his could be seen as Richard Dawkins at his best. It is a collection of shorter works from journal, magazine, and newspaper articles, speeches, lectures, and online posts. The topics run the gamut of topics: the values of science, Darwinism, looking towards the future, religion (or anti-religion), current issues (at the time they were written), truth in science, humor, and tributes. These pieces really show off his skill as a writer, not just his expertise as an evolutionist. The following are some of the comments I wrote on specific pieces of text. Page numbers are in brackets []. It follows the Kindle pagination. [49] “Similar artificial selection [to non-human animals] would work with humans. Not only could you breed for tastes, you could breed for callousness, sympathy, loyalty, slothfulness, piety, meanness or the Protestant work ethic.” But, nobody today would see the results. [49] “Evidence is good that the brain contains a language ‘module’, a computational mechanism that actively seeks to learn language and actively uses grammatical rules to structure it.” Sure it seems obvious, but I would still like to know about any study that confirms this. [106] “IT IS IN the nature of scientific truths that they are waiting to be discovered, by whoever has the ability to do so.” Humans create truth. But a truth needs match reality to be correctly labeled as so. This smacks of platonic realism; nature does not come with labels saying “true.” Despite this scientific truths are discovered and not invented as some postmodernist would have it. [279] ‘Atheists for Jesus’ might be just what is needed to kick-start the meme of superniceness in a post-Christian society.” Jesus wasn’t the greatest character to emulate. And could be childish at that. I used character because I believe he is a work of fiction, and most likely never existed as a historical person. [303] “Isn’t it plausible that a clever species such as our own might need less pain, precisely because we are capable of learning faster, or intelligently working out what is good for us and what damaging events we should avoid? Isn’t it plausible that an unintelligent species might need a massive wallop of pain, to drive home a lesson that we can learn with less powerful inducement?” I found this a fascinating notion. Just as I think I know everything Richard Dawkins has to say, I read another one of his books. This collection of short works is no exception and exemplifies it. From learning something new to support for liberal issues to pure enjoy at his use of words to his humor the book was a very good read. I don’t often give a book a 5 star rating, but this one deserves it. If your a fan of Dawkins or have never read him before I can recommend this book to all but the person with a closed mind, and even then it would do them a world of good to read it.

Ruhtaki BilimRichard Dawkins · Kuzey Yayınları · 2018109 okunma

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