The first collection of essays from renowned scientist and
best-selling author 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 the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay
Gould; and visits with the famed paleoanthropologists Richard and
Maeve Leakey at their African wildlife preserve. The collection
ends with a vivid note to Dawkins''s ten-year-old daughter,
reminding her to remain curious, to ask questions, and to live the
examined life.
關於作者:
Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist renowned
throughout the world. He was educated at Oxford and taught zoology
before becoming the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of
the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, in 1995.
His previous books rank among the most influential intellectual
works of our time., They include The Selfish Gene 1976, River Out
of Eden 1995, and Unweaving the Rainbow 1999.
目錄:
Introduction to the American Edition
1 Science and Sensibility
A Devil''s Chaplain
What is Tree?
Gaps in the Mind
Science, Genetics and Ethics: Memo for Tony Blair
Trial By Jury
Crystalline Truth and Crystal Balls
Postmodernism Disrobed
The Joy of Living Dangerously: Sanderson of Oundle
2 Light Will Be Thrown
Light Will Be Thrown
Darwin Triumphant
The ''Information Challenge''
Genes Aren''t Us
Son of Moore''s Law
3 The Infected.Mind
Chinese Junk and Chinese Whispers
Viruses of the Mind
The Great Convergence
Dolly and the Cloth Heads
Time to Stand Up
4 They Told Me, Heraclitus
Lament for Douglas
Eulogy for Douglas Adams
Eulogy for W. D. Hamilton
Snake Oil
5 Even the Ranks of Tuscany
Reioicing in Multifarious Nature
The Art of the Developable
Hallucigenia, Wiwaxia and Friends
Human Chauvinism and Evolutionary Progress
Unfinished Correspondence with a Darwinian Heavyweight
6 There is All Africa and her Prodigies in Us
Ecology of Genes
Out of the Soul of Africa
I Speak of Africa and Golden Joys
Heroes and Ancestirs
7 A Prayer for My Daughter
Good and Bad Reasons for Believing
Endnotes
Index