Unweaving the Rainbow
Encyclopedia
Unweaving the Rainbow is a 1998 book by Richard Dawkins
, discussing the relationship between science
and the arts
from the perspective of a scientist.
Dawkins addresses the misperception that science and art are at odds. Driven by the responses to his books The Selfish Gene
and The Blind Watchmaker
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 wonder
s 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 deity
but rather the understandable laws of nature.
His starting point is John Keats
' well-known, light-hearted accusation that Isaac Newton
destroyed the poetry of the rainbow
by 'reducing it to the prismatic colours.' (Incidentally, Newton did no such thing: it was Theodoric of Freiberg
who discovered rainbows were prismatic. Newton's famous discovery with prisms was recombination of a spectrum back into white light.) The agenda of the book is to show the reader that science does not destroy, but rather discovers poetry in the patterns of nature.
works, petwhac, etc.), which in fact form most of the text.
lacks purpose
: we live our lives regardless at a "human" level, according to ambition
s and perception
s which come more naturally. Therefore, science should not be feared as a sort of cosmological wet blanket. In fact, those in search of beauty or poetry
in their cosmology
need not turn to the paranormal
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.)
Richard Dawkins has stated on several occasions that these lines should be read at his funeral.
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 atom
s 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 "anaesthetic of familiarity" and observe the universe scientifically.
. 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' synonym for artists—see page 24) and scientists are motivated by a similar spirit of wonder. We should therefore battle the stereotype
that science is difficult, uncool, and not useful for the common person.
First, some scientists, such as Feynman
, are able to appreciate the aesthetics
of the flower while engaged in their study. Second, the mysteries which science unfolds lead to new and more exciting mysteries; for example, botany
's findings might lead us to wonder about the workings of a fly
's consciousness
.
This effect of multiplying mysteries should satisfy even those who think that scientific understanding is at odds with aesthetics
, e.g. people who agree with Einstein that "the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious".
(For evidence, the rest of this chapter discusses the fascinating science and beautiful new mysteries which followed in the wake of Newton's "unweaving" of the rainbow, q.e. his explanation of the prism
atic effects of moist air.)
phenomena such as pendula and periodic mass extinctions.
Everyone should learn the scientist's art of probability assessment, to make better decisions.
, religion
, magic
, and extraterrestrial visitations
. Credulity and Hume
's criterion are also discussed.
temporarily). Although it is useful, some authors take pupillary poetry too far, and, "drunk on metaphor", they produce "bad science"; i.e. postulate faulty theories. This is powered by humanity's natural tendency to look for representations.
s compete with each other, but this occurs within the context of collaboration, as is shown with examples involving mitochondria, bacteria
, and termite
s. Two types of collaboration are co-adaptation (tailoring simultaneously the different parts of an organism, such as flower colour and flower markings), and co-evolution (two species changing together; e.g. predator and prey running speeds may increase together in a sort of arms race
).
. 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 palimpsestic "digital
archive
" if only its language of encoding history could be fully understood. Finally, the curious genetics of cuckoo
s is discussed.
is akin to a powerful computer
, which creates a sort of virtual reality
to model economically the environment. Neural circuitry is discussed, and a comparison is made between brains and genes: albeit over different time scales, both record the environment's past in order to help the organism
make the optimal actions in the (predicted) future.
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 were: language, map reading, ballistics
, meme
s, and metaphor
s/analogies.
of how the universe works.
A way to get an idea of how to use the petwhac is as follows. Say you see a friend from school you have not seen for years when you are on holiday (an unlikely event); before saying it is fate or coincidence, think what is in the petwhac (meeting any friend from the same time period at least, friends of your brothers, sisters or parents, old flames, neighbours, teachers, someone who worked in the local chip-shop... the list is probably endless, and all would seem coincidental). In short: the bigger the petwhac, the stronger case you have to avoid ascribing something to fate
or coincidence.
Dawkins offers several examples of petwhacs in the book, two of which are the bedside clock of a woman (Richard Feynman
's wife) stopping exactly when she died, and a psychic who stops the watches of his television audience.
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' own words, is explained thus —
Dawkins defends his choice of the word "population" by writing "Population may seem an odd word, but it is the correct statistical term.", adding "I won't keep using capital letters because they stand so unattractively on the page."
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
, discussing the relationship between science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and the arts
The arts
The arts are a vast subdivision of culture, composed of many creative endeavors and disciplines. It is a broader term than "art", which as a description of a field usually means only the visual arts. The arts encompass visual arts, literary arts and the performing arts – music, theatre, dance and...
from the perspective of a scientist.
Dawkins addresses the misperception that science and art are at odds. Driven by the responses to his books The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene is a book on evolution by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. It builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's first book Adaptation and Natural Selection. Dawkins coined the term "selfish gene" as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution as opposed to the...
and The Blind Watchmaker
The Blind Watchmaker
The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design is a 1986 book by Richard Dawkins in which he presents an explanation of, and argument for, the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. He also presents arguments to refute certain criticisms made on...
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 wonder
Wonder (emotion)
Wonder is an emotion comparable to surprise that people feel when perceiving something very rare or unexpected . It has historically been seen as an important aspect of human nature, specifically being linked with curiosity and the drive behind intellectual exploration...
s 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 deity
Deity
A deity is a recognized preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....
but rather the understandable laws of nature.
His starting point is John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
' well-known, light-hearted accusation that Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
destroyed the poetry of the rainbow
Rainbow
A rainbow is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines on to droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere. It takes the form of a multicoloured arc...
by 'reducing it to the prismatic colours.' (Incidentally, Newton did no such thing: it was Theodoric of Freiberg
Theodoric of Freiberg
Theodoric of Freiberg was a German member of the Dominican order and a theologian and physicist...
who discovered rainbows were prismatic. Newton's famous discovery with prisms was recombination of a spectrum back into white light.) The agenda of the book is to show the reader that science does not destroy, but rather discovers poetry in the patterns of nature.
Summary of the arguments
The following summary of the book's arguments in favour of science does not attempt to reproduce the actual explanations of scientific phenomena (how DNADNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
works, petwhac, etc.), which in fact form most of the text.
Preface
It is of little concern whether or not science can prove that the ultimate fate of the cosmosCosmos
In the general sense, a cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from the Greek term κόσμος , meaning "order" or "ornament" and is antithetical to the concept of chaos. Today, the word is generally used as a synonym of the word Universe . The word cosmos originates from the same root...
lacks purpose
Meaning of life
The meaning of life constitutes a philosophical question concerning the purpose and significance of life or existence in general. This concept can be expressed through a variety of related questions, such as "Why are we here?", "What is life all about?", and "What is the meaning of it all?" It has...
: we live our lives regardless at a "human" level, according to ambition
Ambition
Ambition is the desire for personal achievement. It provides the motivation and determination necessary to achieve a particular end or condition. Ambitious people are characterised by their strong desire for attainment, power, or superiority...
s and perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
s which come more naturally. Therefore, science should not be feared as a sort of cosmological wet blanket. In fact, those in search of beauty or poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
in their cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
need not turn to the paranormal
Paranormal
Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...
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.)
Opening lines
"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, scientists greater 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?"Richard Dawkins has stated on several occasions that these lines should be read at his funeral.
Summary
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. Time and space are vast, so the probabilityProbability
Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...
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 atom
Atom
The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons...
s 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 "anaesthetic of familiarity" and observe the universe scientifically.
Drawing room of dukes
This chapter describes a third reason to embrace science (the first two being beauty and duty): improving one's performance in the artsThe arts
The arts are a vast subdivision of culture, composed of many creative endeavors and disciplines. It is a broader term than "art", which as a description of a field usually means only the visual arts. The arts encompass visual arts, literary arts and the performing arts – music, theatre, dance and...
. 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' synonym for artists—see page 24) and scientists are motivated by a similar spirit of wonder. We should therefore battle the stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
that science is difficult, uncool, and not useful for the common person.
Barcodes in the stars
Studying a phenomenon, such as a flower, cannot detract from its beauty.First, some scientists, such as Feynman
Feynman
Feynman may refer to:* Richard Feynman , physicist** Feynman diagram** Feynman graph** Feynman–Kac formula** The Feynman Lectures on Physics** Feynman integral, see Path integral formulation** Feynman parametrization...
, are able to appreciate the aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
of the flower while engaged in their study. Second, the mysteries which science unfolds lead to new and more exciting mysteries; for example, botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
's findings might lead us to wonder about the workings of a fly
Fly
True flies are insects of the order Diptera . They possess a pair of wings on the mesothorax and a pair of halteres, derived from the hind wings, on the metathorax...
's consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
.
This effect of multiplying mysteries should satisfy even those who think that scientific understanding is at odds with aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, e.g. people who agree with Einstein that "the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious".
(For evidence, the rest of this chapter discusses the fascinating science and beautiful new mysteries which followed in the wake of Newton's "unweaving" of the rainbow, q.e. his explanation of the prism
Prism (optics)
In optics, a prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light. The exact angles between the surfaces depend on the application. The traditional geometrical shape is that of a triangular prism with a triangular base and rectangular sides, and in colloquial use...
atic effects of moist air.)
Barcodes on the air
This chapter offers more evidence that science is fun and poetic, by exploring sound waves, birdsong, and low-frequencyFrequency
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...
phenomena such as pendula and periodic mass extinctions.
Barcodes at the bar
A fourth reason to embrace science is that it can help deliver justice in a court of law, via DNA fingerprinting or even via simple statistical reasoning.Everyone should learn the scientist's art of probability assessment, to make better decisions.
Hoodwink'd with faery fancy
This chapter explores what Dawkins considers to be fallacies in astrologyAstrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
, religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
, magic
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
, and extraterrestrial visitations
Extraterrestrial hypothesis
The extraterrestrial hypothesis is the hypothesis that some unidentified flying objects are best explained as being extraterrestrial life or non-human aliens from other planets occupying physical spacecraft visiting Earth.-Etymology:...
. Credulity and Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
's criterion are also discussed.
Unweaving the uncanny
Amazing coincidences are much more common than we may think, and sometimes, when over-interpreted, they lead to faulty conclusions. Statistical significance tests can help determine which patterns are meaningful.Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance
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 electronElectron
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...
temporarily). Although it is useful, some authors take pupillary poetry too far, and, "drunk on metaphor", they produce "bad science"; i.e. postulate faulty theories. This is powered by humanity's natural tendency to look for representations.
The selfish cooperator
GeneGene
A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
s compete with each other, but this occurs within the context of collaboration, as is shown with examples involving mitochondria, bacteria
Bacteria
Bacteria are a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...
, and termite
Termite
Termites are a group of eusocial insects that, until recently, were classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera , but are now accepted as the epifamily Termitoidae, of the cockroach order Blattodea...
s. Two types of collaboration are co-adaptation (tailoring simultaneously the different parts of an organism, such as flower colour and flower markings), and co-evolution (two species changing together; e.g. predator and prey running speeds may increase together in a sort of arms race
Arms race
The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation...
).
The genetic Book of the Dead
The body of any organism provides clues about its habitatHabitat
* Habitat , a place where a species lives and grows*Human habitat, a place where humans live, work or play** Space habitat, a space station intended as a permanent settlement...
. 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 palimpsestic "digital
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
archive
Archive
An archive is a collection of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of an organization...
" if only its language of encoding history could be fully understood. Finally, the curious genetics of cuckoo
Cuckoo
The cuckoos are a family, Cuculidae, of near passerine birds. The order Cuculiformes, in addition to the cuckoos, also includes the turacos . Some zoologists and taxonomists have also included the unique Hoatzin in the Cuculiformes, but its taxonomy remains in dispute...
s is discussed.
Reweaving the world
The brainBrain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
is akin to a powerful computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
, which creates a sort of virtual reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
to model economically the environment. Neural circuitry is discussed, and a comparison is made between brains and genes: albeit over different time scales, both record the environment's past in order to help the organism
Organism
In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...
make the optimal actions in the (predicted) future.
The balloon of the mind
The simultaneous explosions in hardwareHardware
Hardware is a general term for equipment such as keys, locks, hinges, latches, handles, wire, chains, plumbing supplies, tools, utensils, cutlery and machine parts. Household hardware is typically sold in hardware stores....
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 were: language, map reading, ballistics
Ballistics
Ballistics is the science of mechanics that deals with the flight, behavior, and effects of projectiles, especially bullets, gravity bombs, rockets, or the like; the science or art of designing and accelerating projectiles so as to achieve a desired performance.A ballistic body is a body which is...
, meme
Meme
A meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...
s, and metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
s/analogies.
Conclusion
The final two paragraphs of The balloon of the mind 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 modelScientific modelling
Scientific modelling is the process of generating abstract, conceptual, graphical and/or mathematical models. Science offers a growing collection of methods, techniques and theory about all kinds of specialized scientific modelling...
of how the universe works.
Petwhac
The book coins an acronymical term, Petwhac (Population of Events That Would Have Appeared Coincidental). This is defined as all those events that may be considered to be a 'coincidence' if studied casually, but are both possible and statistically probable.A way to get an idea of how to use the petwhac is as follows. Say you see a friend from school you have not seen for years when you are on holiday (an unlikely event); before saying it is fate or coincidence, think what is in the petwhac (meeting any friend from the same time period at least, friends of your brothers, sisters or parents, old flames, neighbours, teachers, someone who worked in the local chip-shop... the list is probably endless, and all would seem coincidental). In short: the bigger the petwhac, the stronger case you have to avoid ascribing something to fate
Destiny
Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...
or coincidence.
Dawkins offers several examples of petwhacs in the book, two of which are the bedside clock of a woman (Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
's wife) stopping exactly when she died, and a psychic who stops the watches of his television audience.
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' own words, is explained thus —
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 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 in to 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.
Dawkins defends his choice of the word "population" by writing "Population may seem an odd word, but it is the correct statistical term.", adding "I won't keep using capital letters because they stand so unattractively on the page."
External links
- Charlie Rose, April 11, 2000 - video interview with Dawkins about the book.
- Dawkins's Rainbow Reduces Science to Truth, Beauty—and Fantasy - reviewed by Robert N. Proctor, American Scientist.
- Richard Dawkins: The man who knows the meaning of life review from The Guardian.
- How, Why and Wow! - reviewed by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The Spectator.
- The Beauty of Applied Science - review from Mail on Sunday.
- There is Poetry in Science - reviewed by Melvyn Bragg, The Observer.
- Everyone a Scientist - reviewed by John Gribbin, The Literary Review.
- The Poetry of Science - reviewed by Sam Hurwitt, The San Francisco Examiner.
- The Science of Selfishness - reviewed by Andrew Brown, Salon.
- Nature of Science: A Wondrous and Poetic Spectrum reviewed by Charles M. Vest, Science.
- Frauds! Fakes! Phonies! - reviewed by Timothy Ferris, The New York Times.
- Unweaving the Rainbow reviewed by Paul R. GrossPaul R. GrossPaul R. Gross is a biologist and author, perhaps best known to the general public for Higher Superstition , written with Norman Levitt. Gross is the University Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Virginia; he previously served the university as Provost and Vice-President...
, The Wall Street Journal. - Finding Awe, Reverence, and Wonder in Science - reviewed by Kendrick Frazier, Skeptical Inquirer.
- Unweaving the Rainbow - review from The Complete Review.
- The Scientist As Poet - Arthur WinfreeArthur WinfreeArthur Taylor Winfree was a theoretical biologist at the University of Arizona. He was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States....
's 1964 essayEssayAn essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...