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4.09 AVERAGE
4.09 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
As someone who enjoys learning about evolution and wants to study it in graduate school, this book is great at distilling information in a logical way and in an accessible way through extended metaphor to a non-scientific audience. However, the book suffers on two accounts - the haughty self-important tone that one may expect from a British man and the moralizing/parallel drawing to human society of these evolutionary lessons. This second issue is perplexing as Dawkins in the beginning even discusses the limitations of doing so because of the confounding nature of culture and yet there is a bioessentialist talk on overpopulation (racially tinged unfortunately) and how welfare makes no sense in human society. I believe you might be better off reading a textbook or attending a lecture.
Still a young man's book. Even after all this time. I listened to it. I've never been a fan of Dawkins'. He's far too petulant and like me, for me to like him.
The most bewildering audio book I've ever listened to, and I've listened to more than just about anyone. Dawkins genuinely should have used a younger male Brit for the alternate voice, or done it himself.
Great moments within. Necessary ideas and concepts.
Flawed in the way Dawkins' and his world view are.
The most bewildering audio book I've ever listened to, and I've listened to more than just about anyone. Dawkins genuinely should have used a younger male Brit for the alternate voice, or done it himself.
Great moments within. Necessary ideas and concepts.
Flawed in the way Dawkins' and his world view are.
The content of this book was really interesting and well presented. I only wish that Dawkins could have buried his ego, and not used "I" so many times in his narrative. Even more annoying, educating the reading public on the correct way of pronouncing "algae" and unnecessarily letting us know that a certain word he's defined has made it into the OED only detract from this otherwise excellent book.
Wasn't able to finish it because life is too short, there are more books in the world I would actually enjoy reading, and I'm not a biologist. Nonetheless, I gave it two stars because his logic seems to be air tight and he did a decent job making this very scientific subject somewhat accessible for the average Joe.
It all started with memes. I wanted to know the origin. I wanted to understand how they start, how they function, and how to generate them. I discovered that the root was The Selfish Gene – and memes were conceived as the ideological counterpart to genes. The book is long in the tooth yet as important to understanding evolution today as it ever was. It explains not just the simplicity of selfishness but also how altruism can appear as a complex solution to the simple replication problem.
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A classic that I never got around to reading until now since it was written in '76 and I didn't start reading about evolution until the early 90s.
The basic theme of this book: that the gene, rather than the organism, should be thought of as the unit being acted upon by natural selection, seems a bit obvious now. But that's only because so many other evolution-related books written in the last thirty years build upon what was spelled out in this one!
In a cursory check of the bibliographies of books on my science shelves I found no fewer than twenty books that included this one as a reference, and deservedly so. Dawkins is such a fantastic writer that this book really does seem as fresh today as when it was written. Concepts are introduced and explained with such clear and clever language that whether or not the subject matter is already familiar to the reader, the high level of interest is maintained throughout. This edition has a couple of additional chapters that were added in '89, along with extensive end notes, allowing Dawkins to expand upon some of his points that were more speculative in '76 than they are now. And in case anyone is unaware, it's in this book that Dawkins coins the word "meme" as the cultural equivalent to the biological gene.
A brilliant book, highly recommended.
The basic theme of this book: that the gene, rather than the organism, should be thought of as the unit being acted upon by natural selection, seems a bit obvious now. But that's only because so many other evolution-related books written in the last thirty years build upon what was spelled out in this one!
In a cursory check of the bibliographies of books on my science shelves I found no fewer than twenty books that included this one as a reference, and deservedly so. Dawkins is such a fantastic writer that this book really does seem as fresh today as when it was written. Concepts are introduced and explained with such clear and clever language that whether or not the subject matter is already familiar to the reader, the high level of interest is maintained throughout. This edition has a couple of additional chapters that were added in '89, along with extensive end notes, allowing Dawkins to expand upon some of his points that were more speculative in '76 than they are now. And in case anyone is unaware, it's in this book that Dawkins coins the word "meme" as the cultural equivalent to the biological gene.
A brilliant book, highly recommended.
Articulate, comprehensive and measured are just some of the words that should be used in discussing this seminal work. With meticulous attention to progression and challenge, Dawkins realigns our understanding of the actors in the evolutionary process. A work that does more than explain, provoking thought and reflection.