Daniel James Sharp at The Freethinker:
In The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing (2008), Richard Dawkins writes:
Our ability to understand the universe and our position in it is one of the glories of the human species. Our ability to link mind to mind by language, and especially to transmit our thoughts across the centuries is another. Science and literature, then, are the two achievements of Homo sapiens that most convincingly justify the specific name.
And I think I am justified in saying that Dawkins himself is one of the few who have really managed to combine these two greatest achievements of humanity. In a corpus of work written over half a century, Dawkins has innovated and explained, and he has done so with the ear and eye of a poet. It is appropriate, then, that his new book, The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie, is a medley and a melody: a revisiting and extension of his previous ideas about evolution written with elegance and beauty. The very word ‘reverie’ suggests a pleasant and roaming meditation, which is exactly what The Genetic Book of the Dead is. Come to think of it, the quintessentially Dawkinsian phrase ‘a Darwinian reverie’ might just sum up Dawkins’s entire career. Call this book a Dawkinsian medley, or a Dawkinsian melody, then.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.