An Appetite For Wonder The Making Of A Scientist

Author : Richard Dawkins
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1448152690
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Appetite For Wonder: The Making of a Scientist written by Richard Dawkins and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-09-12 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born to parents who were enthusiastic naturalists, and linked through his wider family to a clutch of accomplished scientists, Richard Dawkins was bound to have biology in his genes. But what were the influences that shaped his life? And who inspired him to become the pioneering scientist and public thinker now famous (and infamous to some) around the world? In An Appetite for Wonder we join him on a personal journey from an enchanting childhood in colonial Africa, through the eccentricities of boarding school in England, to his studies at the University of Oxford’s dynamic Zoology Department, which sparked his radical new vision of Darwinism, The Selfish Gene. Through Dawkins’s honest self-reflection, touching reminiscences and witty anecdotes, we are finally able to understand the private influences that shaped the public man who, more than anyone else in his generation, explained our own origins.

Author : Richard Dawkins
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0552779059
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Appetite for Wonder written by Richard Dawkins and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born to parents who were enthusiastic naturalists, and linked through his wider family to a clutch of accomplished scientists, Richard Dawkins was bound to have biology in his genes. But what were the influences that shaped his life? And who inspired him to become the pioneering scientist and public thinker now famous (and infamous to some) around the world? In An Appetite for Wonder we join him on a personal journey from an enchanting childhood in colonial Africa, through the eccentricities of boarding school in England, to his studies at the University of Oxfordâe(tm)s dynamic Zoology Department, which sparked his radical new vision of Darwinism, The Selfish Gene. Through Dawkinsâe(tm)s honest self-reflection, touching reminiscences and witty anecdotes, we are finally able to understand the private influences that shaped the public man who, more than anyone else in his generation, explained our own origins.

Author : Richard Dawkins
Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 0547347359
Total Pages : 355 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Unweaving the Rainbow written by Richard Dawkins and published by HMH. This book was released on 2000-04-05 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times–bestselling author of Science in the Soul. “If any recent writing about science is poetic, it is this” (The Wall Street Journal). Did Sir Isaac Newton “unweave the rainbow” by reducing it to its prismatic colors, as John Keats contended? Did he, in other words, diminish beauty? Far from it, says acclaimed scientist Richard Dawkins; Newton’s unweaving is the key too much of modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern cosmology. Mysteries don’t lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution often is more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering deeper mysteries. With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made him a bestselling author, Dawkins takes up the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, combining them in a landmark statement of the human appetite for wonder. This is the book Dawkins was meant to write: A brilliant assessment of what science is (and isn’t), a tribute to science not because it is useful but because it is uplifting. “A love letter to science, an attempt to counter the perception that science is cold and devoid of aesthetic sensibility . . . Rich with metaphor, passionate arguments, wry humor, colorful examples, and unexpected connections, Dawkins’ prose can be mesmerizing.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Brilliance and wit.” —The New Yorker

Author : Richard Dawkins
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062225812
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Appetite for Wonder written by Richard Dawkins and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author and renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins delivers an intimate look into his own childhood and intellectual development, illuminating his path to becoming one of the foremost thinkers in modern science today “A memoir that is funny and modest, absorbing and playful. Dawkins has written a marvelous love letter to science . . . and for this, the book will touch scientists and science-loving persons . . . Enchanting.” —NPR Richard Dawkins’s first book, The Selfish Gene, was an immediate sensation and dramatically shifted the study of biology by offering a gene-centered view of evolution. Published in 1976, the book transformed the way we think about genes and evolution and has sold more than a million copies. In 2006, Dawkins transformed the world’s cultural and intellectual landscape again with The God Delusion, a scientific dismantling of religion. It was a New York Times bestseller and has sold more than two million copies worldwide. An Appetite for Wonder is Dawkins’s insightful memoir examining his own evolution as a man and as a thinker. From his beginnings in colonial Kenya to his intellectual awakening at Oxford, Dawkins shares his path to the creation of The Selfish Gene, and offers readers an in-depth look at the man and the mind that has changed the way we view science and evolution.

Author : Richard Dawkins
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780192860927
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Selfish Gene written by Richard Dawkins and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1989 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science

Author : Richard Dawkins
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1451675046
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Magic of Reality written by Richard Dawkins and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author addresses key scientific questions previously explained by rich mythologies, from the evolution of the first humans and the life cycle of stars to the principles of a rainbow and the origins of the universe.

Author : Richard Dawkins
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062288466
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Brief Candle in the Dark written by Richard Dawkins and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this hugely entertaining sequel to the New York Times bestselling memoir An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins delves deeply into his intellectual life spent kick-starting new conversations about science, culture, and religion and writing yet another of the most audacious and widely read books of the twentieth century—The God Delusion. Called “one of the best nonfiction writers alive today” (Stephen Pinker) and a “prize-fighter” (Nature), Richard Dawkins cheerfully, mischievously, looks back on a lifetime of tireless intellectual adventure and engagement. Exploring the halls of intellectual inquiry and stardom he encountered after the publication of his seminal work, The Selfish Gene; affectionately lampooning the world of academia, publishing, and television; and studding the pages with funny stories about the great men and women he’s known, Dawkins offers a candid look at the events and ideas that encouraged him to shift his attention to the intersection of culture, religion, and science. He also invites the reader to look more closely at the brilliant succession of ten influential books that grew naturally out of his busy life, highlighting the ideas that connect them and excavating their origins. On the publication of his tenth book, the smash hit, The God Delusion, a “resounding trumpet blast for truth” (Matt Ridley), Richard Dawkins was catapulted from mere intellectual stardom into a circle of celebrity thinkers dubbed, “The New Atheists”—including Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. Throughout A Brief Candle in the Dark, Dawkins shares with us his infectious sense of wonder at the natural world, his enjoyment of the absurdities of human interaction, and his bracing awareness of life’s brevity: all of which have made a deep imprint on our culture.

Author : Richard Dawkins
Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 0547416520
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Devil's Chaplain written by Richard Dawkins and published by HMH. This book was released on 2004-10-27 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on morality, mortality, and much more from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion. This early collection of essays from renowned evolutionary biologist 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 fellow biologist Stephen Jay Gould; commentary on the events of 9/11; and visits with the famed paleoanthropologists Richard and Meave Leakey at their African wildlife preserve. Ending with a vivid note to Dawkins’s ten-year-old daughter, reminding her to remain curious, ask questions, and live the examined life, A Devil’s Chaplain is a fascinating read by “a man of firm opinions, which he expresses with clarity and punch” (Scientific American).

Author : Richard Dawkins
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1984853910
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Outgrowing God written by Richard Dawkins and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should we believe in God? In this brisk introduction to modern atheism, one of the world’s greatest science writers tells us why we shouldn’t. Richard Dawkins was fifteen when he stopped believing in God. Deeply impressed by the beauty and complexity of living things, he’d felt certain they must have had a designer. Learning about evolution changed his mind. Now one of the world’s best and bestselling science communicators, Dawkins has given readers, young and old, the same opportunity to rethink the big questions. In twelve fiercely funny, mind-expanding chapters, Dawkins explains how the natural world arose without a designer—the improbability and beauty of the “bottom-up programming” that engineers an embryo or a flock of starlings—and challenges head-on some of the most basic assumptions made by the world’s religions: Do you believe in God? Which one? Is the Bible a “Good Book”? Is adhering to a religion necessary, or even likely, to make people good to one another? Dissecting everything from Abraham’s abuse of Isaac to the construction of a snowflake, Outgrowing God is a concise, provocative guide to thinking for yourself. Praise for Outgrowing God “My son came home from his first day in the sixth grade with arms outstretched plaintively demanding to know: ‘Have you ever heard of Jesus?’ We burst out laughing. Maybe not our finest parenting moment, given that he was genuinely distraught. He felt that he had woken up one day to a world in which his peers were expressing beliefs he found frighteningly unreasonable. He began devouring books like The God Delusion, books that helped him formulate his own arguments and helped him stand his ground. Dawkins’s new book is special in the terrain of atheists’ pleas for humanism and rationalism precisely since it speaks to those most vulnerable to the coercive tactics of religion. As Dawkins himself says in the dedication, this book is for ‘all young people when they’re old enough to decide for themselves.’ It is also, I must add, for their parents.”—Janna Levin, author of Black Hole Blues “When someone is considering atheism I tell them to read the Bible first and then Dawkins. Outgrowing God—second only to the Bible!”—Penn Jillette, author of God, No!

Author : Richard Dawkins
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0191093068
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Selfish Gene written by Richard Dawkins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The million copy international bestseller, critically acclaimed and translated into over 25 languages. As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research. Forty years later, its insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published. This 40th anniversary edition includes a new epilogue from the author discussing the continuing relevance of these ideas in evolutionary biology today, as well as the original prefaces and foreword, and extracts from early reviews. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.