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certainly safe, especially since he can keep talking to each caller for a few minutes before the next call ceases to seem roughly simultaneous. There are about 100,000 five-minute periods in a year. The probability that any given watch, say mine, will stop in a designated five-minute period is about 1 in 100,000. Low odds, but there are 10 million people watching the show. If only half of them are wearing watches, we could expect about 25 of those watches to stop in any given minute. If only a quarter of these ring into the studio, that is 6 calls, more than enough to dumbfound a naïve audience. Especially when you add in the calls from people whose watches stopped the day before, people whose watches didn't stop but whose grandfather clocks did, people who died of heart attacks and their bereaved relatives phoned in to say that their 'ticker' gave out, and so on.
278:"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, greater scientists than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?"
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320:. Science is often presented publicly in a translated format, "dumbed down" to fit the language and existing ideas of non-scientists. This offers a disservice to the public, who are capable of appreciating the beauty of the universe as deeply as a scientist can. The successful communication of unadulterated science enhances, not confuses, the arts; after all, poets (Dawkins's synonym for artists—see page 24) and scientists are motivated by a similar spirit of wonder. We should therefore battle the
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During an 'immortal dinner' 28th
December 1817 hosted by Haydon and attended by Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, Keats, and Keats's friend Monkhouse, Keats lightheartedly said Newton 'has destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow, by reducing it to the prismatic colours.' He then proposed a toast to 'Newton's
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and software of the 20th century are together an example of what
Dawkins calls "self-feeding co-evolution". A similar event occurred over a longer time scale (millions of years) when the minds and brains of our ancestors simultaneously improved very rapidly. Five possible triggers of this improvement
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An example would be a person on a foreign holiday encountering a friend they had not seen for years. In isolation this may feel like an impossible coincidence, but considering the wider petwhac (meeting any friend from around the same period, or meeting an acquaintance, or not meeting them but being
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If somebody's watch stopped three weeks after the spell was cast, even the most credulous would prefer to put it down to chance. We need to decide how large a delay would have been judged by the audience as sufficiently simultaneous with the psychic's announcement to impress. About five minutes is
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The first is explained by the fact that the clock had a mechanical defect which made it stop when tilted off the horizontal, which is what a nurse did to read the time of death in poor lighting conditions. The matter of the watches, in
Dawkins's own words, is explained thus —
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had to align in the universe. Given how special these circumstances are, the "noble" thing to do is employ the allotted several decades of human life towards understanding that universe. Rather than simply feeling connected with nature, one should rise above this
595:, short for "Population of Events That Would Have Appeared Coincidental". Dawkins suggests that when one encounters an extremely unlikely coincidence, it should be considered in the broader context of other, similar events which would
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or even necessarily restrict themselves to the mysterious: science itself, the business of unravelling mysteries, is beautiful and poetic. (The rest of the preface sketches an outline of the book, makes acknowledgements, etc.)
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Unlike "magisterial poetry" (where metaphors and pretty language are used to describe the familiar), "pupillary poetry" uses poetic imagery to assist a scientist's thinking about the exotic (e.g. consider "being" an
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that the reader came to be alive here and now, as opposed to another time or place, was slim. More important, the probability that the reader came to be alive at all were even slimmer: the correct structure of
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The first chapter describes several ways in which the universe appears beautiful and poetic when viewed scientifically. However, it first introduces an additional reason to embrace science.
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told weeks later that they had been in the same city at that time) the true odds are more likely. In short, the bigger the petwhac, the stronger case you have to avoid ascribing something to
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wherein readers resented his naturalistic world view, seeing it as depriving life of meaning, Dawkins felt the need to explain that, as a scientist, he saw the world as full of
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conclude by saying that human beings are the only animal with a sense of purpose in life, and that that purpose should be to construct a comprehensive
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on metaphor", they produce "bad science"; i.e. postulate faulty theories. This is powered by humanity's natural tendency to look for representations.
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The
Autobiography and Memoirs of Benjamin Robert Haydon 1786–1846 Compiled from his "Autobiography and Journals" and "Correspondence and Table-Talk"
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is discussed, and a comparison is made between brains and genes: albeit over different time scales, both record the environment's past to help the
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496:. The genes allow one to reconstruct a picture of the range of ways of life that the species has experienced; in this sense DNA would act as a
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of the flower while engaged in their study. Second, the mysteries which science unfolds lead to new and more exciting mysteries; for example,
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and a source of pleasure. This pleasure was not in spite of, but rather because he does not assume as cause the inexplicable actions of a
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or even via simple statistical reasoning. Everyone should learn the scientist's art of probability assessment, to make better decisions.
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Amazing coincidences are much more common than we may think, and sometimes, when over-interpreted, they lead to faulty conclusions.
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This chapter describes a third reason to embrace science (the first two being beauty and duty): improving one's performance in
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Studying a phenomenon, such as a flower, cannot detract from its beauty. First, some scientists, such as
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Unweaving the
Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
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Science in the Soul: Selected
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This chapter explores what
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Dawkins's
Rainbow Reduces Science to Truth, Beauty—and Fantasy
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health, and confusion to mathematics' to the amusement of all.
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Richard
Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think
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Flights of Fancy: Defying
Gravity by Design and Evolution
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The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
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Richard Dawkins: The man who knows the meaning of life
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Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science
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Books Do Furnish a Life: Reading and Writing Science
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The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
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make the optimal actions in the (predicted) future.
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200:but rather the understandable laws of nature.
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1175:The Genius of Charles Darwin
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418:extraterrestrial visitations
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211:destroyed the poetry of the
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579:of how the universe works.
404:Hoodwink'd with faery fancy
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767:The Science of Selfishness
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573:The balloon of the mind
538:The balloon of the mind
360:effects of moist air.)
16:Book by Richard Dawkins
1421:Houghton Mifflin books
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1282:God's utility function
1127:Nice Guys Finish First
941:The Extended Phenotype
813:Unweaving the Rainbow
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457:The selfish cooperator
203:His starting point is
22:Unweaving the Rainbow
1316:Richard Dawkins Award
1167:The Enemies of Reason
1159:The Root of All Evil?
973:Unweaving the Rainbow
857:The Scientist As Poet
845:Unweaving the Rainbow
755:The Poetry of Science
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428:Unweaving the uncanny
328:Barcodes in the stars
312:Drawing room of dukes
260:need not turn to the
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1135:The Blind Watchmaker
949:The Blind Watchmaker
739:Everyone a Scientist
304:of familiarity" and
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61:Evolutionary biology
1297:Universal Darwinism
989:The Ancestor's Tale
850:The Complete Review
748:The Literary Review
587:The book coins the
515:Reweaving the world
392:Barcodes at the bar
364:Barcodes on the air
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981:A Devil's Chaplain
838:Skeptical Inquirer
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1151:The Atheism Tapes
1084:Dawkins vs. Gould
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589:acronymical
370:sound waves
302:anaesthetic
292:probability
254:perceptions
1395:Categories
1252:Lalla Ward
567:Conclusion
549:ballistics
376:, and low-
354:aesthetics
338:aesthetics
322:stereotype
262:paranormal
228:To Science
205:John Keats
1272:Go God Go
1232:Gerin oil
561:analogies
557:metaphors
528:circuitry
482:arms race
410:astrology
378:frequency
358:prismatic
258:cosmology
67:Publisher
1334:Category
1210:See also
544:hardware
532:organism
474:predator
470:termites
447:electron
374:birdsong
318:the arts
175:the arts
131:45155530
49:Language
1361:Science
1347:Portals
791:Science
593:petwhac
583:Petwhac
509:cuckoos
505:archive
502:digital
494:habitat
382:pendula
334:Feynman
306:observe
282:Summary
250:purpose
240:Preface
235:Summary
213:rainbow
194:wonders
106:336 pp.
57:Subject
52:English
1202:(2013)
1194:(2012)
1186:(2010)
1178:(2008)
1170:(2007)
1162:(2006)
1154:(2004)
1146:(1996)
1138:(1987)
1130:(1987)
1111:(2008)
1103:(2006)
1095:(2006)
1087:(2001)
1079:(1991)
1060:(2021)
1052:(2021)
1046:(2019)
1040:(2017)
1032:(2015)
1024:(2013)
1016:(2011)
1008:(2009)
1000:(2006)
992:(2004)
984:(2003)
976:(1998)
968:(1996)
960:(1995)
952:(1986)
944:(1982)
936:(1976)
591:term,
555:, and
525:Neural
416:, and
342:botany
248:lacks
246:cosmos
157:
144:
39:Author
1385:Books
925:Books
915:Views
776:Salon
628:Notes
577:model
553:memes
462:Genes
451:drunk
414:magic
297:atoms
218:Lamia
198:deity
103:Pages
98:Print
1373:Arts
1217:Meme
605:fate
597:also
478:prey
476:and
422:Hume
221:and
186:and
125:OCLC
112:ISBN
82:1998
484:).
348:'s
346:fly
225:'s
1397::
859:–
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