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

Richard Dawkins

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Apr 5, 2000 - Science - 352 pages

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 acclaimed scientist Richard 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 mysteries. With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made him a best-selling author, 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 of the human appetite for wonder.
This is the book Richard Dawkins was meant to write: a brilliant assessment of what science is (and isn't), a tribute to science not because it is useful but because it is uplifting.

What people are saying

Review: Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

User Review  - Henry - Goodreads

Some writers are just born to write. Dawkins writes as easily as breathing, and his style is exemplified by this book. Unweaving The Rainbow was a direct riposte to critics of his earlier works such ...

Review: Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

User Review  - Andy - Goodreads

Like all of Dawkins, this is good, although this is the fifth book of his that I've read, and having moved roughly from greatest to least renown (The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, The Blind ...

Contents

• 1 THE ANAESTHETIC OF FAMILIARITY: 1
• 2 DRAWING ROOM OF DUKES: 15
• 3 BARCODES IN THE STARS: 38
• 4 BARCODES ON THE AIR: 66
• 5 BARCODES AT THE BAR: 83
• 6 HOODWINKD WITH FAERY FANCY: 114
• 7 UNWEAVING THE UNCANNY: 145
• 8 HUGE CLOUDY SYMBOLS OF A HIGH ROMANCE: 180
• 9 THE SELFISH COOPERATOR: 210
• 10 THE GENETIC BOOK OF THE DEAD: 235
• 11 REWEAVING THE WORLD: 257
• 12 THE BALLOON OF THE MIND: 286
• Back Matter: 314
• Back Cover: 339
• Spine: 340

Popular passages

Page 16 - It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and‎

Page 16 - from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us... Thus, from the war of‎

About the author

Richard Dawkins taught zoology at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he has held since 1995. Among his previous books are The Ancestor's Tale, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and A Devil's Chaplain. Dawkins lives in Oxford with his wife, the actress and artist Lalla Ward.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
• Author: Richard Dawkins
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000
• ISBN: 0547347359, 9780547347356
• Length: 352 pages
• Subjects: Philosophy / History & Surveys / General; Science / Life Sciences / Evolution; Science / Philosophy & Social Aspects