Hypotenuse's Full Review: Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong - The Ancestor's Tale...
How do you read non-fiction?
Not - How can you read that dreck? But more along the lines of - In what manner do you read non-fiction? I normally read a book through twice. I read once at the speed of light, as I am dying to get through to the end, and then I immediately begin again, to slowly savor and explore every nuance. When I do so, I must have handy my implements of destruction: dictionary, notebook, highlighter, pen, stack of sticky notes, and my computer browser open to wikipedia. By journey’s end my poor beloved books take on the appearance of having been infected with some mutant alien flat-needled, striated rainbow porcupine syndrome - multi-colored sticky notes protruding from every orifice, pages bent in a variety of signals of importance that only I would recognize, sections highlighted, and arrows pointing here, there, and yonder.
I have just completed my second read of what I shall brazenly dare to call Richard Dawkins’ masterwork, The Ancestor’s Tale. And I must admit to originally thinking that the man had gone bonkers. For me, Chaucer brings back horrid memories of the longest English Literature class since time began. Days would pass in that two-hour bi-weekly class, which was a requirement for degree completion. By the end of the semester I figured that Chaucer owed me considerable compensatory time, the entire epoch of which had been sucked away by that wormhole entitled Canterbury Tales.
Needless to say when I discovered that Dawkins’ epic on evolution was crafted along the lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales I was aghast, and not in a good way. However, Richard’s draw soon overcame my distaste of Chaucer, and here we are. One much loved book in the advanced stages of mutant alien flat-needled, striated rainbow porcupine syndrome.
Richard Dawkins’ begins The Ancestor’s Tale by quoting Mark Twain. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” The appropriateness of this quote becomes apparent as he leads you on a fascinating journey through time. Reversing Chaucer’s pilgrimage, Dawkins begins at the end, at least from our point of view.
The tale begins with homo sapiens, not as a culmination, but because of our understandable interest in who we are, how we got here, and how we fit with the rest of the world. During our journey we will stop on forty different occasions to “rendezvous” with fellow “pilgrims”, who join us as they follow their own paths toward the beginning of life’s journey. Most of the pilgrims have tales to share. These tales teach us a great deal about that which makes them unique, why this is of interest to the human mammal, and how it helps us understand not only more about our fellow traveler, but about ourselves as well.
The Salamander’s Tale:
In describing two distinct species of salamanders, Dawkins teaches us about ring species. This example describes how the ancestor of both species lived at the north end of a valley surrounded on the east and west by mountains. The ancestors migrated separately southward, each inhabiting it’s own side of the valley (east or west), evolving through the years in isolation with respect to the members on the opposite side of the valley. Finally, upon meeting at the southern end of the valley, the salamanders had evolved to the point of separate species, no longer capable of interbreeding.
No evolutionist thinks that modern species change into other modern species. Cats don’t turn into dogs, or vice versa. Rather, cats and dogs have evolved from a common ancestor, who lived tens of millions of years ago. If only all the intermediates were still alive, attempting to separate cats from dogs would be a doomed enterprise, as it is with the salamanders and the gulls. Far from being a question of ideal essences, separating cats from dogs turns out to be possible only because of the lucky (from the point of view of the essentialist) fact that the intermediates happen to be dead. Plato might find it ironic to learn that it is actually an imperfection – the sporadic ill-fortune of death – that makes the separation of any one species from another possible. This of course applies to the separation of human beings from our nearest relatives – and, indeed, from our more distant relatives too. In a world of perfect and complete information, fossil information as well as recent, discrete names for animals would become impossible. Instead of discrete names we would need sliding scales, just as the words hot, warm, cool and cold are better replaced by a sliding scale such as Celsius or Fahrenheit.
There are many well-known pilgrims who join us in this journey back in time. There are fascinating tales of the gibbon, the elephant bird, and the lancelet, each tale presenting the unique properties of our relatives. With the brine shrimp we learn why she swims upside down, ponder on how this could have developed, and are treated to a literary illustration on the differing aspects of dorsal and ventral nerve cords. The Redwood’s Tale begins to teach us the techniques of dating and we learn a thing or two about chemistry. All the tales in this book in a continuous journey back through time, while adding to our knowledge of the storyteller, make a connection with homo sapiens, for it is from our point of view that the tales are written, and our interests which are the focus of this book.
It’s difficult to convey the completeness felt at the end, when the final rendezvous is reached and we’re back in the presence of our host. Richard Dawkins fills our journey with his love of science and awesome way with words, bringing all the separate tales together to make one complete whole. While many may attempt to describe our interconnectivity with the world, it is Richard Dawkins who succeeds with The Ancestor’s Tale. You cannot read this book without understanding the meaning of brotherhood. As Richard writes:
The Wright brothers did not have a blinding flash of inspiration and promptly build a Concorde or a Stealth Bomber. They built a creaking, rickety crate that barely lifted off the ground and lurched into a neighbouring field. From Kitty Hawk to Cape Canaveral, every step of the way was built on its predecessors.
In The Ancestor’s Tale we come to know our predecessors and learn why this knowledge is an important part of being human.
Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale will definitely require more than two readings. I doubt that even three or four will suffice. I will probably be rereading this book for years to come, gleefully adding to its burden of mutant alien flat-needled, striated rainbow porcupine syndrome. And, if this is indeed a return on the endless amount of time stolen by Chaucer in that long ago time-suck wormhole of an English Literature class, I will say the exchange of time was more than worthwhile and I will no longer begrudge even a second.
For those interested, there is now an official Richard Dawkins website, located at http://richarddawkins.net.
In works such as The Selfish Gene and Unweaving the Rainbow, the renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has--withunparalleled wit, clarity, a...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.