Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think: Reflections by Scientists, Writers, and Philosophers

by Alan Grafen (Editor), Mark Ridley (Editor)

15 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0199291168

ISBN-10: 0199291160

Why is ISBN important?

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Share <Embed>

Buy used

$5.79

Condition: Used - Good

In Stock. Sold by Better World Books

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

40 Used from $4.38

+ $0.00 shipping

Deliver to France

Turn on 1-Click ordering

More Buying Choices

9 New from $8.00 40 Used from $4.38

49 used & new from $4.38

See All Buying Options

Free Two-Day Shipping for College Students with Amazon Student

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.

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Richard Dawkins

853

Paperback
$13.68
Richard Dawkins

63

Hardcover
$16.78

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Richard Dawkins

172

Paperback
$9.27
Daniel C. Dennett

177

Paperback
$14.38

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reading this volume, it is evident that The Selfish Gene-Richard Dawkins's seminal text that described how "genes have evolved the means to transform the world's resources in ever more ingenious ways"-continues to have a powerful impact on the scientific community. These 26 essayists offer a glistening blend of praise and personal reflection on both the nature of the author and on the reach of his work. "A phenomenon such as Dawkins' The Selfish Gene can be seen from many points of view and set in many contexts," notes co-editor Grafen. So, while Helena Cronin (The Ant and the Peacock) writes, "Like Einstein's imagined ride on a beam of light, this is an invitation to journey into unreachable worlds for a clearer understanding of reality," Philip Pullman invokes Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens and Sherlock Holmes in his rumination on why Dawkins's books are infectiously readable. Readers looking for a distilled regurgitation of Dawkins's life and works will be disappointed, as this book provides neither a complete biography nor a comprehensive appraisal of his science. This collection succeeds, however, as a tribute: Dawkins appears here majestically, if not prophetically.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Saluting the thirtieth anniversary of British biologist Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene (1976), scientific colleagues explain the book's importance in personal and intellectual terms. A best-selling hit with the public, the book is a rarity for having also been profoundly provocative to evolutionists. A remarkably common reaction among the 25 authors in this volume is the comment that the book changed their lives by altering either their career paths or their thinking about evolution. The academics (as most of them are) wax enthusiastic about the circumstances of their encountering The Selfish Gene. Breaking from preceding theorizing about evolution, Dawkins maintained in elegantly clear rhetoric that natural selection operates on the gene and not the organism. Not all scientists jumped on the selfish-gene bandwagon--notably, the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould--and this volume represents the views of a few Dawkins critics. But most expand, often within their specialty, on their agreement with Dawkins' argument. An interesting supplement to an influential science book every library should have. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Hardcover: 298 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press (May 1, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0199291160
ISBN-13: 978-0199291168
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 1.1 x 5 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
Average Customer Review: 15 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,703,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #893 in Books > Science & Math > Essays & Commentary
- #4501 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Scientists
- #6467 in Books > Textbooks > Science & Mathematics > Biology & Life Sciences > Biology

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

Be the first video

Your name here

Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features:

See Kindle Edition

Customer reviews

Write a customer review

See all 15 customer reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Steven WilliamsTop Contributor: Philosophy

the book was pretty good, but uneven

December 30, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

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.

Comment

September 12, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This is an excellent collection of essays by people who are fans of Dawkins as well as some who are a bit skeptical. Given how much Dawkins himself has written, this collection is a somewhat cheaper way (in time and wealth) to get a bird's eye view of his ideas. As a professional logician I liked that there are four papers in a section titled Logic. They do not contain Goedel's theorems or an exposition of Turing (though some of them do presuppose Turing). But they do make it clear that evolution has a logic which well repays investigation. It is a pity that there is no section of references. Some of the papers do have references in the form of footnotes. But many do not, and neither does the book. But apart from this shortcoming, the book is truly excellent.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Not Helpful

Comment

anthony chapman

... Richard Dawkins is one of the most gifted and brilliant scientist that I've read

December 13, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I think Richard Dawkins is one of the most gifted and brilliant scientist that I've read. His books finally convinced to becoming an Atheist after belng Catholic for decades

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Not Helpful

Comment

Clifford J. Stevens

The Fragility of Science

May 24, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This book is praiseworthy for its account of the evolutionary brilliance of Richard Dawkins, even though reputable biologists question his invention of the "meme", which he uses for the unscientific purpose of attacking religion, and his concept of the gene as "selfish". If anything the human genome is marvelously expansive and blossoms into a myriad of tender emotions and deep-seated drives that are totally absent from the Genome of other mammalian species.

Some of his confreres (John Lennox, for instance), have criticized him for linking his science with atheism, by a stretch of the imagination that is almost as ridiculous as that of the Baron d'Holbach, who linked his atheism to a discredited spontaneous generation and became the laughing stock of the scientific community. Richard Dawkins runs the same risk.

It is in the chapter entitled "Human" and "Controversy" that the work of Richard Dawkins falls flat on its existential face. There is nothing of the truly human in any of his writings and his "controversies" are all of his own making, by raising pseudo-problems having nothing to do with science, or by imposing his own arbitrary interpretations on his evolutionary biology. When he wanders into human application of genomes, genes and genomic data, he pulls the cleverest trick of the scientific charlatans of all time: he either pulls an atheist rabbit out of his ideological hat or he uses the old shell game of transferring data from "animal" biology to the genomics of Homo Sapiens, and then uses the Fallacy of Poisoning the Well, with an intensity that belies his claim of scholarly objectivity.

His basic and unproved conviction that Science and Christianity are innately incompatible has only the support of his atheist bias. In the search for a final cause of the universe, he is totally out of his league, since he mistakes the laws of Physics for the laws of Evolutionary Biology and gets lost in an entanglement of Secondary Causes, which exlain nothing about the Cause of the whole universe. Then he begs the question by saying "science will show that the universe explains itself".

The proper domain of evolution is Change, Chance and Secondary Causality, and his Evolutionary Biology has nothing to do with the structure of the universe and the laws that govern it. Ultimately, in the case of the universe itself and the emergence of Homo Sapiens, he must come face to face with the seven words of the Biblia Hebraica, the first words of the Bible, which explains the order of the whole Cosmos and the earth sciences: "Bereshith Bara Elohim et Hashamayim v'et h'Aretz. "In the Beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth",an explanation more in keeping with the structure of the universe and the emergence of Man upon the planet earth.

His crucial mistake is attempting to demonstrate that the fabric of the universe is atheist and that human beings share in this built-in purpose of a purposeless universe. A consummation, perhaps, devoutly to be wished, but a consummation at odds with the structure of the universe, which cries out for more than an endless progression of Secondary Causes. A mistake which makes one question his objectivity as a scientist and his interpretation of the empirical data on which he bases his professional reputation.

Father Clifford Stevens
Boys Town, Nebraska

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Not Helpful

Comment

I had not realized how important Dawkins was

April 13, 2006

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

until reading assessments of his contribution to modern thought by the writers I most esteem: Stephen Pinker, Daniel Dennett and Matt Ridley.

Dawkins' ability to express himself clearly leads to the deceptive conclusion that he is a popularizer rather than an innovator in science. Wrong. While he draws from the great streams of scientific thought, he has woven ideas together into several constellations that are his alone.

I had thought, reading Dennett's rather dense but delightful "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" that Dawkins was his disciple. Wrong again - other way around.

Each of these 24 authors refer to their subject as "Richard," somewhat familiarly but also with some reverence, as if "Richard" were a prefix for something such as "The Sixth" or "of Cambridge"

Most interesting and awkward of the articles was one by the Bishop of Oxford attempting to grapple with Dawkins' oft-expressed atheism and his belief that religion is a virus of the mind. Quite in contrast with Dawkins' work, I could not make heads or tails of this attempted reconciliation, which seemed to say no more than that he is a decent fellow despite his disbelief.

76 people found this helpful

Helpful

Not Helpful

Comment

Kindle Customer

Scientists give Dawkins a rave notice

November 3, 2006

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Richard Dawkins is brilliant. Because he writes so clearly, his colleagues and students learn from him with ease; because he writes so entertainingly, they thoroughly enjoy the learning process. In Grafen and Ridley's compendium, other scientists who have benefited from Dawkins' brilliance build on his work, and provide important commentary and instruction on how to think and reason.

16 people found this helpful

Helpful

Not Helpful

Comment