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Books : A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love |
List Price: $14.95Amazon.com's Price: $10.17 You Save: $4.78 (32%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 500
EAN: 9780618485390
ISBN: 0618485392
Label: Mariner Books
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: October 27, 2004
Publisher: Mariner Books
Studio: Mariner Books
Sales Rank: 57035
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The first collection of essays from renowned scientist and best-selling author Richard Dawkins is an enthusiastic declaration, a testament to the power of rigorous scientific examination to reveal the wonders of the world. In these essays Dawkins revisits the meme, the unit of cultural information that he named and wrote about in his groundbreaking work The Selfish Gene. Here also are moving tributes to friends and colleagues, including a eulogy for novelist Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; correspondence with the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould; and visits with the famed paleoanthropologists Richard and Maeve Leakey at their African wildlife preserve. The collection ends with a vivid note to Dawkins's ten-year-old daughter, reminding her to remain curious, to ask questions, and to live the examined life.
Amazon.com Review:
Richard Dawkins has an opinion on everything biological, it seems, and in A Devil's Chaplain, everything is biological. Dawkins weighs in on topics as diverse as ape rights, jury trials, religion, and education, all examined through the lens of natural selection and evolution. Although many of these essays have been published elsewhere, this book is something of a greatest-hits compilation, reprinting many of Dawkins' most famous recent compositions. They are well worth re-reading. His 1998 review of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Fashionable Nonsense is as bracing an indictment of academic obscurantism as the book it covered, although the review reveals some of Dawkins' personal biases as well. Several essays are devoted to skillfully debunking religion and mysticism, and these are likely to raise the hackles of even casual believers. Science, and more specifically evolutionary science, underlies each essay, giving readers a glimpse into the last several years' debates about the minutiae of natural selection. In one moving piece, Dawkins reflects on his late rival Stephen Jay Gould's magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, and clarifies what it was the two Darwinist heavyweights actually disagreed about. While the collection showcases Dawkins' brilliance and intellectual sparkle, it brings up as many questions as it answers. As an ever-ardent champion of science, honest discourse, and rational debate, Dawkins will obviously relish the challenge of answering them. --Therese Littleton
Average Rating: 
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In this book, in vivid and virile prose, and many passages of stunning beauty, Richard Dawkins has created an illusion of certainty on one of the most critical issues of contemporary society: What does it mean to be a human being. The book is a collection of articles written over several years, with a literary grace and gift for imagery that is almost poetry.
The book is not a scientific treatise, but it waves the flag of science on every page. The science is sound, the science is breathtaking, ... Read More
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This is a book to sit and read. You are going to reflect why the evolutionary understanding is great!!!
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Some excellent essays. A touch too close to being a bit racist here and there, but perhaps that was inaccuracy of language. For the first time I think I actually understand something about evolution. His point about the 98% figure of genetic similarity with chimps was well made. He cited the fact that if you compare two books, there will be a lot of common letters and the figure would suggest similarity. But if you were to compare them sentence by sentence, they would probably share only a tiny fraction ... Read More
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Richard Dawkins is more eloquent in explaining biology and more forthright in disparaging its critics than anyone else writing in English today. However, the Greeks said even Homer nods, and I want to pursue a thread in this collection of reviews, prefaces and articles where I think Dawkins does not follow his own argument.
A recurrent proposition in these essays is that humans evolved in Africa (even Dawkins haters could be charmed by his essays on his return to Kenya) to meet African conditions. ... Read More
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It's pity about the title: the subtitle is slightly more informative. Dawkins defines the book himself in the first sentence of his introduction: " ... a personal selection from among all the articles, tirades and reflections, book reviews and forewords, tributes and eulogies that I have published (or in some cases not published) over 25 years." This would be a better title but it's a bit long.
If you want to learn more about the things Dawkins writes about, this book is not the best book to read. ... Read More
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