A Devil's Chaplain

by Dawkins, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780618485390
• ISBN10: 0618485392
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780547416526
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-10-27
• Publisher: Mariner Books

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Richard Dawkins taught zoology at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he has held since 1995. Among his previous books are The Ancestor’s Tale, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and A Devil’s Chaplain. Dawkins lives in Oxford with his wife, the actress and artist Lalla Ward.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the American Edition	p. 1
Science and Sensibility	p. 5
A Devil's Chaplain	p. 8
What is True?	p. 14
Gaps in the Mind	p. 20
Science, Genetics and Ethics: Memo for Tony Blair	p. 27
Trial By Jury	p. 38
Crystalline Truth and Crystal Balls	p. 42
Postmodernism Disrobed	p. 47
The Joy of Living Dangerously: Sanderson of Oundle	p. 54
Light Will Be Thrown	p. 61
Light Will Be Thrown	p. 63
Darwin Triumphant	p. 78
The 'Information Challenge'	p. 91
Genes Aren't Us	p. 104
Son of Moore's Law	p. 107
The Infected Mind	p. 117
Chinese Junk and Chinese Whispers	p. 119
Viruses of the Mind	p. 128
The Great Convergence	p. 146
Dolly and the Cloth Heads	p. 152
Time to Stand Up	p. 156
They Told Me, Heraclitus	p. 163
Lament for Douglas	p. 165
Eulogy for Douglas Adams	p. 168
Eulogy for W. D. Hamilton	p. 171
Snake Oil	p. 179
Even the Ranks of Tuscany	p. 187
Rejoicing in Multifarious Nature	p. 190
The Art of the Developable	p. 194
Hallucigenia, Wiwaxia and Friends	p. 203
Human Chauvinism and Evolutionary Progress	p. 206
Unfinished Correspondence with a Darwinian Heavyweight	p. 218
There is All Africa and her Prodigies in Us	p. 223
Ecology of Genes	p. 225
Out of the Soul of Africa	p. 228
I Speak of Africa and Golden Joys	p. 231
Heroes and Ancestors	p. 234
A Prayer for My Daughter	p. 241
Good and Bad Reasons for Believing	p. 242
Endnotes	p. 249
Index	p. 256
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