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A review by phileasfogg
The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True by Richard Dawkins
4.0
Reality is having a pretty hard time these days, with violent religious fanatics more active in the world than they've been for centuries, and with media companies and lobby firms actively campaigning against science in the service of world-damaging enterprises. It could use some champions.
The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True is a persuasive text, aimed primarily at younger readers who don't know much about science. The target audience isn't science geeks, who'll be reading adult popular science books, but their non-geek contemporaries, the kids who might be vulnerable to the forces of irreality. That is to say, to religion. Although the target audience is curious children, I'm sure most adult readers would also learn some new and interesting things from it.
The book's core message is that science is not just another belief system, but is the only reality-based belief system, one based ultimately on what we perceive with our senses. It's the only belief system that can stand up to intelligent scrutiny, that can make useful predictions, that makes claims that can be proved or disproved, that can grow and change to accommodate new discoveries and observations. It's the only belief system that can provide non-silly answers to the questions about the world that occur to thoughtful people.
The book provides clear, concise answers to some of those questions. Most of the questions are scientific, such as 'Why do earthquakes happen?' and 'Why are there so many different kinds of animals?' Some belong more to the metaphysical domain in which religions might try to claim authority, such as 'Why do bad things happen?' I was initially sceptical about whether that latter chapter belonged, but it delved into some interesting and worthwhile aspects of probability that justified its presence.
Richard Dawkins's antipathy to religion is well-known, and in this reader he is preaching to the choir. I suspect he mainly preaches to the choir, because religious believers won't read books with titles like The God Delusion. He reins in his atheistic fervour in this book, though it still emerges, to the book's detriment. Most chapters are prefaced with mythological stories that provide unscientific answers to scientific questions. Dawkins is seldom content to merely tell the myth: he has to take the piss. I felt some of the myths were never intended to be the literal truth by the people who told them, but were playful expressions of the arbitrariness of the way things are. But because many of these stories are essentially comical it's easy to make them and the people who supposedly believed them seem foolish.
Kids aren't stupid, and I think they are as likely as I to detect the 'propaganda' aspect of the book, and to be put off by it. That would be a shame. My ideal version of the book, as an effective weapon in the fight against irreality, would consist of Dawkins's well-written, clear answers, without the myths. The plain truth, written well in language the reader can understand, is persuasive enough.
PS: I read a paperback edition which has illustrations only on the chapter heads, depicting scenes from myth. I felt that some of the scientific explanations would benefit from diagrams, and I believe the hardback version of the book includes them. I'd recommend reading the fully illustrated version if you can.
The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True is a persuasive text, aimed primarily at younger readers who don't know much about science. The target audience isn't science geeks, who'll be reading adult popular science books, but their non-geek contemporaries, the kids who might be vulnerable to the forces of irreality. That is to say, to religion. Although the target audience is curious children, I'm sure most adult readers would also learn some new and interesting things from it.
The book's core message is that science is not just another belief system, but is the only reality-based belief system, one based ultimately on what we perceive with our senses. It's the only belief system that can stand up to intelligent scrutiny, that can make useful predictions, that makes claims that can be proved or disproved, that can grow and change to accommodate new discoveries and observations. It's the only belief system that can provide non-silly answers to the questions about the world that occur to thoughtful people.
The book provides clear, concise answers to some of those questions. Most of the questions are scientific, such as 'Why do earthquakes happen?' and 'Why are there so many different kinds of animals?' Some belong more to the metaphysical domain in which religions might try to claim authority, such as 'Why do bad things happen?' I was initially sceptical about whether that latter chapter belonged, but it delved into some interesting and worthwhile aspects of probability that justified its presence.
Richard Dawkins's antipathy to religion is well-known, and in this reader he is preaching to the choir. I suspect he mainly preaches to the choir, because religious believers won't read books with titles like The God Delusion. He reins in his atheistic fervour in this book, though it still emerges, to the book's detriment. Most chapters are prefaced with mythological stories that provide unscientific answers to scientific questions. Dawkins is seldom content to merely tell the myth: he has to take the piss. I felt some of the myths were never intended to be the literal truth by the people who told them, but were playful expressions of the arbitrariness of the way things are. But because many of these stories are essentially comical it's easy to make them and the people who supposedly believed them seem foolish.
Kids aren't stupid, and I think they are as likely as I to detect the 'propaganda' aspect of the book, and to be put off by it. That would be a shame. My ideal version of the book, as an effective weapon in the fight against irreality, would consist of Dawkins's well-written, clear answers, without the myths. The plain truth, written well in language the reader can understand, is persuasive enough.
PS: I read a paperback edition which has illustrations only on the chapter heads, depicting scenes from myth. I felt that some of the scientific explanations would benefit from diagrams, and I believe the hardback version of the book includes them. I'd recommend reading the fully illustrated version if you can.