ريتشارد دوكينز: عالم غير من أفكارنا

by Mark Ridley, Alan Grafen, زينب البشاري (Translator )

أصبح ريتشارد دوكينز العالم والكاتب العالمي الشهير الذي وضع كتابي صانع الساعات الأعمى والجينات الأنانية وغيرهما من الكتب، يلعب دوراً بارزاً كمفكر شعبي رائد، وإلى جانب كونه مؤلفاً ومتخصصاً في علم الأحياء التطوري، فإنه يشتهر بتأييده الحماسي للعلم، ومناصرته للمذهب العقلاني ومهارته الفائقة في النقاش - التي يراها الكثيرون مثيرة للجدل إلا أنها دائماً في صميم أفكاره - تنافس صيته الذائع في آرائه العلمية الثاقبة والأسلوب الأدبي الرائع الذي يستخدمه في كتبه. وبمساعدة كل من دانيال دينيت وستيفن بينكر، وفيليب بولمان، ومات ريدلي، والسير جون كريبس، وهلينا كرونين، ورت ريف ريتشارد هاريز، ومايكل روس وغيرهم، تبرهن هذه الباقة من المقالات المثيرة والمتنوعة على تأثير أحد أعظم المفكرين في العالم اليوم

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Biography, Biology, Evolution, Philosophy, Essays

344 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of twenty five essays extolling the scientific genius of Richard Dawkins. More specifically, a 283 page homage to The Selfish Gene (pub. 1976) and The Extended Phenotype (pub. 1982) (okay, there are also a few reverent references to his other works, but it’s still The Selfish Gene and its sequel that get most of the ink).

The good news is that the essays are written by biologists, psychologists, ethnologists, sociologists, zoologists, and philosophers; the bad news is that the essays are written by biologists, psychologists, ethnologists, sociologists, zoologists, and philosophers:

“...for altruistic behavior to come about, the benefit (b) of an act has to outweigh its cost (c) times a number that is the reciprocal of the coefficient of relationship. This can be formulated as b > i/r x c.” (pg 77)

After all was said and done, I came away convinced that Dawkins is about 60% evolutionary biologist and about 40% revolutionary philosopher. A man lauded as much for his contributions to our understanding of science as for his contributions to science itself. He is a thinking-man’s thinking-man whose impact on modern scientific reasoning cannot be overstated. Perhaps the writer Philip Pullman said it best:

“He is a coiner of memorable phrases; he is a ferocious and implacable opponent of those who water the dark roots of superstition. But mainly he celebrates. He is a storyteller whose tale is true, and it’s a tale of the inexhaustible wonder of the physical world, and of ourselves and our origins.” (pg 276)

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very few scholars have managed to write break through scientific concepts and write in a manner successful with a popular audience. Richard Dawkins is one of these thinkers, plus in writing The Selfish Gene He did both in one book. When I read it, I was impressed by the clear logic of his arguments but did not know that this was his scientific paper and not an edited version for popular consumption.

When a scholar has achieved as much in the way of new ways of thinking and helping to invite new audiences into the world of scientific thought, there are only a few traditional ways his community can honor him. A banquet is not unknown and there are the various scientific award within the particular communities. What editors Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley have done in Richard Dawkins , How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think, is to bring together a number of the leading voices in several fields who wrote of their experiences applying Dawkins’ gene centric version of Evolution to several fields including and beyond biology. The papers published are organized across several groups including some who might be considered less than Dawkins’ fans, and others who are philosophers.

A problem is: after a few boxes of books are given to Professor Dawkins, maybe a few more scattered among the contributors, what is the popular value of the book? For myself it was a disappointment. The essays, most documented like scientific papers make for uneven reading. Some writers seem to be using the assignment as a cover to advance more of their own projects. Basically, I do not know who any of the contributors are. We do have a piece by Marian Stamp Dawkins who may be his wife or just a biologist with the same last name. (I just looked it up, Professor Dawkins is married to Professor Dawkins.) Why did I have to look it up? None of the contributors are introduced.
Depending on the reader’s background they may know some of these people, but there is little to tell the wider Dawkins audience, who these people are and why having them in this book is an honor for the honoree.

Professor Dawkins has written scientific papers, popular science books, several that are both and will influence thinking people for generations. The shelf life for Richard Dawkins; How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think will be much shorter.

[شريف Arafa · Rating 2 out of 5]

الكتاب عبارة عن مقالات لأناس يمدحون دوكينز دون تقديم أفكاره ذاتها بشكل متعمق.. لو اردت ان تقرأ له فاقرأ صانع الساعات الأعمى واعمل عقلك في الحجج الذي يسوقها كتدريب ذهني جيد فالرجل من رواد الإلحاد في العالم ومن اهم علماء البيولوجيا

[Stephie Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, the book was pretty good, but uneven, like a good many anthology, although the topic itself is very good, like Richard Dawkins and his work. There is a large difference between Dawkins' writing and most of those that have contributed to this volume. On a whole it is others who are writing and not Dawkins himself.

My two favorite chapters was An Eye on the Core about sociobiology linking Dawkins and E. O. Wilson and Every Indication of Inadvertent Solicitude on Dawkins' writing itself, that is not on content. Of the two chapters I emphasize the latter. One reason is that I find Dawkins writes well no matter what his subject matter. Another reason is that the author has provided a possible reason for his likeability as a pure writer. The author's premise is that Dawkins leads the reader along as if he is telling a story with the certainty of destination, although that is not revealed until the end, or close to it. I can relate this to another recent book I have read on epsitemology. The book was by Susan Haack. I felt as if I was reading a murder mystery, as she brought up theory after theory only to dismiss it, leading up to approval of her own theory.

In conclusion, the book is good, but absolutely no substitute for Dawkins' work itself. But, for a sense of his contributions it is an admirable work.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't not like this, considering that is a collection of essays by many of my all-time favorite authors, scientists, and scholars, writing about what is IMO the most important idea anyone ever had (Darwinism), and how profoundly Dawkins deepened our understanding of it.

Note: This is a collection of essays (by accomplished scholars... Some of whom are world-famous best-selling authors themselves). So if you're expecting something different, I suppose you could be disappointed, as some reviewers seem to be.

[Khalil · Rating 5 out of 5]

No wonder that professor Dawkins gained the world's top thinker poll this year , and that his masterpiece takes a place between top 25 greatest science books, as one of the essays noted here , Richard The Golden Pen , he is really so .
I still remember the situation very clearly , The Selfish Gene left me completely shocked for almost a week , it was ( and still ) the greatest science book I have ever read .

[Nola · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really disappointed in this book, which may be my fault. I was expecting an autobiography of Richard Dawkins, whose writing I admire. I was looking forward to a book from which I could learn more about the man, in language I could understand. Instead, this is a collection of essays about Dawkin's work, some of which were somewhat interesting and most of which were way over my head.

[Nesma Mostafa · Rating 3 out of 5]

ريتشارد دوكنز: عالم غير أفكارنا.
كتاب عبارة عن عدة مقالات، تتحدث عن اسهامات دوكينز في علم الأحياء، من خلال كُتبه، وخاصة كتاب "الجين الأناني".
أسفي الوحيد أنني لم اقرأ "الجين الأناني" قبل قراءة هذا الكتاب، وذلك لأن أغلب المقالات يعتمد أصحابها عن شرح الملابسات التي جمعتهم بالكتاب، ثم يتكلمون عن لمحات بسيطة منه، في إطار وجهة نظرهم.
هو كتاب جيد، ولكنه عبر أكثر عن هؤلاء الأشخاص، ومدح جهود دوكينز. وأنت كمُتلقي تتلقى الشحيح مما يُعرض داخل الكتاب الأصلي.
ولكنه على أي حال فُرصة جيدة لتعرفي على بعض كُتب هذا العالم.
سأقيمه بثلاثة نجوم.
لينك التحميل:
https://www.noor-book.com/%D9%83%D8%A...
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2020
(26)

[Ronald · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am an aficionado of Professor Richard Dawkins, the great evolutionary biologist, ethologist, humanist, prolific author and lecturer. And I say that he deserves a better biography than this.

Hmmm... with all of those 4 stars in the ratings of my fellow readers, I'll have to re-read this book. I may have been too hasty in giving it only a 2 star rating. Or, more likely, I've confused it with some other biographical work about Professor Dawkins.

[Leanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up thinking it was a biography, but it's really a set of essays about the impact of The Selfish Gene (and to a lesser extent The Extended Phenotype) on the scientific community, our culture, philosophy, etc. If you've read The Selfish Gene then this one is also worth a look, it describes the paradigm shift that The Selfish Gene requires of readers very well and basically looks at the book from every possible angle.

[Osama Abdel Qader · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب جيد في التعريف بريتشارد دوكينز
لكنه لا يخلو من املال خصوصا في النصف الثاني منه

[Dariosk · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book will appeal to very few people.
it's just a collection of "how Dawkins changed my life" recollections.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Different perspective on Dawkins' contributions to science. Very good.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating an anthology can be kind of a challenge, given the variety of authors represented, but I enjoyed this collection overall. I went through a Dawkins phase several years ago, and it was nice to revisit his writing and ideas, even if peripherally. Most of the pieces here are to some degree fluff, but this book still had enough substance to engage me in thought in three areas: 1) what our being products of evolution means for human nature, 2) what would correspond to a genotype for memes (i.e. what it would mean for a meme to be "in" someone's head), and 3) what, as an atheist, I think about religion. To someone who has read some of Dawkins' books and would be interested in what perspectives other writers' thoughts on them might give, this will probably be a worthwhile read.

[Anas Baydoune · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب من تأليف نخبة من العلماء الذين تأثروا بالعالم الكبير ريتشارد دوكينز وحكوا لنا تجربتهم معه وكيف تعرفوا على كتبه ومقالاته وأرجعوا له الفضل الكبير لما حققوه من إنجازاتهم المهنية والفكرية
وأريد أن أنوه على أمر ألا وهو أن الترجمة كانت جيدة ومرضية بالنسبة لي

[Merahnaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ini juga. Bukunya udah ada di kamar. Tapi entah kapan bacanya.

[Tom Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting selection of essays.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, first off, let me just say I hate the title of this book. Richard Dawkins is a cool and interesting writer, but he did not change the way I think. Setting that aside, though, he does provide lots of interesting food for thought, and this is a book with essays by a few dozen other cool thinkers. It's kind of what internet chat room conversations almost never are, but should be.

The book is composed of about 25 essays by various people about Richard Dawkins' ideas, especially those in his book "The Selfish Gene". For those who don't know Dawkins' work, the two Big Ideas that came out of this book were:
1) genes evolve to do what's good for genes, specifically copies of themselves, and this may or may not be good for the entire organism. On the plus side, it may lead to acts of apparent altruism by the whole organism, pushed by their genes into feeling the urge to help other organisms that hold copies of those same genes. On the down side, there are plenty of ways one can imagine a gene doing more good for itself than for others, for example by pushing the male of a species towards adultery, thinking that to have offspring with 100 partners, of which 7 survive, is better than to have less than 7 offspring with one partner that all survive.
2) genes may not be the only selfish replicators that spread like viruses. "Memes" was a word he coined for viruses of the mind, which spread because...they spread. In a trivial case, think of the jingle which isn't good, but which gets stuck in your mind so that you can't stop singing it, which puts it in other peoples' heads. In a non-trivial case, think of bad religion.

The writers include some I've read previous works by, like Steven Pinker, Dan Dennett, and Matt Ridley. Another interesting chapter comes from Marian Stamp Dawkins, Richard Dawkin's ex-wife, whose chapter begins: "I haven't lived with the author of The Selfish Gene for nearly 25 years but I have lived in close and constant contact with the book itself since before it was published." She gives several amusing stories of having his work plagiarized in the student papers she grades. What kind of an idiot thinks it's a good idea to throw your teacher's ex-husband's words back at her in a paper? The kind that would plagiarize, I suppose.

Whenever you talk about Dawkins' ideas, you cannot avoid discussing his opinions of religion. But in recent years, I think his unapologetically critical stance regarding religion has threatened to obscure his more generally applicable points. The various essays do a good job of balancing his current role as Skeptic in Chief, with a view to the reasons why his ideas are not only interesting but useful tools, perhaps the best thinker since Charles Darwin at giving us a new way of analyzing the world of biology (broadly defined).

Another topic hard to avoid when discussing Dawkins, is his rivalry with Stephen Jay Gould. Since shortly before Gould's death, Dawkins has been trying to downplay this, perhaps out of respect for the memory of a brilliant science writer cut down too early, but prior to that the two of them had been very public rivals. Inevitably, many of the essays in this book which discuss how Dawkins' ideas have grown in influence, make comparisons to, and contrasts with, those of Gould.

Many of the areas they disagreed on, relate to the elephant in the room whenever we talk about evolutionary theory: the political implications. Ever since Darwin's original works, there has been a tendency to use every new advance in how we understand evolution to justify one political theory or another. On one level it makes sense (we are bioligical organisms, and how any species is organized socially is an appropriate topic for biology), but the more a scientific field touches on politics the more heat any theory generates. Gould's ideas tended to support a political ideology somewhat to the left of Dawkins' ideas, which have been used to justify gender stereotypes, for example.

Whether it is religion or politics, part of the problem is that Dawkins' ideas are not quickly stated or understood. There are a lot of implications that need to be worked out, and that takes a certain minimum amount of space (pages) or time (discussion). If you are satisfied with a Reader's Digest version, you will have missed the biggest benefit of Dawkins' (or any other great thinker's) ideas, which is how they help you to analyze related problems on your own. The proper thing to do after reading a Dawkins book, is to play with the ideas yourself, perhaps with a friend, the only way to internalize an idea being to use it yourself. Here's a book full of people doing just that.

[Nicolai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richards Writings on evolution are amazing because they are detailed, thoughtful and well argued and because

1. the ideas make sense
2. he has an uncommon gift for phrase making (every indication of inadvertent solicitude, the selfish gene).
3. he reveals his personality in his writings
4. he tells stories (the quest may be difficult, but the reader is never lost).

he has a dim view of the intellectual and moral merits of religion.

cultural traits evolve by a process of natural selection in which there is a preferential proliferation of traits with properties that promote their own transmission.

transmission is an act of selection (spunky tits monkey ass licking cockarama.) a unit of selection must have fidelity, fecundity and longevity - a replicator.

an important set of ideas that arises from all this is evolutionary stable strategies - eg sex ratios

replicator/vehicle distinction

there are biological underpinings to human behaviour

mind, meaning, purpose and morality are fairly modern outcomes from the mindless churning of darwinian alogrithms. an alogrithm is a step by step set of instructions like directions or baking a cake.

people are more divided by the problems they wish to address than the set of problems

the problem of natural selection applies to any replicator which carries info with a certain degree of fidelity

boyer says religiious ideas are the right blend of familiar and myseterious - transformed familiars. (e.g. creatures but not oridnary, figures humanlike in emotion and passion but not in their power - transformations make them salient).

at some dinner parties the strength with which some opinions are held is matched only by the weakness of their foundations.

there is an odd chapter in this book by philosopher micheal ruse who objects to dawkin's ideas of progress and progression. i think his objections are arguing aginst something that dawkins does not particularly propound.

meaning is not conveyed by life itself, but must be imposed upon it; this is an informed biological perspective and only makes sense because of that perspective. the quest for meaning only takes place because as people's lives are based on a biological fundamental lack of meaning.

humans are evolution that has become aware of itself.

[Xaverius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solo merecerá la pena a los muy interesados (más o menos como yo, lo bastante para leer esto pero no lo bastante como para abrir su autobiografía). Algunas partes de científicos explicando cómo las contribuciones de Dawkins les ayudaron en su investigación son interesantes por relatarte cosas de las polémicas de la sociobiología o como contraejemplo claro a quien dice que el enfoque del gen egoísta es infalsable o que no ha contribuido a entender la evolución(refutado de sobras solo con lo de aquí), pero las partes buenas están enterradas entre gente simplemente alabando a Dawkins y cómo escribe sin ejemplos concretos o criticando movidas tangenciales de su trabajo (como explicar por que la memética no ha producido nada y probablemente nunca lo haga).

[Kerszi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zbiór reporterzy chwalących dokonania Richarda Dawkinsa. W sumie liczyłem na więcej krytyki, a było praktycznie samo zachwalanie. Nawet głosy antyfalne były bardzo przychylne. Z książki się dowiedziałem jakich przyjaciół i fanów ma Dawkins, bo zbytnio nowych rzeczy to nie, ale i tak warto przeczytać. Książka w Polsce ukazała się w 2008 roku, dwa lata po edycji w Anglii i trzydzieści lat po samolubnym genie. Na obecny czas (2015 rok( bardzo ciężko ją dostać, w wersji elektronicznej nie ma, ale wyrwałem jakoś na allegro w zawyżonej cenie.

[Hollis Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fascinating collection of essays that summarises Dawkins' influence on a wide range of disciplines outside of biology: philosophy, psychology, sociology, computer science and popular science in general. Essential reading for Dawkins fans.

[Karima Hussein]

الكتاب عبارة عن أن كل عالم عارف ريتشارد دوكينز بيقول رأيه ف ريتشارد دوكينز وبيمدح فيه زائد أنه بيأيد كلامه ف أنكار وجود ربنا
والكتاب مينفعش تستدل بيه على كلام دوكينز أو على فكره

وعامة ريشتارد دوكينز ملحد أه بس ملحد بيستهبل وكلامه ف مناظراته بيثبت وجود أله للكون

[Jehni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Going to be a good read for my favourite personal hero (next to Douglas Adams!)

[Amoole · Rating 3 out of 5]

مجموعه من الفصول تصف أراء مجموعه من الاشخاص من مختلف التخصصات تصف كيف اثر دوكينز بهم ورأيهم بمؤلفاته وافلامة الوثائقيه

[Eugéne · Rating 1 out of 5]

We think in ways other than empirical verification, i.e. a priori analytical verification, or poetic sympathetic convergence, both of which are more important to the 'way we live' than is 'science'.

[Justin Woody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book about a very interesting man. After reading many of his books it was great to see how he ended up where he did. Looking forward to the second book