Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder - Softcover

Dawkins, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141026189 ISBN 13: 9780141026183

Publisher: Penguin, 2006

Synopsis

A dazzling, passionate polemic against anti-science movements of all kinds

Cover note: Each copy of the new edition of Unweaving the Rainbow features a unique wavelength pattern. No two covers are exactly alike.

Keats accused Newton of destroying the poetry of the rainbow by explaining the origin of its colours. In this illuminating and provocative book, Richard Dawkins argues that Keats could not have been more mistaken, and shows how an understanding of science enhances our wonder of the world. He argues that mysteries do not lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution is often more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering even deeper mysteries. 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 on the human appetite for wonder.

Cover note: Each copy of the new edition of Unweaving the Rainbow features a unique wavelength pattern. No two covers are exactly alike.

About this title

Review:

Richard Dawkins has taken the title of his book from Keats, who believed that Newton had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours. But, as the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, Dawkins naturally believes the opposite is true. And in Unweaving the Rainbow, he attempts to convince those who hold a similar view to Keats.

With a characteristic mixture of forceful argument and illustrations from scientific research, he shows how science, properly understood, does not disenchant nature, but rather enhances the poetry of experience by revealing the workings of the natural world in their full wonder. Even Newton's unweaving of the rainbow made possible the science of spectroscopy, which enables us to determine the elements stars are made of. But Dawkins touches on other subjects, including statistics, astronomy, physiology and genetics. One of the many absorbing topics examined--from a chapter on sense perception--is how brains create a "virtual reality" by filling in "background noise" ignored by nerves which only respond to signal changes in the external world. Dawkins also examines good (selfish genes) and bad (Gaia hypothesis) examples of poetic science.

Review:

A brilliant assertion of the wonder and excitement of real, tough, grown-up science (A. S. Byatt, 'Books of the Year' Daily Telegraph)

The way Dawkins writes about science is not just a brain-tonic. It is more like an extended stay on a brain health-farm ... You come out feeling lean, tuned and enormously more intelligent (John Carey Sunday Times)

Beautifully written and full of interesting, original ideas. Essential reading (The Times)

For Dawkins there is more poetry, not less, in the rainbow because of Newton ... he weaves rainbows of wonder from other provinces of science and then unleashes his fury on those who accuse scientists like him of being unimaginative (Sunday Times)

Brilliantly entertaining and stimulating (Observer)

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0141026189
• ISBN 13: 9780141026183
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352