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122 lines
5.2 KiB
122 lines
5.2 KiB
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me"><h1>Julio Biason .Me 4.3</h1></a> |
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<p class="lead">Old school dev living in a 2.0 dev world</p> |
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<h1 class="post-title">A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love</h1> |
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2019-07-16 |
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/books/">#books</a> |
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/reviews/">#reviews</a> |
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/richard-dawkins/">#richard dawkins</a> |
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/history/">#history</a> |
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/biography/">#biography</a> |
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/stars-2/">#stars:2</a> |
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/published-2003/">#published:2003</a> |
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<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61536.A_Devil_s_Chaplain">Goodreads summary</a>: |
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Richard Dawkins's essays are an enthusiastic testament to the power of |
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rigorous, scientific examination, and they span many different corners of his |
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personal and professional life. He revisits the meme, the unit of cultural |
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information that he named and wrote about in his groundbreaking work The |
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Selfish Gene. He makes moving tributes to friends and colleagues, including a |
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eulogy for novelist Douglas Adams; he shares correspondence with the |
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evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould; and he visits with the famed |
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paleoanthropologists Richard and Maeve Leakey at their African wildlife |
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preserve. He concludes the essays with a vivid note to his ten-year-old |
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daughter, reminding her to remain curious, to ask questions, and to live the |
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examined life.</p> |
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<span id="continue-reading"></span><div> |
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★★☆☆☆ |
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<p>A better name for this book would be "Dawkins, by Dawkins". It's a collection |
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of articles written by Dawkins, selected by Dawkins himself.</p> |
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<p>The first thing I noticed is that, for a "smart" person, Dawkins surely can't |
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write. It seems he tries to shove so much stuff in an article that, at some |
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later point, you start asking yourself what the heck was the point he was |
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trying to make to start with.</p> |
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<p>The other thing I noticed is how much he likes to quote other people. The very |
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first article is so full of quotes, it feels like more than half of it is |
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simply quotes. And absolutely a sloppy job in stitching them together.</p> |
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<p>On top of that, there is a constant feeling that Dawkins believes he's |
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"Neo-Darwinian Prime": The only person capable of talking about new Darwinian |
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theories, and calling other theories wrong. I have the feeling that, in the |
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foreword for a Stephen Gould book, Dawkins claimed the book was wrong. But, |
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then again, with the mess Dawkins do with its ideas, I'm not actually sure if |
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it was a review or a foreword.</p> |
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<p>And even if, through this book, Dawkins claims that he has a good relationship |
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with Gould, the fact that he keeps claiming he believes Gould theories are |
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wrong, and that general feeling that he's the only one that can claim to be |
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neo Darwinian makes me believe that he, actually, didn't.</p> |
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<p>In general, I'm not even sure if this book gives a good impression of Dawkins.</p> |
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