msiduri's Full Review: Richard Dawkins - Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, ...
Dawkins takes his title from John Keats, who decried Isaac Newton's explanation of light as "unweaving the rainbow." Far from robbing the wonderment at light by revealing some of its mysteries, Dawkins maintains that the greater understanding can only increase one's sense of wonder at a commonplace phenomenon, that we have, indeed, become immune to the wonder of the commonplace by not looking too deeply into it.
Starting from Newton's discoveries on the nature of light, Dawkins works his way through spectroscopy, anatomy of the eye, color, onto the electromagnetic spectrum, and DNA. He discusses pseudoscience and the capacity for credulity--which he sees as childish--among the adherents of various forms of pseudoscience. He takes a few wide swipes at Stephen Jay Gould and his idea of punctuated equilibrium, though this he classes as bad science, rather than pseudoscience. Finally, he discusses evolution and the nature of consciousness.
Dawkins manages to pack a lot of important information into one book, and displays a sense of humor: "Lawyers can certainly add up (I once received a lawyer's bill, the last item of which was 'Time spent making out this bill')..." His purpose is to stimulate curiosity as a natural human characteristic, but also to arm against being "hoodwink'd with faery fancy." At the same time, to dumb down material for the public, or to sacrifice substance for the sake of style is what he refers to as "whoring."
Very early in the book, Dawkins admits without any sugarcoating that there is no purpose or meaning to the universe, "but," he asks, "do any of really tie our life's hopes to the ultimate fate of the cosmos anyway?" It is our ties with other humans that make our lives worth living, something he comes back to time and again.
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, say...More at HotBookSale
Did Newton unweave the rainbow by reducing it to its prismatic colors, as Keats contended, and so diminish beauty? Far from it, says the author, an ac...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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