author : Richard Dawkins

In this slim volume (fewer than 200 pages, of widely spaced type) Dawkins attacks his usual targets - the anti-science brigade, who believe in Creationism not evolution - demolishing them with his usual persuasive prose, taking no prisoners.

If you've never read Dawkins before, this is a good start; if you have, it make a lighter alternative to his other, meatier works.

The Digital River

Dawkins uses the metaphor of genes swimming in a digital river to describe selection and evolution. Genes in different branches (different species) don't mix. Genes confined between the same river banks mix and combine in individuals of a given species.

...the genes that survive in the river will be the ones that are good at surviving in the average environment of the species, and perhaps the most important aspect of this average environment is the other genes of the species; the other genes with which a gene is likely to have to share a body...

All Africa and her Progenies

Mitochondrial Eve certainly existed; whether she lived in Africa is less well established, but relatively unimportant; she is almost certainly not our most recent common ancestor, just our most recent common ancestor through the female line.

Do Good by Stealth

The argument against evolution that "half an X would not work at all" is fallacious. A highly evolved organ, sense or behaviour does not have to be 'complete' before it is worth having. There are plausible pathways building towards eyes, towards bee dances, towards wasp-shaped orchids, where each step is better than the previous one. [And no doubt a geological future perspective will show that what we have now is not 'complete', but merely 'a step on the way' to something else.]

Never say, and never take seriously anybody who says, "I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection." I have dubbed this kind of fallacy "the Argument from Personal Incredulity."

God's Utility Function

If we look at a cheetah, we might decide its 'purpose' is to kill antelope. But if we look at an antelope, we might decide its 'purpose' is to starve cheetahs! In truth, the common purpose of both is to replicate their own DNA.

Before Darwin, even educate people who had abandoned "Why" questions for rocks, streams and eclipses still implicitly accepted the legitimacy of the "Why" question where living creatures were concerned. Now only the scientifically illiterate do. But "only" conceals the unpalatable truth that we are still talking about an absolute majority.

The Replication Bomb

Three to four billion years ago, a 'replication bomb', life, was set off on our planet, and its effects have recently reached the stars. It has passed several thresholds on the way:

1. Replicator Threshold - origin of life
2. Phenotype Threshold - "replicators survive not by virtue of their own properties but by virtue of causal effects on something else, which we call the phenotype"
3. Replicator Team Threshold - "Each gene contributes to the environment, which they all then exploit in order to survive. The genes work in teams."
4. Many Cell Threshold - "phenotypes can arise whose shapes and functions are appreciated only on a scale hugely greater than the scale of the single cell"
5. Nervous System Threshold - "action can be taken on a timescale much faster than the one that genes ... can achieve directly"
6. Consciousness Threshold
7. Language Threshold
8. Cooperative Technology Threshold
9. Radio Threshold - "it now becomes possible for external observers to notice [us]"
10. Space Travel Threshold

Dawkins, in his official persona as Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, continues his diatribe against the forces of scientific ignorance and unreason. He purpose is to refute the kind of thinking exemplified by Keats' contention that Newton had destroyed the poetry of the rainbow when he unwove its colours with a prism. Dawkins argues that deeper understanding can only enhance and deepen such beauty. He does this through specific examples -- initially to do with the deep simplicity of the physics of rainbows and spectra and stars, later with the fascinating and boggling baroque diversity and intricacies of biology -- with the aim of invoking the reader's sense of wonder. And he takes the odd pot shot at the cranks and charlatans on the way.

I found the work rather choppy and episodic, as Dawkins attempts to cover a wide range of scientific subjects to expose their beauty. However, the sheer range means that there is probably something new for everybody here -- although the physics of spectra may be well known to many, Dawkins can surely display for every occasion yet another obscure and fascinating factoid about a curious biological adaptation. And, as usual, he pulls no punches condemning the fraudsters and wooly thinkers. In the later chapters he also brings out the idea of "good poetry", that is illuminated by, and in turn illuminates, good science -- as opposed the the kind of "bad poetry" that either confuses the science -- or, like that of Keats, unfairly decries it.

A lovely collection of reviews, book forewords, essays, and rants from Dawkins, written over the past decade. They cover a wide range, but are mostly about evolution, religion, and Africa, all reasonably argued in Dawkins' clear style. I won't attempt to summarise any of the careful arguments -- go and read Dawkins and find out for yourself.

Contents

• A Devil's Chaplain

Acceptance of the message of evolution does not mean acceptance of a bleak sterile existence.

• What is True?. == Hall of Mirrors. 2000

Scientific truth versus cultural relativism.

• Gaps in the Mind. 1993

Our specieist double standards, particularly in relation to the (other) great apes.

• Science, Genetics and Ethics: Memo for Tony Blair

On the positive sides of science.

• Trial By Jury. 1997

Is being judged by our peers a scientifically valid choice?

• Crystalline Truth and Crystal Balls. 1998

Debunking crystalline NewAge clap-trap.

• Postmodernism Disrobed. Nature, 394, 141-143. 1998

A review of Intellectual Impostures and the Sokal Hoax.

• The Joy of Living Dangerously: Sanderson of Oundle. 2002

How modern syllabuses and standardisation are destroying true education in our schools today.

• Light Will Be Thrown. 2003

A foreword to a new edition of Darwin's Descent of Man, covering the section on sexual selection.

• Darwin Triumphant. 1991

Darwinism as a universal truth

• The 'Information Challenge'. The Skeptic, 18:4. 1998

On being tricked by creationists, and on what it means to consider the amount of "information" in a genome.

• Genes Aren't Us. 1993

On genetic determinism, or lack of it.

• Chinese Junk and Chinese Whispers. 1999

The Forward to The Meme Machine

• Viruses of the Mind. 1993

On memes, crazes, and religions

• The Great Convergence. == Snake Oil and Holy Water. 2002

Are science and religion converging? No.

• Dolly and the Cloth Heads. 1997

Why are the opinions of the religious lobby automatically given respect?

• Time to Stand Up. 2001

After September 11, time to get angry about religion, all religion.

• Lament for Douglas. 2001

Written on learning of Douglas Adams' death.

• Eulogy for Douglas Adams. 2001

Eulogy delivered at Douglas Adams' memorial.

• Eulogy for W. D. Hamilton. 2000

Eulogy delivered at the memorial of one of the greatest evolutionary biologists of the 20th century.

• Snake Oil. 2001

Forward to John Diamond's posthumous book Snake Oil and other preoccupations -- about "alternative" medicine.

• Rejoicing in Multifarious Nature. Nature, 276, 121-123. 1978

Review of Gould's Ever Since Darwin.

• The Art of the Developable

Written in 1983, a previously unpublished joint review of Medawar's Pluto's Republic and Gould's Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes.

• Hallucigenia, Wiwaxia and Friends. 1990

Review of Gould's Wonderful Life, pointing out some deep flaws in the arguments about the appearance of new phyla versus new species.

• Human Chauvinism and Evolutionary Progress. Evolution, 51:3, 1015-20. 1997

Review of Gould's Full House (aka Life's Grandeur), including a plea for less baseball, and a plea for consistent book titles on either side of the Atlantic.

• Unfinished Correspondence with a Darwinian Heavyweight

Gould's reasons for denying creationists the respectability of a debating platform.

• Ecology of Genes. 2000

Forward to Pyramids of Life by Croze and Reader. A well balanced ecosystem is an economy, not an adaptation.

• Out of the Soul of Africa. 1998

Forward to Red Strangers by Elspeth Huxley, a novel written from the point of view of the Kikuyu, that manages to make white Europeans look alien.

• I Speak of Africa and Golden Joys. 2001

Forward to The Lion Children by the McNeice children, chronicling their upbringing in the bush.

• Heroes and Ancestors. == All Our Yesterdays. 1995

A travel piece, on returning to his African childhood home, and meeting Richard Leakey.

• Good and Bad Reasons for Believing. 1995

An open letter to his ten-year-old daughter, explaining the difference between science and faith.

• Son of Moore's Law. 2002

The ever-increasing cheapness of sequencing genomes, and what it might lead to.

Dawkins argues that religion (any religion -- he's an equal opportunity disbeliever) doesn't deliver on any of its advertised fronts: not truth, not morality, not consolation. Not only that, he argues that it is actually dangerous, even in moderation, because it teaches that faith (ie, unquestioning belief without evidence, or even in the teeth of the evidence) is a good thing, and it is this very mindset that can so easily lead to bad things.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities -- Voltaire

It's strange: much of what Dawkins says here seems shocking. (For example: teaching a religion to children is a serious form of child abuse.) Yet, in any other domain of discourse, be it Science, Philosophy, Politics, Art, Football, such arguments wouldn't be shocking at all: they would be ordinary, every-day lively debate. Why this special protection for religion? Which just goes to prove his point, really.

Yet beyond the shock is relief -- relief that it's okay to engage in this kind of debate. Throw off that stifling self-censorship, let the clean crisp winds of rational argument blow, and see the fog of old falsehoods disappear. The journey is a refreshing one, sometimes jaw-dropping, often funny, even if Dawkins' fizzing indignation does occasionally dominate -- but then again, there's much to be indignant about!

This isn't a book for the true believer (they mostly won't read it anyway -- except for that small subset who will be looking for something to quote out of context): it's a book for people who didn't know how very reasonable it is be an atheist. Read, think, question, enjoy.