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Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder - Paperback | Diverse Reads

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

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Biologist, humanist, and bestselling author Richard Dawkins deeply examines the inherent beauty within modern scientific discoveries.
“If any recent writing about science is poetic, it is this” (The Wall Street Journal).
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, says acclaimed scientist Richard Dawkins; Newton's unweaving is the key to much of modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern cosmology. Mysteries don't lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution often is more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering deeper mysteries.
With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made him a bestselling author, 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 of the human appetite for wonder. Unweaving the Rainbow is a brilliant assessment of what science is (and isn't), a tribute to science not because it is useful but because it is uplifting.

ISBN-13: 9780618056736

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Publication Date: 04-05-2000

Pages: 352

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.82(d)

RICHARD DAWKINS is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. He is the author of 15 books includingUnweaving the Rainbow, A Devil’s Chaplain, and The God Delusion.Dawkins lives in Oxford.,

Read an Excerpt

We can get outside the universe. I mean in a sense of putting a model of the universe inside our skulls. Not a superstitious, small-minded, parochial model, filled with ghosts and hobgoblins, magic and spirits. A big model, worthy of the reality that regulates, updates, and tempers it. A powerful model capable of running on into the future and making accurate predictions of our destiny and that of our world. We are alone among animals in foreseeing our end. We are also alone in being able to say, before we die: Yes, this is why it was worth coming to life in the first place.

Table of Contents

Title Page,
Table of Contents,
Copyright,
Dedication,
Preface,
The Anaesthetic of Familiarity,
Drawing Room of Dukes,
Barcodes in the Stars,
Barcodes on the Air,
Barcodes at the Bar,
Hoodwink'd with Faery Fancy,
Unweaving the Uncanny,
Huge Cloudy Symbols of a High Romance,
The Selfish Cooperator,
The Genetic Book of the Dead,
Reweaving the World,
The Balloon of the Mind,
Selected Bibliography,
Index,
About the Author,
Footnotes,