Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (Hardcover)

by Richard Dawkins (Author) "We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones..." (more)
Key Phrases: bad poetic science, point explosion hypothesis, cheetah genes, Carl Sagan, Doctor Dolittle, Father Christmas (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Why do poets and artists so often disparage science in their work? For that matter, why does so much scientific literature compare poorly with, say, the phone book? After struggling with questions like these for years, biologist Richard Dawkins has taken a wide-ranging view of the subjects of meaning and beauty in Unweaving the Rainbow, a deeply humanistic examination of science, mysticism, and human nature. Notably strong-willed in a profession of bet-hedgers and wait-and-seers, Dawkins carries the reader along on a romp through the natural and cultural worlds, determined that "science, at its best, should leave room for poetry."

Inspired by the frequently asked question, "Why do you bother getting up in the morning?" following publication of his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins set out determined to show that understanding nature's mechanics need not sap one's zest for life. Alternately enlightening and maddening, Unweaving the Rainbow will appeal to all thoughtful readers, whether wild-eyed technophiles or grumpy, cabin-dwelling Luddites. Excoriations of newspaper astrology columns follow quotes from Blake and Shakespeare, which are sandwiched between sparkling, easy-to-follow discussions of probability, behavior, and evolution. In Dawkins's world (and, he hopes, in ours), science is poetry; he ends his journey by referring to his title's author and subject, maintaining that "A Keats and a Newton, listening to each other, might hear the galaxies sing." --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly
Keats complained that Newton's experiments with prisms had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow. Not so, says Oxford biologist Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) who, in an eloquent if prickly defense of the scientific enterprise, calls on the "two cultures" of science and poetry to learn from each other. Yet Dawkins cautions against "bad poetic science," i.e., seductive but misleading metaphors, and cites as an example " 'Gaia': the overrated romantic fancy of the whole world as an organism," a hypothesis proposed by atmospheric scientist James Lovelock and bacteriologist Lynn Margulis. Dawkins (continuing a celebrated battle that has been raging in the New York Review of Books) also lambastes paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould for "bad poetry," rejecting Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium, which holds that new species emerge during relatively short bursts of evolutionary advance. In these conversational, discursive essays, Dawkins is, as always, an elegant, witty popularizer, whether he is offering a crash course in DNA fingerprinting, explaining the origins of "mad cow disease" in weird proteins that spread like self-replicating viruses or discussing male birdsong as an auditory aphrodisiac for female birds. However, in venturing into realms beyond the immediate purview of science, he reveals his own biases, launching into a predictable, rather superficial assault on paranormal research, UFO reports, astrology and psychic phenomena, all of which he dismisses as products of fraud, illusion, sloppy observation or an exploitation of our natural appetite for wonder. Dawkins is most interesting when he theorizes that our brains have partly taken over from DNA the role of recording the environment, resulting in "virtual worlds" that alter the terrain in which our genes undergo natural selection. Agent, John Brockman. 50,000 first printing; first serial to the Sciences.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (December 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395883822
• ISBN-13: 978-0395883822
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (96 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #749,397 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mind-expanding, March 27, 2000

By	A. J. Watson "Bones" (Newcastle-on-Tyne, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (Paperback)

Not many people have the gift of taking some common event and deconstructing it to the nth degree, while making it all seem quite normal. As in his other books (Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, etc.) Mr. Dawkins makes your mind boggle at the way nature use very simple (?) building blocks to fashion something extraordinary ... like us. You are set back on your heels when you realise that your body is largely composed of modified bacteria, without which we could not exist. He goes on to expound on how we see and from there how our brain interprets the world, comparing it to Virtual Reality (no comparison!) - anyone who has experienced any form of VR will understand the immense computing power it takes to present even a half-decent rendition, but the brain does this continuously AND has time to dream, imagine, remember past events and places all in real-time - I doubt if enough teraflops of computer power exist in the world even now to do that.

The main thrust of the book is the poetry of science; how, by understanding more about the way the universe works, we can appreciate the wonder of it all the better - open our minds to something more beautiful than just the outward appearance of a beautiful object - even make us see the beauty in some not-so- pleasant sights!

In this book he uses well thought-out, easy-to-grasp concepts to explode myths, de-bunk charlatans, and de-mystify magic (a little TOO vitriolic at times, I fear!) - all with the intention of opening our minds to the concept of evolution (specifically Darwinism). He takes us from rainbows to barcodes to DNA in easy stages, explaining in graphic (but never tedious) detail just how nature can (and will) evolve all its wonders.

Sometimes I had to put the book on one side just to let the enormity of it all sink in. I still find it hard to grasp the vastness of time it required for nature to accomplish all that it has - yes, I can imagine a thousand years; a million? ... I'm struggling now; a billion? ... overload! But that's what you need to do to come to grips with the evolutionary process. I suspect it's this lack of comprehension / imagination that is behind the beliefs of many Creationists, or maybe a refusal to accept that evolution can happen without some 'intervention'. Having laid myself open to attack, I can only recommend that you read what Mr. Dawkins has to say and make up your own mind who has the right of it.

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, inspiring and even politically correct!, March 18, 2002

By	Dario Ventra (Utrecht, Netherlands) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (Paperback)

As a geology student I mainly use to read Dawkins' books out of curiosity for evolutionary biology and appreciation for his debating skills, not because they've got anything to do with my field. This one was different though, as I knew it would be about scientific thought in general, so possibly of more interest to anyone into science, no matter what their specific expertise.....
I have to say now, after reading it not once but twice, I am glad I have to disagree with nearly all the negative critics I read on this book, and there seem to have appeared lots, both on Amazon websites and on various magazines and journals. Which was, incidentally, one more reason for me to grow curious about this essay....

"Unweaving The Rainbow" is a collection of informal personal reflections on what science is all about, what it means to some of us from an emotional viewpoint, and how it fares when compared to other cultural orientations that seem to be more widespread, like arts and humanities, or (in stark contrast to science!) superstition, pseudo-science and metaphysical spiritualism. There's no technical discussion of any topics in the philosophy of science, just the knowledgeable digressions of someone with something to say. My only quibble is that the last four chapters seem to stray somewhat far out of the book's main purpose, delving deeper and more exclusively into the realm of "extended" biology, following an evolutionary thread that starts with Dawkins' typical metaphors on the role of genes in the game of life and ends with a touch of cultural anthropology and psychology.... But then again, it's just one more example of how science can be beautiful and fulfilling, though still lacking answers to some of our questions (but working on it, and you never know....) One might as well consider that the book's goal could have been just expressing the author's views on anything he wished, and there my quibble falls!

Somebody says that Dawkins takes on an extreme position, closure to anything that's not scientific, cultural intolerance and nasty undertones... Well, I haven't found any such attitude in here. In fact, I expected his firm, worked-up arguments against religion possibly to be one of the central themes, but I was wrong... His prose flows quiet and clear, humorous, never bitter to anyone. No hint of a temper, just reasoning, and wonder here and there, to remind us that he probably isn't just a scary Oxford professor, but also a human being (who'd suspect that??!!).
Sure, his words are spoken out clear, and they may sound arrogant and intolerantly confrontational when addressed at those who believe in magic, superstition, spiritualism of outlandish sorts, fake science, religious integralism, and the like. But it is my impression that such hard feelings aren't on the part of science, but of its opponents, especially when they notice their arguments can be easily dismissed when someone wants to take time and examine their claims, passing from careless, informal small-talk to "official" testing and debating (and subsequent disclosing of embarrassing truths!). Contrary to what some people believe, honest science DOESN'T harbour ANY superiority complex, as even its results are always prone to doubt and rejection under due evidence. Rather, it's nonsensical thinking that suffers from an inferiority complex. The harshness wasn't in Dawkins' words,probably just in some of his readers' hearts when they felt called out on faults in their ideas.

Other critics, mainly in Italy, lamented a closure to the value literary and figurative arts and to humanities in general, as if Dawkins had stated that science is the only worthy intellectual quest. Another one, on a famous magazine, commented on the author's supposedly misleading recourse only to those poetic quotations that could sound as casting doubt onto science, whereas he would ignore so many other artists who made no bones about their admiration for scientific achievements. Again, I can't find any single example of an antiliterary position anywhere here, no hint at "the two cultures", but rather an implicit enjoyment and even praise of poetry, music and such. And more logically, if I wanted to defend science from its detractors, or from those people who seem to misunderstand its ways and purpose, I would draw examples from them to better point out what I deem to be wrong specifically in their words, I certainly wouldn't mention just anyone else at random!

This is an interesting read that hopes to make you think a little more with your own mind and to let you notice that the world, life and the universe as we know them, anything around and about us, it's all wonderful and awe-inspiring also when you try to understand with a down-to-earth, sensible approach. There seems to be no clear evidence for fairies in the woods yet (thus far!), but we can enjoy hiking just the same, all those plants with their incredible chemical life-tricks, a menagerie of funny warblers with a song for everything they want to do, rocks with ancient though somewhat silent stories to tell, and a star high above that runs big part of the show just by casting its intangible light! Well, this is beautiful enough isn't it... And if there are fairies somewhere we'll certainly find out more about them. But only just IF!

72 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars BE QUIET, SIT UP STRAIGHT AND EAT YOUR DNA, December 23, 2002

By	R. J Szasz "Rod Szasz" (Tokyo, Japan Japan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (Paperback)

Dawkins the old Master is at his best and worst in this book. The premise of the bookis arranged around the idea that Poetry and Art are sometimes in fundemental opposition to science. But why should they be Dawkins asks?

It is a fair question and one must make allowances for some bad scientific allegories as well as plain bad poetry. Dawkins has started out with a wonderful idea and he develops it very nicely for about half of the book. Then the book begins to degenerate into something of a jumbled criticism of Steven J. Gould (nothing new there) and the wanderings and adapted characteristics of hedge sparrows and --- no surprise --- a defence of the selfish-gene theory.

In final analysis Dawkins starts out with one of the those cosmic-wonder-of-science books, and then it degenerates into borderline pedantry, with interesting bits of science thrown in around the sides. Dawkins is not the populariser that is Carl Sagan and his writing in this book shows it.

Dawkins is at his best when he has a specific point to prove in an area that he knows well. "The Blind Watchmaker" and "The Extended Phenotype" and the "Selfish Gene" are all par excellance when it comes to him arguing from a first premise in his area of expertise.

Dawkins is also an old crusty Oxbridge lecturer and it comes across in this book. I like that a lot! I think that some readers may be a little bit perturbed to be told what to think. But let's get it straight here. This man has one of the greatest minds in Modern Zoology -- it behooves us to listen to him. We have a lot to learn from him. His tone is also old-fashioned and may strike people as slightly pedantic, but there is no substitute for clear teaching techniques: Dawkins does not assume we are all geniuses and I really like how when he uses a word that is not all that common he encloses a meaning for it inside parentheses. It reminds me of those good scientific primers from the 1960s that one used to read, you read them to learn something about the world and you expect to be told what to think.

Dawkins gives you the scientific, intellectual and vocabulary tools and he expects you to do the rest. He brooks no dummies. Some (American?) readers, raised with an insistence on "respect for other's opinions" -- however silly, may find Dawkins a little hard to stomach at times. We must remember that he comes from a long line of English intellectual thought; I see him as similar to Lord Whitehead, and Betrand Russel in that respect. Both were more than a little [ ] up on certain topics and both were extremely opinionated -- but they wrote well and the whole history of western thinking has benefited from the enormous ideas they espoused and the span of history and scientific thought that they have been exposed to --- Dawkins is from that same English intellectual stream, now frightfully close to being dried up.

In final analysis this is not the best of Dawkins' work. It does have very good vignettes of Science, from Newton's unweaving of the rainbow to those hedge sparrows, and it is obvious that Dawkins is also a connosieur of the romantics, particularly Keats and Shelly. That is also the mark of a well rounded human being, but the poetry and the science of this book could be better maintained, developed and connected.