Books Do Furnish a Life Reading and Writing Science

by Dawkins, Richard

• ISBN13: 9781787633681
• ISBN10: 1787633683
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2021-09-01
• Publisher: Bantam Press

Summary

A SPECTATOR BEST BOOK OF 2021

'Richard Dawkins is a thunderously gifted science writer.' Sunday Times

'It may be a collection of shorter parts, but the book is in no sense Dawkins made simple. It amounts to a substantive whole which offers a unitary panoramic view across his entire intellectual life.' Spectator

Including conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and more, this is an essential guide to the most exciting ideas of our time and their proponents from our most brilliant science communicator.

Books Do Furnish a Life is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and interrogating faith. For the first time, it brings together Richard Dawkins' forewords, afterwords and introductions to the work of some of the leading thinkers of our age - Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert - with a selection of his reviews to provide an electrifying celebration of science writing, both fiction and non-fiction. It is also a sparkling addition to Dawkins' own remarkable canon of work.

Plenty of other scientists write well, but no one writes like Dawkins... here is Dawkins the teacher, the scholar, the polemicist, the joker, the aesthete, the poet, the satirist, the man of compassion as well as indignation, the slayer of superstition and, above all, the scientist. - Areo Magazine

Author Biography

Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is a Fellow of New College, Oxford and both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Editor’s introduction 1
Author’s introduction: The literature of science 4

i TOOLS OF TWO TRADES: :
WRITING SCIENCE 19
In conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson:
   On science and scientists, in public and private 21
The uncommon sense of science 38
Are we all related? 44
The timeless and the topical 47
Fighting on two fronts 54
Pornophilosophy 57
Determinism and dialectics: a tale of sound and fury 62
Tutorial-driven teaching 69
Life after light 76
A scientific education and the Deep Problems 79
Rationalist, iconoclast, Renaissance man 85
Revisiting The Selfish Gene 90

II WORLDS BEYOND WORDS:
CELEBRATING NATURE 103
In conversation with Adam Hart-Davis:
    Evolution and plain writing in science 105
Close encounters with the truth 116
Conserving communities 120
Darwin on the slab 129
Life within life 132
Pure delight in a godless universe 138
Travelling with Darwin 143
Pictures of paradise 158

III INSIDE THE SURVIVAL MACHINE:61
EXPLORING HUMANITY
In conversation with Steven Pinker:
    Language, learning and debugging the brain 163
Old brain, new brain 176
Breaking the species barrier 183
Branching out 187
Darwinism and human purpose 192
Worlds in microcosm 199
Real genes and virtual worlds 221
Nice guys (still) finish frst 229
Art, advertisement and attraction 234
From African Eve to the Banda strandlopers 240
We are stardust 253
The descent of Edward Wilson 255
IV THE MINER'S CANARY:
SUPPORTING SCEPTICISM 267
In conversation with Christopher Hitchens:
Is America heading for theocracy? 269
Witness of internal delusion 279
Kicking the habit 284
The unburdening lightness of relief 287
A public and political atheist 290
The great escape 296
In His own words: a portrait of God 298
Liberation from theology 302
The God Temptation 309
The intellectual and moral courage of atheism 313

V COUNSEL FOR THE PROSECUTION:
INTERROGATING FAITH 327
    In conversation with Lawrence Krauss:
Should science speak to faith? 329
Defending the wall of separation 338
A moral and intellectual emergency 344
Unmasking the design illusion 347
‘Nothing will come of nothing’: why Lear was wrong 352
The fast food thesis: religion as evolutionary by-product 357
An ambitious banana skin 361
Heavenly twins 365
A tale of horror and heroism 368

V TENDING THE FLAME:
EVANGELIZING EVOLUTION 373
    In conversation with Matt Ridley:
From Darwin to DNA – and beyond 375
Te ‘little Penguin’ relaunched 386
Foxes in the snow 393
Telling truth in a dark time 401
Irresponsible publishing? 407
Inferior design 414
The only kind of truth that works 418

Epilogue: To be read at my funeral 429

Sources and acknowledgments 431
Bibliography of works cited 437
Index 441