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

Richard Dawkins

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 071399214X ISBN 13: 9780713992144

Publisher: Allen Lane, 1998

Synopsis

'We may unweave the rainbow, but we put together something far more beautiful' More and more frequently, science is accused of promoting an arid and joyless message, of robbing our lives of what makes them worth living. In UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW Richard Dawkins shows how science, properly understood, does not expose the pointlessness of our lives in a vast, meaningless universe, but instead enhances the poetry of experience by revealing the workings of the natural world in their full wonder.

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: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 071399214X
• ISBN 13: 9780713992144
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336
• Illustrator: Lalla Ward