان معنا و مفهوم مى‏بخشیم، و گاه این معنا بر مرگ غالب مى‏��ود، احساس غرور کنیم. ممکن است در جوامع پیشرفته تمرکز ثروت به جایى برسد که قدرتِ عددى فقیران بسیار هماورد و رقیب قدرتِ استعداد اغنیاىِ اندک گردد، آن گاه این تعادل ناپایدار وضعى حاد و بحرانى به وجود مى‏آورد، که تاریخ با دو حالتِ متضادِ توزیع مجدد ثروت به دست قانون، یا تولیدِ فقر به دست انقلاب، با آن روبه‏رو شده است. این ها گزیده‌ای از جملاتی بود که در این کتاب نظرم رو جلب کرد، و البته تنها جملاتی نبود که می‌تونست در اینجا ذکر بشه. ویل دورانت در این کتاب در فصول مختلف راجع به مسایلی مثل اقتصاد، دین، حکومت، اخلاق و ... صحبت می‌کنه. ویل دورانت در هر فصل برای بیان دیدگاه خودش شاهد مثال‌هایی رو تقریبا به شکل تیتر وار از تاریخ میاره، بنابراین انتظار دیدن مطالب تاریخی مفصل از این کتاب نداشته باشید. اما می‌شه گفت دیدن دنیا (و تاریخ) از دید ویل دورانت واقعا خوب و لذت بخش هست.    This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.                   164 reviews9 followers     June 10, 2011   I first heard of Will and Ariel Durant in 2004 when reading a message by Jeffrey R. Holland, then President of Brigham Young University: No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.  This passage (which comes from this book) still strikes me as powerful, and is just one of countless great quotes from this book. Will and Ariel Durant wrote the 11-volume "Story of Civilization", and afterwards sought to briefly some of the patterns that occur, regardless of time and setting. While I intend to read the entire series, I just purchased The Harvard Classics collection. Prudence says I should work through that before buying another massive collection.  Despite only 100 pages and published 43 years ago (1968), I consider their work priceless. And unlike the majority of other history books, it's ENJOYABLE to read. Other GoodReads and Amazon.com reviews discuss the content more effectively that I would be able to, so I'll end here. :)           Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,417 reviews
The Lessons of History
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/174713.The_Lessons_of_History
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25986260-god
God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction
2016-04-05
Author
<div><div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5686119-book"></a></section><section><p>726 reviews134 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2351903949">August 15, 2019</a></section><div><p>God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction by Dan Barker and Richard Dawkins<p>“God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction” is an expose of “God’s” true qualities based on the very book that attempts to describe “Him”. Taking a page from Richard Dawkins, former evangelist minister and co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Dan Barker takes the readers on a journey through the Bible and during this trip he clearly describes the “Lord Jealous”. This provocative 322-page book includes twenty-eight chapters broken out by two parts: Part 1. Dawkins Was Right and Part II. Dawkins Was Too Kind.</p><p>Positives:<br />1.	Well-researched, well-written book. Barker takes glee in exposing the character of “God”.<br />2.	The fascinating topic of the characterization of “God” through analyzing the Bible. “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”<br />3.	The chapters are broken out by character traits. Each chapter begins with a biblical appropriate passage. “A jealous and avenging God is the Lord, the Lord is avenging and wrathful.” —Nahum 1:2”<br />4.	Barker knows the Bible with mastery and provides countless biblical passages that clearly supports his main points. “He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.” (Genesis 22:2)”<br />5.	So many biblical passages that will make your head spin. “Leviticus 19:28 “You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.” <br />6.	Traits of an unjust “God”. “Exodus 22:18 “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.””<br />7.	The concept of hell. “The concept of eternal Hell, a truly infinite lack of forgiveness, does not occur until the New Testament, thanks to Jesus.” <br />8.	Many examples of “God’s” Type-A micromanagement. <br />9.	Traits of a vindictive “God”. “Deuteronomy 32:35 “The Lord says, … ‘I will take revenge; I will pay them back. In due time their feet will slip. Their day of disaster will arrive, and their destiny will overtake them.’””<br />10.	The bloodthirsty lord. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement. (Leviticus 17:11)”<br />11.	Threatening nonbelievers, so cruel. “2 Chronicles 15:13 “All who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman.””<br />12.	Ethnic cleanser of biblical proportions. “Go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. (1 Samuel 15:3)”<br />13.	Misogyny and plenty of it. “Deuteronomy 22:28–29 “If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her away all his days.” RSV (You broke it, you buy it.)”<br />14.	So anti-gay. “Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.””<br />15.	The Bible endorses slavery, how terrible. “Leviticus 25:44–46 “As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers [NRSV: “aliens”] who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property.””<br />16.	Examples of infanticide. “O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock! (Psalm 137:8–9)”<br />17.	Examples of megalomania. ““So I will display my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the Lord.” —Ezekiel 38:23””<br />18.	Examples of malevolence. ““I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” —Isaiah 45:7, KJV”<br />19.	Just a plain old bully. “But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go. (Exodus 10:20)”<br />20.	Examples of flame-happy “God”. “Leviticus 21:9 “And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.” KJV (Notice that her “crime” is profaning her father.)”<br />21.	And so much more.</p><p>Negatives:<br />1.	I wanted more expert commentary from Barker.<br />2.	I would have added a section on how the Bible came together and the different versions.<br />3.	No notes or links.</p><p>In summary, I enjoyed this book. It will serve as an excellent reference when I debate my Christian friends. Barker has great command of the topic and even takes glee in exposing what are clearly difficult and realistic characterizations of the biblical “God”. Provocative and what must be difficult for Christians to digest, this is the word of “God”. I recommend it. </p><p>Further recommendations: “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, “The Religion Virus” by James A. Craig, “50 Reasons People Give For Believing in a God” by Guy P. Harrison, “The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture” by Darrel W. Ray, “End of Faith” by Sam Harris, “Faith No More: Why People Reject religion” by Phil Zuckerman, “Atheism Advanced” by David Eller, “Why We Believe In God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith” by J. Anderson Thomson Jr., “The Believing Brain” by Michael Shermer, and “Why I Became An Atheist” by John W. Loftus.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5686119?shelf=atheism-religion">atheism-religion</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5935491-tanja-berg"></a></section><section><p>1,808 reviews403 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4749611764">May 30, 2022</a></section><div><p>Wow. My mind is reeling from the sheer atrociousness of the Christian god. It's been murder, rape and blood spatter for nearly 16 hours of audio book - all in the name of god, or committed directly by the almighty himself. You can of course pick up any bible and start to actually read it, you won't get far before the jealous god begins to assert himself, or you can have a look here: <p><a href="https://www.salon.com/2014/05/31/11_kinds_of_bible_verses_christians_love_to_ignore_partner/">https://www.salon.com/2014/05/31/11_k...</a></p><p>I never understood the book of Job. I understand it even less now - god lets the devil bet that Job won't love good if all his worldly possessions, he won't still love god. To prove his point, god LETS the devil run with it. There is no moral lesson here. You must love god, and if you do, he will let you suffer. Right.</p><p>When I was 10 or 11 years old I set out to read the grown-up version of the Bible. I cannot believe my educated parents - bible translators at the time - let me. They cannot possibly have been ignorant to the horrors I would encounter. So perhaps I might not know exactly that when two angels came to visit Lot in Sodom and the population demanded that the handsome strangers and "know them" that meant having sex with them. But surely I understood that he protected the strangers rather than his daughters, that he threw out in their stead.</p><p>Hopefully I didn't really understand this part on cannibalism either: "And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son...." (II Kings 6:28-29)</p><p>I do remember thinking that god overreacted here though: 'Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. "Get out of here, baldy!" they said. "Get out of here, baldy!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.' 2 Kings 2:23-25 NIV</p><p>So sure, I knew what the bible contained. I even remarked, at an attempt to be converted by Mormons when I was 18, that I commented that the god of the new testament and the old testament are so different they should be different deities and not one. (Even after this, it took me more than ten years to leave the baptist version of christianity I was raised in behind.) Nonetheless, despite knowing my bible fairly well and the new testament exceedingly well, I was shocked. It reads like a horror story and I got to read the adult version of it as a child! Furthermore, it wasn't appreciated when I started reading Stephen King and other horror authors as a teen. None of the evil portrayed in standard fiction comes even close to the Christian god. I was primed to enjoy it, after hours upon hours with the old testament a few years before.</p><p>The author briefly touches on the new testament, mainly to make the point that Jesus says he is god and as such he is jealous and vindictive and full of bloodlust. Jesus proclaims to this in John, which is the last of the gospels and thus the one farthest removed from the actual historical person. This is perhaps the only weak point of the book, but honestly, at that point you're kind of tired of death and damnation anyway. </p><p>Up until now I have been fairly content to be respectful of religion and to keep my atheist views to myself - aside from this one arena. However, from this point forward, keeping my tongue in check when hearing friends and acquaintances speak of "the love of good" and mean it, will be exceedingly difficult. God doesn't love anyone or anything, he hates in abundance though. It wouldn't matter, since he doesn't exist, the trouble is that so many live their lives as if he did and think free thinkers are the immoral ones.</p><p>If you think the author and I are completely wrong, just pick up the bible yourself and start reading from the beginning. Enjoy! I hope you like horror stories.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5935491?shelf=audio">audio</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5935491?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/38396339-buck-wilde"></a></section><section><p>787 reviews37 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1996953483">June 3, 2017</a></section><div><p>"And now, reading the foreward: Richard Dawkins".<p>Yes, I know you groaned. I groaned too. We all groaned. It was uncharacteristically brief, then enter, stage right, Dan Barker, who proceeds to explain how he's pretty much the opposite of a born-again Christian in that he was once real into God, as a minister, then quit that lame shit and proceeded to become a proto-neckbeard. </p><p>I made it a quarter of the way through the book because it got monotonous. Barker kept announcing "And now, ladies and gentlemen, irrefutable proof that God is a DICK!" and then unveiling bible quote after bible quote with the showmanship of a Vegas stage magician. You could almost hear the "VOILA!"s.</p><p>Like, I know, dude.</p><p>"Ah, perhaps! But did you know that he told Abraham to BURN HIS SON! VOILA!"</p><p>Yeah, man. Everybody knows that.</p><p>"How about when those kids called Elisha bald and God sent SHE-BEARS TO KILL THEM ALL! VOILA!"</p><p>Yeah. He's a total prick but this is also not news.</p><p>"Well! What about... when... he DROWNED THE EARTH!"</p><p>Really, fam? You're trying to shock me with Noah's Ark? </p><p>"THE DEVIL ONLY KILLED TEN PEOPLE! VOILA!"</p><p>I know. I am like the foremost defender of the Devil. And those were all hired jobs.</p><p>"GOD TOLD HIM TO, VOILA!"</p><p>I just... yeah. I just said that. </p><p>"HE SAYS RIGHT IN THE TEN COMMANDMENTS "for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous"! MAYBE... MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T CALL HIM GOD, OR YAHWEH! MAYBE WE SHOULD CALL HIM JEALOUS! VOILA!"</p><p>Oh, dude, this is getting sad.</p><p>"Wait! Don't you want to hear about the cotton-linen blends?"</p><p>Look, I gotta go. Thanks for... quoting really well-known scripture at me for two hours, I guess.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/16696693-katie-harder-schauer"></a></section><section><p>767 reviews48 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1520487605">July 3, 2016</a></section><div><p>I received a copy of this book through the Goodreads First Reads giveaway program in the hopes that I would leave an honest review. <p>This book served to reinforce my preconceived notion that religion is merely a means to explain things that society doesn't understand. But it also showed me that it was used as a way to control a group of people (and has continued to do so for thousands of years to an extent). And it confirmed for me that a theocracy based on a literal interpretation of the Bible would be just as violent and wrong as some of the theocracies that employ Sharia law today. </p><p>I would honestly recommend this book to everyone. I think it would help to show Christians why there is an increasing number of people who are skeptical of Christianity and why it is difficult for those same people to accept moral outrage based on the Bible. And non-religious people will likely enjoy it because it reinforces their pre-conceived notions (like me). </p><p>My one complaint is that I wish the book included more commentary from the author. It would have broken up the monotony of the lists of Bible verses that demonstrate each negative characteristic a little bit. </p><p>4 out of 5 stars.</p><p>Review originally posted on Just Another Girl and Her Books blog<br /><a href="http://www.justanothergirlandherbooks.blogspot.com/">http://www.justanothergirlandherbooks...</a></p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/29332496-penny-cipolone"></a></section><section><p>247 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1566139066">March 12, 2016</a></section><div><p>I thought this book would be interesting because the title comes from Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion." Dan Barker is not Richard Dawkins. Neither is he Christopher Hitchens or Michael Shermer - all authors that I admire. Basically this is a concordance of often repeated Bible quotes with little or no interpretation provided to prove the author's point. Don't waste your time. </p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/14072411-mkf"></a></section><section><p>920 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1530724049">July 9, 2017</a></section><div><p>A book of bible verses describing the horrible aspects of God. I know first hand that this book will offended certain people who swear God is good, kind, and loving.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/14072411?shelf=religion-christianity">religion-christianity</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/21824220-k-f-silver"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>1 book6 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1879091327">February 7, 2017</a></section><div><p>The Lord Jealous.<p>"For you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god..."<br />- Exodus 34:14</p><p>From the get-go Dan's dry humor about the god from the bible drew me in. Throughout the book he points out the inconsistencies and downright weird crap in the bible's numerous passages (not to mention numerous versions), and he uses versus from the Old and New Testament to support the claim of Lord Jealous being:</p><p>"The god of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."<br />- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion</p><p>This is not a book for those who believe in this god or even the bible as anything more than fictional historical accounts by ancient civilizations, if you couldn't tell.</p><p>Dan goes through each trait Dawkin's subscribed to Lord Jealous, and adds a few of his own at the end. Right from the beginning he warns the reader some pages will be a little much to read in one sitting, and he recommends scanning through at first and coming back later. In my ignorance I was determined to read through every single verse he gave me to understand his arguments.</p><p>Yeah. Um... After three pages of pure verses on how fire-happy the god of the bible was I took his recommendation and skimmed. I will be going through later and re-reading - and I look forward to it!</p><p>Dan's understanding of the bible is a huge help throughout this book - he used to be a preacher - and there are many points he can make that someone with a lesser innate knowledge of the books and how the verses work would be able to.</p><p>I would recommend this book to anyone looking for arguments the religious will make about "taking it out of context" and for a better understanding of why the bible is not a great moral compass - and while this won't happen I'd also recommend it to anyone who does believe in the bible's god. To better understand the religion a solid take on what is good and bad about it is needed.</p><p>Any religious sort who does has my admiration, regardless if they agree with Dan or not.</p><p>I wish I would have read this sooner. &lt;3</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21824220?shelf=non-fic">non-fic</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/10998222-danial-tanvir"></a></section><section><p>305 reviews26 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1611879837">August 20, 2016</a></section><div><p>Its danial tanvir , i am 22 am from pakistan and i am very good friends with atheist writer dan barker and i have gotten dozens and dozens of emails from him<br />i have read two of his last books twice.<br />he is great!.<p>this was a great read but it was not as good as his other book called "god less"<br />in which he tells us about how he became atheist from a preacher/</p><p>i LOVED his books and i read this book two time .<br />he talks about why be good when there is no god/</p><p>he gives arguments against the existance of god.</p><p> i loved his book titled "Godless"<br />and i cant wait to read his new book!.</p><p>it should sell millions</p><p>bye</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/59084040-james-cloyd"></a></section><section><p>42 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1744545219">August 14, 2017</a></section><div><p>What a damning book for Christianity. It's definitely a tough read, due to the fact that it is 90% scripture verses, all of which are full of unjustifiable violence, genocide, infanticide, racism, sexism, slavery, rape &amp; more all in disturbingly graphic detail, &amp; with the approval or by the command of Yahweh. Thank God He's not real!</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/59084040?shelf=atheism-read">atheism-read</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/59084040?shelf=wanted">wanted</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31587186-james-ridgers"></a></section><section><p>12 reviews4 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1526185426">May 16, 2016</a></section><div><p>This was both a tough read and an easy read for me. It was tough because it cemented for me that the ideals and ideas concerning the biblical god's character that I had been raised with are quite the opposite of what the bible tells. On the other hand, the clear list of references, coherently explained, presented in context, and thematically connected to the characteristics being explored made it an extremely easy read.<p>Dawkins' writing often polarizes audiences along the theistic/atheistic line, and it is clear where Barker's position is on the matter in this book. I'd be the first to admit that Dawkins can come across as arrogant and condescending in his writing, but I can't fault his content or science. Barker, however, nails both the content and the delivery. While there are some elements of tongue-in-cheek humour to his assassination of god's character, he doesn't come across as arrogant, patronizing, or condescending. From time to time, there's a little bit of anger in his tone, and it seems to be directed more to the idea that such a repulsive character as god could ever be considered to be benevolent. That's a tone that I can understand.</p><p>Barker has done an outstanding job with this book, diving in to the subject matter and presenting clear, concise, well-backed, and well-thought arguments to further establish the malevolent nature of the biblical god as the most unpleasant character in all of fiction. I highly recommend this book!</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4365659-jan-e"></a></section><section><p>195 reviews2 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1552404424">February 19, 2016</a></section><div><p>After debating fundamentalists on the internet for more than a decade, I must say I expected a little more from this book than hundreds of pages of (sometimes superficial) quote-mining. It's not that I disagree with Barker - his conclusion is pretty much spot-on. But the way he gets there leaves his position open to attack. Perhaps I am wrong, though. Perhaps the average reader has no idea about the horrors hiding in the bible, and really needs this to see it.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4260241-rachael-booth"></a></section><section><p>157 reviews3 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1552551845">April 2, 2016</a></section><div><p>If you read the Bible it's easy to gloss over the really nasty stuff in it ordered by a "just and loving god". But take out those things and show them separately and it will make you wonder why you ever followed this religion. People say Islam is an "evil" religion because of a few really bad apples mis-interpreting the Kor'an. But if you do the same thing to the Kor'an that Dan Barker did to the Bible here, you'd find much the same. This book reminds you that Christianity was started during a barbaric, backward, Bronze Age time where unhappiness and despair were rampant and the thoughts of all the people in power getting their comeuppance while you're in a better place was the overriding hope of the day. Fascinating read all the while stomach turning that an entire religion is based on this while turning a blind eye to its less savory aspects that are right there staring you in the eye - if you only looked.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2096862-bfilbeck"></a></section><section><p>87 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1559209490">February 24, 2016</a></section><div><p>It is unusual to find that the author of a book called God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction is a former evangelical minister but this is an unusual book. Dan Barker sets out to prove the truth of the title by showing the reader numerous quotes from several of the numerous versions of the Christian bible itself; he succeeds. "True Believers" who claim that the bible is "God's Word" will have a difficult time arguing against the quotes while free thinking readers will likely come away recognizing the veracity of the title. Curious readers who have any interest at all in religion, either from the standpoint of a believer or a non-believer, will find it a stimulating read. </p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/20092538-joshua-craig"></a></section><section><p>3 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1583405177">May 20, 2016</a></section><div><p>This is a nice compilation / commentary on the aspects of the character of the god of the bible that they don't teach you in Sunday school. Or they teach you and then candy coat it.<p>It's harsh, it's painful, but it's true.</p><p>I think it finally helped me realize something I've known for a while and this is that I'm done. </p><p>Even if it turned out that the god of the bible was real, why would to want to serve such a vile being?</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/68263172-kyra"></a></section><section><p>42 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2684897545">February 9, 2019</a></section><div><p>I’ve only recently deconverted after a childhood of Christianity. Like many former believers, I walk in the world with a lot of things I was taught about God still rattling around in my brain and behavior. Nothing has helped my Former Christian Guilt more than this book. Learning more of the places in the bible where God himself is said to do the morally indefensible is a refreshing balm. <p>Because if there is a God, and he’s really like he is in the bible, then I am PROUD not to worship him.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/10047499-charles"></a></section><section><p>506 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2069528626">September 16, 2017</a></section><div><p>The perfect answer to anyone who thinks the god of the Bible is a good guy. </p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/33966295-eduardo"></a></section><section><p>13 reviews3 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2737413122">August 28, 2019</a></section><div><p>It's funny how one can get fooled by others into believing things about the Jewish/Christian god and the commandments that arent't even true. One of my next goals is to read the whole bible, cover to cover.<p>Es gracioso cómo podemos ser inducidos a creer cosas acerca del dios judeocristiano y los mandamientos que simplemente no son ciertas. Uno de mis objetivos de corto plazo es leer la Biblia completa.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/9759317-deadweight"></a></section><section><p>268 reviews57 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2299021537">December 13, 2019</a></section><div><p>Well, you can take the preacher out of the evangelicism, but you can't the evangelicism out of the preacher. Dan Barker is a reformed evangelical preacher and a minor pillar of the "New Atheism" movement, and has been publishing books like this for years, and my dude, please, get a hobby. Barker quit on being a minister during the 80's, when evangelical moralizing was at its peak and had America by the balls, and yes, this was a dark f*cking time, but considering everything which has happened in these last few years in spite of the age of mass secularism it would stand to reason that maybe the Bible isn't actually the common denominator here.<p>Barker's latest book is essentially little more than a play-by-play Biblical commentary in which he attempts to highlight every instance of the Biblical God being a jerk, which feels backwards coming out this late into his career, doesn't it? Surely this should have preceded his last six books (<i>two</i> of which were autobiographies), that would seem to make sense. Then again, maybe he shouldn't have published anything at all, because who precisely needs to be reminded that "the OT God is kinda unpleasant." F*cking <i>shocker</i>.</p><p>What is most ironic is how strongly Barker embodies everything wrong with the evangelical movement -- he is a rabid prosteletyzer fuelled by misdirected moral outrage. Barker feels he must <i>prove</i> to the lost flock that they are living a life consigned to mortal damnation. Look at how gleefully he makes sure to refer to the Bible as "fiction" in the title, so "provocatively." This is a man who runs an organization called "Freedom From Religion" because he seriously believes the real root of evil in America is the usage of "in God we trust" on the $1 bank note. This is a man so absolutely <i>ferverous</i> about his beliefs he f*cking released this:</p><p></p><p>He sells this from his website with the disclaimer: "music CD album," presumably so that dance-fearing Christians may cower before his heretical Mr. Rogers sweater.</p><p>But I can only go on about this for so long, attacking a specific person or cause, because I am not Dan Barker, and thus lack the obsessive emotional stamina. It must be completely exhausting to be a evangelical atheist and try to keep up that indignation in the face of general religious apathy; Dawkins is in on this book too, but at least <i>he</i> has a <i>real</i> job. What's Barker's Plan B? Busking? Cause this schrick must surely run out sometime. Even Barker's diehard adherents will have to get sick of jerking off about how weird Leviticus is eventually. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, whether or not he exits.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/57956231-ailith-twinning"></a></section><section><p>649 reviews35 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2027371721">June 12, 2017</a></section><div><p>This is not a book -- it is a collection of Bible quotes, many of which are repeated several times and the only thing the author contributes is grouping like verses together under headings like "God loves blood" "God kills to prove he is lord" and so on. 16 hours of pompous, insane, evil verses with very little in between. <p>If you have never read the Bible and you are Christian, sure, read this. You won't be at the end. </p><p>If you have read the Bible this is just tedious -- and what little commentary there is (seriously, so little) is often sufficiently flawed that the collection would better make the author's point without any commentary at all. </p><p>I know, the preface makes the point that context doesn't matter -- actually it does, not because it makes the stuff okay, but because people can take the fact the context matters and disprove your argument, even tho the full context is actually -worse- than the given form. This is particular to the many times punishments are quoted as random acts without the context that "You break the covenant, and this happens" -- all the stuff about women who wouldn't touch their feet to the ground being jealous of their babies flesh so that they might eat it in secret &gt;.&gt; There's lots of just lazy as shit things like this in the sparse commentary and frankly I'm just thinking "How can you be so lazy about your commentary as to have this little of it and still be mostly wrong?" </p><p>If you want good commentary on Christianity in its own terms, read God: A Biography. If you want a list of wretched shit God said, read Deuteronomy. If you want rage against god read Fighting God: An Athiest Manifesto, and if you want alternative arguments to Christianity try Why Everybody is Wrong About God or Breaking the Spell or The God Delusion. </p><p>This book offers nothing. </p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/57956231?shelf=2017">2017</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1437459-eric-shaffer"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>11 books34 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4076540473">August 17, 2021</a></section><div><p>Bill Maher calls the bible "Godʻs Big Book of Bad Ideas," and every time I look closely at any book, chapter, or verse in the bible, I more fervently agree and am further appalled by the immorality printed on those onion-skin pages.<p>This book by Dan Barker is an excellent review of the quote that identify the worst qualities of this particular Supreme Being. As a reference book, this one is outstanding. The chapters organized by quality--from "Jealous and Proud of It" to "Slavemonger"--are impressively comprehensive; in fact, reading this book cover to cover made much easier locating a number of quotes I had lost track of or barely remembered, which is very handy for polishing up and accurately deploying my biblical knowledge.</p><p>In addition, since I read the bible a long time ago, I had forgotten some of the quotes that now strike me as exceptionally useful, and I am gratified to have access to them again. I always appreciate a refresher, and I find knowing the bible better than those who use the book merely for thumping a great advantage in educating those who can be educated about the actual horrors of their childhood indoctrination.</p><p>I never want to read the bible cover to cover again--although I might--so Dan Barkerʻs book, with commentaries, index, categories, and introduction, will be extremely helpful and useful to me in the days to come. Thanks, Dan.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1437459?shelf=atheism">atheism</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1627830206">May 3, 2016</a></section><div><p>This is the greatest book on Abrahamic theology ever written; it yields complete understanding. Best of all, it is assuredly not just the author’s opinion, because more than half of the text directly quotes the sacred scripture of the Abrahamic god. The author’s comments establish the thread clearly, keep it interesting, and are sometimes amusing, as a welcome relief from astonishing quoted scripture. Specific quoted passages from the scripture will be useful in any discussion. Everyone with any interest in Abrahamic religion, for or against, needs this book.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/16069341-ryan-ulrich"></a></section><section><p>43 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2184434340">November 21, 2017</a></section><div><p>An extensive breakdown of the unprecedented villainy and juvenile acts of jealousy that are carried out by the god depicted in The Bible. Being 90 percent biblical recitation and 10 percent author's interjection, this book gets a bit monotonous and all too often repetitive. Nonetheless, the point is driven home and one has to wonder how anyone who has read The Bible can condone the nefarious acts perpetrated by god, much less worship him.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/116638063-michael"></a></section><section><p>20 reviews8 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3383725925">August 29, 2021</a></section><div><p>An honest biblical account of bible god/Jesus.<br />Anyone who worships these fictional entities is deficient in many things including morals and critical thinking skills.<br />No doubt this won't be liked by many bible believers as it exposes them to what the bible actually says and the nasty rotten mythological piece of work they worship.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/116638063?shelf=anti-christianity">anti-christianity</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/116638063?shelf=book-reference">book-reference</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/43571237-mark"></a></section><section><p>481 reviews6 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2155886548">June 26, 2018</a></section><div><p>I read this book coming into thinking that I would get some interpretation of the scripture. Instead, I got quick blurbs that the beginning of each chapter following a list of scripture to back it up with no explanation Un short if I wanted to read the bible I would have.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/43571237?shelf=religion-philosophy">religion-philosophy</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><p><b>Read</b></p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1603727189">May 27, 2016</a></section><div><p>Such high hopes for this book, too bad it became an exercise in list reading.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/71784393-candy-smith"></a></section><section><p>3 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3075607873">December 7, 2019</a></section><section><div><p>Having printed out the entire book because it's available online, I have realized that many of the verses that Barker complains about have either: already been addressed and answered, were mentioned by and then explained by Kyle Butt in his debate with him and Kyle responded to them and explained how they aren't what he claims them to be, and yet he still complains about them anyways. <p>For example, just to gives you a few examples of how much of a flat out liar and dishonest human being Barker is. </p><p>Chapter 3: Unjust</p><p>Pg.49</p><p>He mentions several verses. I will give the list of the verses below, but it will only be the verse. </p><p>Deuteronomy 5:8–9, Deuteronomy<br />24:16; see also 2 Kings 14:6, Jeremiah 31:29–30, Ezekiel 18:20</p><p>Exodus 34:6–7</p><p>Numbers 14:18</p><p>1 Kings 21:28–29</p><p>Isaiah 14:21</p><p>The articles that I site may not have responses to all of the verses mentioned, but I'm working on them and will post responses to the ones that I don't give responses to, A S.A.P. </p><p><a href="https://carm.org/do-sons-bear-the-sins-of-their-fathers-or-not">https://carm.org/do-sons-bear-the-sin...</a></p><p><a href="https://www.rationalchristianity.net/punish_sons.html">https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...</a></p><p>FYI, this article sites the one directly above. </p><p><a href="http://www.tektonics.org/lp/paydaddy.php">http://www.tektonics.org/lp/paydaddy.php</a></p><p><a href="http://apologeticspress.org/AllegedDiscrepancies.aspx?article=1824&amp;b=Deuteronomy">http://apologeticspress.org/AllegedDi...</a></p><p><a href="https://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&amp;article=1378">https://apologeticspress.org/apconten...</a></p><p>"Babies killed and wives raped to punish pride"</p><p>"Isaiah 13:11–16 “I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty. … Their<br />infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be<br />looted and their wives violated.” NIV"</p><p><a href="https://carm.org/bible-difficulties/isaiah-malachi/why-does-bible-say-houses-will-be-plundered-and-wives-ravished">https://carm.org/bible-difficulties/i...</a></p><p>Pg. 124</p><p>Chapter 9: Misogynistic</p><p>Barker has a Hissy-fit about the fact that man was created first instead of women. </p><p>"(Notice the biological reversal: woman comes<br />out of man instead of the other way around.)"</p><p>What/Where is his basis for saying that Women should have been created first and why on Earth does it even matter? Women were created second. So what? </p><p>Pg. 124 and 125</p><p>"The national poll counted only males"</p><p>"Numbers 1:1–2"</p><p>This is a Census that is specifically only counting Males. There is a reason why it isn't including women. There is no reason to be having a Hissy-fit about women not being included in this. If God doesn't want to have women included in this Census, then He is allowed to have then be included. It's not a big deal. </p><p>"Women don’t count"</p><p>"Numbers 3:15, 28"</p><p>Same as above.</p><p>Pg. 127</p><p>"Female as property. If a man rapes a single woman, he has to pay<br />her father and marry her."</p><p>Deuteronomy 22:28–29 “If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and<br />seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with<br />her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and<br />she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her<br />away all his days.” RSV (You broke it, you buy it.)"</p><p><a href="https://www.gotquestions.org/Deuteronomy-22-28-29-marry-rapist.html">https://www.gotquestions.org/Deuteron...</a></p><p><a href="http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=11&amp;article=5197">http://apologeticspress.org/APContent...</a></p><p><a href="https://answersingenesis.org/bible-questions/feedback-does-bible-teach-sexual-assault-victims-must-marry-their-attacker/">https://answersingenesis.org/bible-qu...</a></p><p><a href="https://evidenceforchristianity.org/my-friend-claims-that-god-has-no-problem-with-men-raping-women-what-about-deuteronomy-2225-28/">https://evidenceforchristianity.org/m...</a></p><p><a href="https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.equip.org/bible_answers/how-could-the-bible-command-a-rape-victim-to-marry-her-rapist/amp/">https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.equi...</a></p><p>And where is Barker's Objective Basis for Right and Wrong for which he uses to claim that Rape is even wrong (Objectively Wrong), to begin with. A mere opinion or "Ethical Relativism/Relativism as he says he believes in, in his book "Godless" does not prove that Rape is wrong. Saying that Morality is Relative would basically mean that the Rapist can decide that Rape is perfectly alright for him and the Rape Victim can decide that Rape isn't right for her but, (either way), at the end of the day, it's merely one person's opinion against the other and no one is really right or wrong.</p><p>Chapter 14: Filicidal</p><p> Pg. 183</p><p>Stubborn son publicly executed</p><p>Deuteronomy 21:18–21 “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which<br />will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that,<br />when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his<br />father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of<br />his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of<br />his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice;<br />he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him<br />with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and<br />all Israel shall hear, and fear.” KJV</p><p><a href="https://carm.org/bible-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy/stone-rebellious-son">https://carm.org/bible-difficulties/g...</a></p><p><a href="https://www.gotquestions.org/stone-rebellious-children.html">https://www.gotquestions.org/stone-re...</a></p><p>"Eat your own children</p><p>Leviticus 26:27–29 “And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk<br />contrary unto me; Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I,<br />even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. And ye shall eat the<br />flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.” KJV"</p><p><a href="https://www.rationalchristianity.net/cannibal.html">https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...</a></p><p>“You will eat the fruit of your womb”</p><p>Deuteronomy 28:53 “And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the<br />flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given<br />thee, in the siege, and in the straitness,wherewith thine enemies shall<br />distress thee.” KJV</p><p><a href="https://www.rationalchristianity.net/cannibal.html">https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...</a></p><p>Reciprocal cannibalism</p><p>Ezekiel 5:9–10 “And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and<br />whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all thine abominations.<br />Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons<br />shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in thee, and the whole<br />remnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds.” KJV</p><p><a href="https://www.rationalchristianity.net/cannibal.html">https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...</a></p><p>Those are just a handful of Barker having hissy -fits about verses that have already been explained. I'll follow up with more some time in the future.</p></p></div><div><p>This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.</p></div></section><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/72996111-carlos-jaramillo"></a></section><section><p>124 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2782057939">May 9, 2019</a></section><div><p>Ahora entiendo por que Nietzsche decía que necesitaba usar guantes para leer este libro. Estoy pensando en hacer lo mismo, no quiero manchar mis manos con tanta sangre y odio. No quiero hablar mucho de este libro. Solo dire que todas las acusaciones expuestas están defendidas por sus respectivas citas. </p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/72996111?shelf=2019">2019</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/72996111?shelf=libros-que-influyeron-en-mi">libros-que-influyeron-en-mi</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/72996111?shelf=my-picks-for-you">my-picks-for-you</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div></div>||||I|||| * Home
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 God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction

 Dan Barker , Richard Dawkins ( Foreword)

 3.91
 686 ratings 115 reviews
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 What words come to mind when we think of God? Merciful? Just? Compassionate? In fact, the Bible lays out God’s primary qualities clearly: jealous, petty, unforgiving, bloodthirsty, vindictive—and worse! Originally conceived as a joint presentation between influential thinker and bestselling author Richard Dawkins and former evangelical preacher Dan Barker, this unique book provides an investigation into what may be the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Barker combs through both the Old and New Testament (as well as thirteen different editions of the “Good Book”), presenting powerful evidence for why the Scripture shouldn’t govern our everyday lives. This witty, well-researched book suggests that we should move past the Bible and clear a path to a kinder and more thoughtful world.
 Genres Religion Nonfiction Atheism Philosophy History Audiobook Skepticism
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 310 pages, Hardcover

 First published April 5, 2016

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 About the author

 Dan Barker

 22 books 172 followers
 Daniel Edwin Barker is an American atheist activist and musician who served as an evangelical Christian preacher and composer for 19 years but left Christianity in 1984. He and his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor are the current co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation . He has written numerous articles the organization's newspaper Freethought Today . He is the author of several books including Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist. Barker has been an invited speaker at Rock Beyond Belief. He is on the speakers bureau of the Secular Student Alliance.

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 726 reviews 134 followers
 August 15, 2019
 God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction by Dan Barker and Richard Dawkins

 “God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction” is an expose of “God’s” true qualities based on the very book that attempts to describe “Him”. Taking a page from Richard Dawkins, former evangelist minister and co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Dan Barker takes the readers on a journey through the Bible and during this trip he clearly describes the “Lord Jealous”. This provocative 322-page book includes twenty-eight chapters broken out by two parts: Part 1. Dawkins Was Right and Part II. Dawkins Was Too Kind.

 Positives:
 1. Well-researched, well-written book. Barker takes glee in exposing the character of “God”.
 2. The fascinating topic of the characterization of “God” through analyzing the Bible. “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
 3. The chapters are broken out by character traits. Each chapter begins with a biblical appropriate passage. “A jealous and avenging God is the Lord, the Lord is avenging and wrathful.” —Nahum 1:2”
 4. Barker knows the Bible with mastery and provides countless biblical passages that clearly supports his main points. “He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.” (Genesis 22:2)”
 5. So many biblical passages that will make your head spin. “Leviticus 19:28 “You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.”
 6. Traits of an unjust “God”. “Exodus 22:18 “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.””
 7. The concept of hell. “The concept of eternal Hell, a truly infinite lack of forgiveness, does not occur until the New Testament, thanks to Jesus.”
 8. Many examples of “God’s” Type-A micromanagement.
 9. Traits of a vindictive “God”. “Deuteronomy 32:35 “The Lord says, … ‘I will take revenge; I will pay them back. In due time their feet will slip. Their day of disaster will arrive, and their destiny will overtake them.’””
 10. The bloodthirsty lord. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement. (Leviticus 17:11)”
 11. Threatening nonbelievers, so cruel. “2 Chronicles 15:13 “All who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman.””
 12. Ethnic cleanser of biblical proportions. “Go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. (1 Samuel 15:3)”
 13. Misogyny and plenty of it. “Deuteronomy 22:28–29 “If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her away all his days.” RSV (You broke it, you buy it.)”
 14. So anti-gay. “Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.””
 15. The Bible endorses slavery, how terrible. “Leviticus 25:44–46 “As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers [NRSV: “aliens”] who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property.””
 16. Examples of infanticide. “O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock! (Psalm 137:8–9)”
 17. Examples of megalomania. ““So I will display my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the Lord.” —Ezekiel 38:23””
 18. Examples of malevolence. ““I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” —Isaiah 45:7, KJV”
 19. Just a plain old bully. “But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go. (Exodus 10:20)”
 20. Examples of flame-happy “God”. “Leviticus 21:9 “And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.” KJV (Notice that her “crime” is profaning her father.)”
 21. And so much more.

 Negatives:
 1. I wanted more expert commentary from Barker.
 2. I would have added a section on how the Bible came together and the different versions.
 3. No notes or links.

 In summary, I enjoyed this book. It will serve as an excellent reference when I debate my Christian friends. Barker has great command of the topic and even takes glee in exposing what are clearly difficult and realistic characterizations of the biblical “God”. Provocative and what must be difficult for Christians to digest, this is the word of “God”. I recommend it.

 Further recommendations: “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, “The Religion Virus” by James A. Craig, “50 Reasons People Give For Believing in a God” by Guy P. Harrison, “The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture” by Darrel W. Ray, “End of Faith” by Sam Harris, “Faith No More: Why People Reject religion” by Phil Zuckerman, “Atheism Advanced” by David Eller, “Why We Believe In God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith” by J. Anderson Thomson Jr., “The Believing Brain” by Michael Shermer, and “Why I Became An Atheist” by John W. Loftus.
 atheism-religion
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 Tanja Berg
 1,808 reviews 403 followers
 May 30, 2022
 Wow. My mind is reeling from the sheer atrociousness of the Christian god. It's been murder, rape and blood spatter for nearly 16 hours of audio book - all in the name of god, or committed directly by the almighty himself. You can of course pick up any bible and start to actually read it, you won't get far before the jealous god begins to assert himself, or you can have a look here:

 https://www.salon.com/2014/05/31/11_k...

 I never understood the book of Job. I understand it even less now - god lets the devil bet that Job won't love good if all his worldly possessions, he won't still love god. To prove his point, god LETS the devil run with it. There is no moral lesson here. You must love god, and if you do, he will let you suffer. Right.

 When I was 10 or 11 years old I set out to read the grown-up version of the Bible. I cannot believe my educated parents - bible translators at the time - let me. They cannot possibly have been ignorant to the horrors I would encounter. So perhaps I might not know exactly that when two angels came to visit Lot in Sodom and the population demanded that the handsome strangers and "know them" that meant having sex with them. But surely I understood that he protected the strangers rather than his daughters, that he threw out in their stead.

 Hopefully I didn't really understand this part on cannibalism either: "And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son...." (II Kings 6:28-29)

 I do remember thinking that god overreacted here though: 'Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. "Get out of here, baldy!" they said. "Get out of here, baldy!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.' 2 Kings 2:23-25 NIV

 So sure, I knew what the bible contained. I even remarked, at an attempt to be converted by Mormons when I was 18, that I commented that the god of the new testament and the old testament are so different they should be different deities and not one. (Even after this, it took me more than ten years to leave the baptist version of christianity I was raised in behind.) Nonetheless, despite knowing my bible fairly well and the new testament exceedingly well, I was shocked. It reads like a horror story and I got to read the adult version of it as a child! Furthermore, it wasn't appreciated when I started reading Stephen King and other horror authors as a teen. None of the evil portrayed in standard fiction comes even close to the Christian god. I was primed to enjoy it, after hours upon hours with the old testament a few years before.

 The author briefly touches on the new testament, mainly to make the point that Jesus says he is god and as such he is jealous and vindictive and full of bloodlust. Jesus proclaims to this in John, which is the last of the gospels and thus the one farthest removed from the actual historical person. This is perhaps the only weak point of the book, but honestly, at that point you're kind of tired of death and damnation anyway.

 Up until now I have been fairly content to be respectful of religion and to keep my atheist views to myself - aside from this one arena. However, from this point forward, keeping my tongue in check when hearing friends and acquaintances speak of "the love of good" and mean it, will be exceedingly difficult. God doesn't love anyone or anything, he hates in abundance though. It wouldn't matter, since he doesn't exist, the trouble is that so many live their lives as if he did and think free thinkers are the immoral ones.

 If you think the author and I are completely wrong, just pick up the bible yourself and start reading from the beginning. Enjoy! I hope you like horror stories.
 audio non-fiction
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 Buck Wilde
 787 reviews 37 followers
 June 3, 2017
 "And now, reading the foreward: Richard Dawkins".

 Yes, I know you groaned. I groaned too. We all groaned. It was uncharacteristically brief, then enter, stage right, Dan Barker, who proceeds to explain how he's pretty much the opposite of a born-again Christian in that he was once real into God, as a minister, then quit that lame shit and proceeded to become a proto-neckbeard.

 I made it a quarter of the way through the book because it got monotonous. Barker kept announcing "And now, ladies and gentlemen, irrefutable proof that God is a DICK!" and then unveiling bible quote after bible quote with the showmanship of a Vegas stage magician. You could almost hear the "VOILA!"s.

 Like, I know, dude.

 "Ah, perhaps! But did you know that he told Abraham to BURN HIS SON! VOILA!"

 Yeah, man. Everybody knows that.

 "How about when those kids called Elisha bald and God sent SHE-BEARS TO KILL THEM ALL! VOILA!"

 Yeah. He's a total prick but this is also not news.

 "Well! What about... when... he DROWNED THE EARTH!"

 Really, fam? You're trying to shock me with Noah's Ark?

 "THE DEVIL ONLY KILLED TEN PEOPLE! VOILA!"

 I know. I am like the foremost defender of the Devil. And those were all hired jobs.

 "GOD TOLD HIM TO, VOILA!"

 I just... yeah. I just said that.

 "HE SAYS RIGHT IN THE TEN COMMANDMENTS "for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous"! MAYBE... MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T CALL HIM GOD, OR YAHWEH! MAYBE WE SHOULD CALL HIM JEALOUS! VOILA!"

 Oh, dude, this is getting sad.

 "Wait! Don't you want to hear about the cotton-linen blends?"

 Look, I gotta go. Thanks for... quoting really well-known scripture at me for two hours, I guess.
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 Katie Harder-schauer
 767 reviews 48 followers
 July 3, 2016
 I received a copy of this book through the Goodreads First Reads giveaway program in the hopes that I would leave an honest review.

 This book served to reinforce my preconceived notion that religion is merely a means to explain things that society doesn't understand. But it also showed me that it was used as a way to control a group of people (and has continued to do so for thousands of years to an extent). And it confirmed for me that a theocracy based on a literal interpretation of the Bible would be just as violent and wrong as some of the theocracies that employ Sharia law today.

 I would honestly recommend this book to everyone. I think it would help to show Christians why there is an increasing number of people who are skeptical of Christianity and why it is difficult for those same people to accept moral outrage based on the Bible. And non-religious people will likely enjoy it because it reinforces their pre-conceived notions (like me).

 My one complaint is that I wish the book included more commentary from the author. It would have broken up the monotony of the lists of Bible verses that demonstrate each negative characteristic a little bit.

 4 out of 5 stars.

 Review originally posted on Just Another Girl and Her Books blog
 http://www.justanothergirlandherbooks...
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 Penny Cipolone
 247 reviews 1 follower
 March 12, 2016
 I thought this book would be interesting because the title comes from Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion." Dan Barker is not Richard Dawkins. Neither is he Christopher Hitchens or Michael Shermer - all authors that I admire. Basically this is a concordance of often repeated Bible quotes with little or no interpretation provided to prove the author's point. Don't waste your time.
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 MKF
 920 reviews
 July 9, 2017
 A book of bible verses describing the horrible aspects of God. I know first hand that this book will offended certain people who swear God is good, kind, and loving.
 religion-christianity
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 K.F. Silver
 Author 1 book 6 followers
 February 7, 2017
 The Lord Jealous.

 "For you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god..."
 - Exodus 34:14

 From the get-go Dan's dry humor about the god from the bible drew me in. Throughout the book he points out the inconsistencies and downright weird crap in the bible's numerous passages (not to mention numerous versions), and he uses versus from the Old and New Testament to support the claim of Lord Jealous being:

 "The god of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
 - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

 This is not a book for those who believe in this god or even the bible as anything more than fictional historical accounts by ancient civilizations, if you couldn't tell.

 Dan goes through each trait Dawkin's subscribed to Lord Jealous, and adds a few of his own at the end. Right from the beginning he warns the reader some pages will be a little much to read in one sitting, and he recommends scanning through at first and coming back later. In my ignorance I was determined to read through every single verse he gave me to understand his arguments.

 Yeah. Um... After three pages of pure verses on how fire-happy the god of the bible was I took his recommendation and skimmed. I will be going through later and re-reading - and I look forward to it!

 Dan's understanding of the bible is a huge help throughout this book - he used to be a preacher - and there are many points he can make that someone with a lesser innate knowledge of the books and how the verses work would be able to.

 I would recommend this book to anyone looking for arguments the religious will make about "taking it out of context" and for a better understanding of why the bible is not a great moral compass - and while this won't happen I'd also recommend it to anyone who does believe in the bible's god. To better understand the religion a solid take on what is good and bad about it is needed.

 Any religious sort who does has my admiration, regardless if they agree with Dan or not.

 I wish I would have read this sooner. <3
 non-fic
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 Kendra
 1,523 reviews
 August 2, 2017
 Heavily focused on the OT and what a horrific god he is.

 Would be nice to see a full length breakdown on the NT rather then a small chapter.
 atheism religion z-added-in-july-2017
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 Danial Tanvir
 305 reviews 26 followers
 August 20, 2016
 Its danial tanvir , i am 22 am from pakistan and i am very good friends with atheist writer dan barker and i have gotten dozens and dozens of emails from him
 i have read two of his last books twice.
 he is great!.

 this was a great read but it was not as good as his other book called "god less"
 in which he tells us about how he became atheist from a preacher/

 i LOVED his books and i read this book two time .
 he talks about why be good when there is no god/

 he gives arguments against the existance of god.

 i loved his book titled "Godless"
 and i cant wait to read his new book!.

 it should sell millions

 bye
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 James Cloyd
 42 reviews 1 follower
 August 14, 2017
 What a damning book for Christianity. It's definitely a tough read, due to the fact that it is 90% scripture verses, all of which are full of unjustifiable violence, genocide, infanticide, racism, sexism, slavery, rape & more all in disturbingly graphic detail, & with the approval or by the command of Yahweh. Thank God He's not real!
 atheism-read wanted
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 James Ridgers
 12 reviews 4 followers
 May 16, 2016
 This was both a tough read and an easy read for me. It was tough because it cemented for me that the ideals and ideas concerning the biblical god's character that I had been raised with are quite the opposite of what the bible tells. On the other hand, the clear list of references, coherently explained, presented in context, and thematically connected to the characteristics being explored made it an extremely easy read.

 Dawkins' writing often polarizes audiences along the theistic/atheistic line, and it is clear where Barker's position is on the matter in this book. I'd be the first to admit that Dawkins can come across as arrogant and condescending in his writing, but I can't fault his content or science. Barker, however, nails both the content and the delivery. While there are some elements of tongue-in-cheek humour to his assassination of god's character, he doesn't come across as arrogant, patronizing, or condescending. From time to time, there's a little bit of anger in his tone, and it seems to be directed more to the idea that such a repulsive character as god could ever be considered to be benevolent. That's a tone that I can understand.

 Barker has done an outstanding job with this book, diving in to the subject matter and presenting clear, concise, well-backed, and well-thought arguments to further establish the malevolent nature of the biblical god as the most unpleasant character in all of fiction. I highly recommend this book!
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 Jan-e
 195 reviews 2 followers
 February 19, 2016
 After debating fundamentalists on the internet for more than a decade, I must say I expected a little more from this book than hundreds of pages of (sometimes superficial) quote-mining. It's not that I disagree with Barker - his conclusion is pretty much spot-on. But the way he gets there leaves his position open to attack. Perhaps I am wrong, though. Perhaps the average reader has no idea about the horrors hiding in the bible, and really needs this to see it.
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 Rachael Booth
 157 reviews 3 followers
 April 2, 2016
 If you read the Bible it's easy to gloss over the really nasty stuff in it ordered by a "just and loving god". But take out those things and show them separately and it will make you wonder why you ever followed this religion. People say Islam is an "evil" religion because of a few really bad apples mis-interpreting the Kor'an. But if you do the same thing to the Kor'an that Dan Barker did to the Bible here, you'd find much the same. This book reminds you that Christianity was started during a barbaric, backward, Bronze Age time where unhappiness and despair were rampant and the thoughts of all the people in power getting their comeuppance while you're in a better place was the overriding hope of the day. Fascinating read all the while stomach turning that an entire religion is based on this while turning a blind eye to its less savory aspects that are right there staring you in the eye - if you only looked.
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 bfilbeck
 87 reviews
 February 24, 2016
 It is unusual to find that the author of a book called God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction is a former evangelical minister but this is an unusual book. Dan Barker sets out to prove the truth of the title by showing the reader numerous quotes from several of the numerous versions of the Christian bible itself; he succeeds. "True Believers" who claim that the bible is "God's Word" will have a difficult time arguing against the quotes while free thinking readers will likely come away recognizing the veracity of the title. Curious readers who have any interest at all in religion, either from the standpoint of a believer or a non-believer, will find it a stimulating read.
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 Joshua Craig
 3 reviews 1 follower
 May 20, 2016
 This is a nice compilation / commentary on the aspects of the character of the god of the bible that they don't teach you in Sunday school. Or they teach you and then candy coat it.

 It's harsh, it's painful, but it's true.

 I think it finally helped me realize something I've known for a while and this is that I'm done.

 Even if it turned out that the god of the bible was real, why would to want to serve such a vile being?
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 Kyra
 42 reviews
 February 9, 2019
 I’ve only recently deconverted after a childhood of Christianity. Like many former believers, I walk in the world with a lot of things I was taught about God still rattling around in my brain and behavior. Nothing has helped my Former Christian Guilt more than this book. Learning more of the places in the bible where God himself is said to do the morally indefensible is a refreshing balm.

 Because if there is a God, and he’s really like he is in the bible, then I am PROUD not to worship him.
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 Charles
 506 reviews
 September 16, 2017
 The perfect answer to anyone who thinks the god of the Bible is a good guy.
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 Eduardo
 13 reviews 3 followers
 August 28, 2019
 It's funny how one can get fooled by others into believing things about the Jewish/Christian god and the commandments that arent't even true. One of my next goals is to read the whole bible, cover to cover.

 Es gracioso cómo podemos ser inducidos a creer cosas acerca del dios judeocristiano y los mandamientos que simplemente no son ciertas. Uno de mis objetivos de corto plazo es leer la Biblia completa.
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 DeadWeight
 268 reviews 57 followers
 December 13, 2019
 Well, you can take the preacher out of the evangelicism, but you can't the evangelicism out of the preacher. Dan Barker is a reformed evangelical preacher and a minor pillar of the "New Atheism" movement, and has been publishing books like this for years, and my dude, please, get a hobby. Barker quit on being a minister during the 80's, when evangelical moralizing was at its peak and had America by the balls, and yes, this was a dark f*cking time, but considering everything which has happened in these last few years in spite of the age of mass secularism it would stand to reason that maybe the Bible isn't actually the common denominator here.

 Barker's latest book is essentially little more than a play-by-play Biblical commentary in which he attempts to highlight every instance of the Biblical God being a jerk, which feels backwards coming out this late into his career, doesn't it? Surely this should have preceded his last six books ( two of which were autobiographies), that would seem to make sense. Then again, maybe he shouldn't have published anything at all, because who precisely needs to be reminded that "the OT God is kinda unpleasant." F*cking shocker .

 What is most ironic is how strongly Barker embodies everything wrong with the evangelical movement -- he is a rabid prosteletyzer fuelled by misdirected moral outrage. Barker feels he must prove to the lost flock that they are living a life consigned to mortal damnation. Look at how gleefully he makes sure to refer to the Bible as "fiction" in the title, so "provocatively." This is a man who runs an organization called "Freedom From Religion" because he seriously believes the real root of evil in America is the usage of "in God we trust" on the $1 bank note. This is a man so absolutely ferverous about his beliefs he f*cking released this:



 He sells this from his website with the disclaimer: "music CD album," presumably so that dance-fearing Christians may cower before his heretical Mr. Rogers sweater.

 But I can only go on about this for so long, attacking a specific person or cause, because I am not Dan Barker, and thus lack the obsessive emotional stamina. It must be completely exhausting to be a evangelical atheist and try to keep up that indignation in the face of general religious apathy; Dawkins is in on this book too, but at least he has a real job. What's Barker's Plan B? Busking? Cause this schrick must surely run out sometime. Even Barker's diehard adherents will have to get sick of jerking off about how weird Leviticus is eventually. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, whether or not he exits.
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 Ailith Twinning
 649 reviews 35 followers
 June 12, 2017
 This is not a book -- it is a collection of Bible quotes, many of which are repeated several times and the only thing the author contributes is grouping like verses together under headings like "God loves blood" "God kills to prove he is lord" and so on. 16 hours of pompous, insane, evil verses with very little in between.

 If you have never read the Bible and you are Christian, sure, read this. You won't be at the end.

 If you have read the Bible this is just tedious -- and what little commentary there is (seriously, so little) is often sufficiently flawed that the collection would better make the author's point without any commentary at all.

 I know, the preface makes the point that context doesn't matter -- actually it does, not because it makes the stuff okay, but because people can take the fact the context matters and disprove your argument, even tho the full context is actually -worse- than the given form. This is particular to the many times punishments are quoted as random acts without the context that "You break the covenant, and this happens" -- all the stuff about women who wouldn't touch their feet to the ground being jealous of their babies flesh so that they might eat it in secret >.> There's lots of just lazy as shit things like this in the sparse commentary and frankly I'm just thinking "How can you be so lazy about your commentary as to have this little of it and still be mostly wrong?"

 If you want good commentary on Christianity in its own terms, read God: A Biography. If you want a list of wretched shit God said, read Deuteronomy. If you want rage against god read Fighting God: An Athiest Manifesto, and if you want alternative arguments to Christianity try Why Everybody is Wrong About God or Breaking the Spell or The God Delusion.

 This book offers nothing.
 2017
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 Eric Shaffer
 Author 11 books 34 followers
 August 17, 2021
 Bill Maher calls the bible "Godʻs Big Book of Bad Ideas," and every time I look closely at any book, chapter, or verse in the bible, I more fervently agree and am further appalled by the immorality printed on those onion-skin pages.

 This book by Dan Barker is an excellent review of the quote that identify the worst qualities of this particular Supreme Being. As a reference book, this one is outstanding. The chapters organized by quality--from "Jealous and Proud of It" to "Slavemonger"--are impressively comprehensive; in fact, reading this book cover to cover made much easier locating a number of quotes I had lost track of or barely remembered, which is very handy for polishing up and accurately deploying my biblical knowledge.

 In addition, since I read the bible a long time ago, I had forgotten some of the quotes that now strike me as exceptionally useful, and I am gratified to have access to them again. I always appreciate a refresher, and I find knowing the bible better than those who use the book merely for thumping a great advantage in educating those who can be educated about the actual horrors of their childhood indoctrination.

 I never want to read the bible cover to cover again--although I might--so Dan Barkerʻs book, with commentaries, index, categories, and introduction, will be extremely helpful and useful to me in the days to come. Thanks, Dan.
 atheism
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 Ron Davis
 1 review
 May 3, 2016
 This is the greatest book on Abrahamic theology ever written; it yields complete understanding. Best of all, it is assuredly not just the author’s opinion, because more than half of the text directly quotes the sacred scripture of the Abrahamic god. The author’s comments establish the thread clearly, keep it interesting, and are sometimes amusing, as a welcome relief from astonishing quoted scripture. Specific quoted passages from the scripture will be useful in any discussion. Everyone with any interest in Abrahamic religion, for or against, needs this book.
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 Ryan Ulrich
 43 reviews
 November 21, 2017
 An extensive breakdown of the unprecedented villainy and juvenile acts of jealousy that are carried out by the god depicted in The Bible. Being 90 percent biblical recitation and 10 percent author's interjection, this book gets a bit monotonous and all too often repetitive. Nonetheless, the point is driven home and one has to wonder how anyone who has read The Bible can condone the nefarious acts perpetrated by god, much less worship him.
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 Michael
 20 reviews 8 followers
 August 29, 2021
 An honest biblical account of bible god/Jesus.
 Anyone who worships these fictional entities is deficient in many things including morals and critical thinking skills.
 No doubt this won't be liked by many bible believers as it exposes them to what the bible actually says and the nasty rotten mythological piece of work they worship.
 anti-christianity book-reference
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 Mark
 481 reviews 6 followers
 June 26, 2018
 I read this book coming into thinking that I would get some interpretation of the scripture. Instead, I got quick blurbs that the beginning of each chapter following a list of scripture to back it up with no explanation Un short if I wanted to read the bible I would have.
 religion-philosophy
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 Matt
 1 review
 Read
 May 27, 2016
 Such high hopes for this book, too bad it became an exercise in list reading.
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 Victor
 84 reviews
 September 5, 2017
 More reference book than just book
 audiobooks
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 Candy Smith
 3 reviews 1 follower
 December 7, 2019
 Having printed out the entire book because it's available online, I have realized that many of the verses that Barker complains about have either: already been addressed and answered, were mentioned by and then explained by Kyle Butt in his debate with him and Kyle responded to them and explained how they aren't what he claims them to be, and yet he still complains about them anyways.

 For example, just to gives you a few examples of how much of a flat out liar and dishonest human being Barker is.

 Chapter 3: Unjust

 Pg.49

 He mentions several verses. I will give the list of the verses below, but it will only be the verse.

 Deuteronomy 5:8–9, Deuteronomy
 24:16; see also 2 Kings 14:6, Jeremiah 31:29–30, Ezekiel 18:20

 Exodus 34:6–7

 Numbers 14:18

 1 Kings 21:28–29

 Isaiah 14:21

 The articles that I site may not have responses to all of the verses mentioned, but I'm working on them and will post responses to the ones that I don't give responses to, A S.A.P.

 https://carm.org/do-sons-bear-the-sin...

 https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...

 FYI, this article sites the one directly above.

 http://www.tektonics.org/lp/paydaddy.php

 http://apologeticspress.org/AllegedDi...

 https://apologeticspress.org/apconten...



 "Babies killed and wives raped to punish pride"

 "Isaiah 13:11–16 “I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty. … Their
 infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be
 looted and their wives violated.” NIV"

 https://carm.org/bible-difficulties/i...

 Pg. 124

 Chapter 9: Misogynistic

 Barker has a Hissy-fit about the fact that man was created first instead of women.

 "(Notice the biological reversal: woman comes
 out of man instead of the other way around.)"

 What/Where is his basis for saying that Women should have been created first and why on Earth does it even matter? Women were created second. So what?

 Pg. 124 and 125

 "The national poll counted only males"

 "Numbers 1:1–2"

 This is a Census that is specifically only counting Males. There is a reason why it isn't including women. There is no reason to be having a Hissy-fit about women not being included in this. If God doesn't want to have women included in this Census, then He is allowed to have then be included. It's not a big deal.

 "Women don’t count"

 "Numbers 3:15, 28"

 Same as above.

 Pg. 127

 "Female as property. If a man rapes a single woman, he has to pay
 her father and marry her."

 Deuteronomy 22:28–29 “If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and
 seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with
 her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and
 she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her
 away all his days.” RSV (You broke it, you buy it.)"

 https://www.gotquestions.org/Deuteron...

 http://apologeticspress.org/APContent...

 https://answersingenesis.org/bible-qu...

 https://evidenceforchristianity.org/m...

 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.equi...

 And where is Barker's Objective Basis for Right and Wrong for which he uses to claim that Rape is even wrong (Objectively Wrong), to begin with. A mere opinion or "Ethical Relativism/Relativism as he says he believes in, in his book "Godless" does not prove that Rape is wrong. Saying that Morality is Relative would basically mean that the Rapist can decide that Rape is perfectly alright for him and the Rape Victim can decide that Rape isn't right for her but, (either way), at the end of the day, it's merely one person's opinion against the other and no one is really right or wrong.

 Chapter 14: Filicidal

 Pg. 183

 Stubborn son publicly executed

 Deuteronomy 21:18–21 “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which
 will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that,
 when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his
 father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of
 his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of
 his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice;
 he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him
 with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and
 all Israel shall hear, and fear.” KJV

 https://carm.org/bible-difficulties/g...

 https://www.gotquestions.org/stone-re...

 "Eat your own children

 Leviticus 26:27–29 “And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk
 contrary unto me; Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I,
 even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. And ye shall eat the
 flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.” KJV"

 https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...

 “You will eat the fruit of your womb”

 Deuteronomy 28:53 “And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the
 flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given
 thee, in the siege, and in the straitness,wherewith thine enemies shall
 distress thee.” KJV

 https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...

 Reciprocal cannibalism

 Ezekiel 5:9–10 “And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and
 whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all thine abominations.
 Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons
 shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in thee, and the whole
 remnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds.” KJV

 https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...

 Those are just a handful of Barker having hissy -fits about verses that have already been explained. I'll follow up with more some time in the future.
 This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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 Carlos Jaramillo
 124 reviews
 May 9, 2019
 Ahora entiendo por que Nietzsche decía que necesitaba usar guantes para leer este libro. Estoy pensando en hacer lo mismo, no quiero manchar mis manos con tanta sangre y odio. No quiero hablar mucho de este libro. Solo dire que todas las acusaciones expuestas están defendidas por sus respectivas citas.
 2019 libros-que-influyeron-en-mi my-picks-for-you
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 Colton Massey
 134 reviews 41 followers
 December 11, 2020
 Blessed be Lord Jealous
 philosophy
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726 reviews134 followers     August 15, 2019   God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction by Dan Barker and Richard Dawkins“God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction” is an expose of “God’s” true qualities based on the very book that attempts to describe “Him”. Taking a page from Richard Dawkins, former evangelist minister and co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Dan Barker takes the readers on a journey through the Bible and during this trip he clearly describes the “Lord Jealous”. This provocative 322-page book includes twenty-eight chapters broken out by two parts: Part 1. Dawkins Was Right and Part II. Dawkins Was Too Kind. Positives:1.	Well-researched, well-written book. Barker takes glee in exposing the character of “God”.2.	The fascinating topic of the characterization of “God” through analyzing the Bible. “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”3.	The chapters are broken out by character traits. Each chapter begins with a biblical appropriate passage. “A jealous and avenging God is the Lord, the Lord is avenging and wrathful.” —Nahum 1:2”4.	Barker knows the Bible with mastery and provides countless biblical passages that clearly supports his main points. “He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.” (Genesis 22:2)”5.	So many biblical passages that will make your head spin. “Leviticus 19:28 “You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.” 6.	Traits of an unjust “God”. “Exodus 22:18 “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.””7.	The concept of hell. “The concept of eternal Hell, a truly infinite lack of forgiveness, does not occur until the New Testament, thanks to Jesus.” 8.	Many examples of “God’s” Type-A micromanagement. 9.	Traits of a vindictive “God”. “Deuteronomy 32:35 “The Lord says, … ‘I will take revenge; I will pay them back. In due time their feet will slip. Their day of disaster will arrive, and their destiny will overtake them.’””10.	The bloodthirsty lord. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement. (Leviticus 17:11)”11.	Threatening nonbelievers, so cruel. “2 Chronicles 15:13 “All who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman.””12.	Ethnic cleanser of biblical proportions. “Go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. (1 Samuel 15:3)”13.	Misogyny and plenty of it. “Deuteronomy 22:28–29 “If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her away all his days.” RSV (You broke it, you buy it.)”14.	So anti-gay. “Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.””15.	The Bible endorses slavery, how terrible. “Leviticus 25:44–46 “As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers [NRSV: “aliens”] who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property.””16.	Examples of infanticide. “O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock! (Psalm 137:8–9)”17.	Examples of megalomania. ““So I will display my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the Lord.” —Ezekiel 38:23””18.	Examples of malevolence. ““I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” —Isaiah 45:7, KJV”19.	Just a plain old bully. “But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go. (Exodus 10:20)”20.	Examples of flame-happy “God”. “Leviticus 21:9 “And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.” KJV (Notice that her “crime” is profaning her father.)”21.	And so much more. Negatives:1.	I wanted more expert commentary from Barker.2.	I would have added a section on how the Bible came together and the different versions.3.	No notes or links. In summary, I enjoyed this book. It will serve as an excellent reference when I debate my Christian friends. Barker has great command of the topic and even takes glee in exposing what are clearly difficult and realistic characterizations of the biblical “God”. Provocative and what must be difficult for Christians to digest, this is the word of “God”. I recommend it.  Further recommendations: “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, “The Religion Virus” by James A. Craig, “50 Reasons People Give For Believing in a God” by Guy P. Harrison, “The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture” by Darrel W. Ray, “End of Faith” by Sam Harris, “Faith No More: Why People Reject religion” by Phil Zuckerman, “Atheism Advanced” by David Eller, “Why We Believe In God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith” by J. Anderson Thomson Jr., “The Believing Brain” by Michael Shermer, and “Why I Became An Atheist” by John W. Loftus.     atheism-religion               1,808 reviews403 followers     May 30, 2022   Wow. My mind is reeling from the sheer atrociousness of the Christian god. It's been murder, rape and blood spatter for nearly 16 hours of audio book - all in the name of god, or committed directly by the almighty himself. You can of course pick up any bible and start to actually read it, you won't get far before the jealous god begins to assert himself, or you can have a look here:  https://www.salon.com/2014/05/31/11_k...  I never understood the book of Job. I understand it even less now - god lets the devil bet that Job won't love good if all his worldly possessions, he won't still love god. To prove his point, god LETS the devil run with it. There is no moral lesson here. You must love god, and if you do, he will let you suffer. Right. When I was 10 or 11 years old I set out to read the grown-up version of the Bible. I cannot believe my educated parents - bible translators at the time - let me. They cannot possibly have been ignorant to the horrors I would encounter. So perhaps I might not know exactly that when two angels came to visit Lot in Sodom and the population demanded that the handsome strangers and "know them" that meant having sex with them. But surely I understood that he protected the strangers rather than his daughters, that he threw out in their stead. Hopefully I didn't really understand this part on cannibalism either: "And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son...." (II Kings 6:28-29) I do remember thinking that god overreacted here though: 'Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. "Get out of here, baldy!" they said. "Get out of here, baldy!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.' 2 Kings 2:23-25 NIV So sure, I knew what the bible contained. I even remarked, at an attempt to be converted by Mormons when I was 18, that I commented that the god of the new testament and the old testament are so different they should be different deities and not one. (Even after this, it took me more than ten years to leave the baptist version of christianity I was raised in behind.) Nonetheless, despite knowing my bible fairly well and the new testament exceedingly well, I was shocked. It reads like a horror story and I got to read the adult version of it as a child! Furthermore, it wasn't appreciated when I started reading Stephen King and other horror authors as a teen. None of the evil portrayed in standard fiction comes even close to the Christian god. I was primed to enjoy it, after hours upon hours with the old testament a few years before. The author briefly touches on the new testament, mainly to make the point that Jesus says he is god and as such he is jealous and vindictive and full of bloodlust. Jesus proclaims to this in John, which is the last of the gospels and thus the one farthest removed from the actual historical person. This is perhaps the only weak point of the book, but honestly, at that point you're kind of tired of death and damnation anyway.  Up until now I have been fairly content to be respectful of religion and to keep my atheist views to myself - aside from this one arena. However, from this point forward, keeping my tongue in check when hearing friends and acquaintances speak of "the love of good" and mean it, will be exceedingly difficult. God doesn't love anyone or anything, he hates in abundance though. It wouldn't matter, since he doesn't exist, the trouble is that so many live their lives as if he did and think free thinkers are the immoral ones. If you think the author and I are completely wrong, just pick up the bible yourself and start reading from the beginning. Enjoy! I hope you like horror stories.     audio non-fiction               787 reviews37 followers     June 3, 2017   "And now, reading the foreward: Richard Dawkins".Yes, I know you groaned. I groaned too. We all groaned. It was uncharacteristically brief, then enter, stage right, Dan Barker, who proceeds to explain how he's pretty much the opposite of a born-again Christian in that he was once real into God, as a minister, then quit that lame shit and proceeded to become a proto-neckbeard.  I made it a quarter of the way through the book because it got monotonous. Barker kept announcing "And now, ladies and gentlemen, irrefutable proof that God is a DICK!" and then unveiling bible quote after bible quote with the showmanship of a Vegas stage magician. You could almost hear the "VOILA!"s. Like, I know, dude. "Ah, perhaps! But did you know that he told Abraham to BURN HIS SON! VOILA!" Yeah, man. Everybody knows that. "How about when those kids called Elisha bald and God sent SHE-BEARS TO KILL THEM ALL! VOILA!" Yeah. He's a total prick but this is also not news. "Well! What about... when... he DROWNED THE EARTH!" Really, fam? You're trying to shock me with Noah's Ark?  "THE DEVIL ONLY KILLED TEN PEOPLE! VOILA!" I know. I am like the foremost defender of the Devil. And those were all hired jobs. "GOD TOLD HIM TO, VOILA!" I just... yeah. I just said that.  "HE SAYS RIGHT IN THE TEN COMMANDMENTS "for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous"! MAYBE... MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T CALL HIM GOD, OR YAHWEH! MAYBE WE SHOULD CALL HIM JEALOUS! VOILA!" Oh, dude, this is getting sad. "Wait! Don't you want to hear about the cotton-linen blends?" Look, I gotta go. Thanks for... quoting really well-known scripture at me for two hours, I guess.                   767 reviews48 followers     July 3, 2016   I received a copy of this book through the Goodreads First Reads giveaway program in the hopes that I would leave an honest review. This book served to reinforce my preconceived notion that religion is merely a means to explain things that society doesn't understand. But it also showed me that it was used as a way to control a group of people (and has continued to do so for thousands of years to an extent). And it confirmed for me that a theocracy based on a literal interpretation of the Bible would be just as violent and wrong as some of the theocracies that employ Sharia law today.  I would honestly recommend this book to everyone. I think it would help to show Christians why there is an increasing number of people who are skeptical of Christianity and why it is difficult for those same people to accept moral outrage based on the Bible. And non-religious people will likely enjoy it because it reinforces their pre-conceived notions (like me).  My one complaint is that I wish the book included more commentary from the author. It would have broken up the monotony of the lists of Bible verses that demonstrate each negative characteristic a little bit.  4 out of 5 stars. Review originally posted on Just Another Girl and Her Books blog http://www.justanothergirlandherbooks...                    247 reviews1 follower     March 12, 2016   I thought this book would be interesting because the title comes from Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion." Dan Barker is not Richard Dawkins. Neither is he Christopher Hitchens or Michael Shermer - all authors that I admire. Basically this is a concordance of often repeated Bible quotes with little or no interpretation provided to prove the author's point. Don't waste your time.                   920 reviews     July 9, 2017   A book of bible verses describing the horrible aspects of God. I know first hand that this book will offended certain people who swear God is good, kind, and loving.    religion-christianity               Author  1 book6 followers     February 7, 2017   The Lord Jealous."For you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god..."- Exodus 34:14 From the get-go Dan's dry humor about the god from the bible drew me in. Throughout the book he points out the inconsistencies and downright weird crap in the bible's numerous passages (not to mention numerous versions), and he uses versus from the Old and New Testament to support the claim of Lord Jealous being: "The god of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion This is not a book for those who believe in this god or even the bible as anything more than fictional historical accounts by ancient civilizations, if you couldn't tell. Dan goes through each trait Dawkin's subscribed to Lord Jealous, and adds a few of his own at the end. Right from the beginning he warns the reader some pages will be a little much to read in one sitting, and he recommends scanning through at first and coming back later. In my ignorance I was determined to read through every single verse he gave me to understand his arguments. Yeah. Um... After three pages of pure verses on how fire-happy the god of the bible was I took his recommendation and skimmed. I will be going through later and re-reading - and I look forward to it! Dan's understanding of the bible is a huge help throughout this book - he used to be a preacher - and there are many points he can make that someone with a lesser innate knowledge of the books and how the verses work would be able to. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for arguments the religious will make about "taking it out of context" and for a better understanding of why the bible is not a great moral compass - and while this won't happen I'd also recommend it to anyone who does believe in the bible's god. To better understand the religion a solid take on what is good and bad about it is needed. Any religious sort who does has my admiration, regardless if they agree with Dan or not. I wish I would have read this sooner. &lt;3     non-fic               305 reviews26 followers     August 20, 2016   Its danial tanvir , i am 22 am from pakistan and i am very good friends with atheist writer dan barker and i have gotten dozens and dozens of emails from himi have read two of his last books twice.he is great!.this was a great read but it was not as good as his other book called "god less"in which he tells us about how he became atheist from a preacher/ i LOVED his books and i read this book two time .he talks about why be good when there is no god/ he gives arguments against the existance of god.  i loved his book titled "Godless"and i cant wait to read his new book!. it should sell millions bye                   42 reviews1 follower     August 14, 2017   What a damning book for Christianity. It's definitely a tough read, due to the fact that it is 90% scripture verses, all of which are full of unjustifiable violence, genocide, infanticide, racism, sexism, slavery, rape &amp; more all in disturbingly graphic detail, &amp; with the approval or by the command of Yahweh. Thank God He's not real!    atheism-read wanted               12 reviews4 followers     May 16, 2016   This was both a tough read and an easy read for me. It was tough because it cemented for me that the ideals and ideas concerning the biblical god's character that I had been raised with are quite the opposite of what the bible tells. On the other hand, the clear list of references, coherently explained, presented in context, and thematically connected to the characteristics being explored made it an extremely easy read.Dawkins' writing often polarizes audiences along the theistic/atheistic line, and it is clear where Barker's position is on the matter in this book. I'd be the first to admit that Dawkins can come across as arrogant and condescending in his writing, but I can't fault his content or science. Barker, however, nails both the content and the delivery. While there are some elements of tongue-in-cheek humour to his assassination of god's character, he doesn't come across as arrogant, patronizing, or condescending. From time to time, there's a little bit of anger in his tone, and it seems to be directed more to the idea that such a repulsive character as god could ever be considered to be benevolent. That's a tone that I can understand. Barker has done an outstanding job with this book, diving in to the subject matter and presenting clear, concise, well-backed, and well-thought arguments to further establish the malevolent nature of the biblical god as the most unpleasant character in all of fiction. I highly recommend this book!                   195 reviews2 followers     February 19, 2016   After debating fundamentalists on the internet for more than a decade, I must say I expected a little more from this book than hundreds of pages of (sometimes superficial) quote-mining. It's not that I disagree with Barker - his conclusion is pretty much spot-on. But the way he gets there leaves his position open to attack. Perhaps I am wrong, though. Perhaps the average reader has no idea about the horrors hiding in the bible, and really needs this to see it.                  157 reviews3 followers     April 2, 2016   If you read the Bible it's easy to gloss over the really nasty stuff in it ordered by a "just and loving god". But take out those things and show them separately and it will make you wonder why you ever followed this religion. People say Islam is an "evil" religion because of a few really bad apples mis-interpreting the Kor'an. But if you do the same thing to the Kor'an that Dan Barker did to the Bible here, you'd find much the same. This book reminds you that Christianity was started during a barbaric, backward, Bronze Age time where unhappiness and despair were rampant and the thoughts of all the people in power getting their comeuppance while you're in a better place was the overriding hope of the day. Fascinating read all the while stomach turning that an entire religion is based on this while turning a blind eye to its less savory aspects that are right there staring you in the eye - if you only looked.                  87 reviews     February 24, 2016   It is unusual to find that the author of a book called God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction is a former evangelical minister but this is an unusual book. Dan Barker sets out to prove the truth of the title by showing the reader numerous quotes from several of the numerous versions of the Christian bible itself; he succeeds. "True Believers" who claim that the bible is "God's Word" will have a difficult time arguing against the quotes while free thinking readers will likely come away recognizing the veracity of the title. Curious readers who have any interest at all in religion, either from the standpoint of a believer or a non-believer, will find it a stimulating read.                   3 reviews1 follower     May 20, 2016   This is a nice compilation / commentary on the aspects of the character of the god of the bible that they don't teach you in Sunday school. Or they teach you and then candy coat it.It's harsh, it's painful, but it's true. I think it finally helped me realize something I've known for a while and this is that I'm done.  Even if it turned out that the god of the bible was real, why would to want to serve such a vile being?                   42 reviews     February 9, 2019   I’ve only recently deconverted after a childhood of Christianity. Like many former believers, I walk in the world with a lot of things I was taught about God still rattling around in my brain and behavior. Nothing has helped my Former Christian Guilt more than this book. Learning more of the places in the bible where God himself is said to do the morally indefensible is a refreshing balm. Because if there is a God, and he’s really like he is in the bible, then I am PROUD not to worship him.                   506 reviews     September 16, 2017   The perfect answer to anyone who thinks the god of the Bible is a good guy.                   13 reviews3 followers     August 28, 2019   It's funny how one can get fooled by others into believing things about the Jewish/Christian god and the commandments that arent't even true. One of my next goals is to read the whole bible, cover to cover.Es gracioso cómo podemos ser inducidos a creer cosas acerca del dios judeocristiano y los mandamientos que simplemente no son ciertas. Uno de mis objetivos de corto plazo es leer la Biblia completa.                   268 reviews57 followers     December 13, 2019   Well, you can take the preacher out of the evangelicism, but you can't the evangelicism out of the preacher. Dan Barker is a reformed evangelical preacher and a minor pillar of the "New Atheism" movement, and has been publishing books like this for years, and my dude, please, get a hobby. Barker quit on being a minister during the 80's, when evangelical moralizing was at its peak and had America by the balls, and yes, this was a dark f*cking time, but considering everything which has happened in these last few years in spite of the age of mass secularism it would stand to reason that maybe the Bible isn't actually the common denominator here.Barker's latest book is essentially little more than a play-by-play Biblical commentary in which he attempts to highlight every instance of the Biblical God being a jerk, which feels backwards coming out this late into his career, doesn't it? Surely this should have preceded his last six books (two of which were autobiographies), that would seem to make sense. Then again, maybe he shouldn't have published anything at all, because who precisely needs to be reminded that "the OT God is kinda unpleasant." F*cking shocker. What is most ironic is how strongly Barker embodies everything wrong with the evangelical movement -- he is a rabid prosteletyzer fuelled by misdirected moral outrage. Barker feels he must prove to the lost flock that they are living a life consigned to mortal damnation. Look at how gleefully he makes sure to refer to the Bible as "fiction" in the title, so "provocatively." This is a man who runs an organization called "Freedom From Religion" because he seriously believes the real root of evil in America is the usage of "in God we trust" on the $1 bank note. This is a man so absolutely ferverous about his beliefs he f*cking released this:   He sells this from his website with the disclaimer: "music CD album," presumably so that dance-fearing Christians may cower before his heretical Mr. Rogers sweater. But I can only go on about this for so long, attacking a specific person or cause, because I am not Dan Barker, and thus lack the obsessive emotional stamina. It must be completely exhausting to be a evangelical atheist and try to keep up that indignation in the face of general religious apathy; Dawkins is in on this book too, but at least he has a real job. What's Barker's Plan B? Busking? Cause this schrick must surely run out sometime. Even Barker's diehard adherents will have to get sick of jerking off about how weird Leviticus is eventually. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, whether or not he exits.                   649 reviews35 followers     June 12, 2017   This is not a book -- it is a collection of Bible quotes, many of which are repeated several times and the only thing the author contributes is grouping like verses together under headings like "God loves blood" "God kills to prove he is lord" and so on. 16 hours of pompous, insane, evil verses with very little in between. If you have never read the Bible and you are Christian, sure, read this. You won't be at the end.  If you have read the Bible this is just tedious -- and what little commentary there is (seriously, so little) is often sufficiently flawed that the collection would better make the author's point without any commentary at all.  I know, the preface makes the point that context doesn't matter -- actually it does, not because it makes the stuff okay, but because people can take the fact the context matters and disprove your argument, even tho the full context is actually -worse- than the given form. This is particular to the many times punishments are quoted as random acts without the context that "You break the covenant, and this happens" -- all the stuff about women who wouldn't touch their feet to the ground being jealous of their babies flesh so that they might eat it in secret &gt;.&gt; There's lots of just lazy as shit things like this in the sparse commentary and frankly I'm just thinking "How can you be so lazy about your commentary as to have this little of it and still be mostly wrong?"  If you want good commentary on Christianity in its own terms, read God: A Biography. If you want a list of wretched shit God said, read Deuteronomy. If you want rage against god read Fighting God: An Athiest Manifesto, and if you want alternative arguments to Christianity try Why Everybody is Wrong About God or Breaking the Spell or The God Delusion.  This book offers nothing.      2017               Author  11 books34 followers     August 17, 2021   Bill Maher calls the bible "Godʻs Big Book of Bad Ideas," and every time I look closely at any book, chapter, or verse in the bible, I more fervently agree and am further appalled by the immorality printed on those onion-skin pages.This book by Dan Barker is an excellent review of the quote that identify the worst qualities of this particular Supreme Being. As a reference book, this one is outstanding. The chapters organized by quality--from "Jealous and Proud of It" to "Slavemonger"--are impressively comprehensive; in fact, reading this book cover to cover made much easier locating a number of quotes I had lost track of or barely remembered, which is very handy for polishing up and accurately deploying my biblical knowledge. In addition, since I read the bible a long time ago, I had forgotten some of the quotes that now strike me as exceptionally useful, and I am gratified to have access to them again. I always appreciate a refresher, and I find knowing the bible better than those who use the book merely for thumping a great advantage in educating those who can be educated about the actual horrors of their childhood indoctrination. I never want to read the bible cover to cover again--although I might--so Dan Barkerʻs book, with commentaries, index, categories, and introduction, will be extremely helpful and useful to me in the days to come. Thanks, Dan.     atheism           May 3, 2016   This is the greatest book on Abrahamic theology ever written; it yields complete understanding. Best of all, it is assuredly not just the author’s opinion, because more than half of the text directly quotes the sacred scripture of the Abrahamic god. The author’s comments establish the thread clearly, keep it interesting, and are sometimes amusing, as a welcome relief from astonishing quoted scripture. Specific quoted passages from the scripture will be useful in any discussion. Everyone with any interest in Abrahamic religion, for or against, needs this book.                  43 reviews     November 21, 2017   An extensive breakdown of the unprecedented villainy and juvenile acts of jealousy that are carried out by the god depicted in The Bible. Being 90 percent biblical recitation and 10 percent author's interjection, this book gets a bit monotonous and all too often repetitive. Nonetheless, the point is driven home and one has to wonder how anyone who has read The Bible can condone the nefarious acts perpetrated by god, much less worship him.                  20 reviews8 followers     August 29, 2021   An honest biblical account of bible god/Jesus.Anyone who worships these fictional entities is deficient in many things including morals and critical thinking skills.No doubt this won't be liked by many bible believers as it exposes them to what the bible actually says and the nasty rotten mythological piece of work they worship.    anti-christianity book-reference               481 reviews6 followers     June 26, 2018   I read this book coming into thinking that I would get some interpretation of the scripture. Instead, I got quick blurbs that the beginning of each chapter following a list of scripture to back it up with no explanation Un short if I wanted to read the bible I would have.    religion-philosophy            Read  May 27, 2016   Such high hopes for this book, too bad it became an exercise in list reading.                  3 reviews1 follower     December 7, 2019    Having printed out the entire book because it's available online, I have realized that many of the verses that Barker complains about have either: already been addressed and answered, were mentioned by and then explained by Kyle Butt in his debate with him and Kyle responded to them and explained how they aren't what he claims them to be, and yet he still complains about them anyways. For example, just to gives you a few examples of how much of a flat out liar and dishonest human being Barker is.  Chapter 3: Unjust Pg.49 He mentions several verses. I will give the list of the verses below, but it will only be the verse.  Deuteronomy 5:8–9, Deuteronomy24:16; see also 2 Kings 14:6, Jeremiah 31:29–30, Ezekiel 18:20 Exodus 34:6–7 Numbers 14:18 1 Kings 21:28–29 Isaiah 14:21 The articles that I site may not have responses to all of the verses mentioned, but I'm working on them and will post responses to the ones that I don't give responses to, A S.A.P.   https://carm.org/do-sons-bear-the-sin...   https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...  FYI, this article sites the one directly above.   http://www.tektonics.org/lp/paydaddy.php   http://apologeticspress.org/AllegedDi...   https://apologeticspress.org/apconten...  "Babies killed and wives raped to punish pride" "Isaiah 13:11–16 “I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty. … Theirinfants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will belooted and their wives violated.” NIV"  https://carm.org/bible-difficulties/i...  Pg. 124 Chapter 9: Misogynistic Barker has a Hissy-fit about the fact that man was created first instead of women.  "(Notice the biological reversal: woman comesout of man instead of the other way around.)" What/Where is his basis for saying that Women should have been created first and why on Earth does it even matter? Women were created second. So what?  Pg. 124 and 125 "The national poll counted only males" "Numbers 1:1–2" This is a Census that is specifically only counting Males. There is a reason why it isn't including women. There is no reason to be having a Hissy-fit about women not being included in this. If God doesn't want to have women included in this Census, then He is allowed to have then be included. It's not a big deal.  "Women don’t count" "Numbers 3:15, 28" Same as above. Pg. 127 "Female as property. If a man rapes a single woman, he has to payher father and marry her." Deuteronomy 22:28–29 “If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, andseizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay withher shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, andshe shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put heraway all his days.” RSV (You broke it, you buy it.)"  https://www.gotquestions.org/Deuteron...   http://apologeticspress.org/APContent...   https://answersingenesis.org/bible-qu...   https://evidenceforchristianity.org/m...   https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.equi...  And where is Barker's Objective Basis for Right and Wrong for which he uses to claim that Rape is even wrong (Objectively Wrong), to begin with. A mere opinion or "Ethical Relativism/Relativism as he says he believes in, in his book "Godless" does not prove that Rape is wrong. Saying that Morality is Relative would basically mean that the Rapist can decide that Rape is perfectly alright for him and the Rape Victim can decide that Rape isn't right for her but, (either way), at the end of the day, it's merely one person's opinion against the other and no one is really right or wrong. Chapter 14: Filicidal  Pg. 183 Stubborn son publicly executed Deuteronomy 21:18–21 “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, whichwill not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that,when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall hisfather and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders ofhis city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders ofhis city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice;he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone himwith stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; andall Israel shall hear, and fear.” KJV  https://carm.org/bible-difficulties/g...   https://www.gotquestions.org/stone-re...  "Eat your own children Leviticus 26:27–29 “And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walkcontrary unto me; Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I,even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. And ye shall eat theflesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.” KJV"  https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...  “You will eat the fruit of your womb” Deuteronomy 28:53 “And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, theflesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath giventhee, in the siege, and in the straitness,wherewith thine enemies shalldistress thee.” KJV  https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...  Reciprocal cannibalism Ezekiel 5:9–10 “And I will do in thee that which I have not done, andwhereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all thine abominations.Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sonsshall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in thee, and the wholeremnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds.” KJV  https://www.rationalchristianity.net/...  Those are just a handful of Barker having hissy -fits about verses that have already been explained. I'll follow up with more some time in the future.    This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.                   124 reviews     May 9, 2019   Ahora entiendo por que Nietzsche decía que necesitaba usar guantes para leer este libro. Estoy pensando en hacer lo mismo, no quiero manchar mis manos con tanta sangre y odio. No quiero hablar mucho de este libro. Solo dire que todas las acusaciones expuestas están defendidas por sus respectivas citas.     2019 libros-que-influyeron-en-mi my-picks-for-you
God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25986260-god
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A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather …
2012-01-10
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 A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

 Lawrence M. Krauss , Richard Dawkins ( Afterword)

 3.94
 29,264 ratings 1,599 reviews
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 Goodreads Choice Award
 Nominee for Best Nonfiction (2012)
 Bestselling author and acclaimed physicist Lawrence Krauss offers a paradigm-shifting view of how everything that exists came to be in the first place.

 “Where did the universe come from? What was there before it? What will the future bring? And finally, why is there something rather than nothing?”

 One of the few prominent scientists today to have crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss describes the staggeringly beautiful experimental observations and mind-bending new theories that demonstrate not only can something arise from nothing, something will always arise from nothing. With a new preface about the significance of the discovery of the Higgs particle, A Universe from Nothing uses Krauss’s characteristic wry humor and wonderfully clear explanations to take us back to the beginning of the beginning, presenting the most recent evidence for how our universe evolved—and the implications for how it’s going to end.

 Provocative, challenging, and delightfully readable, this is a game-changing look at the most basic underpinning of existence and a powerful antidote to outmoded philosophical, religious, and scientific thinking.
 Genres Science Nonfiction Physics Philosophy Astronomy Religion Atheism
 ...more

 204 pages, Hardcover

 First published January 10, 2012

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 About the author

 Lawrence M. Krauss

 34 books 1,708 followers
 Prof. Lawrence M. Krauss is an internationally known theoretical physicist with wide research interests, including the interface between elementary particle physics and cosmology, where his studies include the early universe, the nature of dark matter, general relativity and neutrino astrophysics. He has investigated questions ranging from the nature of exploding stars to issues of the origin of all mass in the universe. He was born in New York City and moved shortly thereafter to Toronto, Canada, where he grew up. He received undergraduate degrees in both Mathematics and Physics at Carleton University. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1982), then joined the Harvard Society of Fellows (1982-85). He joined the faculty of the departments of Physics and Astronomy at Yale University as assistant professor in 1985, and associate professor in 1988. In 1993 he was named the Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, Professor of Astronomy, and Chairman of the department of Physics at Case Western Reserve University. He served in the latter position for 12 years, until 2005. During this period he built up the department, which was ranked among the top 20 Physics Graduate Research Programs in the country in a 2005 national ranking. Among the major new initiatives he spearheaded are included the creation of one of the top particle astrophysics experimental and theoretical programs in the US, and the creation of a groundbreaking Masters Program in Physics Entrepreneurship. In 2002, he was named Director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case.

 In August 2008 Krauss took up his new post as Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics Department, and Inaugural Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University . As planned, Origins will become a national center for research and outreach on origins issues, from the origins of the universe, to human origins, to the origins of consciousness and culture. It will also form a cross-cutting educational theme at ASU. In April of 2009, it hosted an Origins Symposium, bringing together some of the most well known scientists and public intellectuals in the world for both scientific discussions and public presentations. Over 5000 people attended the events directly, and many more watched the live webcasts from around the world.

 Prof. Krauss is the author of over 300 scientific publications, as well as numerous popular articles on physics and astronomy. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his research and writing, including the Gravity Research Foundation First Prize Award (1984), and the Presidential Investigator Award (1986). In February 2000, in Washington D.C., Krauss was awarded the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 1999-2000 Award for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology . Previous awardees include Carl Sagan (1995) and E.O. Wilson (1994). In 2001 he was awarded the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society . The citation reads "For outstanding contributions to the understanding of the early universe, and extraordinary achievement in communicating the essence of physical science to the general public". Previous awardees include Stephen W. Hawking (1999), and Kip S. Thorne (1996). In 2001 the American Institute of Physics awarded Krauss the Andrew Gemant Award , given annually to "a person who has made significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimensions of physics". Previous awardees include Freeman Dyson, Steven Weinberg, and Stephen Hawking. He was also awarded the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award in 2002 for his book "Atom".

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 http://krauss.faculty.asu.edu/biography/

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 Riku Sayuj
 658 reviews 7,287 followers
 March 10, 2014

 Krauss has managed to draw an almost perfect normal curve (Bell Curve) with this book as far as engagement and content is concerned.

 The Start of the Curve

 It starts slow by promising us a full whirlwind historic tour from Galileo to CMBR and beyond and takes its own sweet time getting to even Einstein and then dwells on the most known aspects of modern science as if no one has heard of all that before.

 The Rise

 Then as I was contemplating postponing the book for some future date, Krauss suddenly draws himself up to his full commanding ivory tower height and things suddenly get hard to comprehend. Now I was perked, this was what I was there with him for, after all.

 The Peak of the Curve

 Maybe it is because that was the only part of the book which I knew not enough about. I had read about the fact that the only way to explain the universe is to postulate an inflationary scenario for the early universe but Krauss puts it in terms which no other author which I have read has done. He makes it beautiful, breath-taking and completely believable that in a few micro seconds the universe expanded by an order of magnitude of 24 and attained the final shape that we see now! And he systematically charts out how this theory was derived based on observed size and density of universe, based on postulated energy of empty space, based on curvature of the universe and on the nature of acceleration of distant 'standard candles'. During this part of the book as well as the part in which he lists out the reasons for why the universe we live in is flat and accelerating and dominated by energy (as against mass, ie, by repulsive force of acceleration than by attractive force of gravity) and then slam-dunks it in by explaining how all this can only be explained by an inflationary early universe.

 The Dip

 Just as I was bristling with all the new knowledge and information and thinking of the rave review this book is gonna get and about how knowledgeable I was going to be as I finish it, Krauss grinds the journey to a screeching halt as far as science is concerned. He takes a major left turn and plunges into an entire chapter on speculating if scientists wo trillion years into the future can ever find out the true nature of the universe. The anser is no. All evidence of the origins of universe would be lost or obscured by then and Kraus concludes that it is possible that even with the best scientific method, minds and far advanced technology, it is posible to reach the wrong conclusions. In face no matter how advanced that civilization is they will never know of a world beyond their own meta-galaxy! This is a wonderful thought an Richard Dawkins comments extensively on it in the afterword but surely it didn't warrant so many pages in al already small book? But in spite of the boring nature of the chapter, it is sill a very profound one - All our attempts to understand anything is limited by the presence of physical evidence, so we must also think about what might already have been obscured from us in the 13.odd billion years of the universe and this is especially true if the inflationary hypothesis is correct because an inflation like that would be like a flood over a crime scene. So the chapter is about humility even though Krauss tried to make it into an argument about why we live in a very special time, the only time we can wonder why it is special. This is again a clear opening to fit a god-of-the-gaps into. I am amazed at how many new avenues Krauss has opened up in this book. Is he secretly against Dawkins and Hitchens?

 The Lower End

 And then he shifts into trying to explain the universe in terms of the Anthropic Principle which I have a tough time accepting even though I agree with the sturdy logic of it. I just feel it is Wrong, that is all, to explain things by saying that we wouldn't be here to talk about it if it were not so and that is the answer.

 The interest is still held fo a while as he does a critical analysis of string theory and concludes that it is a wonderful mathematical and theoretical edifice but it has proven/predicted not one single observation in 25 years or so and hence is more or less a dead-end. He plainly asks the common reader to get over the string theory hype and stop talking about String Theory to show how knowledgeable you are. If anyone talks of string theory and TOE to you, count on the fact that he heard about some stuff during the Great Hype and never bothered enough to understand or keep up-to-date.

 The Long Tail of the Curve

 And then comes the low point of the book, which Krauss probably put in only to gain traction with Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens . The long rant about religious claims and about their argument about "How can something come out of nothing" - the only answer is that it does, it still is happening and something can also go back into nothing in the future. So what does that prove? Not much I think except to accept that the universe is right strange, brotha. Then comes the epilogue about how science has to be respected and all that Carl Sagan stuff as science as a candle in the dark, the normal curve tending towards zero on the tail now, reader barely awake.

 The Anomaly

 And finally, the book winds down with a poetic afterword by Dawkins registering a major upturn anomaly in the normal curve towards the very end. (any good normal distribution will have the outliers after all).

 Takeaways

 The reader can come way from the book with a feeling that he now knows some 'deep' quantum kick-ass fundamentals without having been stretched as much as, say, a Brian Greene would do to you in The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory . This must be the reason for the sudden popularity of the book and comparisons with 'The Origin of Species' and with A Brief History of Time as the next great opening of windows by science and as the final nail in the coffin that Darwin built for religion. Richard Dawkins sure sounds very pep in his afterword, as if, now that this book is out, no more argument is possible.

 I am not to sure about that of course. Ultimately the book is making the claim that everything we can measure and see and know anything at all about, ever, is just 1% of the universe. That is to say that physics can never know anything about 99% of what exist in the universe. Now, that is dangerous territory and can play right into the hands of religious aficionados. I wonder why Dawkins was elated by the book and not feverishly going back to the drawing board to counter all the hundreds of nonsensical faith-based claims that can crop up from this information.

 Final Word

 In the end, I liked the book. It was worth the read for that amazing middle portion and for the analysis on string theory. but to compare it with The Origin of Species as a landmark work or to talk as if it is the definitive word in the argument strikes me as hyperbole. It is a well-written work accessible to the lay-reader that tries to explain how much modern science does not know. If that fills you with a sense of wonder, this is the book for you.



 Post Script
 PS. I really don't get why Ian McEwan turned up to comment on the cover. Some mix up? Hmm...
 pop-science r-r-rs science-evolution
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 Manny
 Author 34 books 14.9k followers
 November 19, 2021
 Point/Counterpoint

 A Nice Brief Account Of The Inflation/Ω/Dark Energy Thread

 Krauss, who was personally involved in some of the work and knows all the key actors, does a fine job of summarising progress in cosmology over the last fifteen years. The most significant development, needless to say, has been the discovery of Dark Energy. Krauss presents the background and shows why it wasn't quite as unexpected as has often been made out; he was one of the few people to have predicted it, though it sounds like he could hardly believe his own prediction. He is also good on showing you how solid the evidence is. To people outside the field, it isn't at all obvious that the case is a strong one, since it depends on ultra-precise measurements of the distances to the most remote galaxies, something that is anything but trivial to do. Krauss straightforwardly says that he had doubts at first and urged his colleagues not to jump on the bandwagon; but, after a while, so much material had accumulated that it was almost impossible to explain the facts in any other way.

 Krauss also presents a compelling account of how the theory of gravitational lensing was first developed, almost by accident, by Einstein, and later used to obtain accurate estimates of the overall curvature of the universe. He explains how the various streams of research have combined to show that the universe is flat to within observational error, and how this fits together with the now-standard inflationary model to yield a model of a flat universe with zero total energy. As many people have pointed out, this opens the intriguing possibility that the universe could have been created from no more than a vacuum fluctuation in empty space.

 Krauss is honest about the limitations of our knowledge. In an imaginative passage, he makes a projection of what hypothetical cosmologists three trillion years from now would be able to deduce about the history of the cosmos they saw; he argues that it would be impossible for them to find evidence for either dark energy or an expanding universe. The obvious implication is that changing conditions may similarly have erased evidence that we would need to understand the true history of the early universe.

 The book would have been better if Krauss had not felt impelled to take frequent and generally unnecessary pot-shots at creationists, theologians and philosophers, but is still an informative and enjoyable read.

 Holy Fucking Shit, This Book Just Blows My Mind

 Oh My God, I was going to say, but Krauss, in this stunning book , gives you solid evidence that God doesn't exist . The latest advances in astronomy have uncovered a bunch of amazing new facts . Believe it or not, we now know the age of the universe to four significant figures!! Yes, the universe is 13.72 billion years old - not 13.71 billion or 13.73 billion!!!

 But that's just the starting point in Professor Krauss's whirlwind tour of all human knowledge . He tells you how 99% of the universe is invisible dark matter and dark energy . Incredibly, there's exactly enough invisible stuff to make space perfectly flat . And that means... wait for it... that the universe could only have started from nothing! Yes, you heard me. If things started with nothing and got blown up by inflation (don't worry, he tells you what it is), then you'd have exactly what we see today!

 So who needs God? Not Richard Dawkins, who wrote the cool afterword!
 history-and-biography if-research-were-romance science
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 Ahmad Ebaid
 285 reviews 2,122 followers
 February 25, 2018
 "كون من لاشيء، لماذا هنالك شيء بدلا من لا شيء؟"



 ***

 عندما يقيس العلماء طاقة أحد عناقيد المجرات، تكون النتيجة أن معظم الكتلة تتمركز في الظلام بين المجرات، حيث الفراغ

 وهذا الفراغ الخالي من الذرات والإشعاع هو ما يطلق المؤلف عليه "لا شيء". وهذا الفراغ يتمدد، والتموجات الكمية شكلت البنى التي نراها اليوم من النجوم والمجرات من لا شيء

 قوانين الجاذبية النظرية تخبرنا بأنه بإمكان الجاذبية توليد طاقة سلبية تعادل الطاقة الايجابية للمادة، وتكون المحصلة النهائية للطاقة في الكون هو صفر، وهذا كون يمكن أن ينتج من لاشيء

 لماذا هناك شيء من لا شيء؟ لأن الفراغ غير مستقر، وقد تتحول طاقة اللاشيء/الفراغ إلى مادة


 هذه هي فقط فكرة الكتاب، وباقي الكتاب؟ لا شيء، فهذا كتاب من لا شيء

 ولد الكتاب من رحم محاضرة ألقاها لورانس كراوس أكتوبر 2009 في لوس أنجلوس، تبدأ بسرد أكثر الاكتشافات إثارة للدهشة في الفيزياء خلال القرن الماضي، وتنتهي بأبحاثه الخاصة في الفيزياء والتي تتعلق بالتساؤل عن نهاية الكون. قرأت الكتاب قبل المحاضرة، وليست مصادفة أن ما ورد في المحاضرة كان هو أكثر ما أتذكره جيدا من الكتاب

 كانت المحاضرة جيدة ومرحة، ولكن يبدون أنه عندما قرر كراوس تضمين المحاضرة ضمن هذا الكتاب لم يبذل الجهد الكافي في إعادة كتابة المحاضرة، وإنما قام بإحاطة المادة المقدمة في المحاضرة بتفاصيل كثيرة من مرجع ما، وهكذا تفاصيل عملت على إفساد الجسد الأنيق للمحاضرة وتركته مترهل غير مستساغ

 كما أن تلك التفاصيل سردت بسرعة وتعجل، دون الشرح اللازم. ويمكنكم تصور الجسد المترهل الذي قد ينتجه نحات يمر على جسد منحوتته بهكذا طريقة. تفاصيل كثيرة متناثرة بإهمال ولا تشبع نفسا فضولية، فيسود جو من مشاعر الغضب كالتي قد تنتاب الفضولي الذي لا يستطيع أن يتنصت جيدا إلى حديث رجلان من عالم آخر

 ولهذا فالتقييم منخفض، فأنا أعتبر أن الكتاب لم يقدم شيئا، وكل هذه التفاصيل المترهلة عن الموضوع الساحر اخترت تجاهلها، تماما كما قد يتجاهل الفارس رؤيته لحورية قبيحة حتى لا يغير صورة الحوريات الحسناوات في خيالة. وفي انتظار كتاب آخر عن اللاشيء

 ***

 "إن المستقبل ليس ما اعتدنا عليه"
 يوجي بيرا

 الكتاب حافل بالعديد من الاقتباسات الجيدة كالاقتباس السابق، ولكنها معا لا تشكل سميفونية متناغمة أو حتى لوحة جميلة كمنظر السماء الذي كان يحيط بأسلافنا، فالاقتباسات قد أصابها الترهل الذي أصاب بقية الكتاب

 ***

 الترجمة؟ لا يمكن أن أصفها بالجيدة، ففي غير موضوع تتكون من جمل غير سلسلة، ناتجة على الأغلب من كون المترجم غير مستوعب لموضوع الكتاب، ويتضح جهله بالفيزياء حين ترجم اسم عالم الفيزياء النووية الضعيفة "محمد عبد السلام" الحاصل على نوبل عن أعماله مع شريكه "ستيفن وينبرج"، إلى "أبدوس سلام". وبمناسبة الحديث عن عبد السلام، فهو أحد المسلمين الحاصلين على جائزة نوبل، ولكن يتم تجاهل ذكره عادة من طرف المسلمين العرب، لأنه ولد لمسلمين أحمديين وليس لمسلمين سنة مثلهم.
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 Greg
 1,120 reviews 1,983 followers
 January 21, 2012
 One thing is certain, however. The metaphysical 'rule', which is held as an ironclad conviction by those whom I have debated the issue of creation, namely that "out of nothing nothing comes," has no foundation in science. Arguing that it is self-evident, unwavering, and unassailable is like arguing, as Darwin falsely did, when he made the suggestion that the origin of life was beyond the domain of science by building an analogy with the incorrect claim that matter cannot be created or destroyed. All it represents is an unwillingness to recognize the simple fact that nature may be cleverer than philosophers or theologians.

 I'm not going to even attempt to figure out if what Lawrence Krauss is saying is scientifically correct. I have no way of knowing, even though his is a pop-science book, many of the arguments went flying over my head like some high velocity particle being expelled from a black hole (with apparently no need for high energy because of some properties of black holes, gravity, quantum stuff, particles and other things that I can just nod along with). I could whine that the lack of footnotes, or citations to where I could read the articles dealing with this stuff is missing, but I have a feeling that a) it's easy enough to do a bit of library research to uncover any of the articles but b) if I tried to read any of them my brain might collapse into itself like some unstable quantum universe under the pressure of my own ignorance.

 One reviewer I noticed was turned off by the constant return to 'bashing' big G and his believers around. This reviewer believes that Krauss should have laid off a little and just let the science speak for itself. Fuck them, I say. Bash away. Yeah, the believers might not be the ones who will ever read this book, but throw rocks at their flimsy and childish beliefs. Why? Because we (I mean I) live in a country where more people believe in angels than believe in evolution and I work in a bookstore where more people will probably buy the book that has the prayer for ridding your life of satanic demon birds in it than will buy this book. Any chance you get throw intellectual rocks at the fuckers, because guess what? They are throwing rocks all the time, and they are name-calling and attempting to push their medieval bullshit fear mongering on everyone. That said, it's not like there is name calling going on in this book, it's just the author is pointing out that there is no reason to revert to creation myths to explain things, science is doing a fairly good job at chiseling away at a fairly comprehensive picture of the universe without the words, let there be light being said and logos permeating the cosmos.

 All this aside though, the book is really interesting. I would do an awful job at even trying to paraphrase the arguments and discoveries that points to everything in the universe was created out of quantum fluctuations in 'nothingness', or in the empty space where until fairly recently everyone thought was just empty space, but now scientists are realizing is filled with 'stuff' that is a whirlpool of strange goings ons and contains more dark energy than all of the observable energy in the whole big, gigantic, universe. Want some of the details on how this is so? Read the book (I sound like the old commercial from the 1980's for that Scientology tract). It's a fascinating idea, and sucks even a little more 'meaning' out of our existence, what if we really are only here because of some particles popping into existence at the mind boggling strange quantum level and because they went through an inflationary period in the mind boggling tiny amount of time before they would normally pop back out of existence (apparently at this level things do pop in and out of existence fairly often, how exactly scientists know this I can't say, but it sounded convincing to me) and because of that everything we can possibly see and tons of stuff that is so far away from us that we will never be able to see even using the most powerful technologies we have was formed. Fucking incredible, right? Maybe not the most comforting, it's not going to reassure you that you really are important and that something bigger than yourself loves you, but really more beautiful and amazing than the idea that some jealous being floating around the ether decided on a whim to create the world and then lingered around for billions of years before throwing some gigantic temper tantrums on the equivalent of a few grains of sand on the gigantic beach that would be 'his' creation.

 The ideas in this book are 'dangerous', if I was feeling sleazy and wanted to dupe some stupid motherfuckers, I would set out to take the basic premises of this book and concoct some New Age book using a few scientific facts and make a Secret -esque book about the power to create something from nothing. I'll leave that to people with less morals and more ambition than me though. There is a lot of ground in this book to misunderstand and trample around on to make all kinds of nonsensical 'metaphysical' extrapolations from.

 And speaking of metaphysics, without the quotes and not in the way that most people use the word (when people generally ask for the metaphysics books they aren't looking for philosophy they are looking for New Age), the ideas in this book are like a giant wedge to shove into classic philosophical arguments. If the idea of nothing can come from nothing is overthrown by science what does that do to whole lines of philosophical reasoning? This is one of the basic tenets of Western Philosophy, it's what you learn in Philosophy School, it's how you help shape logical arguments about the Big Questions. All the way back to Aristotle (and beyond, but I'm going to stop there, it gets different when you step back to Plato, and the Pre-Socratics, well just forget it), it's this basic idea that works to create his own speculation about creation (he sidestepped the question in a way by saying the universe must be eternal since there could be no prime-mover), and following his logic it's one of those tools that most philosophy people carry around in their mental toolbox to help them call bullshit on arguments with weak premises.

 Krauss likes to take pot-shots at philosophers, too. And this is probably not a bad thing. I can imagine a Zizek getting a hold of a few of the ideas in this book and running rampant through Lacan and Hitchcock with them to make up some unsettling and absurd claims, but lets consider him and his ilk theorists, and not philosophers for the sake of this review, but it would be fascinating (and unrealizable, because of the whole space time continuum and all) to have honest to goodness heavy-weight philosophers take this kind of knowledge and re-work it into their own views of the universe. What would an Aristotle or a Spinoza be able to do with their own philosophies with the added benefit of years and years of scientific discovery at their disposal? I'm not saying they would advance our knowledge necessarily beyond what we have now, but what avenues of thought would they go down by knowing more about the physical world then the time they lived in? Or, more realistically, would these great philosophers not hang their head in shame if they saw that their works were still being read and certain arguments of theirs still being wielded even in the face of scientific discoveries that led them to be obsolete, did any of these philosophers ever want to be just accepted as blind dogma?

 I'm losing a bit of control on this review. So I'll sum up, the world is strange and beautiful and we are more likely than not just an insignificant part of it, but we are observers of it and we should be open to understanding it as it is, even if it's not the most comforting version of the world that we might want, just because it Is and there is nothing else.
 science
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 Bharath
 721 reviews 541 followers
 March 12, 2020
 There is a deep sense of curiosity in most of us on how the universe came to be. If we manage to determine that, it would be the pinnacle of human intellect & achievement, I think. Lawrence argues in the book how science has progressed enough to explain how the universe grew from ‘Nothing’. A note of warning though – this ‘Nothing’ assumes the existence of space and the laws of physics already being in place. This (as the author notes as well), is not the ‘Nothing’ many of us will assume this to be. The absolute ‘Nothing’ which some or many of us understand differently also finds some limited discussion towards the end of the book.

 The book traces the progress we have made in uncovering the mysteries of the universe – and with each new discovery, the role of God diminishes. Through the book, Lawrence expectedly takes several digs at theology. He states that scientific facts should not be ignored, and a ‘God of the gaps’ (attributing what science is yet to explain to God) is a poor concept as it in any case diminishes the role of God as understood by religion. I agree and think most people do accept this, but still find meaning in religion for personal growth and treat (or should as Joseph Campbell advises) a lot of what is stated in religious texts metaphorically (also Advaita Vedanta treats the concept of God very differently). Scientific evidence is very strong (such as with the cosmic microwave background radiation) that there was a big bang, the universe went through a period of rapid expansion, and matter was created leading to what we see today.

 I found the concepts of the flat, closed and open universe to be fascinating. The discussion around this and the implications for the future of the universe makes for very engrossing reading. We are most likely in a flat universe (though this is not conclusive) – light does not curve and the universe may not roll back onto itself. The author mentions that we are at the best possible time to determine the secrets of the universe, since as we go on – the expansion would tear apart galaxies and greatly diminish the remnants of the big bang. This is interesting – indicating we should be investing more in cosmology now.

 As one would expect, it is not that the book has all the answers – after all science itself does not yet. The creation of the universe from nothing or the possibility of a multiverse finds some discussion towards the end of the book. There is some barely disguised disdain for string theory – which I share as well since it comes as force fitted, excessively complex and detached from reality to me.

 I found parts of the book to be a bit dense / less readable, nor did I find much of the humor the synopsis of the book mentions.

 The book is intellectually stimulating and does well to bring advances in cosmology together in a crisp narrative.
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 David Rubenstein
 822 reviews 2,664 followers
 October 3, 2013
 This is a short, entertaining and informative book, written by a leading cosmologist. Lawrence Krauss describes, step by step, the observational evidence for the expansion of the universe, the existence of dark matter, and dark energy. He clearly describes the differences between a closed, open, and a flat universe, and shows the the reasons why we probably live in a flat universe. I had never understood before reading his explanation, how the spatial scales of variability of the cosmic microwave background radiation proves that our universe is flat. In a flat universe, space is in Euclidean geometry, and light rays travel in straight lines. The universe will not implode upon itself in the distant future.

 He shows the evidence for the big bang theory--quite a lot of evidence is behind the theory--I had no idea. Scientists claim that the universe has expanded for 13.72 billion years since the big bang: How do they figure it so precisely, to four significant figures? Krauss explains this very nicely.

 Krauss shows a way out of the anthropic principle, that is, that the universe's characteristics were chosen to be "just right" for the production of galaxies, stars, earth, and life. He shows that the idea of multiple universes is not so far-fetched, if one defines the universe as that region of space that is causally connected.

 Krauss adds a subtle, dry humor to his text. For example, the title of the sixth chapter is The Free Lunch at the End of the Universe , a bow to the title of the book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams. So what is the free lunch? As the universe is expanding, the density of energy remains constant . That is because for any galaxy in a flat universe, its positive energy of motion is exactly balanced by its negative energy of gravitational attraction. Truly "empty" space is unstable--small quantum fluctuations give rise to the creation of matter, and at the same time conserve energy. Krauss quotes Yogi Berra, "The future ain't what it used to be."
 astronomy science
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 Lilo
 131 reviews 413 followers
 December 1, 2017
 As a layperson, I don’t feel qualified to review a scientific book written by a renowned professor of theoretical physics. But here are a few thoughts I had during and after reading this book:

 Upfront I must confess that I did not fully understand the contents.

 What, for instance, is a “flat universe”? O.k., you can blow up a balloon, and the more you blow it up, the less curvature its surface will have. Fine! But will it ever get totally flat? Just try it. I’ll bet you anything that it will burst before it gets anywhere near to be flat. So why is Professor Krauss talking about a flat universe? We can’t be there yet. And what would happen if we ever got near there? Would our universe bust, or would it ignore all predictions? Taking from my meager recollections of what I ever learned in math, the curvature would get infinitely close to flat but would never reach it. Correct me if I am wrong. So what’s all this talk about a flat universe? I don’t get it.

 There is also a lot of talk about what Nothing really means. The experts of different fields of science, philosophy, and theology don’t seem to be able to agree on how Nothing needs to be defined. Well, I can’t help them there. They’ll have to figure it out between themselves.

 Is Nothing still Nothing when it has the potential to create Something? Maybe this Nothing contains Something after all. And is Nothing equivalent to empty space, or is it something different? Somewhere in this book it says that empty space pops up from Nothing. Now, this had me really confused. If Nothing and empty space are the same, then Nothing must pop up from Nothing. Well, this is beyond me. Trying to comprehend this, my brain feels like empty space or rather like a black hole.

 Talking about black holes: I had always been under the impression that whatever matter gets too close to a black hole will be sucked into it, and not even the smartest theoretical physicist knows what awaits it there. No scientist claims to know what’s on the other side of a black hole. (That’s, at least, last I heard.) And now Professor Krauss tells me that there is a virtual particle escaping when a pair of positive and negative particles reaches the event horizon of a black hole. And what’s worse, the particle that flies off to infinity takes away its twin’s energy. This messes up the law of conservation of energy and, over time, results in the black hole being deprived of more and more energy until it finally disappears out of existence. Well, maybe I got this all wrong. I wouldn’t notice anyway if a black hole were missing on the starry sky.

 Btw, it was new to me that our universe only came to be because of a one-in-a-billion impurity of equal matches of matter and antimatter during the Big Bang. Without this impurity, matter and antimatter would have equaled each other out in a matter of split seconds or minutes or hours or a few thousand hundred of years. (I don’t quite remember, but what does this matter when we are talking about the immense age of our universe, which, I learned, is exactly 23,73 billions of years old.) In other words: Not only we but everything in our whole universe is a product of some pollution. This was quite a shock to me. Yet I was somewhat comforted by the fact, which Professor Krauss has pointed out, that however our universe came to be, we are all made of stardust.

 You see, that even though this book is a bit over my head, I certainly learned Something.

 I must say, however, that I have a beef with this book. Yet let me start from the beginning. No, not from the Big Bang—only from the beginning of my writing here. I should have told you upfront that Professor Krauss is trying hard to convince you, the reader, that our universe did NOT NEED a creator (or more likely even, did NOT HAVE a creator). And Richard Dawkins, who wrote the epilogue, is literally preaching that there is no God behind the Big Bang. I, on the other hand, assume that there IS, even though I do not believe in a personalized God, as He is portrayed in the bible and in all religions (maybe with the exception of Buddhism, which is actually less a religion and more a philosophy.) What I assume is a force behind the Big Bang, which is a Something and Not a Nothing.

 Well, who am I to argue with renowned scientists, such as Professor Krauss and Professor Dawkins? Compared to their high-caliber cannon of a brain, my brain is only a BB gun. Yet let me point out that how ever much Professor Krauss and Professor Dawkins know, there is still more that they don’t know. So for instance, they (as well as other theoretical physicists) haven’t got the slightest clue what the so-called dark energy of empty space is (which makes up for about 70% of all the energy in the universe). Neither do they know too much about parallel universes they claim exist. (Well, I’ll forgive them this because I know even less about parallel universes.) So for all they don’t know, they are IMHO a bit too sure that our universe (as well as an infinite number of parallel universes) came from Nothing and not from Something.

 Now with all due respect to Professors Krauss and Dawkins, I would like you, the reader, to consider that my little BB gun of a brain might be right on target, while Professor Krauss’s and Professor Dawkin’s high-caliber cannons of brains might be shooting in the wrong direction.


 For a scientific review of this book, please read Rama’s review at

 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
 philosophy physics read-as-paper-book
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 فهد الفهد
 Author 1 book 5,040 followers
 May 23, 2016
 كون من لا شيء

 تركني هذا الكتاب بذات الحيرة التي بدأته بها، يبدو العنوان واعداً، كيف يكون هناك كون من لا شيء؟ عندما تمت الإجابة على الأسئلة الكونية والفيزيائية بإعادة كل شيء إلى لحظة الانفجار الكبير، كان السؤال التالي هو كيف ولماذا؟ من أين جاءت المادة التي خلق الكون من انفجارها؟ لا يخصص كراوس لأطروحته إلا الصفحات الخمسين الأخيرة فقط، ويتركنا تائهين وخاصة غير المتخصصين، لأننا نكتشف أن (لا شيء) ليست (لا شيء) اللغوية، وإنما هي (لا شيء) فيزيائية، وهي أمر آخر تماماً يلخصه كراوس بقوله في الصفحة 194:

 "يمكن أن يبزغ شيء ما من الفضاء الفارغ على وجه الدقة، لأن طاقة الفضاء الفارغ النشطة، في حضور ووجود الجاذبية، ليست ما يهدينا له الحس العام، قبل أن نكتشف القوانين الخفية للطبيعة".

 ثم يقول بعد سطور:

 "إن الملاحظات العلمية بأن الكون مسطح، وأن قيمة طاقة الجاذبية النيوتنية تساوي بالضرورة صفراً، تطرح بقوة اليوم أن كوننا انبثق خلال عملية شبيهة بالتضخم، وهي العملية التي تتحول بها طاقة الفضاء الفارغ (لا شيء) إلى طاقة (شيء ما)".

 وفي الحوار الملحق بالكتاب يجيب كراوس على سؤال (ماذا تعني حقاً بـ لا شيء؟) بقوله:

 "قد تكون حالة اللامادة ليست اللاشيء بالمعنى الكلاسيكي، ولكنه تحول رائع مع ذلك، لهذا فإن الشكل الأول من اللاشيء هو الفضاء الفارغ"

 من هنا يمكن للاهوتيين أن يتنفسوا الصعداء، لأن السؤال التالي هو ومن أين جاءت طاقة الفضاء الفارغ والتي حسب كراوس تحولت إلى شيء وفق قوانين فيزيائية يرى أنها في حد ذاتها قد تكون عشوائية.

 بقي أن أقول أن الكتاب ابتلي بترجمته العربية، وأنه من الأفضل قراءته بالإنجليزية لوضوح أكثر في الأفكار والمصطلحات.
 non-fiction-science-cosmos
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 Melki
 6,423 reviews 2,450 followers
 November 27, 2021
 Yeah, yeah - probably 90% of this went whooshing over my head, but it's always nice to be reminded of just how great it is to be made of star stuff, and to have had a teeny-tiny, infinitesimal place in this fantastic, mind-boggling universe of ours.
 atheism sciency-stuff
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 Book Shark
 772 reviews 147 followers
 June 13, 2016
 If you like my review please don't hesitate to like my amazon review too. I appreciate it...it's a wonderful book.


 A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss

 “A Universe from Nothing" is the fascinating book about how are universe came from nothing. Using the latest in scientific knowledge, his expertise and the innate ability to explain very complex topics in accessible manner earns this book five stars. Lawrence Krauss takes us on an exciting voyage of discovery that helps us understand the universe and further whets our appetite for more knowledge. This 224-page book is composed of the following eleven chapters: 1. A Cosmic Mystery Story: Beginnings, 2. A Cosmic Mystery Story: Weighing the Universe, 3. Light from the Beginning of Time, 4. Much Ado About Nothing, 5. The Runaway Universe, 6. The Free Lunch at the End of the Universe, 7. Our Miserable Future, 8. A Grand Accident?, 9. Nothing Is Something, 10. Nothing Is Unstable, and 11. Brave New Worlds.

 Positives:
 1. This book is truly something! A page turner.
 2. A thought-provoking, inspirational quest for knowledge…I loved it!
 3. A profound book that is intelligible. An achievement in its own right. Very complex topics accessible to the masses. Thank you.
 4. Elegant prose with conviction. Lucid and clarity in a world of dark matter.
 5. A journey of cosmological discoveries.
 6. Effective use of charts and illustrations.
 7. I have a much better understanding of our universe as a result of this book and most importantly it has only whet my appetite for even more knowledge…and that’s why I read.
 8. A love affair with science and for good reason. The three key principles of scientific ethos.
 9. Startling conclusions are presented. The author does a wonderful job of letting us know what we do know versus what we don’t know.
 10. Some of the greatest discoveries presented.
 11. I finally have a reasonable grasp of the Big Bang, Bazinga! The three main observational pillars.
 12. Of course you will get to hear about the greats of science but I really appreciate the stories of the lesser known scientists who provided vital knowledge, such as, the story of Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Vera Rubin. Bravo!
 13. Great facts spruced throughout the book and some jaw-dropping insight. One scientist was able to defend his mother in a witchcraft trial…find out whom.
 14. What general relativity tells us.
 15. The uses for gravitational lensing. Let’s get Zwicky with it.
 16. Dark matter and dark energy…enlighten me. Or at least try.
 17. Quantum mechanics, I will never understand it but I can appreciate it what it provides.
 18. The author does a good job of telling us what scientific progress has been made and how that applies to cosmology.
 19. A flat universe?? Find out.
 20. An explanation of nothing that means something to me. Can you say quantum fluctuations?
 21. A “creator” in proper perspective. The requirement of some externality. Read it and you will understand.
 22. Multiverses…oh my.
 23. String theory a critical view.
 24. A little bit of philosophy for good measure.
 25. The best explanation for how something can come out of nothing to best current knowledge available.
 26. Key concepts will now become part of your understanding…”the existence of energy in empty space”.
 27. Black holes under the light and some very interesting takes.
 28. Spoiler alert…one of the most profound questions, “What I want to know is whether God had any choice in the creation of the universe.” Thank you, Mr. Einstein.
 29. An interesting look at Aristotle and the First Cause in the light of new knowledge.
 30. The book ends with a bang of reality.

 Negatives:
 1. No links or bibliography.
 2. A lot of the concepts of this book are hard to grasp. Some readers may not have the patience and inclination to take the time to properly digest what is being offered. That being said, the author does wonders in making such difficult concepts accessible.

 In summary, this is a fantastic book, a real treat. I learned so much and admire the author for providing a book that is accessible and enjoyable to the masses. This book lived up to my expectations. Fascinating topics in the hands of a master results in a captivating book. This is how science books should be written. I can’t recommend this book enough!
 science
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 Simcha York
 180 reviews 19 followers
 February 5, 2013
 Lawrence Krauss's A Universe from Nothing appears to have been done a serious disservice by the author, the editor, or both in that what would otherwise be a decent enough (though not particularly groundbreaking) work of popular science has been press-ganged into the tired ranks of writings on the God Wars. While I haven't yet read a book from either side of this debate that adds anything really worthwhile to a discussion which is largely sophmoric and whose actors seem to spend most of their time stumbling over one anothers' metaphors, this book is particularly disappointing in that it is built around the kernel of a much more promising work that really shouldn't have deigned to stoop to the silliness exhibited by both the New Athiests and their detractors.

 Krauss, like all good writers of popular science, has an infectuous enthusiasm for his field of knowledge. He also has a fairly good eye for compelling detail and an ability to take very complex concepts and present them in a manner that is lucid and accessible to those of us without advanced degrees in physics. That said, there is nothing in this book that will be particularly new to the avid reader of popular science. Even the title theme (a universe rising up from "nothing") was covered, though in somewhat less interesting detail, in Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's The Grand Design . And like that work, this present book suffers from the author's attempts to wade into the waters of philosophy and metaphysics, in which he quickly finds himself out of his depths.

 The book's subtitle ( Why There is Something Rather than Nothing ) is a bit misleading, in that this question is not actually addressed by the book. Or, it is addressed, but only through a bit of semantic sleight-of-hand, by which Krauss sets his own terms for what he means when he uses the word "nothingness" and then goes on to explain not only how something can come from "nothing" but how it could well be that something must come from "nothing." All of which is quite interesting in its own right. Unfortunately, Krauss tries to pass this off as equivalent to the metaphysical question as to why their is something rather than nothing (to be honest, it is difficult to tell if Krauss is being disengenuous here or simply sloppy in his thinking). With regard to Krauss's concepts of "nothingness," one can't help but recall one of the best-known lines from The Princess Bride : "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

 In short, A Universe from Nothing would likely have been a better, more focused book had it contented itself with being a work of popular science exploring some of the more fascinating things that physicists are discovering about the emergence and ultimate fate of our universe. That it attempts to also situate itself in the growing canon of popular books on atheism feels like a tacked-on marketing ploy. And such a ploy is the only thing that can explain the unfortunate inclusion of the Afterword by Richard Dawkins, which is so obsequious and hyperbolic in its barely-pubescent fanboy glee that I am not sure who should be more embarrassed - Dawkins for having written it, or Krauss for making himself look like a self-congratulatory schmuck by allowing it to appear in his book.
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 Max
 349 reviews 405 followers
 June 7, 2017
 I found Krauss’s book totally engaging. His style is challenging but not overwhelming. His arguments for how the universe was created from “nothing” were convincing. The critical term is “nothing”. What nothing is may seem obvious, but Krauss shows us why it isn’t. He takes us back to the very beginning, the Big Bang. How did it start: Quantum fluctuations, false vacuum or just a potentiality? So something if no more than physical rules for the event to originate seem to have existed. Although Krauss suggests that these rules or potentialities could also have spontaneously arisen. But there is no reason to believe that such spontaneous eruptions are a onetime event.

 This brings us to the multiverse spawned from continually bubbling inflation or existing in other dimensions such as those described by string theory. Another answer is God. Like Krauss I am not a fan of what he calls “God of the gaps”, the insertion of God to explain things we don’t understand in the physical world. Any explanation would have to invoke the eternal to avoid the question of First Cause. The author brought up Aristotle’s idea that God is eternal pure thought who did not create the world and does not intervene. Of course, Aristotle’s idea would not be compatible with today’s major religions.

 Krauss discusses many other issues. He offers a detailed explanation of why our universe is flat and why that is important to us. He digs into what are perhaps the two biggest mysteries - dark matter and dark energy. We don’t know what they are. If particles responsible for dark matter could be discovered, the Big Bang and the universe’s future might be clarified. Dark energy provides another take on nothingness, in this case empty space. Quantum mechanics dictates that there is no such thing. It is filled with virtual particles that come and go too quickly to track but impart energy to space. This dark energy maintains the energy density of space as it expands while the density of ordinary matter diminishes overwhelming gravity. Thus over trillions of years the universe will dissipate into an amorphous sea of particles, a fate that clearly disturbs the author. Perhaps a better understanding of dark energy would lead to a different outlook.

 Krauss painstakingly makes the case for his beliefs. I found myself going back and reading many sections again to get to the bottom of his arguments. The depth of this book made it an enjoyable process. Even though I have read about these topics before, Krauss’s explanations were enlightening. A casual reader could benefit picking up the gist of Krauss’s views, but I think this book will be appreciated the most by the reader with a deep interest in the subject. So for me a clear five stars.
 physics
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 Karl-O
 171 reviews 4 followers
 August 10, 2012
 2.5 Stars

 The idea of a an Unmoved Mover or better still a First Cause is fascinating. Just to think that everything has a cause(s) which itself has a cause(s) takes one to a journey backward which we may well be ill equipped to take. This book didn't do much in that domain however, but it rather explained our recent understanding of the cosmos and how from "nothingness" (though with quantum fluctuation which makes the whole idea of Krauss' "nothingness" problematic) a whole universe can come into existence. Frankly, I couldn't help finding the title inappropriate . However, it helped to clear some misunderstandings that I had about the multiverse and the inflation, though the examples he used were not-so-brilliant.

 But, I was disappointed with the book because it made serious attacks against philosophy which in my view were unfounded or at best irrelevant especially that he mentions in this very book how Einstein (apparently one of his heroes) was influenced by Spinoza. Sean Carroll beautifully put it while commenting on Krauss' attacks on philosophy:

 "The point of philosophy is not to be “useful” to science, any more than the point of mycology is to be “useful” to fungi".
 astronomy non-fiction philosophy
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 Bernardo
 71 reviews 69 followers
 January 31, 2021
 As the title of this book says, Lawrence Krauss wants to convince us that the Universe came from nothing, without the need of a Creator. It’s a good book, even if his argument for why there is something rather than nothing isn’t completely convincing.

 In the first half of the book, Krauss demonstrates how scientists have obtained observational evidence related to the expansion and flatness of the Universe, as well as the existence of both dark matter and dark energy, among others. Krauss mixes some stories in these sections and I thought that the chapters concerning these ideas were the best of the book.

 He then proceeds to showing the consequences of these discoveries, namely how they could indicate that our Universe came from nothing. These include, for example, the net gravitational energy being very close to zero, therefore requiring no energy input, which could lead to the existence of a Universe filled with matter and radiation as a consequence of the energy of empty space.

 Later in the book, I thought that he performed quite a bit of hand waving when it came to the topic of how spacetime might have come into existence out of nothing, namely through quantum processes. Additionally, Krauss assumes that the principles of quantum mechanics are just there, they just exist from the start. And he actually admits to this as a potential flaw near the end of the book. As a result, I don’t believe he was as clear and convincing as he might have thought.

 The argument of how something came into existence out of nothing is a bit stretched, with Krauss referring that experimental data about the evolution of the Universe has removed the need for a Creator. I thought that Krauss was slightly unreasonable and biased at times, even if he had some genuinely interesting things to say about our understanding of the Universe.
 non-fiction science
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 Mohammad Ranjbari
 243 reviews 154 followers
 March 18, 2021
 ویژگی ممتاز این کتاب، زبان سادۀ آن در توضیح نکات سخت و آمار و مباحث مربوط به فیزیک و نجوم بود.
 از خواندش غرق در لذت و تفکر شدم.
 وقتی مابین عدم و وجود قرار می گیرم، تصور نبودِ هیچ و تصور به وجود آمدن از هیچ و بیگ بنگ و گسترش کیهان و ماده و مادۀ تاریک و انرژی تاریک و ... همه و همه، صحنه های پر ابهام و تکان دهنده ای برای روح و فکرم می شود. این کتاب را اغلب، شب ها قبل از خواب مطالعه می کردم، چون دوست داشتم در پیش درآمد خوابیدن، ذهنم را به ابدیت بسپارم و حتی هیچ بودن را متصور شوم و مانند چشمی باشم که آغاز را می بیند و به سوی انجام هم رهسپار می شود. به تمدن ها و سیاره هایی فکر کنم که شاید در این حجم کثیر از احتمالات، هستند و حضور دارند. اما فاصله ها اجازۀ آگاهی نمی دهد. و یا از بین میلیاردها کهکشان، این زمین است که مستثنی ست. با این افکار به خواب می رفتم تا پاسخ به این پرسش ها نیز هم شیرین باشد و هم مبهم و شاید روزی قابل تعبیر...
 e-book sciences
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 Bettie
 9,989 reviews 10 followers
 November 25, 2015
 Description: A wildly popular lecture now on YouTube has attracted almost a million viewers. One question in particular has been at the center of religious and philosophical debates about the existence of God, and it's the supposed counterargument to anyone who questions the need for God. As Krauss argues, scientists have, however, historically focused on other, more pressing issues such as figuring out how the universe actually functions, which can ultimately help us to improve the quality of our lives.

 In a cosmological story that rivets as it enlightens, pioneering theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss explains the groundbreaking new scientific advances that turn the most basic philosophical questions on their heads. One of the few prominent scientists today to have actively crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss reveals that modern science is addressing the question of why there is something rather than nothing, with surprising and fascinating results. The staggeringly beautiful experimental observations and mind-bending new theories are all described accessibly in A Universe from Nothing, and they suggest that not only can something arise from nothing, something will always arise from nothing.

 That grrramazon description rather defeats the need for the book - watch out! Bezos and his lucre hunting cronies will be after you...

 Yep - I've dumped the audio book and opted for the youtube lecture instead .

 Had great fun with this: recommended.








 anthropic-mania autumn-2015 cosmic-archaeology
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 Alex J. O'Connor
 19 reviews 4,840 followers
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 November 4, 2018
 A great book outlining the history of cosmology. I found it got a little hard to follow near the end, but cleared up for a satisfying conclusion. It regularly hints at Krauss' atheism, which although is perfectly justified I feel may alienate agnostic or theistic readers. I wouldn't recommend this book to anybody who has no interest in physics whatsoever, as you'll be introduced to new concepts that require a bit of thinking. If, however, you are a science enthusiast of any kind, this book is a must have.
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 Derek
 550 reviews 98 followers
 July 25, 2012
 I found this book very frustrating.

 In the first place, Krauss spends far too much time God-bashing, instead of just sticking to the science. Fine, he doesn't believe that God created the universe, but there's absolutely no good reason to even bring it into a discussion of how our universe has been created from nothing.

 In any case, ultimately, his arguments seem no better than a belief in a supreme being as creator. Krauss waves his hands and tells us that most of the universe consists of "Dark Matter" (fairly easy to believe, as it is simply matter that we can't detect with current instruments), and "Dark Energy" (a seriously kludgy substance that exists purely to make physical theory match observed reality, via the "Cosmological Constant"). How is it that if we believe in God, we're credulous cretins, but if we believe in Dark Energy we're "scientists"?

 He even had the nerve to introduce Occam's Razor . If we are to use the Razor, perhaps we shouldn't jump so blindly on the Cosmological Constant bandwagon — a part of Einstein's General Relativity that he seriously regretted, and considered an error.

 Now, my knowledge and understanding of physics is probably about as good as it gets for someone without a degree in physics, and I didn't have too much trouble following the science in the book — but it was hard enough that it can hardly be considered as being a book for the layman (that is, the science is far harder than A Brief History of Time ). Perhaps he could have provided arguments that would convince me, but if so, the book contains too little physics to convince anyone of his case, and too much for most readers to follow.
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 Daniel Villines
 417 reviews 73 followers
 August 5, 2022
 Reading A Universe from Nothing was like being invited over to Lawrence Krauss’ home for a dinner party with his colleagues. The prospect of the invitation is very exciting, but the conversation at the dinner table does not drop down to the lowly level needed for full comprehension by a mere civil engineer.

 I appreciated the contents of the book. The journey that the science of our universe has taken over the past 500 years is outlined within the chapters. It was nice to have all the major discoveries touched upon in one place, culminating with the strange and exotic behaviors of seemingly empty space. But this complete journey may have also been the problem. There was not enough time (and probably desire) for Krauss to painstakingly transform the science into analogies that could be understood by the non- astro/particle physicists sitting at the table, which are his readers!

 Beyond the science, there is also a bit of condescension towards those that would rather look towards the spiritual aspects of our being (i.e. God) for all of the answers to all of the questions that science is trying to answer. In every science-related book that I’ve read, there are always questions as to why humans, with their capability to reason, would choose to not use their inherent gift. Carl Sagan wrote an entire book on the subject with his The Demon-Haunted World. Krauss, however, takes it one step further. While still short of being belligerent, he does cross the line where acceptance ends. While the condescension felt somewhat prickly under my skin, I also thought this could be indicative of our possible collective future. A future where science rises up to become the last religion that humans will ever need.
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 BetseaK
 78 reviews
 October 16, 2013
 This book failed short of my expectations. The subject was interesting but its exposition lacked clarity due to inconsistencies of all kinds. Regarding the semantic ones, allow me to paraphrase the author: There is no such thing as 'nothing' because 'nothing' is 'something', namely 'nothing' is 'empty space' that is not really empty but 'a boling brew of virtual particles that we cannot see directly'. And, though nothing can travel faster than c, about 70% of that seemingly empty space, termed as 'dark energy', carries the visible galaxies apart from each other at superluminal speed.
 As for other inconsistencies and flaws, let me name just a few:
 The references to equations with no equations were of no help for better comprehension.
 Though it was clear to me that the author was trying to explain the contradictory estimates of the geometry of the observable universe by measuring its curvature directly versus assessment of its mass density, the presentation and the pertinent illustrations for the closed, open and the so-called 'flat' universe left me baffled and made me re-read the relevant explanation in The Perception of Space... and its Measurement .
 I felt forced to google for somewhat clearer explanation of the mystery of 'dark matter' versus 'dark energy'.
 The intriguing hypothesis that the Big Bang resulted from a quantum fluctuation left me craving for a better exposition, too.

 On the plus side, bearing in mind that I haven't read many books on cosmology, I found the book informative. I learned about some engrossing facts, including the pioneering work of the American astronomer Vera Rubin and her colleagues in the early 1970s, the BOOMERANG experiment in 1997 and the WMAP experiment in 1997, and a few more.

 As for the parts against the existence of God, if I were a theist I would find the author's arguments unconvincing.

 cosmology physics science
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 Tanja Berg
 2,003 reviews 475 followers
 March 12, 2013
 This book surprised me with its readability. I didn't feel like I was an average 5th grader taking a university course in physics ALL the time, although I do admit that somethings were above my head. If I ever want to learn anything outside of my current capability, obviously it's not going to come easy. This was very accessible though.

 "Quantum fluctuations, which otherwise would have been completely invisible, get frozen by inflation and emergy afterward as density fluctuations that produce everything we can see! If we are all stardust, it is also true, if inflation happened, that we all, literally, emerged from quantum nothingness". (p.98)

 The other startling conclusion is that we live in a day and age where it is still possible to measure evidence of the Big Bang and light can still travel from galaxy to galaxy. A few trillion years down the line, this will not be possible. It will only be possible to know about the mega-galaxy that the cluster the Milky Way belongs to will have merged with. The other galaxies and stars will have sped away from us, beyond an observable distance. Well, I never thought of that before!

 I am quite bothered by light pollution, but not enough to regularly travel into the wilderness and look at the stars. I should take the time. Ponder the fact that we live in a special time, when the mysteries of the universe can still be considered, theorized about and proven by observation. I haven't seen the Milky Way since I was 10 years old, much less any smudge of a galaxy which isn't the one I live in. My knowledge of the sky is limited to the ability of telling stars from planets, but that doesn't deter me from enjoying it.
 cosmology science
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 Stuart
 722 reviews 299 followers
 December 12, 2014
 My understanding of this book perfectly traced the arc of the Big Bang and expanding universe. An initial burst of inspiration followed by a rapid expansion of ideas about quarks, quantum mechanics, general relativity, dark matter and dark energy, and then a sudden reversal and contraction as the book strays from the fascinating early ideas and collapses in a chaotic discussion of how science and reason are not compatible with religious beliefs (anyone who is reading this book is probably already in that camp), and how the various schools of thought among cosmologists are constantly shifting as more experiments, data, and theories are digested and debated. In particular, the discussion of string theory was too precursory given the complexity of that admittedly difficult and abstract line of thought.

 In the end, I was left with a sense that the true origins of the universe remain a mystery, particularly the question of whether quantum fluctuations in a vacuum really could trigger a Big Bang and our current universe (or multiverses if you prefer that theory), along with the related question of whether the current laws of physics have always been a constant or whether they could have developed differently in other universes, what were the initial conditions that existed before the singularity occurred (of course there was likely “nothing” since at that point there was supposedly no time or space), and finally the idea that our knowledge of the universe will actually fade in the future as the universe expands to the point where all galaxies will become too distant from each other even for light to reach each other, and may eventually collapse back into themselves. And all along I just though it was “turtles all the way down”.

 In the early and middle part of the book, which I liked best, Lawrence Krauss describes the Big Bang, namely the singularity in which quantum fluctuations in a vacuum before space and time existed led to a sudden and exponential expansion in the universe, in which a slight imbalance between matter and antimatter allowed for the eventual formation all the matter and galaxies, stars and planets that we can now observe in the visible universe. And by studying the redshift of distant galaxies, we can also measure their distances and test various theories about whether the universe is open (forever expanding), flat (perfectly balanced in its present state), or closed (will eventually stop expanding, reverse course, and contract back into a singularity). Krauss also discusses CMBR (cosmic microwave background radiation) and how it reveals the initial conditions of the early universe. This is by far the most interesting and accessible part of the book.

 To sum up, although the book is promoted as an accessible book discussing the origins of the universe from nothing, I would say it was only partly successful, and mostly in the early going. I also read Stephen Hawking’s A Briefer History of Time and The Grand Design (both written “with” Leonard Mlodinow) earlier and found the former to be a more understandable beginners approach, but the latter to be so watered down for the average Joe interested in quantum theory (wonder how many of them are out there) as to be somewhat insulting. I still have on the TBR shelf Brian Green’s The Elegant Universe and Lee Smolin’s The Trouble with Physics, with the former being a major proponent of string theory and the latter being a debunking of that whole school of thought, but I wonder if that will just confuse me further.

 I’m still looking for the right balance of clarity, accessibility, and readability to improve my understanding of concepts that boggle even the most brilliant scientific minds out there, but am starting to think that this is really asking way too much of any one book. If anyone has any suggestions, especially Manny or Brendon, I’m receptive.
 technology-science
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 Sarah ~
 837 reviews 874 followers
 January 30, 2018
 كون من لا شيء - لورنس كراوس .

 الفكرة الأساسية للكتاب أكثر من مثيرة للإهتمام ..
 تُختصر الفكرة الرئيسية بنشوء الكون من لا شيء أو من فضاء فارغ .
 وكلتا النظريتان تنتهيان بنفس الشاكلة وإن اختلفت الزمن التي تستغرقها العملية النهائية .
 هذا الكون نشأ من العدم وإلى العدم مآله.
 الفكرة بحدّ ذاتها قد تبدو من وجهة نظر ما عبثية للغاية، ولكن بالنسبة للكاتب والفيزيائي لورنس كراوس فإن نشوء كون من لا شيء وبدون غاية تبدو مدهشة للغاية .
 لكن دعونا لا ننسى أن هذه الإجابة ليست نهائية وقاطعة وأن العلم يتغير
 ويتجدد كل يوم وتتغير مداركنا ووعينا بكوننا وبكل ماحولنا
 وتتغير المعادلات والنتائج ومن الواضح كذلك أن أيامنا هذه هي أفضل الأوقات للحصول على مزيد من الأجوبة عن كوننا وكيف نشأ ... إلخ ..
 هذا الكتاب كتبَ بلغة آسرة ومليئة بالشغف ما يجعله مختلفًا ومن كتبي المفضلة .
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 Amy
 585 reviews 45 followers
 September 21, 2017
 This book was half academic circle jerking and half wannabe Dawkins posturing.

 1. I was too dumb to understand the majority of the nitty gritty science. You can tell me that the universe is flat based on geometry and I'll believe you; you're just wasting my time if you try to impress me with equations.

 2. Knowing that I'm too dumb for this book made me wonder who he was writing it for. I'm not unintelligent, even if my background is in English and not in physics. There's just enough raw science in here that I'd think a layman would be confused and just enough simplistic analogies that say he's writing for the layman, after all.

 3. Half of the time is spent nodding at his colleagues' work, his own work, and the "silly" work of others in misguided fields. There's a long sojourn where he talks smack on string theory. It's some of the most condescending writing I've seen. He tries to say he still respects them, but for every "String theorists are intelligent men and women" concession, he'll follow it up with a "So just let them have their little vain moment in the sun" comment. I'm not interested.

 4. Can't stress enough how much of this book is just "I know that important guy" and "I was the one who organized the conference where that dude spoke" and "My work on ____." Is this a book for the masses or an excuse for you to flout your CV, Krauss?

 5. I am not one to feel offended when someone tries to prove there isn't a god. I'm the person who goes out and buys Dawkins so I can better argue against churchgoers. But I did not pick up this book for a philosophical debate about the existence of God. It's not what I wanted. Say your piece, Krauss, and if you want to go full Hitchens and outline why God doesn't exist, then write a different book. His arguments felt completely out of place.

 6. Let me summarize:

 The universe is still expanding. In a trillion years, anyone's who's alive in the universe will not be able to see beyond their own galaxy. They'll think they're alone and anyone who suspects otherwise will not be able to prove it. We live in a special time, a small (relatively speaking) window of roughly a billion years where we can trace the origin of the Big Bang, know that we are one of many billion galaxies, and are able to study starstuff that will eventually cease to exist.

 It is postulated that the universe will end as it began: by one day jumping from one state to another. One day, it will cease to exist. There is something now. There will be nothing later. But, because it's been proven (or the possibility is so dramatically high that it's practically proven) that you can create something from nothing, who's to say another Big Bang won't happen when our universe dies? It could. It might not. It probably will. The cycle would begin anew. However it all ends, it will be mathematically beautiful.

 That's it. That's all you need to know. Thank me for saving you hours of your life.
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 Becky
 1,454 reviews 1,815 followers
 March 22, 2015
 3.5 Stars:
 Yeah. So. I read this. Or, rather, I listened to it. Which, in hindsight, may not have been the best choice. *insert forced/awkward laugh here* You see, this is not what I expected at all. Well, I take that back. This was what I expected, but the ratios were quite a lot different than I expected. (You know, that whole 'reading summaries' thing I don't do? Probably would have helped there.)

 My point is that, had I done some research and maybe found out what this book actually was going to be, I'd have read a copy of it instead of listening to the audio, and probably got a lot more out of it. But, I totally blame myself for this, because this 'not reading summaries/reviews' thing is a habit I've gotten into in order to come to every book with an open mind, which sometimes backfires on me.

 So anyway. I listened to this, and I say that it probably wasn't the best way to experience this book because I'm not an auditory learner, and there was a TON of information in this book that I just could not follow in this format. I fully admit that while I found the information in this book to be extremely interesting, most of the explanatory technical stuff went WHOOSH! right over my head. I do much better when I can see and peruse and absorb data visually than when hearing it, especially for technical or complex information and ideas, of which there was a lot in this book. A LOT. (Even better is if there are pictures of said complex info. Colorful ones. With descriptions and arrows and thingies.)

 This book explains how something can come from nothing. (Or rather "Nothing", a distinction that I'm still unclear about. I don't feel THAT bad about this ignorance disclosure, though, because it seems that "Nothing" is a constantly evolving concept.) This concept, something from nothing, is very intriguing to me because I am curious to know how things form and start their paths to nowness. I also like to know how things end, though not quite as much, because that starts me thinking about how I'LL end - not nearly as fun a concept. This little passing interest of mine isn't like a fixation or anything - but if I find something interesting, I usually want to start at the beginning, or at least find out what the beginning was to give the history context.

 So, in that way, this book was very interesting. It was cool to learn more about the make-up of the universe, and the possibilities of the multi-verse, and the projected future-history of the universe, which is bleak and kinda depressing, but still fascinating, if just for the fact that it's changed my perspective on the future. I mean, I'd always imagined that science will continue to evolve and that we'll make more and more discoveries of the universe, but our window of observation is finite - after a couple trillion years, that literally won't be possible because the expansion of the universe will cause the observable light we can see today to shift so far on the light spectrum as to become invisible. (Or aliens will eat it, or something. I might need to re-read that bit. Gosh, this book was so technical!) And then the universe, like everything, will eventually end.

 I also enjoyed the overviews of how great scientific minds have formulated theories or made discoveries that have changed the course of science. I liked that there was a wide range of theories and aspects of science discussed in this book, and I won't even pretend to pretend that I understood it all, but it's intrigued me to want to read more... though hopefully more accessible for the non-cosmologists/physicists/scientists/PhD'd among us (that's me, FYI). Preferably with pictures.

 We'll start here:


 ...and build from there. :D
 audiobook multi-dimensional non-fiction
 ...more
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 Clif Hostetler
 1,145 reviews 854 followers
 August 2, 2012
 This book pauses with sufficient frequency during its romp through science from particle physics to astrophysics to take pokes at theistic religion to make it clear that the author's intention is to cast a shot across the bow of "God of the gaps" thinking which seeks refuge in the question, "Why there is something rather than nothing." The author explains that phenomenal progress has been made in the past century that has brought us to the cusp of operationally addressing questions regarding origin, current condition and ultimate fate of our cosmos.

 The book describes how in the process of pursuing these questions the very meaning of these questions has evolved along with our understanding of the universe. The recent findings that the dominate part (99%) of the universe is made up of material we can't see (i.e. dark energy and dark matter) has changed our distinction between something and nothing. After sighting examples from quantum physics and astrophysics that show; (1) particles appearing from nothing, and that (2) empty space is not "nothing" (it's a quantum field), the author proceeds to show that "nothing" is an unstable condition thus "something" was inevitable.

 As with most recent physics, these explanations are not all that easy to comprehend, and beyond my ability to accurately summarize in a book review such as this. If you're interested to pursuing this subject further I recommend this YouTube Link that provides a 50 minute lecture by the author that generally covers the first ten chapters of this book. The final four chapters explores a variety of possible concepts of the universe and/or multiverses.

 I was fascinated to learn how controversial and uncertain the definition of "nothing" was. For scientists empty space--what formerly could have passed for nothing--now has a new dynamic that dominates the current evolution of the cosmos. Some contentious theologians on the other hand have insisted that their concept of "nothing" is more profound than anything that a scientist might understand to be "nothing." They insist that a "nothing" that contains the potential for "something" can't be truly "nothing." The author counters that a "nothing" which contains the potential of creation is no less worthy than the theist's God who has the potential to create. My own observation is that a "nothing" with no God exudes nothingness more completely than a "nothing" than includes the existence of God.
 "We have discovered that all signs suggest a universe that could and plausibly did arise from a deeper nothing--involving that absence of space itself--and which may one day return to nothing via processes that may not only be comprehensible but also processes that do not require any external control or direction. In this sense, science...does not make it impossible to believe in God, but rather makes it possible to not believe in God. Without science, everything is a miracle. With science, there remains the possibility that nothing is. Religious belief in this case becomes less and less necessary, and also less and less relevant. ... I believe that if we are to be intellectually honest, we must make an informed choice, informed by fact, not by revelation."
 The following are my own musings, not necessarily from the book:
 I think the author is needlessly critical of supersymmetric string theory. He admits that it is a mathematical model that rationalizes the relationships between subatomic particles using 10 dimensions, but he says it has never explained or predicted anything in particle physics. Well, maybe so, but I foresee a possibility that a version of string theory may end up providing the best possible model for dark energy and dark matter. Dark energy is apparently everywhere in our universe including under our noses. Since we can't see it I propose that it may have something to do with those seven unseen dimensions. And perhaps the dark matter may consist of strings with no vibration. (I suspect some readers will laugh at my thoughts. I don't care. Thinking up crazy ideas is fun.)

 The following are two concepts that were new to me and that I learned from this book:

 1. Faster than the speed of light?
 If space expands at an ever increasing rate, it is possible for objects to move away from each other faster than the speed of light without violation of the theory of relativity. This is because the speed of light applies to speed through space, not space itself which has no limit on how fast it can expand. (i.e. Space does not obey the law of space-time.) If space itself expands at an increasing rate, eventually the expansion will exceed the speed of light and consequently light from the most distance stars will not be visible. This will lead to a condition in two trillion years when all stars that are not included within our local super cluster of constellations will not be visible to earth-like observers in our constellation. (It won't be earthlings doing the observing because our sun will burn out long before then.) This condition will erase all observable evidence of the big bang.

 2. Changing ratio of dark energy to dark matter
 The ratio of dark energy to dark matter has been changing as the universe expands. Early in the history of the universe the constant quantity of dark matter was more concentrated within the smaller universe and thus it was the dominate constituent. Dark energy is different in that it remains at the same concentration throughout the expanding universe and thus in the distant future will be the dominate constituent as dark matter becomes diluted by the expanded size of the universe. We currently live at a unique time in the history of the universe when both dark energy and dark matter are measurable. The author described this as a special time in history because it is the only time when we would be able to tell how special it is.

 Wikipedia.com has articles on dark energy and dark matter for those interested in reading more.
 science
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 Jafar
 728 reviews 287 followers
 April 5, 2012
 If you’re looking for free lunch, think big. The universe itself may be the ultimate free lunch.

 From a scientific point of view, this book is along the same lines as The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking. To summarize the book in two sentences: “In quantum gravity, universes can, and indeed always will, spontaneously appear from nothing. Such universes need not be empty, but can have matter and radiation in them, as long as the total energy, including the negative energy associated with gravity, is zero.” Nothing here is not just empty space; it’s the absence of space itself. One very important thing that Hawking avoided in his book, but Krauss struggles to address in this book, is that even if a universe can appear out of nothing, it does so according to the laws of quantum gravity. So it’s not nothing in its true sense, if you want to be finicky. We still need the laws that allow for the appearance of a universe out of nothing. (Don’t ask me what it means when space-time doesn’t exist but there are still laws that govern the nothingness.) He admits that this is still not easy to explain. Regardless, the book is a good survey of the latest in cosmology.

 I didn’t like his frequent snide remarks at theologians. That’s uncalled-for in a science book.
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 Diana
 46 reviews 17 followers
 April 2, 2013
 I really enjoyed this book for a couple of reasons:

 1) Krauss is one of those rare personalities that excel both in science (his successes are well documented) and teaching and by teaching I mean in a seductive (a word Krauss has used and you'll see how his language in the book can be seductive and almost flirty at times), entertaining way. This is something the world desperately needs as we seem to have slipped back as a society (even in places once much more rational like the United States) that believes the strangest non substantiated things. Our society really needs better fundamental science education. As I've heard Krauss say, a couple hundred years ago, you'd be considered illiterate if you did not know something about natural philosophy....how illiterate many are not knowing about fundamental science and by extension mechanisms of critical thinking and the scientific method.

 2) The content, with a little work, can be easily grasped. Since it is devoid of math (because the math to describe the concepts in this book and the math that proves and makes predictable the content in this book requires a lot of training) it is accessible, especially if you are the sort of person that can grasp somewhat abstract concepts.

 If you want to become more literate regarding how the universe began, how it will end and what is cutting edge in physics today, I highly recommend this book. If you are intellectually lazy - go ahead and read it anyway - you shouldn't be intellectually lazy. I'm saying this to shame you because we don't have time for lazy brains anymore.

 I find it odd that people have criticized this book because it is anti religion. I was waiting for malicious statements and found none. Krauss simply presents what evidence has shown us: that it is less probable that a god is responsible for such things given that it is at least plausible that a universe can come from nothing albeit sometimes he makes a little joke at the expense of those who make ignorant statements. Maybe I'm just more tolerant and also enjoy the witty jokes.

 Perhaps I am also in the minority for not seeing the cold death of the universe as terrible (though in the 90s when scientists were measuring the universe directly I did morbidly root for a big crunch)....I think this is perhaps because a lifetime of existential angst over my own mortality has hardened me to the mortality of the earth, solar system and by extension galaxies & universe I live in. Krauss titles this chapter "Our Miserable Future" because almost worse than our universe's cold death as space/time expands & galaxy clusters move away, intelligent beings will be less able to know the universe's true nature. More specifically, in the far future, physicists on other worlds (should they exist), will make inaccurate conclusions about the universe (as accurate as human conclusions 100 years ago). No more microwave background radiation to measure, no more evidence of the big bang. Oh well, too bad suckers! :) We're lucky to live when we live but maybe if we were smarter a bit earlier we would have been lucky then too.

 Go ahead, treat your brain to this book - nothing is unstable :)

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 Shaun
 Author 4 books 194 followers
 August 27, 2014
 I actually listened to the audio version of this book, narrated by Krauss.

 I'd be less than honest if I didn't admit that some of this went over my head, but then again, I haven't devoted my life to the study of physics and the cosmos. That said, I think I can appreciate the basic points being made.

 Krauss not only presents a sound and compelling case for the Big Bang Theory, but he also explains how something really can come from nothing (which is really something, btw), a concept that makes my head hurt...but in a good way.

 Throughout the explanation lies an undercurrent of anti-theism/deism as Krauss addresses (though not always directly) how and why many traditional religions are not only incompatible with science but also in direct opposition to it.

 I happen to share many of Krauss' views on religion, and as such realize that this might not be a book for those persons of faith who aren't prepared to have their beliefs challenged and minimized. On the other hand, if you're open and secure in what you believe, don't mind a healthy dose of mind bending ideas, and are interested in learning more about the freaking awesomeness of the universe, then this somewhat simplified introduction is probably worth your time.

 I'll add that Krauss produced this book after a video of one of his lectures went viral. He felt that he needed to build upon the ideas offered in the lecture and set the record straight for those on both sides of the "God" debate who seemed to find justification in his ideas. So, if you're not sure about the book, or want to sample a truncated version, that might be a place to start.
 non-fiction read-in-2014
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 Duff
 88 reviews
 April 2, 2012
 As a non-scientist, I found many moments of "oh, that is what I didn't quite understand" from previous reading in physics and cosmology. That said, there were also times when I simply did not quite understand the complexities that Krauss was explicating. It was a book that I was sad to finish...really liked it. He takes us on a clear, guided journey around the issues of "nothing"...that which we cannot see in the universe, but through the laws of physics and math is actually measurable, in a theoretical sense. Other reviewers have noted how many times he "refutes" God, mostly through examples of his own debates with deists. A little trying, but easily passed by for the incredible material he presents.
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A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather …
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Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Thi…
2006-01-01
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<div><div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/67532575-kevin"></a></section><section><p>463 reviews68 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2804529907">December 24, 2022</a></section><div><p>A collection of twenty five essays extolling the scientific genius of Richard Dawkins. More specifically, a 283 page homage to <i>The Selfish Gene</i> (pub. 1976) and <i>The Extended Phenotype</i> (pub. 1982) (okay, there are also a few reverent references to his other works, but it’s still <i>The Selfish Gene</i> and its sequel that get most of the ink).<p>The good news is that the essays are written by biologists, psychologists, ethnologists, sociologists, zoologists, and philosophers; the bad news is that the essays are written by biologists, psychologists, ethnologists, sociologists, zoologists, and philosophers:</p><p>“...for altruistic behavior to come about, the benefit (b) of an act has to outweigh its cost (c) times a number that is the reciprocal of the coefficient of relationship. This can be formulated as b &gt; i/r x c.” (pg 77)</p><p>After all was said and done, I came away convinced that Dawkins is about 60% evolutionary biologist and about 40% revolutionary philosopher. A man lauded as much for his contributions to our understanding of science as for his contributions to science itself. He is a thinking-man’s thinking-man whose impact on modern scientific reasoning cannot be overstated. Perhaps the writer Philip Pullman said it best:</p><p>“He is a coiner of memorable phrases; he is a ferocious and implacable opponent of those who water the dark roots of superstition. But mainly he celebrates. He is a storyteller whose tale is true, and it’s a tale of the inexhaustible wonder of the physical world, and of ourselves and our origins.” (pg 276)</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/67532575?shelf=authors-richard-dawkins">authors-richard-dawkins</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/67532575?shelf=biography">biography</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/67532575?shelf=biology">biology</a> </ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/67951314-phrodrick"></a></section><section><p>864 reviews36 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3425394956">July 26, 2020</a></section><div><p>Very few scholars have managed to write break through scientific concepts and write in a manner successful with a popular audience. Richard Dawkins is one of these thinkers, plus in writing The Selfish Gene He did both in one book. When I read it, I was impressed by the clear logic of his arguments but did not know that this was his scientific paper and not an edited version for popular consumption. <p>When a scholar has achieved as much in the way of new ways of thinking and helping to invite new audiences into the world of scientific thought, there are only a few traditional ways his community can honor him. A banquet is not unknown and there are the various scientific award within the particular communities. What editors Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley have done in Richard Dawkins , How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think, is to bring together a number of the leading voices in several fields who wrote of their experiences applying Dawkins’ gene centric version of Evolution to several fields including and beyond biology. The papers published are organized across several groups including some who might be considered less than Dawkins’ fans, and others who are philosophers. </p><p>A problem is: after a few boxes of books are given to Professor Dawkins, maybe a few more scattered among the contributors, what is the popular value of the book? For myself it was a disappointment. The essays, most documented like scientific papers make for uneven reading. Some writers seem to be using the assignment as a cover to advance more of their own projects. Basically, I do not know who any of the contributors are. We do have a piece by Marian Stamp Dawkins who may be his wife or just a biologist with the same last name. (I just looked it up, Professor Dawkins is married to Professor Dawkins.) Why did I have to look it up? None of the contributors are introduced. <br />Depending on the reader’s background they may know some of these people, but there is little to tell the wider Dawkins audience, who these people are and why having them in this book is an honor for the honoree. </p><p>Professor Dawkins has written scientific papers, popular science books, several that are both and will influence thinking people for generations. The shelf life for Richard Dawkins; How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think will be much shorter. </p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7299609-sherif-arafa"></a></section><section><p>Author <i></i>9 books4,307 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/362311787">July 6, 2012</a></section><div><p>الكتاب عبارة عن مقالات لأناس يمدحون دوكينز دون تقديم أفكاره ذاتها بشكل متعمق.. لو اردت ان تقرأ له فاقرأ صانع الساعات الأعمى واعمل عقلك في الحجج الذي يسوقها كتدريب ذهني جيد فالرجل من رواد الإلحاد في العالم ومن اهم علماء البيولوجيا</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/28825839-stephie-williams"></a></section><section><p>382 reviews36 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1177773282">September 6, 2015</a></section><div><p>Overall, the book was pretty good, but uneven, like a good many anthology, although the topic itself is very good, like Richard Dawkins and his work. There is a large difference between Dawkins' writing and most of those that have contributed to this volume. On a whole it is others who are writing and not Dawkins himself.<p>My two favorite chapters was An Eye on the Core about sociobiology linking Dawkins and E. O. Wilson and Every Indication of Inadvertent Solicitude on Dawkins' writing itself, that is not on content. Of the two chapters I emphasize the latter. One reason is that I find Dawkins writes well no matter what his subject matter. Another reason is that the author has provided a possible reason for his likeability as a pure writer. The author's premise is that Dawkins leads the reader along as if he is telling a story with the certainty of destination, although that is not revealed until the end, or close to it. I can relate this to another recent book I have read on epsitemology. The book was by Susan Haack. I felt as if I was reading a murder mystery, as she brought up theory after theory only to dismiss it, leading up to approval of her own theory.</p><p>In conclusion, the book is good, but absolutely no substitute for Dawkins' work itself. But, for a sense of his contributions it is an admirable work.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/20506822-lee"></a></section><section><p>26 reviews18 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/896817249">March 31, 2014</a></section><div><p>I couldn't not like this, considering that is a collection of essays by many of my all-time favorite authors, scientists, and scholars, writing about what is IMO the most important idea anyone ever had (Darwinism), and how profoundly Dawkins deepened our understanding of it.<p>Note: This is a collection of essays (by accomplished scholars... Some of whom are world-famous best-selling authors themselves). So if you're expecting something different, I suppose you could be disappointed, as some reviewers seem to be.</p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5641322-khalil"></a></section><section><p>29 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/716067575">September 11, 2013</a></section><div><p>No wonder that professor Dawkins gained the world's top thinker poll this year , and that his masterpiece takes a place between top 25 greatest science books, as one of the essays noted here , Richard <i> The Golden Pen </i> , he is really so .<br />I still remember the situation very clearly , <i> The Selfish Gene </i> left me completely shocked for almost a week , it was ( and still ) the greatest science book I have ever read .</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5641322?shelf=biology">biology</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5641322?shelf=science">science</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/764967-nola"></a></section><section><p>202 reviews1 follower</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/46922038">October 20, 2009</a></section><div><p>I was really disappointed in this book, which may be my fault. I was expecting an autobiography of Richard Dawkins, whose writing I admire. I was looking forward to a book from which I could learn more about the man, in language I could understand. Instead, this is a collection of essays about Dawkin's work, some of which were somewhat interesting and most of which were way over my head.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8220703-nesma-mostafa"></a></section><section><p>289 reviews3 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1980109276">May 9, 2020</a></section><div><p>ريتشارد دوكنز: عالم غير أفكارنا.<br />كتاب عبارة عن عدة مقالات، تتحدث عن اسهامات دوكينز في علم الأحياء، من خلال كُتبه، وخاصة كتاب "الجين الأناني".<br />أسفي الوحيد أنني لم اقرأ "الجين الأناني" قبل قراءة هذا الكتاب، وذلك لأن أغلب المقالات يعتمد أصحابها عن شرح الملابسات التي جمعتهم بالكتاب، ثم يتكلمون عن لمحات بسيطة منه، في إطار وجهة نظرهم.<br />هو كتاب جيد، ولكنه عبر أكثر عن هؤلاء الأشخاص، ومدح جهود دوكينز. وأنت كمُتلقي تتلقى الشحيح مما يُعرض داخل الكتاب الأصلي.<br />ولكنه على أي حال فُرصة جيدة لتعرفي على بعض كُتب هذا العالم.<br />سأقيمه بثلاثة نجوم.<br />لينك التحميل:<br /><a href="https://www.noor-book.com/%D9%83%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%A8-%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%AA%D8%B4%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%AF-%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%83%D9%8A%D9%86%D8%B2-%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85-%D8%BA%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D8%A3%D9%81%D9%83%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%A7-pdf">https://www.noor-book.com/%D9%83%D8%A...</a><br />__<br />2020<br />(26)<br /></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/8220703?shelf=%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%B4-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B9%D8%B1%D9%81%D8%A9">على-هامش-المعرفة</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/164068278">September 1, 2015</a></section><div><p>I am an aficionado of Professor Richard Dawkins, the great evolutionary biologist, ethologist, humanist, prolific author and lecturer. And I say that he deserves a better biography than this.<p>Hmmm... with all of those 4 stars in the ratings of my fellow readers, I'll have to re-read this book. I may have been too hasty in giving it only a 2 star rating. Or, more likely, I've confused it with some other biographical work about Professor Dawkins. </p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/52141943-leanne"></a></section><section><p>138 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1655281427">July 4, 2016</a></section><div><p>I picked this up thinking it was a biography, but it's really a set of essays about the impact of The Selfish Gene (and to a lesser extent The Extended Phenotype) on the scientific community, our culture, philosophy, etc. If you've read The Selfish Gene then this one is also worth a look, it describes the paradigm shift that The Selfish Gene requires of readers very well and basically looks at the book from every possible angle. </p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/52141943?shelf=library-book">library-book</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/52141943?shelf=non-fiction">non-fiction</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6646323-osama-abdel-qader"></a></section><section><p>105 reviews11 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/572372516">March 27, 2013</a></section><div><p>كتاب جيد في التعريف بريتشارد دوكينز<br />لكنه لا يخلو من املال خصوصا في النصف الثاني منه</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6905750-dariosk"></a></section><section><p>442 reviews25 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/731908991">October 1, 2013</a></section><div><p>this book will appeal to very few people.<br />it's just a collection of "how Dawkins changed my life" recollections.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4539680-pat"></a></section><section><p>631 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1664582067">August 17, 2016</a></section><div><p>Different perspective on Dawkins' contributions to science. Very good. </p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5835735-matthew"></a></section><section><p>4 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3622725764">February 3, 2021</a></section><div><p>Rating an anthology can be kind of a challenge, given the variety of authors represented, but I enjoyed this collection overall. I went through a Dawkins phase several years ago, and it was nice to revisit his writing and ideas, even if peripherally. Most of the pieces here are to some degree fluff, but this book still had enough substance to engage me in thought in three areas: 1) what our being products of evolution means for human nature, 2) what would correspond to a genotype for memes (i.e. what it would mean for a meme to be "in" someone's head), and 3) what, as an atheist, I think about religion. To someone who has read some of Dawkins' books and would be interested in what perspectives other writers' thoughts on them might give, this will probably be a worthwhile read.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/74012723-merahnaga"></a></section><section><p>88 reviews3 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2801532791">April 28, 2019</a></section><div><p>Ini juga. Bukunya udah ada di kamar. Tapi entah kapan bacanya.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/25371127-rossdavidh"></a></section><section><p>505 reviews135 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1022982073">September 24, 2015</a></section><div><p>Ok, first off, let me just say I hate the title of this book. Richard Dawkins is a cool and interesting writer, but he did not change the way I think. Setting that aside, though, he does provide lots of interesting food for thought, and this is a book with essays by a few dozen other cool thinkers. It's kind of what internet chat room conversations almost never are, but should be.<p>The book is composed of about 25 essays by various people about Richard Dawkins' ideas, especially those in his book "The Selfish Gene". For those who don't know Dawkins' work, the two Big Ideas that came out of this book were:<br />1) genes evolve to do what's good for genes, specifically copies of themselves, and this may or may not be good for the entire organism. On the plus side, it may lead to acts of apparent altruism by the whole organism, pushed by their genes into feeling the urge to help other organisms that hold copies of those same genes. On the down side, there are plenty of ways one can imagine a gene doing more good for itself than for others, for example by pushing the male of a species towards adultery, thinking that to have offspring with 100 partners, of which 7 survive, is better than to have less than 7 offspring with one partner that all survive.<br />2) genes may not be the only selfish replicators that spread like viruses. "Memes" was a word he coined for viruses of the mind, which spread because...they spread. In a trivial case, think of the jingle which isn't good, but which gets stuck in your mind so that you can't stop singing it, which puts it in other peoples' heads. In a non-trivial case, think of bad religion.</p><p>The writers include some I've read previous works by, like Steven Pinker, Dan Dennett, and Matt Ridley. Another interesting chapter comes from Marian Stamp Dawkins, Richard Dawkin's ex-wife, whose chapter begins: "I haven't lived with the author of The Selfish Gene for nearly 25 years but I have lived in close and constant contact with the book itself since before it was published." She gives several amusing stories of having his work plagiarized in the student papers she grades. What kind of an idiot thinks it's a good idea to throw your teacher's ex-husband's words back at her in a paper? The kind that would plagiarize, I suppose.</p><p>Whenever you talk about Dawkins' ideas, you cannot avoid discussing his opinions of religion. But in recent years, I think his unapologetically critical stance regarding religion has threatened to obscure his more generally applicable points. The various essays do a good job of balancing his current role as Skeptic in Chief, with a view to the reasons why his ideas are not only interesting but useful tools, perhaps the best thinker since Charles Darwin at giving us a new way of analyzing the world of biology (broadly defined).</p><p>Another topic hard to avoid when discussing Dawkins, is his rivalry with Stephen Jay Gould. Since shortly before Gould's death, Dawkins has been trying to downplay this, perhaps out of respect for the memory of a brilliant science writer cut down too early, but prior to that the two of them had been very public rivals. Inevitably, many of the essays in this book which discuss how Dawkins' ideas have grown in influence, make comparisons to, and contrasts with, those of Gould.</p><p>Many of the areas they disagreed on, relate to the elephant in the room whenever we talk about evolutionary theory: the political implications. Ever since Darwin's original works, there has been a tendency to use every new advance in how we understand evolution to justify one political theory or another. On one level it makes sense (we are bioligical organisms, and how any species is organized socially is an appropriate topic for biology), but the more a scientific field touches on politics the more heat any theory generates. Gould's ideas tended to support a political ideology somewhat to the left of Dawkins' ideas, which have been used to justify gender stereotypes, for example.</p><p>Whether it is religion or politics, part of the problem is that Dawkins' ideas are not quickly stated or understood. There are a lot of implications that need to be worked out, and that takes a certain minimum amount of space (pages) or time (discussion). If you are satisfied with a Reader's Digest version, you will have missed the biggest benefit of Dawkins' (or any other great thinker's) ideas, which is how they help you to analyze related problems on your own. The proper thing to do after reading a Dawkins book, is to play with the ideas yourself, perhaps with a friend, the only way to internalize an idea being to use it yourself. Here's a book full of people doing just that.</p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/25371127?shelf=black">black</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/27932239">July 22, 2008</a></section><div><p>Richards Writings on evolution are amazing because they are detailed, thoughtful and well argued and because<p>1. the ideas make sense<br />2. he has an uncommon gift for phrase making (every indication of inadvertent solicitude, the selfish gene).<br />3. he reveals his personality in his writings<br />4. he tells stories (the quest may be difficult, but the reader is never lost).</p><p>he has a dim view of the intellectual and moral merits of religion. </p><p>cultural traits evolve by a process of natural selection in which there is a preferential proliferation of traits with properties that promote their own transmission. </p><p>transmission is an act of selection (spunky tits monkey ass licking cockarama.) a unit of selection must have fidelity, fecundity and longevity - a replicator. </p><p>an important set of ideas that arises from all this is evolutionary stable strategies - eg sex ratios</p><p>replicator/vehicle distinction</p><p>there are biological underpinings to human behaviour </p><p>mind, meaning, purpose and morality are fairly modern outcomes from the mindless churning of darwinian alogrithms. an alogrithm is a step by step set of instructions like directions or baking a cake. </p><p>people are more divided by the problems they wish to address than the set of problems</p><p>the problem of natural selection applies to any replicator which carries info with a certain degree of fidelity</p><p>boyer says religiious ideas are the right blend of familiar and myseterious - transformed familiars. (e.g. creatures but not oridnary, figures humanlike in emotion and passion but not in their power - transformations make them salient). </p><p>at some dinner parties the strength with which some opinions are held is matched only by the weakness of their foundations. </p><p>there is an odd chapter in this book by philosopher micheal ruse who objects to dawkin's ideas of progress and progression. i think his objections are arguing aginst something that dawkins does not particularly propound. </p><p>meaning is not conveyed by life itself, but must be imposed upon it; this is an informed biological perspective and only makes sense because of that perspective. the quest for meaning only takes place because as people's lives are based on a biological fundamental lack of meaning.</p><p>humans are evolution that has become aware of itself. </p></p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1772091360">September 30, 2016</a></section><div><p>Solo merecerá la pena a los muy interesados (más o menos como yo, lo bastante para leer esto pero no lo bastante como para abrir su autobiografía). Algunas partes de científicos explicando cómo las contribuciones de Dawkins les ayudaron en su investigación son interesantes por relatarte cosas de las polémicas de la sociobiología o como contraejemplo claro a quien dice que el enfoque del gen egoísta es infalsable o que no ha contribuido a entender la evolución(refutado de sobras solo con lo de aquí), pero las partes buenas están enterradas entre gente simplemente alabando a Dawkins y cómo escribe sin ejemplos concretos o criticando movidas tangenciales de su trabajo (como explicar por que la memética no ha producido nada y probablemente nunca lo haga).</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1412302015">November 3, 2015</a></section><div><p>Zbiór reporterzy chwalących dokonania Richarda Dawkinsa. W sumie liczyłem na więcej krytyki, a było praktycznie samo zachwalanie. Nawet głosy antyfalne były bardzo przychylne. Z książki się dowiedziałem jakich przyjaciół i fanów ma Dawkins, bo zbytnio nowych rzeczy to nie, ale i tak warto przeczytać. Książka w Polsce ukazała się w 2008 roku, dwa lata po edycji w Anglii i trzydzieści lat po samolubnym genie. Na obecny czas (2015 rok( bardzo ciężko ją dostać, w wersji elektronicznej nie ma, ale wyrwałem jakoś na allegro w zawyżonej cenie.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1862015-hollis"></a></section><section><p>325 reviews6 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/43443951">January 20, 2009</a></section><div><p>A fascinating collection of essays that summarises Dawkins' influence on a wide range of disciplines outside of biology: philosophy, psychology, sociology, computer science and popular science in general. Essential reading for Dawkins fans.</p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1862015?shelf=essays">essays</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/12889485-karima-hussein"></a></section><section><p>17 reviews21 followers</p></section></div><section><section><p><b>Read</b></p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/489657742">January 15, 2013</a></section><div><p>الكتاب عبارة عن أن كل عالم عارف ريتشارد دوكينز بيقول رأيه ف ريتشارد دوكينز وبيمدح فيه زائد أنه بيأيد كلامه ف أنكار وجود ربنا <br />والكتاب مينفعش تستدل بيه على كلام دوكينز أو على فكره <p>وعامة ريشتارد دوكينز ملحد أه بس ملحد بيستهبل وكلامه ف مناظراته بيثبت وجود أله للكون </p></p></div><section><ul><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/12889485?shelf=%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85-%D8%BA%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%A3%D9%81%D9%83%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%A7">عالم-غير-من-أفكارنا</a></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5870035-amoole"></a></section><section><p>3 reviews6 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/707476010">August 30, 2013</a></section><div><p>مجموعه من الفصول تصف أراء مجموعه من الاشخاص من مختلف التخصصات تصف كيف اثر دوكينز بهم ورأيهم بمؤلفاته وافلامة الوثائقيه</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/24058087-eug-ne"></a></section><section><p>39 reviews14 followers</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/735553340">October 6, 2013</a></section><div><p>We think in ways other than empirical verification, i.e. a priori analytical verification, or poetic sympathetic convergence, both of which are more important to the 'way we live' than is 'science'.</p></div><section><ul></ul></section><hr /></section></article></div><div><article><div><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/24614812-justin-woody"></a></section><section><p>46 reviews</p></section></div><section><section><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/762559263">December 31, 2013</a></section><div><p>Great book about a very interesting man. After reading many of his books it was great to see how he ended up where he did. Looking forward to the second book </p></div><section><ul></ul></section></section></article></div></div>||||I|||| * Home
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 Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think

 Alan Grafen ( Editor) , Mark Ridley ( Editor) , Seth Bullock ( Contributor)
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 3.76
 464 ratings 26 reviews
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 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.
 Genres Science Nonfiction Biography Biology Evolution Philosophy Essays
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 304 pages, Paperback

 First published January 1, 2006

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 Alan Grafen

 4 books 3 followers

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 3.76
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 Kevin
 463 reviews 68 followers
 December 24, 2022
 A collection of twenty five essays extolling the scientific genius of Richard Dawkins. More specifically, a 283 page homage to The Selfish Gene (pub. 1976) and The Extended Phenotype (pub. 1982) (okay, there are also a few reverent references to his other works, but it’s still The Selfish Gene and its sequel that get most of the ink).

 The good news is that the essays are written by biologists, psychologists, ethnologists, sociologists, zoologists, and philosophers; the bad news is that the essays are written by biologists, psychologists, ethnologists, sociologists, zoologists, and philosophers:

 “...for altruistic behavior to come about, the benefit (b) of an act has to outweigh its cost (c) times a number that is the reciprocal of the coefficient of relationship. This can be formulated as b > i/r x c.” (pg 77)

 After all was said and done, I came away convinced that Dawkins is about 60% evolutionary biologist and about 40% revolutionary philosopher. A man lauded as much for his contributions to our understanding of science as for his contributions to science itself. He is a thinking-man’s thinking-man whose impact on modern scientific reasoning cannot be overstated. Perhaps the writer Philip Pullman said it best:

 “He is a coiner of memorable phrases; he is a ferocious and implacable opponent of those who water the dark roots of superstition. But mainly he celebrates. He is a storyteller whose tale is true, and it’s a tale of the inexhaustible wonder of the physical world, and of ourselves and our origins.” (pg 276)
 authors-richard-dawkins biography biology
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 Phrodrick
 864 reviews 36 followers
 July 26, 2020
 Very few scholars have managed to write break through scientific concepts and write in a manner successful with a popular audience. Richard Dawkins is one of these thinkers, plus in writing The Selfish Gene He did both in one book. When I read it, I was impressed by the clear logic of his arguments but did not know that this was his scientific paper and not an edited version for popular consumption.

 When a scholar has achieved as much in the way of new ways of thinking and helping to invite new audiences into the world of scientific thought, there are only a few traditional ways his community can honor him. A banquet is not unknown and there are the various scientific award within the particular communities. What editors Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley have done in Richard Dawkins , How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think, is to bring together a number of the leading voices in several fields who wrote of their experiences applying Dawkins’ gene centric version of Evolution to several fields including and beyond biology. The papers published are organized across several groups including some who might be considered less than Dawkins’ fans, and others who are philosophers.

 A problem is: after a few boxes of books are given to Professor Dawkins, maybe a few more scattered among the contributors, what is the popular value of the book? For myself it was a disappointment. The essays, most documented like scientific papers make for uneven reading. Some writers seem to be using the assignment as a cover to advance more of their own projects. Basically, I do not know who any of the contributors are. We do have a piece by Marian Stamp Dawkins who may be his wife or just a biologist with the same last name. (I just looked it up, Professor Dawkins is married to Professor Dawkins.) Why did I have to look it up? None of the contributors are introduced.
 Depending on the reader’s background they may know some of these people, but there is little to tell the wider Dawkins audience, who these people are and why having them in this book is an honor for the honoree.

 Professor Dawkins has written scientific papers, popular science books, several that are both and will influence thinking people for generations. The shelf life for Richard Dawkins; How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think will be much shorter.

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 Sherif Arafa
 Author 9 books 4,307 followers
 July 6, 2012
 الكتاب عبارة عن مقالات لأناس يمدحون دوكينز دون تقديم أفكاره ذاتها بشكل متعمق.. لو اردت ان تقرأ له فاقرأ صانع الساعات الأعمى واعمل عقلك في الحجج الذي يسوقها كتدريب ذهني جيد فالرجل من رواد الإلحاد في العالم ومن اهم علماء البيولوجيا
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 Stephie Williams
 382 reviews 36 followers
 September 6, 2015
 Overall, the book was pretty good, but uneven, like a good many anthology, although the topic itself is very good, like Richard Dawkins and his work. There is a large difference between Dawkins' writing and most of those that have contributed to this volume. On a whole it is others who are writing and not Dawkins himself.

 My two favorite chapters was An Eye on the Core about sociobiology linking Dawkins and E. O. Wilson and Every Indication of Inadvertent Solicitude on Dawkins' writing itself, that is not on content. Of the two chapters I emphasize the latter. One reason is that I find Dawkins writes well no matter what his subject matter. Another reason is that the author has provided a possible reason for his likeability as a pure writer. The author's premise is that Dawkins leads the reader along as if he is telling a story with the certainty of destination, although that is not revealed until the end, or close to it. I can relate this to another recent book I have read on epsitemology. The book was by Susan Haack. I felt as if I was reading a murder mystery, as she brought up theory after theory only to dismiss it, leading up to approval of her own theory.

 In conclusion, the book is good, but absolutely no substitute for Dawkins' work itself. But, for a sense of his contributions it is an admirable work.
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 Lee
 26 reviews 18 followers
 March 31, 2014
 I couldn't not like this, considering that is a collection of essays by many of my all-time favorite authors, scientists, and scholars, writing about what is IMO the most important idea anyone ever had (Darwinism), and how profoundly Dawkins deepened our understanding of it.

 Note: This is a collection of essays (by accomplished scholars... Some of whom are world-famous best-selling authors themselves). So if you're expecting something different, I suppose you could be disappointed, as some reviewers seem to be.
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 Khalil
 29 reviews
 September 11, 2013
 No wonder that professor Dawkins gained the world's top thinker poll this year , and that his masterpiece takes a place between top 25 greatest science books, as one of the essays noted here , Richard The Golden Pen , he is really so .
 I still remember the situation very clearly , The Selfish Gene left me completely shocked for almost a week , it was ( and still ) the greatest science book I have ever read .
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 Nola
 202 reviews 1 follower
 October 20, 2009
 I was really disappointed in this book, which may be my fault. I was expecting an autobiography of Richard Dawkins, whose writing I admire. I was looking forward to a book from which I could learn more about the man, in language I could understand. Instead, this is a collection of essays about Dawkin's work, some of which were somewhat interesting and most of which were way over my head.
 3 likes
 3 comments
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 Nesma Mostafa
 289 reviews 3 followers
 May 9, 2020
 ريتشارد دوكنز: عالم غير أفكارنا.
 كتاب عبارة عن عدة مقالات، تتحدث عن اسهامات دوكينز في علم الأحياء، من خلال كُتبه، وخاصة كتاب "الجين الأناني".
 أسفي الوحيد أنني لم اقرأ "الجين الأناني" قبل قراءة هذا الكتاب، وذلك لأن أغلب المقالات يعتمد أصحابها عن شرح الملابسات التي جمعتهم بالكتاب، ثم يتكلمون عن لمحات بسيطة منه، في إطار وجهة نظرهم.
 هو كتاب جيد، ولكنه عبر أكثر عن هؤلاء الأشخاص، ومدح جهود دوكينز. وأنت كمُتلقي تتلقى الشحيح مما يُعرض داخل الكتاب الأصلي.
 ولكنه على أي حال فُرصة جيدة لتعرفي على بعض كُتب هذا العالم.
 سأقيمه بثلاثة نجوم.
 لينك التحميل:
 https://www.noor-book.com/%D9%83%D8%A...
 __
 2020
 (26)
 على-هامش-المعرفة
 1 like
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 Ronald
 120 reviews
 September 1, 2015
 I am an aficionado of Professor Richard Dawkins, the great evolutionary biologist, ethologist, humanist, prolific author and lecturer. And I say that he deserves a better biography than this.

 Hmmm... with all of those 4 stars in the ratings of my fellow readers, I'll have to re-read this book. I may have been too hasty in giving it only a 2 star rating. Or, more likely, I've confused it with some other biographical work about Professor Dawkins.
 1 like
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 Leanne
 138 reviews
 July 4, 2016
 I picked this up thinking it was a biography, but it's really a set of essays about the impact of The Selfish Gene (and to a lesser extent The Extended Phenotype) on the scientific community, our culture, philosophy, etc. If you've read The Selfish Gene then this one is also worth a look, it describes the paradigm shift that The Selfish Gene requires of readers very well and basically looks at the book from every possible angle.
 library-book non-fiction
 1 like
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 Osama Abdel Qader
 105 reviews 11 followers
 March 27, 2013
 كتاب جيد في التعريف بريتشارد دوكينز
 لكنه لا يخلو من املال خصوصا في النصف الثاني منه
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 Dariosk
 442 reviews 25 followers
 October 1, 2013
 this book will appeal to very few people.
 it's just a collection of "how Dawkins changed my life" recollections.
 1 like
 1 comment
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 Pat
 631 reviews
 August 17, 2016
 Different perspective on Dawkins' contributions to science. Very good.
 1 like
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 Matthew
 4 reviews
 February 3, 2021
 Rating an anthology can be kind of a challenge, given the variety of authors represented, but I enjoyed this collection overall. I went through a Dawkins phase several years ago, and it was nice to revisit his writing and ideas, even if peripherally. Most of the pieces here are to some degree fluff, but this book still had enough substance to engage me in thought in three areas: 1) what our being products of evolution means for human nature, 2) what would correspond to a genotype for memes (i.e. what it would mean for a meme to be "in" someone's head), and 3) what, as an atheist, I think about religion. To someone who has read some of Dawkins' books and would be interested in what perspectives other writers' thoughts on them might give, this will probably be a worthwhile read.
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 Merahnaga
 88 reviews 3 followers
 April 28, 2019
 Ini juga. Bukunya udah ada di kamar. Tapi entah kapan bacanya.
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 Tom Richards
 103 reviews 7 followers
 February 16, 2020
 Interesting selection of essays.
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 Rossdavidh
 505 reviews 135 followers
 September 24, 2015
 Ok, first off, let me just say I hate the title of this book. Richard Dawkins is a cool and interesting writer, but he did not change the way I think. Setting that aside, though, he does provide lots of interesting food for thought, and this is a book with essays by a few dozen other cool thinkers. It's kind of what internet chat room conversations almost never are, but should be.

 The book is composed of about 25 essays by various people about Richard Dawkins' ideas, especially those in his book "The Selfish Gene". For those who don't know Dawkins' work, the two Big Ideas that came out of this book were:
 1) genes evolve to do what's good for genes, specifically copies of themselves, and this may or may not be good for the entire organism. On the plus side, it may lead to acts of apparent altruism by the whole organism, pushed by their genes into feeling the urge to help other organisms that hold copies of those same genes. On the down side, there are plenty of ways one can imagine a gene doing more good for itself than for others, for example by pushing the male of a species towards adultery, thinking that to have offspring with 100 partners, of which 7 survive, is better than to have less than 7 offspring with one partner that all survive.
 2) genes may not be the only selfish replicators that spread like viruses. "Memes" was a word he coined for viruses of the mind, which spread because...they spread. In a trivial case, think of the jingle which isn't good, but which gets stuck in your mind so that you can't stop singing it, which puts it in other peoples' heads. In a non-trivial case, think of bad religion.

 The writers include some I've read previous works by, like Steven Pinker, Dan Dennett, and Matt Ridley. Another interesting chapter comes from Marian Stamp Dawkins, Richard Dawkin's ex-wife, whose chapter begins: "I haven't lived with the author of The Selfish Gene for nearly 25 years but I have lived in close and constant contact with the book itself since before it was published." She gives several amusing stories of having his work plagiarized in the student papers she grades. What kind of an idiot thinks it's a good idea to throw your teacher's ex-husband's words back at her in a paper? The kind that would plagiarize, I suppose.

 Whenever you talk about Dawkins' ideas, you cannot avoid discussing his opinions of religion. But in recent years, I think his unapologetically critical stance regarding religion has threatened to obscure his more generally applicable points. The various essays do a good job of balancing his current role as Skeptic in Chief, with a view to the reasons why his ideas are not only interesting but useful tools, perhaps the best thinker since Charles Darwin at giving us a new way of analyzing the world of biology (broadly defined).

 Another topic hard to avoid when discussing Dawkins, is his rivalry with Stephen Jay Gould. Since shortly before Gould's death, Dawkins has been trying to downplay this, perhaps out of respect for the memory of a brilliant science writer cut down too early, but prior to that the two of them had been very public rivals. Inevitably, many of the essays in this book which discuss how Dawkins' ideas have grown in influence, make comparisons to, and contrasts with, those of Gould.

 Many of the areas they disagreed on, relate to the elephant in the room whenever we talk about evolutionary theory: the political implications. Ever since Darwin's original works, there has been a tendency to use every new advance in how we understand evolution to justify one political theory or another. On one level it makes sense (we are bioligical organisms, and how any species is organized socially is an appropriate topic for biology), but the more a scientific field touches on politics the more heat any theory generates. Gould's ideas tended to support a political ideology somewhat to the left of Dawkins' ideas, which have been used to justify gender stereotypes, for example.

 Whether it is religion or politics, part of the problem is that Dawkins' ideas are not quickly stated or understood. There are a lot of implications that need to be worked out, and that takes a certain minimum amount of space (pages) or time (discussion). If you are satisfied with a Reader's Digest version, you will have missed the biggest benefit of Dawkins' (or any other great thinker's) ideas, which is how they help you to analyze related problems on your own. The proper thing to do after reading a Dawkins book, is to play with the ideas yourself, perhaps with a friend, the only way to internalize an idea being to use it yourself. Here's a book full of people doing just that.
 black
 2 comments
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 Nicolai
 47 reviews 3 followers
 July 22, 2008
 Richards Writings on evolution are amazing because they are detailed, thoughtful and well argued and because

 1. the ideas make sense
 2. he has an uncommon gift for phrase making (every indication of inadvertent solicitude, the selfish gene).
 3. he reveals his personality in his writings
 4. he tells stories (the quest may be difficult, but the reader is never lost).

 he has a dim view of the intellectual and moral merits of religion.

 cultural traits evolve by a process of natural selection in which there is a preferential proliferation of traits with properties that promote their own transmission.

 transmission is an act of selection (spunky tits monkey ass licking cockarama.) a unit of selection must have fidelity, fecundity and longevity - a replicator.

 an important set of ideas that arises from all this is evolutionary stable strategies - eg sex ratios

 replicator/vehicle distinction

 there are biological underpinings to human behaviour

 mind, meaning, purpose and morality are fairly modern outcomes from the mindless churning of darwinian alogrithms. an alogrithm is a step by step set of instructions like directions or baking a cake.

 people are more divided by the problems they wish to address than the set of problems

 the problem of natural selection applies to any replicator which carries info with a certain degree of fidelity

 boyer says religiious ideas are the right blend of familiar and myseterious - transformed familiars. (e.g. creatures but not oridnary, figures humanlike in emotion and passion but not in their power - transformations make them salient).

 at some dinner parties the strength with which some opinions are held is matched only by the weakness of their foundations.

 there is an odd chapter in this book by philosopher micheal ruse who objects to dawkin's ideas of progress and progression. i think his objections are arguing aginst something that dawkins does not particularly propound.

 meaning is not conveyed by life itself, but must be imposed upon it; this is an informed biological perspective and only makes sense because of that perspective. the quest for meaning only takes place because as people's lives are based on a biological fundamental lack of meaning.

 humans are evolution that has become aware of itself.
 1 comment
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 Xaverius
 41 reviews 7 followers
 September 30, 2016
 Solo merecerá la pena a los muy interesados (más o menos como yo, lo bastante para leer esto pero no lo bastante como para abrir su autobiografía). Algunas partes de científicos explicando cómo las contribuciones de Dawkins les ayudaron en su investigación son interesantes por relatarte cosas de las polémicas de la sociobiología o como contraejemplo claro a quien dice que el enfoque del gen egoísta es infalsable o que no ha contribuido a entender la evolución(refutado de sobras solo con lo de aquí), pero las partes buenas están enterradas entre gente simplemente alabando a Dawkins y cómo escribe sin ejemplos concretos o criticando movidas tangenciales de su trabajo (como explicar por que la memética no ha producido nada y probablemente nunca lo haga).

 1 comment
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 Kerszi
 210 reviews 1 follower
 November 3, 2015
 Zbiór reporterzy chwalących dokonania Richarda Dawkinsa. W sumie liczyłem na więcej krytyki, a było praktycznie samo zachwalanie. Nawet głosy antyfalne były bardzo przychylne. Z książki się dowiedziałem jakich przyjaciół i fanów ma Dawkins, bo zbytnio nowych rzeczy to nie, ale i tak warto przeczytać. Książka w Polsce ukazała się w 2008 roku, dwa lata po edycji w Anglii i trzydzieści lat po samolubnym genie. Na obecny czas (2015 rok( bardzo ciężko ją dostać, w wersji elektronicznej nie ma, ale wyrwałem jakoś na allegro w zawyżonej cenie.
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 Hollis
 325 reviews 6 followers
 January 20, 2009
 A fascinating collection of essays that summarises Dawkins' influence on a wide range of disciplines outside of biology: philosophy, psychology, sociology, computer science and popular science in general. Essential reading for Dawkins fans.
 essays
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 Karima Hussein
 17 reviews 21 followers
 Read
 January 15, 2013
 الكتاب عبارة عن أن كل عالم عارف ريتشارد دوكينز بيقول رأيه ف ريتشارد دوكينز وبيمدح فيه زائد أنه بيأيد كلامه ف أنكار وجود ربنا
 والكتاب مينفعش تستدل بيه على كلام دوكينز أو على فكره

 وعامة ريشتارد دوكينز ملحد أه بس ملحد بيستهبل وكلامه ف مناظراته بيثبت وجود أله للكون
 عالم-غير-من-أفكارنا
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 Comment
 Jehni
 8 reviews
 August 20, 2008
 Going to be a good read for my favourite personal hero (next to Douglas Adams!)
 science
 Like
 Comment
 Amoole
 3 reviews 6 followers
 August 30, 2013
 مجموعه من الفصول تصف أراء مجموعه من الاشخاص من مختلف التخصصات تصف كيف اثر دوكينز بهم ورأيهم بمؤلفاته وافلامة الوثائقيه
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 Eugéne
 39 reviews 14 followers
 October 6, 2013
 We think in ways other than empirical verification, i.e. a priori analytical verification, or poetic sympathetic convergence, both of which are more important to the 'way we live' than is 'science'.
 1 comment
 Like
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 Justin Woody
 46 reviews
 December 31, 2013
 Great book about a very interesting man. After reading many of his books it was great to see how he ended up where he did. Looking forward to the second book
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 Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews

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463 reviews68 followers     December 24, 2022   A collection of twenty five essays extolling the scientific genius of Richard Dawkins. More specifically, a 283 page homage to The Selfish Gene (pub. 1976) and The Extended Phenotype (pub. 1982) (okay, there are also a few reverent references to his other works, but it’s still The Selfish Gene and its sequel that get most of the ink).The good news is that the essays are written by biologists, psychologists, ethnologists, sociologists, zoologists, and philosophers; the bad news is that the essays are written by biologists, psychologists, ethnologists, sociologists, zoologists, and philosophers: “...for altruistic behavior to come about, the benefit (b) of an act has to outweigh its cost (c) times a number that is the reciprocal of the coefficient of relationship. This can be formulated as b &gt; i/r x c.” (pg 77) After all was said and done, I came away convinced that Dawkins is about 60% evolutionary biologist and about 40% revolutionary philosopher. A man lauded as much for his contributions to our understanding of science as for his contributions to science itself. He is a thinking-man’s thinking-man whose impact on modern scientific reasoning cannot be overstated. Perhaps the writer Philip Pullman said it best: “He is a coiner of memorable phrases; he is a ferocious and implacable opponent of those who water the dark roots of superstition. But mainly he celebrates. He is a storyteller whose tale is true, and it’s a tale of the inexhaustible wonder of the physical world, and of ourselves and our origins.” (pg 276)     authors-richard-dawkins biography biology               864 reviews36 followers     July 26, 2020   Very few scholars have managed to write break through scientific concepts and write in a manner successful with a popular audience. Richard Dawkins is one of these thinkers, plus in writing The Selfish Gene He did both in one book. When I read it, I was impressed by the clear logic of his arguments but did not know that this was his scientific paper and not an edited version for popular consumption. When a scholar has achieved as much in the way of new ways of thinking and helping to invite new audiences into the world of scientific thought, there are only a few traditional ways his community can honor him. A banquet is not unknown and there are the various scientific award within the particular communities. What editors Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley have done in Richard Dawkins , How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think, is to bring together a number of the leading voices in several fields who wrote of their experiences applying Dawkins’ gene centric version of Evolution to several fields including and beyond biology. The papers published are organized across several groups including some who might be considered less than Dawkins’ fans, and others who are philosophers.  A problem is: after a few boxes of books are given to Professor Dawkins, maybe a few more scattered among the contributors, what is the popular value of the book? For myself it was a disappointment. The essays, most documented like scientific papers make for uneven reading. Some writers seem to be using the assignment as a cover to advance more of their own projects. Basically, I do not know who any of the contributors are. We do have a piece by Marian Stamp Dawkins who may be his wife or just a biologist with the same last name. (I just looked it up, Professor Dawkins is married to Professor Dawkins.) Why did I have to look it up? None of the contributors are introduced. Depending on the reader’s background they may know some of these people, but there is little to tell the wider Dawkins audience, who these people are and why having them in this book is an honor for the honoree.  Professor Dawkins has written scientific papers, popular science books, several that are both and will influence thinking people for generations. The shelf life for Richard Dawkins; How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think will be much shorter.                    Author  9 books4,307 followers     July 6, 2012   الكتاب عبارة عن مقالات لأناس يمدحون دوكينز دون تقديم أفكاره ذاتها بشكل متعمق.. لو اردت ان تقرأ له فاقرأ صانع الساعات الأعمى واعمل عقلك في الحجج الذي يسوقها كتدريب ذهني جيد فالرجل من رواد الإلحاد في العالم ومن اهم علماء البيولوجيا                  382 reviews36 followers     September 6, 2015   Overall, the book was pretty good, but uneven, like a good many anthology, although the topic itself is very good, like Richard Dawkins and his work. There is a large difference between Dawkins' writing and most of those that have contributed to this volume. On a whole it is others who are writing and not Dawkins himself.My two favorite chapters was An Eye on the Core about sociobiology linking Dawkins and E. O. Wilson and Every Indication of Inadvertent Solicitude on Dawkins' writing itself, that is not on content. Of the two chapters I emphasize the latter. One reason is that I find Dawkins writes well no matter what his subject matter. Another reason is that the author has provided a possible reason for his likeability as a pure writer. The author's premise is that Dawkins leads the reader along as if he is telling a story with the certainty of destination, although that is not revealed until the end, or close to it. I can relate this to another recent book I have read on epsitemology. The book was by Susan Haack. I felt as if I was reading a murder mystery, as she brought up theory after theory only to dismiss it, leading up to approval of her own theory. In conclusion, the book is good, but absolutely no substitute for Dawkins' work itself. But, for a sense of his contributions it is an admirable work.                   26 reviews18 followers     March 31, 2014   I couldn't not like this, considering that is a collection of essays by many of my all-time favorite authors, scientists, and scholars, writing about what is IMO the most important idea anyone ever had (Darwinism), and how profoundly Dawkins deepened our understanding of it.Note: This is a collection of essays (by accomplished scholars... Some of whom are world-famous best-selling authors themselves). So if you're expecting something different, I suppose you could be disappointed, as some reviewers seem to be.                   29 reviews     September 11, 2013   No wonder that professor Dawkins gained the world's top thinker poll this year , and that his masterpiece takes a place between top 25 greatest science books, as one of the essays noted here , Richard  The Golden Pen  , he is really so .I still remember the situation very clearly ,  The Selfish Gene  left me completely shocked for almost a week , it was ( and still ) the greatest science book I have ever read .    biology science               202 reviews1 follower     October 20, 2009   I was really disappointed in this book, which may be my fault. I was expecting an autobiography of Richard Dawkins, whose writing I admire. I was looking forward to a book from which I could learn more about the man, in language I could understand. Instead, this is a collection of essays about Dawkin's work, some of which were somewhat interesting and most of which were way over my head.                  289 reviews3 followers     May 9, 2020   ريتشارد دوكنز: عالم غير أفكارنا.كتاب عبارة عن عدة مقالات، تتحدث عن اسهامات دوكينز في علم الأحياء، من خلال كُتبه، وخاصة كتاب "الجين الأناني".أسفي الوحيد أنني لم اقرأ "الجين الأناني" قبل قراءة هذا الكتاب، وذلك لأن أغلب المقالات يعتمد أصحابها عن شرح الملابسات التي جمعتهم بالكتاب، ثم يتكلمون عن لمحات بسيطة منه، في إطار وجهة نظرهم.هو كتاب جيد، ولكنه عبر أكثر عن هؤلاء الأشخاص، ومدح جهود دوكينز. وأنت كمُتلقي تتلقى الشحيح مما يُعرض داخل الكتاب الأصلي.ولكنه على أي حال فُرصة جيدة لتعرفي على بعض كُتب هذا العالم.سأقيمه بثلاثة نجوم.لينك التحميل: https://www.noor-book.com/%D9%83%D8%A... __2020(26)     على-هامش-المعرفة           September 1, 2015   I am an aficionado of Professor Richard Dawkins, the great evolutionary biologist, ethologist, humanist, prolific author and lecturer. And I say that he deserves a better biography than this.Hmmm... with all of those 4 stars in the ratings of my fellow readers, I'll have to re-read this book. I may have been too hasty in giving it only a 2 star rating. Or, more likely, I've confused it with some other biographical work about Professor Dawkins.                    138 reviews     July 4, 2016   I picked this up thinking it was a biography, but it's really a set of essays about the impact of The Selfish Gene (and to a lesser extent The Extended Phenotype) on the scientific community, our culture, philosophy, etc. If you've read The Selfish Gene then this one is also worth a look, it describes the paradigm shift that The Selfish Gene requires of readers very well and basically looks at the book from every possible angle.     library-book non-fiction               105 reviews11 followers     March 27, 2013   كتاب جيد في التعريف بريتشارد دوكينزلكنه لا يخلو من املال خصوصا في النصف الثاني منه                  442 reviews25 followers     October 1, 2013   this book will appeal to very few people.it's just a collection of "how Dawkins changed my life" recollections.                  631 reviews     August 17, 2016   Different perspective on Dawkins' contributions to science. Very good.                   4 reviews     February 3, 2021   Rating an anthology can be kind of a challenge, given the variety of authors represented, but I enjoyed this collection overall. I went through a Dawkins phase several years ago, and it was nice to revisit his writing and ideas, even if peripherally. Most of the pieces here are to some degree fluff, but this book still had enough substance to engage me in thought in three areas: 1) what our being products of evolution means for human nature, 2) what would correspond to a genotype for memes (i.e. what it would mean for a meme to be "in" someone's head), and 3) what, as an atheist, I think about religion. To someone who has read some of Dawkins' books and would be interested in what perspectives other writers' thoughts on them might give, this will probably be a worthwhile read.                  88 reviews3 followers     April 28, 2019   Ini juga. Bukunya udah ada di kamar. Tapi entah kapan bacanya.                  505 reviews135 followers     September 24, 2015   Ok, first off, let me just say I hate the title of this book. Richard Dawkins is a cool and interesting writer, but he did not change the way I think. Setting that aside, though, he does provide lots of interesting food for thought, and this is a book with essays by a few dozen other cool thinkers. It's kind of what internet chat room conversations almost never are, but should be.The book is composed of about 25 essays by various people about Richard Dawkins' ideas, especially those in his book "The Selfish Gene". For those who don't know Dawkins' work, the two Big Ideas that came out of this book were:1) genes evolve to do what's good for genes, specifically copies of themselves, and this may or may not be good for the entire organism. On the plus side, it may lead to acts of apparent altruism by the whole organism, pushed by their genes into feeling the urge to help other organisms that hold copies of those same genes. On the down side, there are plenty of ways one can imagine a gene doing more good for itself than for others, for example by pushing the male of a species towards adultery, thinking that to have offspring with 100 partners, of which 7 survive, is better than to have less than 7 offspring with one partner that all survive.2) genes may not be the only selfish replicators that spread like viruses. "Memes" was a word he coined for viruses of the mind, which spread because...they spread. In a trivial case, think of the jingle which isn't good, but which gets stuck in your mind so that you can't stop singing it, which puts it in other peoples' heads. In a non-trivial case, think of bad religion. The writers include some I've read previous works by, like Steven Pinker, Dan Dennett, and Matt Ridley. Another interesting chapter comes from Marian Stamp Dawkins, Richard Dawkin's ex-wife, whose chapter begins: "I haven't lived with the author of The Selfish Gene for nearly 25 years but I have lived in close and constant contact with the book itself since before it was published." She gives several amusing stories of having his work plagiarized in the student papers she grades. What kind of an idiot thinks it's a good idea to throw your teacher's ex-husband's words back at her in a paper? The kind that would plagiarize, I suppose. Whenever you talk about Dawkins' ideas, you cannot avoid discussing his opinions of religion. But in recent years, I think his unapologetically critical stance regarding religion has threatened to obscure his more generally applicable points. The various essays do a good job of balancing his current role as Skeptic in Chief, with a view to the reasons why his ideas are not only interesting but useful tools, perhaps the best thinker since Charles Darwin at giving us a new way of analyzing the world of biology (broadly defined). Another topic hard to avoid when discussing Dawkins, is his rivalry with Stephen Jay Gould. Since shortly before Gould's death, Dawkins has been trying to downplay this, perhaps out of respect for the memory of a brilliant science writer cut down too early, but prior to that the two of them had been very public rivals. Inevitably, many of the essays in this book which discuss how Dawkins' ideas have grown in influence, make comparisons to, and contrasts with, those of Gould. Many of the areas they disagreed on, relate to the elephant in the room whenever we talk about evolutionary theory: the political implications. Ever since Darwin's original works, there has been a tendency to use every new advance in how we understand evolution to justify one political theory or another. On one level it makes sense (we are bioligical organisms, and how any species is organized socially is an appropriate topic for biology), but the more a scientific field touches on politics the more heat any theory generates. Gould's ideas tended to support a political ideology somewhat to the left of Dawkins' ideas, which have been used to justify gender stereotypes, for example. Whether it is religion or politics, part of the problem is that Dawkins' ideas are not quickly stated or understood. There are a lot of implications that need to be worked out, and that takes a certain minimum amount of space (pages) or time (discussion). If you are satisfied with a Reader's Digest version, you will have missed the biggest benefit of Dawkins' (or any other great thinker's) ideas, which is how they help you to analyze related problems on your own. The proper thing to do after reading a Dawkins book, is to play with the ideas yourself, perhaps with a friend, the only way to internalize an idea being to use it yourself. Here's a book full of people doing just that.     black           July 22, 2008   Richards Writings on evolution are amazing because they are detailed, thoughtful and well argued and because1. the ideas make sense2. he has an uncommon gift for phrase making (every indication of inadvertent solicitude, the selfish gene).3. he reveals his personality in his writings4. he tells stories (the quest may be difficult, but the reader is never lost). he has a dim view of the intellectual and moral merits of religion.  cultural traits evolve by a process of natural selection in which there is a preferential proliferation of traits with properties that promote their own transmission.  transmission is an act of selection (spunky tits monkey ass licking cockarama.) a unit of selection must have fidelity, fecundity and longevity - a replicator.  an important set of ideas that arises from all this is evolutionary stable strategies - eg sex ratios replicator/vehicle distinction there are biological underpinings to human behaviour  mind, meaning, purpose and morality are fairly modern outcomes from the mindless churning of darwinian alogrithms. an alogrithm is a step by step set of instructions like directions or baking a cake.  people are more divided by the problems they wish to address than the set of problems the problem of natural selection applies to any replicator which carries info with a certain degree of fidelity boyer says religiious ideas are the right blend of familiar and myseterious - transformed familiars. (e.g. creatures but not oridnary, figures humanlike in emotion and passion but not in their power - transformations make them salient).  at some dinner parties the strength with which some opinions are held is matched only by the weakness of their foundations.  there is an odd chapter in this book by philosopher micheal ruse who objects to dawkin's ideas of progress and progression. i think his objections are arguing aginst something that dawkins does not particularly propound.  meaning is not conveyed by life itself, but must be imposed upon it; this is an informed biological perspective and only makes sense because of that perspective. the quest for meaning only takes place because as people's lives are based on a biological fundamental lack of meaning. humans are evolution that has become aware of itself.                September 30, 2016   Solo merecerá la pena a los muy interesados (más o menos como yo, lo bastante para leer esto pero no lo bastante como para abrir su autobiografía). Algunas partes de científicos explicando cómo las contribuciones de Dawkins les ayudaron en su investigación son interesantes por relatarte cosas de las polémicas de la sociobiología o como contraejemplo claro a quien dice que el enfoque del gen egoísta es infalsable o que no ha contribuido a entender la evolución(refutado de sobras solo con lo de aquí), pero las partes buenas están enterradas entre gente simplemente alabando a Dawkins y cómo escribe sin ejemplos concretos o criticando movidas tangenciales de su trabajo (como explicar por que la memética no ha producido nada y probablemente nunca lo haga).              November 3, 2015   Zbiór reporterzy chwalących dokonania Richarda Dawkinsa. W sumie liczyłem na więcej krytyki, a było praktycznie samo zachwalanie. Nawet głosy antyfalne były bardzo przychylne. Z książki się dowiedziałem jakich przyjaciół i fanów ma Dawkins, bo zbytnio nowych rzeczy to nie, ale i tak warto przeczytać. Książka w Polsce ukazała się w 2008 roku, dwa lata po edycji w Anglii i trzydzieści lat po samolubnym genie. Na obecny czas (2015 rok( bardzo ciężko ją dostać, w wersji elektronicznej nie ma, ale wyrwałem jakoś na allegro w zawyżonej cenie.                  325 reviews6 followers     January 20, 2009   A fascinating collection of essays that summarises Dawkins' influence on a wide range of disciplines outside of biology: philosophy, psychology, sociology, computer science and popular science in general. Essential reading for Dawkins fans.    essays               17 reviews21 followers      Read  January 15, 2013   الكتاب عبارة عن أن كل عالم عارف ريتشارد دوكينز بيقول رأيه ف ريتشارد دوكينز وبيمدح فيه زائد أنه بيأيد كلامه ف أنكار وجود ربنا والكتاب مينفعش تستدل بيه على كلام دوكينز أو على فكره وعامة ريشتارد دوكينز ملحد أه بس ملحد بيستهبل وكلامه ف مناظراته بيثبت وجود أله للكون      عالم-غير-من-أفكارنا               3 reviews6 followers     August 30, 2013   مجموعه من الفصول تصف أراء مجموعه من الاشخاص من مختلف التخصصات تصف كيف اثر دوكينز بهم ورأيهم بمؤلفاته وافلامة الوثائقيه                  39 reviews14 followers     October 6, 2013   We think in ways other than empirical verification, i.e. a priori analytical verification, or poetic sympathetic convergence, both of which are more important to the 'way we live' than is 'science'.                  46 reviews     December 31, 2013   Great book about a very interesting man. After reading many of his books it was great to see how he ended up where he did. Looking forward to the second book
Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Thi…
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142726.Richard_Dawkins
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Richard Dawkins
2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

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 <span>The God Delusion</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 3.90 avg rating — 268,178 ratings</span>
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 <span>The Selfish Gene</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.15 avg rating — 178,443 ratings</span>
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 <span>The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.16 avg rating — 53,859 ratings</span>
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 <span>The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.09 avg rating — 39,559 ratings</span>
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 1986
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 <span>The Ancestor&#39;s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.14 avg rating — 27,667 ratings</span>
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 2004
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 <span>The Magic of Reality: How We Know What&#39;s Really True</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.05 avg rating — 26,060 ratings</span>
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 2011
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 <span>Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.01 avg rating — 11,208 ratings</span>
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 2000
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 <span>Climbing Mount Improbable</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.11 avg rating — 9,575 ratings</span>
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 1996
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 <span>The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 4.11 avg rating — 9,233 ratings</span>
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 1982
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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32275.River_Out_of_Eden">
 
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 <span>River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life</span>
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 <span><span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span><span></span></span> 3.98 avg rating — 8,425 ratings</span>
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 “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
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 ―
 <span>
 Richard Dawkins,
 </span>
 <span>
 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3044365">The God Delusion</a>
 </span>
</div>
 
 <br/>
</div>
	<div>
 <div>
 “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
 <br/>
 ―
 <span>
 Richard Dawkins,
 </span>
 <span>
 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3044365">The God Delusion</a>
 </span>
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 “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
 <br/>
 ―
 <span>
 Richard Dawkins,
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 <span>
 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3323916">Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder</a>
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 The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
 
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 The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
 
 
 
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 The Ancestor&#39;s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
 
 
 
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 The Magic of Reality: How We Know What&#39;s Really True
 
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 Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
 
 
 
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 The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene
 
 
 
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 River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
 
 
 
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 More books by Richard Dawkins…
 
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For more than a decade, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the world-renowned astrophysicist and host of the popular radio and Emmy-nominated...      The renowned evolutionary biologist and vocal atheist reflects on his life in science in Brief Candle in the Dark, his latest memoir and follow-up... His Favorite Life-Changing Books: The scientist charts his intellectual growth in the new memoir An Appetite for Wonder and shares five... 
 
 
  
 
 
 	
 
 “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
 
 ―
 
 Richard Dawkins,
 
 
 The God Delusion
 
 
 
	
 
 “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
 
 ―
 
 Richard Dawkins,
 
 
 The God Delusion
 
 
 
	
 
 “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
 
 ―
 
 Richard Dawkins,
 
 
 Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
 
 
 
 
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 The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True (Hardcover)
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 The God Delusion (Hardcover)
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 avg rating 3.90 — 268,454 ratings — published 2006
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 The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (Paperback)
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 (shelved 2 times as richard-dawkins-books)
 avg rating 4.09 — 39,597 ratings — published 1986
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 Climbing Mount Improbable (Paperback)
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 River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (Paperback)
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 An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist (Hardcover)
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 avg rating 3.68 — 4,067 ratings — published 2013
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Interview with Richard Dawkins
2015-09-01
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 Interview with Richard Dawkins
 </h2>
 
 Posted by Goodreads on September 1, 2015
 
 
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Evolutionary biologist <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1194.Richard_Dawkins">Richard Dawkins</a> may be the most recognizable living scientist in the English-speaking world. Known most recently for his pugilistic <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14743.The_God_Delusion">The God Delusion</a>, which put him up there with the late <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3956.Christopher_Hitchens">Christopher Hitchens</a> as the man creationists love to hate, he is, first and foremost, a champion of Darwin and an enemy of irrational thought. He first rose to fame in 1976 with his groundbreaking <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61535.The_Selfish_Gene">The Selfish Gene</a>, a book that broke down DNA structures—and their role in the evolutionary system—in a way that even laypeople could understand. Now that the rakish Dawkins has passed 70, the scientist who was once deemed too boyish-looking to present his own ideas on television has crafted a two-part memoir: first, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17924018-an-appetite-for-wonder">An Appetite for Wonder</a> (2013), and now its follow-up, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26053275-brief-candle-in-the-dark">Brief Candle in the Dark</a>. Dawkins talks to Goodreads about the value of learning poetry by heart, the future of humanity, battling bad logic, and his legacy as a public intellectual.
<b><i>Goodreads:</i> What are some of your favorite memoirs? As you sat down to write this book, were you thinking about any particular memoirs as models for your own? </b><p>
<i>Richard Dawkins</i>: My memoir is in two volumes. Volume one, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17924018-an-appetite-for-wonder">An Appetite for Wonder</a>, is chronological, and for that I suppose a model for that was <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51784.The_Autobiography_of_Bertrand_Russell">Bertrand Russell's autobiography</a>. For volume two, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26053275-brief-candle-in-the-dark">Brief Candle in the Dark</a>, I wanted to depart from chronology, and for that I suppose my model was <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13078.Kingsley_Amis">Kingsley Amis</a>, the English novelist, who wrote <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95321.Memoirs">his memoir</a> in thematic form. He had chapters on various people he'd known, chapters on his education, chapters on drink, which he was famous for, one on jazz. I think I should probably say Kingsley Amis was my model for <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26053275-brief-candle-in-the-dark">Brief Candle in the Dark</a>. </p><p>
Originally the whole thing was going to be one big memoir. However, when I got halfway through my life chronologically, I decided that I wanted to divide it into half. I could see that chronology was working for the first part of my life, but I wanted to depart from chronology for the second part, mainly because I wanted it to become less personal stylistically and more professional. If I had done it chronologically, that forces me into what happened next. I didn't want to do "what happened next."
 </p>
<b><i>GR</i>: You weave a lot of literary references into your writing. Do poetry and literature still matter in your life? Also, do you think having a humanities education is as important as having a scientific education? </b><p>
<i>RD</i>: Poetry is very important in my life. I don't think I've learned much new poetry—I think most of the poetry I know dates from the time when I was a young man, and I love it still. I have difficulty reading it aloud without choking up [<i>chuckles</i>], I'm sorry to say. I'm a bit sentimental about it. But I don't tend to read much new poetry—I tend to stick to the favorites from my childhood. </p><p>
<b><i>GR</i>: Moving into the religion debate, do you think that the human race would be better—do you think that people would be more compassionate and more productive—if religion didn't exist? </b></p><p>
<i>RD</i>: Yes, is the short answer. There's not a lot of that in the book, is there? But I do think that the world would be a better place without religion.
</p><p>
<b><i>GR</i>: I know you've praised <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17910054-the-sixth-extinction">The Sixth Extinction</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/45840.Elizabeth_Kolbert">Elizabeth Kolbert</a>'s book about human kind's impact on the planet. Do you think that religion keeps us from solving some of these global problems?
</b></p>
<i>RD</i>: I think that one of the pernicious qualities of religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with nonexplanation, generally, rather than teaching us to be constantly curious and constantly trying to solve problems, so <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17910054-the-sixth-extinction">The Sixth Extinction</a> would be one example—a very important one—but I think that science is held back by religion. That's not to deny that many great scientists of the past have been religious. It might even be true that in some cases in historical times the Christian religion, for example, the Jewish religion, has actually been a positive influence in science, but it no longer is, and I would like to see it become history.
<p>
<b><i>GR</i>: Some critics have said that you can be dismissive of people who are critical of you—and you touch upon this in this book. Do you think that it's valuable to be sensitive to the views of other people even when you know they're wrong?
</b></p><p>
<i>RD</i>: I hope I'm always polite, always courteous, but I like to tell it like it is, and I simply like to argue for what is supported by evidence. And if a point of view is not supported by evidence, I don't respect it, though I do respect the person as a person, but I don't respect their view if it has no evidential support.
</p><p>
<b><i>GR</i>: Technology is part of the problem in climate change—do you think that we will ever be able to use technology to save ourselves?
</b></p><p>
<i>RD</i>: Well, technology is part of the problem, ever since the Industrial Revolution, when people were using coal and then oil. This is a major problem, and I would like to think that technology of the future will solve the problem by discovering practical economically viable usages of cleaner fuels.
</p><p>
<b><i>GR</i>: Goodreads member <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/20954603-tom-horton">Tom Horton</a> asks, "<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3915.Steven_Pinker">Steven Pinker</a> stunned many skeptics and humanists with his well-supported thesis that violence in the human race is on a long-term decline. Similarly, is it possible that over the long span of history, science is actually winning the battle against superstition and ignorance?"
</b></p>
<i>RD</i>: Very interesting. He's referring to the book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11107244-the-better-angels-of-our-nature">The Better Angels of Our Nature</a>. I enormously admire Steven Pinker, I think he's a truly great writer and he's hugely versatile, it's amazing the number of subjects he's able to master in his different books. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11107244-the-better-angels-of-our-nature">The Better Angels of Our Nature</a> has this rather surprising thesis that we're getting nicer, we're getting better. And over the broad sweep of history we're getting less sadistic. I found myself very convinced by his thesis, but of course it's not an absolutely monotonic change, it's a kind of zigzag sawtooth, but the overall trend is toward improvement, but in any one decade you can see the reversal of that trend. And I suppose that's also going to be true with the progress of science education, that on the whole in general over the long sweep of history we're winning, but in the short term you might see something more like a sawtooth.
<p>
<b><i>GR</i>: Another Goodreads member, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5089979-jacques">Jacques</a>, asks, "What example of evolution could I use to convince a friend that evolution occurs? It ideally would be something a layman would be familiar with, not something only an expert can relate to."
</b></p><p>
<i>RD</i>: Yes, there's so much, of course. The evidence is so overwhelming, and it comes from so many different sources. Possibly the most convincing evidence is from molecular—it may be that the questioner would regard that as not suitable for the layman, but it's really just a modern version of what Darwin himself used in comparable anatomy. Darwin looked at, for example, the vertebrate skeleton, comparing vertebrate skeletons in different species, showing that all the same bones are there but they just have different proportions, so it's very easy to see how they are descended from a common ancestor. The hand of a human, the wing of a bat, the flipper of a dolphin, all have the same bones, but they're obviously very differently proportioned to do different jobs.</p>
The modern version of that I suppose would be molecular genetics, where you can point to particular genes, or particular proteins which the genes give rise to, where the exact sequence of chemical basis is letter for letter recognizable across different species, with minor differences, so it's just like comparing texts of different ancient documents, different documents and the Bible, say, and you can actually count the number of differences between rats and mice and find rather few differences, then count the number of differences in letters of the DNA alphabet, between rats and moles, and find a larger difference, and rats and kangaroos, and find more differences still. And you can count the differences, and you can do that for all the different genes. When you do that, you find that animals and plants, bacteria, everything, fall into a branching hierarchical scheme that could only be a pedigree; there's nothing else it could be. It is knockdown evidence for a pedigree hierarchical structure. I think it's even more convincing than fossil evidence, and fossil evidence is itself extremely convincing.
<p>
<b><i>GR</i>: Goodreads member <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/32467-matt">Matt</a> asks, "Since <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61535.The_Selfish_Gene">The Selfish Gene</a>, your work and public persona have grown increasingly political. What do you think is the appropriate political role of public intellectuals such as yourself? What would you like your legacy to be?"
</b></p><p>
<i>RD</i>: I suppose it's important for people since we do live in a world, we live in a society, we can't ignore politics, we can't ignore the political situation in which we live, and so I have done so; however, it does have a certain ephemerality. And if you ask about my legacy, I would hope that my longer-term legacy, if I aspire to have one, would be more scientific, and what I may possibly have achieved in changing people's minds about science and educating people about my particular type of science, evolutionary biology.
</p><p>
<b><i>GR</i>: In this book you speak about your methods of doing entrance interviews for undergraduates. What kind of a mind would you like people to have when they are entering an intellectual community? How would you like to see young people thinking, or what kinds of minds would you like them to have if they are going to solve these huge problems that face us now and in the future?
</b></p><p>
<i>RD</i>: I'm a great believer in what's become almost a cliché—you teach how to think and not what to think. Teach curiosity; teach skepticism. I do very strongly subscribe to that. Obviously there are many facts to learn, learning poetry, learning things that we already know to be true, and so we mustn't neglect that. One of the things that I suggested in the book, semi-tongue in cheek, is that testing general knowledge is a good way of assessing whether this student's mind is receptive. If this school child knows a lot about a lot of different things, it's not so much the knowledge itself that matters, it's an indicator, a kind of litmus test, that this child is likely to be good at learning, likely to be good at finding things out, likely to be good at curiosity-driven learning, so I think you have to combine testing of knowledge and testing of intelligence. I've heard of students who, at 18, couldn't find Africa on a map of the world. That suggests not only plain ignorance, that suggests a lack of curiosity. The two might be able to go together—testing knowledge may be a way of testing curiosity.
</p>
<b><i>GR</i>: What are you reading now?
</b><p>
<i>RD</i>: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6641.Helen_Fisher">Helen Fisher</a>—<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10165.Anatomy_of_Love">The Anatomy of Love</a>. She is a colleague, she is an anthropologist, and this is a second edition of her book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10165.Anatomy_of_Love">The Anatomy of Love</a>. She studies not just sex but love, sexual love, in a way that is different. She does bring biological knowledge to bear, but it's a different take.</p><p>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3151.Matt_Ridley">Matt Ridley</a>, who is a great writer of science. His latest book, which is not actually yet published, is called <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25005139-the-evolution-of-everything">The Evolution of Everything.</a></p><p>
<b><i>GR</i>: What is your next project?
</b></p><p>
<i>RD</i>: I'm discussing the possibility of a collection of essays.
 </p>
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 News and Interviews

 Interview with Richard Dawkins

 Posted by Goodreads on September 1, 2015
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 Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins may be the most recognizable living scientist in the English-speaking world. Known most recently for his pugilistic The God Delusion , which put him up there with the late Christopher Hitchens as the man creationists love to hate, he is, first and foremost, a champion of Darwin and an enemy of irrational thought. He first rose to fame in 1976 with his groundbreaking The Selfish Gene , a book that broke down DNA structures—and their role in the evolutionary system—in a way that even laypeople could understand. Now that the rakish Dawkins has passed 70, the scientist who was once deemed too boyish-looking to present his own ideas on television has crafted a two-part memoir: first, An Appetite for Wonder (2013), and now its follow-up, Brief Candle in the Dark . Dawkins talks to Goodreads about the value of learning poetry by heart, the future of humanity, battling bad logic, and his legacy as a public intellectual.


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 Goodreads: What are some of your favorite memoirs? As you sat down to write this book, were you thinking about any particular memoirs as models for your own?

 Richard Dawkins : My memoir is in two volumes. Volume one, An Appetite for Wonder , is chronological, and for that I suppose a model for that was Bertrand Russell's autobiography . For volume two, Brief Candle in the Dark , I wanted to depart from chronology, and for that I suppose my model was Kingsley Amis , the English novelist, who wrote his memoir in thematic form. He had chapters on various people he'd known, chapters on his education, chapters on drink, which he was famous for, one on jazz. I think I should probably say Kingsley Amis was my model for Brief Candle in the Dark .

 Originally the whole thing was going to be one big memoir. However, when I got halfway through my life chronologically, I decided that I wanted to divide it into half. I could see that chronology was working for the first part of my life, but I wanted to depart from chronology for the second part, mainly because I wanted it to become less personal stylistically and more professional. If I had done it chronologically, that forces me into what happened next. I didn't want to do "what happened next."


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 GR: You weave a lot of literary references into your writing. Do poetry and literature still matter in your life? Also, do you think having a humanities education is as important as having a scientific education?

 RD : Poetry is very important in my life. I don't think I've learned much new poetry—I think most of the poetry I know dates from the time when I was a young man, and I love it still. I have difficulty reading it aloud without choking up [ chuckles ], I'm sorry to say. I'm a bit sentimental about it. But I don't tend to read much new poetry—I tend to stick to the favorites from my childhood.

 GR: Moving into the religion debate, do you think that the human race would be better—do you think that people would be more compassionate and more productive—if religion didn't exist?

 RD : Yes, is the short answer. There's not a lot of that in the book, is there? But I do think that the world would be a better place without religion.

 GR: I know you've praised The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert's book about human kind's impact on the planet. Do you think that religion keeps us from solving some of these global problems?


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 RD : I think that one of the pernicious qualities of religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with nonexplanation, generally, rather than teaching us to be constantly curious and constantly trying to solve problems, so The Sixth Extinction would be one example—a very important one—but I think that science is held back by religion. That's not to deny that many great scientists of the past have been religious. It might even be true that in some cases in historical times the Christian religion, for example, the Jewish religion, has actually been a positive influence in science, but it no longer is, and I would like to see it become history.

 GR: Some critics have said that you can be dismissive of people who are critical of you—and you touch upon this in this book. Do you think that it's valuable to be sensitive to the views of other people even when you know they're wrong?

 RD : I hope I'm always polite, always courteous, but I like to tell it like it is, and I simply like to argue for what is supported by evidence. And if a point of view is not supported by evidence, I don't respect it, though I do respect the person as a person, but I don't respect their view if it has no evidential support.

 GR: Technology is part of the problem in climate change—do you think that we will ever be able to use technology to save ourselves?

 RD : Well, technology is part of the problem, ever since the Industrial Revolution, when people were using coal and then oil. This is a major problem, and I would like to think that technology of the future will solve the problem by discovering practical economically viable usages of cleaner fuels.

 GR: Goodreads member Tom Horton asks, "Steven Pinker stunned many skeptics and humanists with his well-supported thesis that violence in the human race is on a long-term decline. Similarly, is it possible that over the long span of history, science is actually winning the battle against superstition and ignorance?"


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 RD : Very interesting. He's referring to the book The Better Angels of Our Nature . I enormously admire Steven Pinker, I think he's a truly great writer and he's hugely versatile, it's amazing the number of subjects he's able to master in his different books. The Better Angels of Our Nature has this rather surprising thesis that we're getting nicer, we're getting better. And over the broad sweep of history we're getting less sadistic. I found myself very convinced by his thesis, but of course it's not an absolutely monotonic change, it's a kind of zigzag sawtooth, but the overall trend is toward improvement, but in any one decade you can see the reversal of that trend. And I suppose that's also going to be true with the progress of science education, that on the whole in general over the long sweep of history we're winning, but in the short term you might see something more like a sawtooth.

 GR: Another Goodreads member, Jacques, asks, "What example of evolution could I use to convince a friend that evolution occurs? It ideally would be something a layman would be familiar with, not something only an expert can relate to."

 RD : Yes, there's so much, of course. The evidence is so overwhelming, and it comes from so many different sources. Possibly the most convincing evidence is from molecular—it may be that the questioner would regard that as not suitable for the layman, but it's really just a modern version of what Darwin himself used in comparable anatomy. Darwin looked at, for example, the vertebrate skeleton, comparing vertebrate skeletons in different species, showing that all the same bones are there but they just have different proportions, so it's very easy to see how they are descended from a common ancestor. The hand of a human, the wing of a bat, the flipper of a dolphin, all have the same bones, but they're obviously very differently proportioned to do different jobs.


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 The modern version of that I suppose would be molecular genetics, where you can point to particular genes, or particular proteins which the genes give rise to, where the exact sequence of chemical basis is letter for letter recognizable across different species, with minor differences, so it's just like comparing texts of different ancient documents, different documents and the Bible, say, and you can actually count the number of differences between rats and mice and find rather few differences, then count the number of differences in letters of the DNA alphabet, between rats and moles, and find a larger difference, and rats and kangaroos, and find more differences still. And you can count the differences, and you can do that for all the different genes. When you do that, you find that animals and plants, bacteria, everything, fall into a branching hierarchical scheme that could only be a pedigree; there's nothing else it could be. It is knockdown evidence for a pedigree hierarchical structure. I think it's even more convincing than fossil evidence, and fossil evidence is itself extremely convincing.

 GR: Goodreads member Matt asks, "Since The Selfish Gene, your work and public persona have grown increasingly political. What do you think is the appropriate political role of public intellectuals such as yourself? What would you like your legacy to be?"

 RD : I suppose it's important for people since we do live in a world, we live in a society, we can't ignore politics, we can't ignore the political situation in which we live, and so I have done so; however, it does have a certain ephemerality. And if you ask about my legacy, I would hope that my longer-term legacy, if I aspire to have one, would be more scientific, and what I may possibly have achieved in changing people's minds about science and educating people about my particular type of science, evolutionary biology.

 GR: In this book you speak about your methods of doing entrance interviews for undergraduates. What kind of a mind would you like people to have when they are entering an intellectual community? How would you like to see young people thinking, or what kinds of minds would you like them to have if they are going to solve these huge problems that face us now and in the future?

 RD : I'm a great believer in what's become almost a cliché—you teach how to think and not what to think. Teach curiosity; teach skepticism. I do very strongly subscribe to that. Obviously there are many facts to learn, learning poetry, learning things that we already know to be true, and so we mustn't neglect that. One of the things that I suggested in the book, semi-tongue in cheek, is that testing general knowledge is a good way of assessing whether this student's mind is receptive. If this school child knows a lot about a lot of different things, it's not so much the knowledge itself that matters, it's an indicator, a kind of litmus test, that this child is likely to be good at learning, likely to be good at finding things out, likely to be good at curiosity-driven learning, so I think you have to combine testing of knowledge and testing of intelligence. I've heard of students who, at 18, couldn't find Africa on a map of the world. That suggests not only plain ignorance, that suggests a lack of curiosity. The two might be able to go together—testing knowledge may be a way of testing curiosity.


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 GR: What are you reading now?

 RD : Helen Fisher — The Anatomy of Love . She is a colleague, she is an anthropologist, and this is a second edition of her book The Anatomy of Love . She studies not just sex but love, sexual love, in a way that is different. She does bring biological knowledge to bear, but it's a different take.

 Matt Ridley , who is a great writer of science. His latest book, which is not actually yet published, is called The Evolution of Everything.

 GR: What is your next project?

 RD : I'm discussing the possibility of a collection of essays.




 Interview by Sara Scribner for Goodreads. Sara writes about books and culture from Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Salon, MOJO, the Los Angeles Times, and The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock: Trouble Girls.

 Learn more about Sara and follow what she's reading.

 Would you like to contribute author interviews to Goodreads? Contact us.




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 message 1: by Balle (new)
 Sep 04, 2015 11:25AM


 Great interview.

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 message 2: by Vivian (new)
 Sep 04, 2015 02:41PM


 Very interesting. I will buy his latest book. I like how he thinks. I am a great supporter on Mr. Dawkins. I wish I knew more about science.

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 message 3: by Dexter (last edited Sep 04, 2015 05:16PM) (new)
 Sep 04, 2015 05:14PM


 Dawkins has wandered so far from the scientific method he is hard to take seriously anymore. His obsession with religion is fanatical,and has ruined any sense of rigor he once demonstrated in the field of biology. He seems to like the role of a gadfly more than a scientist, and has accomplished nothing with his obsessions except to alienate scientists who believe in God, which jeopardizes the progress of scientific discovery by politicizing and polarizing the field. His nastiness toward those who disagree with him makes of Dawkins a bit of a reptile while more serious researchers carry the banner of science forward in spite of Dawkins' bigotry and fanaticism.

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 message 4: by Ludovici (new)
 Sep 04, 2015 06:39PM


 This has to be the best interview for so many reasons. What an honour to talk to RD. Look forward to reading his latest book. Thank you.

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 message 5: by Hilary (new)
 Sep 04, 2015 11:48PM


 God made every single one of us.I hope this poor man and his readers come to realize this before its to late for them.

 Psalm 139 v 13 NIV
 For you created my inmost being;you knit me together in my mothers womb.

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 message 6: by Marcus (new)
 Sep 05, 2015 03:31AM


 Hilary wrote: "God made every single one of us.I hope this poor man and his readers come to realize this before its to late for them.

 Psalm 139 v 13 NIV
 For you created my inmost being;you knit me together in my..."

 Hilary wrote: "God made every single one of us.I hope this poor man and his readers come to realize this before its to late for them.

 Psalm 139 v 13 NIV
 For you created my inmost being;you knit me together in my..."

 Thank you for your post, Hilary. You remind me of why Dawkins is a actually a great man. Sadly, your compassion and concern are misplaced.

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 message 7: by Marcus (new)
 Sep 05, 2015 03:42AM


 Dexter wrote: "Dawkins has wandered so far from the scientific method he is hard to take seriously anymore. His obsession with religion is fanatical,and has ruined any sense of rigor he once demonstrated in the f..."

 Greetings, Dexter! Would you please explain, with examples, of how Dawkins' "obsession" with religion "has ruined" his scientific rigor? Also, I wonder if "bigot" is an inaccurate characterization of Dawkins. Yes, he is definitely intolerant of religion - as am I - and for good reason, but I don't think of him (or me!) as a bigot. I believe its fair to say that he (and I!) object more to religion's negative role and impact in society and the human mind. May be it would be better to say he's "uncompromising" with religion in the public sphere. Believe any irrational supernatural thing but do so in your home or church, synagogue, or mosque - keep it out of public policy and the schools.

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 message 8: by Pauline (new)
 Sep 05, 2015 05:09AM


 Thank you Marcus, my feelings exactly on both of your replies.

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 message 9: by Babak (new)
 Sep 05, 2015 07:49AM


 One of the extremely rare interviews that I read to the very end.

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 message 10: by Dywane (new)
 Sep 05, 2015 06:08PM


 Great Interview?

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 message 11: by Thomas (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 12:01AM


 Thank you, Marcus, for your succinct reply to Dexter. You, like Dawkins, do not tolerate fools!

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 message 12: by Catherine (last edited Sep 06, 2015 12:56AM) (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 12:55AM


 Wow.. But God is the author and the omega of all creation. His word is sovereign. Nothing Was made without Him. Creation itself, its diversity, its design is a testament of a great and wise God somewhere.

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 message 13: by Martin (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 03:58AM


 Catherine, your designation of a divinity as "author and omega" is perfectly compatible with everything Dawkins has said. From that perspective, science deals with what that author has created, not with the author. Many scientists find no advantage in postulating a "great and wise" creator, and no evidence that such an entity exists. Most of them would have no problem with your point of view, so long as you do not try to impose it on the world through the schools and the government.

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 message 14: by Dolores Vernet (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 04:36AM


 Hilary wrote: "God made every single one of us.I hope this poor man and his readers come to realize this before its to late for them.

 Psalm 139 v 13 NIV
 For you created my inmost being;you knit me together in my..."

 reply | flag

 message 15: by Dolores Vernet (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 04:38AM


 There is no proof of a God making every single one of us, it is written in a book of faith, no scientific. RD has the proofs of evolution not a creation

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 message 16: by Gavin (last edited Sep 06, 2015 06:07AM) (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 05:51AM


 Dawkins' approach is blinded by underlying assumptions (God cannot exist, people are biological machines). This is against the spirit of scientific inquiry, which should examine all possibilities equally. I have no quibble with evolution, but how about we get on with considering more relevant issues before we write off the idea of God? Like consciousness, for example. God is the ultimate conscious being, and we don't yet know what consciousness IS.
 Those who would like to see an unbiased and assumption-free inquiry into the facts (which incidentally leads us strongly towards an evidence-based understanding of God) may like to check out my own Mind Beyond Matter: How the Non-Material Self Can Explain the Phenomenon of Consciousness and Complete Our Understanding of Reality.

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 message 17: by Marcus (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 05:56AM


 Catherine wrote: "Wow.. But God is the author and the omega of all creation. His word is sovereign. Nothing Was made without Him. Creation itself, its diversity, its design is a testament of a great and wise God so..."

 Catherine! Which of the approximately 9,600 gods in recorded human history are you referring to? Also, prior to the raise of the Abrahamic religions, most deities were female (read "When God was a Woman"). Perhaps you might consider changing the pronoun.

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 message 18: by Jay R. (last edited Sep 06, 2015 06:48AM) (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 06:41AM


 A very telling interview! It's nice to see the great debate continues on...and, yes, the "creator" did have an inordinate fondness for beetles!

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 message 19: by Marcus (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 07:14AM


 Gavin wrote: "Dawkins' approach is blinded by underlying assumptions (God cannot exist, people are biological machines). This is against the spirit of scientific inquiry, which should examine all possibilities e..."

 Greetings, Gavin! I just read your introduction, and I am hooked. I intend to buy and read your book. Moreover, I salute your audacity to take on such a great and seemingly intractable mystery. I certainly would never have the courage or the brain power (no pun intended)to do so! However, I believe that "substance dualism" is a philosophical idea not scientific, so I really question whether it is a testable hypothesis, as you argue. I also question your assertion that "science has yet to come to grips with the causes of mental illness." I believe there's plenty of evidence demonstrating a biological link to all sorts of mental and emotional illness. A number of initial questions pop to mind: how do you account for physical memories; how do the material and non-material interact; if the mind is non-physical, doesn't that put it outside the realm of science; therefore, is substance dualism not a testable hypothesis? Finally, I am extremely skeptical of your assertion that religion and science are "mutually compatible ways of understanding our reality." Regardless, I look forward to being challenged by your book, because you recognize that you'll need to provide "an abundance of [credible] evidence." Finally, may I contact you with questions?

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 message 20: by Mike (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 07:51AM


 Thanks for this!

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 message 21: by Audry (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 08:24AM


 dig to much make people even more fool, we're not a robot, once we'll come to this basic form of philosophy, question 'whats to dig?' 'why dig?' , we're not a robot, we think much, and the last thing we realize, in every needed we start furious, we start recognize faith, so science have a homework now, 'what, why, who, which, when....faith? (since its not 1+2)' Aristotle first found classification, made chalk not only an ilusion, but true thing which follow then the scheme of atom, molecul, species, ordo, family of chalk, follow then its derivate, meubel. Science 'fill in the blanks ' with algoritma in atomic scale to change three hand chalk atom to a two hand meubel atom, find why apple fall from tree, and still dream of this universal dream, theory of anything. only to find 'what happen with this world'. Even there's no science, world would still exist. Dont dig to much if dont get the esensi, what, why, who? we're not a robot.

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 message 22: by Vivian (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 08:56AM


 A book I suggest everyone should read is Faith vs. Fact by Jerry A. Coyne.

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 message 23: by Yassir (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 09:57AM


 Yeah, i enjoyed every single word of it, thank you

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 message 24: by H. (last edited Sep 06, 2015 12:54PM) (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 12:52PM


 I wish Richard would take a different approach to religion. Nobody would deny that religions are widespread and that human spend a lot of resources on them. The question is why? That's a question that I think can only be answered in biological evolution terms. Something in the environment humans evolved in must have selected people for susceptibility to religions.

 Some psychological traits, such as the one behind capture-bonding, have clear evolutionary origins; women who did not rapidly bond to their captors were killed while those who did became our ancestors to a considerable extent.

 When you think about them, what are religions? I argue that they are, at the heart, xenophobic memes.

 Humans always had the ability to overpopulate the environment, and, since they lack predators, when food got short, they would thin out the neighbors with wars. If you run a fairly simple gene accounting of wars, you can see that they were favored in circumstances where the alternative (50% starving) was worse.

 The reason in the accounting for why war favoring genes had an advantage is that the young women of a defeated tribe carried the genes of the defeated (and killed) warriors. That downside limitation made wars with neighbors "better" than starving(from the gene's viewpoint of course).

 Susceptibility to xenophobic memes (in some circumstances) was needed to convert the neighbors from people you traded with (for wives) to non-people who the meme infested warriors could kill.

 Thus ultimately, it's the human practice of young women being treated as booty that gave rise to both the human traits of wars and religions.

 Richard Dawkins quoted me in the second edition of The Selfish Gene on the concept of "memeoids." He might pay attention to this argument if someone who is in contact with him were to call his attention to it.

 Keith Henson

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 message 25: by Robertbduffer (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 01:03PM


 GREAT WISDOM-i LOVE ALL WORDS

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 message 26: by Marcus (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 02:05PM


 H. wrote: "I wish Richard would take a different approach to religion. Nobody would deny that religions are widespread and that human spend a lot of resources on them. The question is why? That's a questio..."

 Dawkins does speculate on the evolutionary reason for religious belief. He wonders if it is a "mis-firing" of natural selection. Immature humans are genetically inclined to defer to authority figures (parents) and this gene "mis-fires" or continues working into adulthood, hence god is "the father" - a protector and guarantor of safety and happiness - who replaces the absent parent. This is probably a very poor account of Dawkins' speculation. He readily admits that he has no idea how to make it a testable hypothesis.

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 message 27: by H. (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 02:44PM


 There certainly are "mis-firing" of natural selection."

 One of them is drug addiction. It's really obvious that the tendency to get intoxicated on opium sap while lying under a bush is a way to get eaten in the days when there were big predators around. Not conducive to gene survival! In fact, most people can't be addicted to opium. Addiction happens because the opiates happen to fit the same receptors as endorphins (in some people). Endorphins are released into the brain's reward system in response to activities that normally aid gene survival.

 This proposal for the reason humans have wars and religions could be tested by formal modeling gene flow/selection through many generations in a computer. Any grad students around who are looking for a PhD topic?

 I don't think anyone would deny that there is a connection in the "modern" world of the last few thousand years between religions and wars. This just makes the claim that both stem from population growth, environmental instability and the well known trait to turn captive young women into wives.

 More background to the idea is here:

 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/...

 and

 http://www.mankindquarterly.org/archi...

 The paper quotes Book of Numbers, from The holy Bible, King James version Chapter 31 vs. 7-18. That description of the aftermath of a war was the inspiration for the model.

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 message 28: by ALI (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 03:08PM


 WOW!!!!......AWESOME...SCIENTISTS ARE GREAT..

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 message 29: by Wisdom (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 04:38PM


 its interesting reading it

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 message 30: by Gavin (last edited Sep 06, 2015 10:54PM) (new)
 Sep 06, 2015 05:08PM


 Marcus wrote: Greetings, Gavin! I just read your introduction, and I am hooked. I intend to buy and read your book. Moreover, I salute your audacity to take on such a great and seemingly intractable mystery.

 Hello Marcus. Thanks for your generous comments.
 It will probably take reading the book to answer some of your questions.
 As regards the biological correlates of mental illness, I can say this:
 What we have discovered thus far does not help us to distinguish between two alternatives - either a) the brain and the mind are essentially the same thing or b) the brain and mind are independent but closely interacting things, influencing each other in a multitude of ways.
 There are many important ways in which mental illnesses differ from the more straightforward brain illnesses such as MS and epilepsy. Mental illnesses are caused/exacerbated/ameliorated by events and influences within our subjective reality eg trauma, counselling. Mental illnesses cannot be diagnosed using brain scans or other biological tests - we continue to rely on patient's subjective reports and observations of subjectively-driven behaviours to establish diagnoses.
 The mental realm is obviously very complex and can be analysed at a number of levels - cognitive, emotional, biological, social,(+/- spiritual). There's a lot to explore and religion doesn't get a look in until the latter half of the final chapter. But a lot of the steps along the way are closed off if we take an attitude such as Dawkins'.
 You are most welcome to contact me through the website www.mindbeyondmatter.com.au.

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 message 31: by Gene (new)
 Sep 07, 2015 08:20AM


 This is the best interview and follow up comments that I have seen on Goodreads.

 I have spent many decades studying the relationships among science, theology, religion, psychology and philosophy and I have come to believe that each is important in different ways as we continue to learn more about our natural and spiritual worlds.

 Science has advanced our knowledge of the natural world but seems to be of little use as we try to learn more about our spiritual world.

 I am not an atheist but I have greatly admired the work of Richard Dawkins for many years.

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 message 32: by Julio (new)
 Sep 07, 2015 08:30AM


 This is the man that broke my last vestige of creationist that I have, a great scientist and good interview

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 message 33: by Keiran (new)
 Sep 08, 2015 06:38PM


 My problem with Dawkins is that his "appetite for wonder"has a severe blind spot because he seems unable to appreciate the poetic nature of religion.It can sometimes address the big issues in a way that science struggles with.Personally, I'm fascinated how a wandering Jew 2000 years ago managed to turn prevailing values on their head and proclaim that treating each other with love and compassion was the key. The Pope's recent writing on climate change reflects a perspective that not only supports science but addresses the deeper issues that science is ill equipped to handle. Things like values and meaning, how we best manage the way we rub up against each other. Who else has been wise enough to point out that rampant consumerism is not sustainable.
 I do not subscribe to any religion and it is so easy to point out the silliness of many religious beliefs and practices but even Dawkins can surely wonder at the profound insights into the human mind revealed by the Buddha?
 Recent works such as Gavin Rowland's "Mind Beyond Matter" excite me more than Dawkins because he has an open mind and integrates very good science with speculation and a deep appreciation of the human condition.

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 message 34: by Marcus (last edited Sep 09, 2015 03:15AM) (new)
 Sep 09, 2015 03:14AM


 Keiran wrote: "My problem with Dawkins is that his "appetite for wonder"has a severe blind spot because he seems unable to appreciate the poetic nature of religion.It can sometimes address the big issues in a way..."

 Love and compassion are universal human attributes and can hardly be attributed to Jesus (or Yeshua). Also, Dawkins is all about "wonder" but pursued rationally. What's more fascinating to me is the fact that a make believe religion created by a small, wandering group of sheep herders thousands of years ago continues to have such a devastating effect on society today.

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 message 35: by Patricia (new)
 Sep 09, 2015 09:10AM


 Richard Dawkins is entitled to his beliefs as I am to mine. God loves all of us, even unbelievers.Didn't Jesus tell the thieves they would be with him in paradise? Rather than wasting time worrying about the state of Dawkins soul, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the sick and sorrowing, and visit those in prison. Matthew 10:14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.

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 message 36: by Erin *Proud Book Hoarder* (new)
 Sep 09, 2015 09:36AM


 Patricia wrote: "Richard Dawkins is entitled to his beliefs as I am to mine. God loves all of us, even unbelievers.Didn't Jesus tell the thieves they would be with him in paradise? Rather than wasting time worryi..."

 I agree - great post.

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 message 37: by Mike (last edited Sep 09, 2015 08:46PM) (new)
 Sep 09, 2015 08:42PM


 Sure, Everyone takes a different path in search of the truth, and Richard is no exception. But, he should also encourage his readers to be mindful of that this is just a theory. The best, a scientific mind can do to explain the phenomena we call life. The question is when and how does a Gene decide to express something new? Where does that information come from? If it is simply a trial and error exercise we should see many failed prototypes in the fossil records right? I mean if you really think about it, all the variables that you have to account for before you come up with the perfect wing.
 Just mind boggling. "seek and you shall find"
 Cheers,

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 message 38: by Jami (new)
 Sep 10, 2015 05:13AM


 Great interview; but i felt he has not studied Quran( the holey book of muslims) in detail as Quran also support the theory of evolution. Only on the basis of studying Bible how can he reject every religon??

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 message 39: by H. (new)
 Sep 10, 2015 06:59AM


 Dawkins is down on all religions equally. (Exception, he might have better feelings about the Pastafarians than most.) My feeling about religions stem from understanding them as fundamentally xenophobic memes. Humans evolved the ability to *have* religions as part of the same selection package for why they have wars.

 There is no current possibility to get rid of this human trait, but we can keep it switched off by holding the population increase smaller than economic growth. Unfortunately, Arab culture is not conducive to either low population growth or much economic growth. This is an Arab rather than an Islamic cultural trait because the Iranians (also Muslims) have reached the two child per woman mark.

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 message 40: by Bob (new)
 Sep 10, 2015 03:22PM


 My first Dawkins book was The Ancestor's Tale, which I suspect I read 8-9 years ago. It is a wonderfully informative and entertaining book that had a profound impact on me personally.

 Regarding his rejection on Islam without having read the Quran, you can't expect a scientist to study every living creature before accepting evolution. There is an overwhelming amount of media information on all major religions. Sufficient to know they almost all believe in a god being as a basis of their beliefs. Determining there is no scientific evidence of a god is sufficient to reject religion. You need not reject every aspect of a religion (compassion, love) to reject it's basic premise.

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 message 41: by H. (new)
 Sep 10, 2015 08:57PM


 Ancestor's tale was great. It would be cool if Dawkins updated it because some of it is out of date.

 Even more common than gods, part of a religious meme is "this is the one true religion," and if the environment/economics takes a nose dive, then what gets added is "kill the unbelievers." Love and compassion come along when either something else is holding down population growth, or technology is growing the economy faster than the population.

 I have a dire view of the human trait to have religions.

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 message 42: by Phil (new)
 Oct 13, 2015 12:08PM


 I recollect reading "The God Delusion" some time ago, and remember thinking how much of an amazing author Mr. Dawkins is. Still one of my favorite readings. Sadly, I seem to have let someone borrow my copy, and have not had it returned. :-)
 Great interview.

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 message 43: by Shingeling (new)
 Oct 24, 2015 01:23PM


 "..do you think having a humanities education is as important as having a scientific education?" ..too bad he did not answer this question. otherwise a very interesting interview

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 message 44: by Tressa23 (new)
 Dec 30, 2015 08:42PM


 Thanks to both Goodreads & Dawkins for this interview.

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 message 45: by Dywane (new)
 Dec 31, 2015 03:54AM


 Wonderful?

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 Interview with Richard Dawkins
 
 
 Posted by Goodreads on September 1, 2015
 
 
 
 
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins may be the most recognizable living scientist in the English-speaking world. Known most recently for his pugilistic The God Delusion, which put him up there with the late Christopher Hitchens as the man creationists love to hate, he is, first and foremost, a champion of Darwin and an enemy of irrational thought. He first rose to fame in 1976 with his groundbreaking The Selfish Gene, a book that broke down DNA structures—and their role in the evolutionary system—in a way that even laypeople could understand. Now that the rakish Dawkins has passed 70, the scientist who was once deemed too boyish-looking to present his own ideas on television has crafted a two-part memoir: first, An Appetite for Wonder (2013), and now its follow-up, Brief Candle in the Dark. Dawkins talks to Goodreads about the value of learning poetry by heart, the future of humanity, battling bad logic, and his legacy as a public intellectual.
 Goodreads: What are some of your favorite memoirs? As you sat down to write this book, were you thinking about any particular memoirs as models for your own?  
Richard Dawkins: My memoir is in two volumes. Volume one, An Appetite for Wonder, is chronological, and for that I suppose a model for that was Bertrand Russell's autobiography. For volume two, Brief Candle in the Dark, I wanted to depart from chronology, and for that I suppose my model was Kingsley Amis, the English novelist, who wrote his memoir in thematic form. He had chapters on various people he'd known, chapters on his education, chapters on drink, which he was famous for, one on jazz. I think I should probably say Kingsley Amis was my model for Brief Candle in the Dark.  
Originally the whole thing was going to be one big memoir. However, when I got halfway through my life chronologically, I decided that I wanted to divide it into half. I could see that chronology was working for the first part of my life, but I wanted to depart from chronology for the second part, mainly because I wanted it to become less personal stylistically and more professional. If I had done it chronologically, that forces me into what happened next. I didn't want to do "what happened next."
 
 GR: You weave a lot of literary references into your writing. Do poetry and literature still matter in your life? Also, do you think having a humanities education is as important as having a scientific education?  
RD: Poetry is very important in my life. I don't think I've learned much new poetry—I think most of the poetry I know dates from the time when I was a young man, and I love it still. I have difficulty reading it aloud without choking up [chuckles], I'm sorry to say. I'm a bit sentimental about it. But I don't tend to read much new poetry—I tend to stick to the favorites from my childhood.  
 GR: Moving into the religion debate, do you think that the human race would be better—do you think that people would be more compassionate and more productive—if religion didn't exist?   
RD: Yes, is the short answer. There's not a lot of that in the book, is there? But I do think that the world would be a better place without religion.
 
 GR: I know you've praised The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert's book about human kind's impact on the planet. Do you think that religion keeps us from solving some of these global problems?
 
RD: I think that one of the pernicious qualities of religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with nonexplanation, generally, rather than teaching us to be constantly curious and constantly trying to solve problems, so The Sixth Extinction would be one example—a very important one—but I think that science is held back by religion. That's not to deny that many great scientists of the past have been religious. It might even be true that in some cases in historical times the Christian religion, for example, the Jewish religion, has actually been a positive influence in science, but it no longer is, and I would like to see it become history.
 GR: Some critics have said that you can be dismissive of people who are critical of you—and you touch upon this in this book. Do you think that it's valuable to be sensitive to the views of other people even when you know they're wrong?
  
RD: I hope I'm always polite, always courteous, but I like to tell it like it is, and I simply like to argue for what is supported by evidence. And if a point of view is not supported by evidence, I don't respect it, though I do respect the person as a person, but I don't respect their view if it has no evidential support.
 
 GR: Technology is part of the problem in climate change—do you think that we will ever be able to use technology to save ourselves?
  
RD: Well, technology is part of the problem, ever since the Industrial Revolution, when people were using coal and then oil. This is a major problem, and I would like to think that technology of the future will solve the problem by discovering practical economically viable usages of cleaner fuels.
 
 GR: Goodreads member Tom Horton asks, "Steven Pinker stunned many skeptics and humanists with his well-supported thesis that violence in the human race is on a long-term decline. Similarly, is it possible that over the long span of history, science is actually winning the battle against superstition and ignorance?"
 
RD: Very interesting. He's referring to the book The Better Angels of Our Nature. I enormously admire Steven Pinker, I think he's a truly great writer and he's hugely versatile, it's amazing the number of subjects he's able to master in his different books. The Better Angels of Our Nature has this rather surprising thesis that we're getting nicer, we're getting better. And over the broad sweep of history we're getting less sadistic. I found myself very convinced by his thesis, but of course it's not an absolutely monotonic change, it's a kind of zigzag sawtooth, but the overall trend is toward improvement, but in any one decade you can see the reversal of that trend. And I suppose that's also going to be true with the progress of science education, that on the whole in general over the long sweep of history we're winning, but in the short term you might see something more like a sawtooth.
 GR: Another Goodreads member, Jacques, asks, "What example of evolution could I use to convince a friend that evolution occurs? It ideally would be something a layman would be familiar with, not something only an expert can relate to."
  
RD: Yes, there's so much, of course. The evidence is so overwhelming, and it comes from so many different sources. Possibly the most convincing evidence is from molecular—it may be that the questioner would regard that as not suitable for the layman, but it's really just a modern version of what Darwin himself used in comparable anatomy. Darwin looked at, for example, the vertebrate skeleton, comparing vertebrate skeletons in different species, showing that all the same bones are there but they just have different proportions, so it's very easy to see how they are descended from a common ancestor. The hand of a human, the wing of a bat, the flipper of a dolphin, all have the same bones, but they're obviously very differently proportioned to do different jobs.
The modern version of that I suppose would be molecular genetics, where you can point to particular genes, or particular proteins which the genes give rise to, where the exact sequence of chemical basis is letter for letter recognizable across different species, with minor differences, so it's just like comparing texts of different ancient documents, different documents and the Bible, say, and you can actually count the number of differences between rats and mice and find rather few differences, then count the number of differences in letters of the DNA alphabet, between rats and moles, and find a larger difference, and rats and kangaroos, and find more differences still. And you can count the differences, and you can do that for all the different genes. When you do that, you find that animals and plants, bacteria, everything, fall into a branching hierarchical scheme that could only be a pedigree; there's nothing else it could be. It is knockdown evidence for a pedigree hierarchical structure. I think it's even more convincing than fossil evidence, and fossil evidence is itself extremely convincing.
 GR: Goodreads member Matt asks, "Since The Selfish Gene, your work and public persona have grown increasingly political. What do you think is the appropriate political role of public intellectuals such as yourself? What would you like your legacy to be?"
  
RD: I suppose it's important for people since we do live in a world, we live in a society, we can't ignore politics, we can't ignore the political situation in which we live, and so I have done so; however, it does have a certain ephemerality. And if you ask about my legacy, I would hope that my longer-term legacy, if I aspire to have one, would be more scientific, and what I may possibly have achieved in changing people's minds about science and educating people about my particular type of science, evolutionary biology.
 
 GR: In this book you speak about your methods of doing entrance interviews for undergraduates. What kind of a mind would you like people to have when they are entering an intellectual community? How would you like to see young people thinking, or what kinds of minds would you like them to have if they are going to solve these huge problems that face us now and in the future?
  
RD: I'm a great believer in what's become almost a cliché—you teach how to think and not what to think. Teach curiosity; teach skepticism. I do very strongly subscribe to that. Obviously there are many facts to learn, learning poetry, learning things that we already know to be true, and so we mustn't neglect that. One of the things that I suggested in the book, semi-tongue in cheek, is that testing general knowledge is a good way of assessing whether this student's mind is receptive. If this school child knows a lot about a lot of different things, it's not so much the knowledge itself that matters, it's an indicator, a kind of litmus test, that this child is likely to be good at learning, likely to be good at finding things out, likely to be good at curiosity-driven learning, so I think you have to combine testing of knowledge and testing of intelligence. I've heard of students who, at 18, couldn't find Africa on a map of the world. That suggests not only plain ignorance, that suggests a lack of curiosity. The two might be able to go together—testing knowledge may be a way of testing curiosity.
 GR: What are you reading now?
 
RD: Helen Fisher—The Anatomy of Love. She is a colleague, she is an anthropologist, and this is a second edition of her book The Anatomy of Love. She studies not just sex but love, sexual love, in a way that is different. She does bring biological knowledge to bear, but it's a different take. 
Matt Ridley, who is a great writer of science. His latest book, which is not actually yet published, is called The Evolution of Everything.  
 GR: What is your next project?
  
RD: I'm discussing the possibility of a collection of essays.
 
 
 
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Interview with Richard Dawkins
https://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/1062.Richard_Dawkins