Richard Dawkins: books: Unweaving the Rainbow
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Unweaving the
Rainbow:
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- Order the Houghton
Mifflin hardcover or
paperback
from Amazon.com (USA) - Order the Penguin hardcover or paperback from Amazon.co.uk (UK)
- Penguin Books "readme" pages on Unweaving the Rainbow
- Online Bookstores in the UK, USA & everywhere
| Book Description |  |
From Amazon.com:
Did Newton "unweave the rainbow" by
reducing it to its prismatic colors, as Keats contended?
Did he, in other words, diminish beauty? Far from it,
says Dawkins--Newton's unweaving is the key to much of
modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern
cosmology. Mysteries don't lose their poetry because they
are solved: the solution often is more beautiful than the
puzzle, uncovering deeper mystery. (The Keats who spoke
of "unweaving the rainbow" was a very young
man, Dawkins reminds us.)
With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made his books worldwide bestsellers, Dawkins addresses the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, and combines them in a landmark statement of the human appetite for wonder.
This is the book that Richard Dawkins was meant to write: a brilliant assessment of what science is (and what it isn't), a tribute to science "not because it is useful (though it is), but because it is uplifting, in the same way as the best poetry is uplifting."
Chapters:
- Chapter 1: The Anaesthetic of Familiarity
- Chapter 2: Drawing Room of Dukes
- Chapter 3: Barcodes in the Stars
- Chapter 4: Barcodes on the Air
- Chapter 5: Barcodes at the Bar
- Chapter 6: Hoodwink'd with Faery Fancy
- Chapter 7: Unweaving the Uncanny
- Chapter 8: Huge Cloudy Symbols of a High Romance
- Chapter 9: The Selfish Cooperator
- Chapter 10: The Genetic Book of the Dead
- Chapter 11: Reweaving the World
- Chapter 12: The Balloon of the Mind
| Reviews & Articles | |
Note: some sites below require free registration.
- Richard Dawkins: The man who knows the meaning of life by Colin Hughes. The Guardian, Oct 3, 1998
- How, why and wow! by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. Spectator, Oct 17 1998, p.40
- Two Cultures: Science holds no fears for poetry by Galen Strawson. Financial Times, Oct 17 1998
- The selfish gene goes ape by Steven Rose. The Guardian, Oct 17, 1998
- The beauty of applied science. Mail on Sunday Oct 18, 1998
- In the eye of the beholder by John Carey. The Sunday Times, Oct 18, 1998
- What a wonderful world by Matt Ridley. Sunday Telegraph, Oct 18, 1998
- There is poetry in science. It's just that most poets are deaf to its rhythmn by Melvyn Bragg. The Observer, Oct 18, 1998
- Science's true colour by Lewis Wolpert. The Times, Oct 22, 1998
- A Review by Robert Hanks. The Independent, Oct 25, 1998
- Everyone a Scientist by John Gribbin. Literary Review, Nov, 1998
- The wonder of it all by Andrew Pomiankowski. New Scientist, Nov 21, 1998
- The poetry of science - Just sitting around unweaving the mysteries of the unverse: John Cleese and author Richard Dawkins chat it up in San Francisco. The San Francisco Examiner. Nov 22, 1998
- Alma Mater - It was only during his second year at Oxford that science won his heart, recalls Richard Dawkins. The Irish Times, (Nov 24, 98)
- A Revew by Paul R. Gross, The Wall Street Journal, Dec 11, 1998
- The science of selfishness by Andrew Brown. Salon, Dec. 22, 1998
- "You ask the questions" : Richard Dawkins answers reader questions. An edited version of this was published in The Independent (London), December 23, 1998, Wednesday, Page 8
- Nature of Science: A Wondrous and Poetic Spectrum by Charles M. Vest. Science, Jan 1, 1999
- Frauds! Fakes! Phonies!: Richard Dawkins attacks superstitions, fantasies and every kind of pseudoscience by Timothy Ferris. New York Times January 10, 1999
- A Review by Alan I. Packer. HMS Beagle, January 22, 1999 · Issue 46
- One Man's Rainbow by Melvin Konner. Scientific American, March 1999
- Book Review by By Kendrick Frazier. Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1999
- A brief review from 2Think.org. April 1999
| Related Links | |
- General:
- Chapter 1: The Anaesthetic of Familiarity
- Chapter 2: Drawing Room of Dukes
- Lamia part I and Part II by Keats, John (1795-1821)
- Newton Sir Isaac (1642-1727)
- The Kennewick Man Entrance Page
- Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science by Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt
- The X-Files - one too many sites
- Chapter 3: Barcodes in the Stars
- Chapter 4: Barcodes on the Air
- Chapter 5: Barcodes at the Bar
- Chapter 6: Hoodwink'd with Faery Fancy
- Chapter 7: Unweaving the Uncanny
- Chapter 8: Huge Cloudy Symbols of a High Romance
- The "G-Files" - debates with S.J. Gould et al.
under construction
- Chapter 9: The Selfish Cooperator
- Chapter 10: The Genetic Book of the Dead
- Chapter 11: Reweaving the World
- Chapter 12: The Balloon of the Mind
| Endorsements / Quotes | |
"The way Dawkins writes about science is not just
a brain-tonic. It is more like an extended stay on a
brain health-farm, complete with the mental equivalents
of sun-beds, aerobics and intensive carrot-juice diet.
You come out feeling lean, tuned and enormously more
intelligent."
--John Carey, Sunday Times
"Unweaving the Rainbow is the product of a
beguiling and fascinating mind and one generous enough to
attempt to include all willing readers in its brilliantly
informed enthusiasm."
--Melvyn Bragg, The Observer
"Richard Dawkins is quite simply incomparable. No
one can make science so exciting, so interesting or so
clear. . . if only Stephen Hawking had a tenth of his
clarity."
--Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, Spectator
"What Dawkins adds to the easy part is a radiant
gift for exposition, a deadly patience in explanation.
His tools, logic apart, are allegory, analogy, and
metaphor, which he uses in a highly controlled manner
(knowing that they are wide open to misuse) and prolongs
in unexpected and sensuous ways, until they transcend
their illustrative role and trigger new perspectives and
hypotheses."
--Galen Strawson, Financial Times
"Dawkins pulls it off with panache, style and
even (prose-) poetry."
--Matt Ridley, Sunday Telegraph
"A particular bete rouge is Stephen Jay Gould,
perhaps because he is one of the few who can write as
elegantly as Dawkins himself, but complexity theorists
like Stuart Kauffman take a fair hammering too."
--Steven Rose, The Guardian
"A sharp mind is much in evidence, delighting in
exposing fraud, providing instruction, baiting a
colleague, and indulging in his own high-wire acts of
evolutionary dreaming."
--Kirkus Reviews
"In many ways, Unweaving the Rainbow is a bigger
work than his previous hits. It is not so much a
scientific book as a book about science, about its uses,
its reputation in the wider world, its claims on our
time, its ability to bring delight to our lives"
--Simon Garfield, Mail on Sunday
"Like all of Dawkins's books, this one is
beautifully written and full of interesting, original
ideas. Essential reading, for those who care about
science."
--Lewis Wolpert, The Times
| Selected Quotes and Excerpts | |
