Unweaving the rainbow by Richard Dawkins and Lalla ward
Audiobook
Genre- Non Fiction
Rating- 4/5 for matter, 3/5 for never ending soap opera like feeling!
Talking about how the poet WB Keats told that newtons forever spoiled his poetry for him by getting the scientific fact of rainbows And how they are formed
Richard here tries to use that analogy and tries to make his point that even scientific points can make nice poems. So after trying out all the avenues of his theory of evolution he now takes on poets and the abstracts!
So an already drab book about evolution which usually is instilled with facts is now filled with quotes and quotations and poems recited in alternate by the husband and wife duo!
Unfortunately people to read poems and poetry are not the ones who would try to read these type of books.
Then again like I had predicted in the previous book the Blind watchmaker that there will be similar books of these kinds written by Richard and narrated by him and I have been proven right!
So the very thing which he wanted to oppose like the sermon like nature of the religious books has now become a sermon of evolution in each and every book coming from the Richard Hawkins factory!
Mind you this is not a bad attempt; it’s a very nice book and if it was your first book of Richard Dawkins it would have been an amazing read but since this is like the fifth sixth book in the series it has become repetitive and definitely boring!
After the third of fourth book like the Blind watchmaker or the selfish Gene or the greatest show on Earth the individuality of each and every book has been lost to me and I am sure to the reader and now I am sure even the author has lost the individuality! So you have repetitions like the bad and the most commonly repeated animal that is the behaviour the cuckoo. I have a big urge of telling that the author has become cuckoo but then that’s not scientific!
Just make several important and good points throughout the book though.
Like the power of the brain it’s not what the eyes see but what the brain processes! He compares the system to a computer saying that you cannot use it like a direct comparison. But using the example of hollow mask which the brain perceives as solid he says that whatever we see is actually the virtual imaging done or made by the brain. Which is why when we see things which are not there or things which look like other things these are just tricks of light added to the imaging capacity of the brain!
This can very well be an imaginary monster which is at the end of the alley or it can be a dieting which you see in the sky or on the walls!
He also makes a very good point about coincidences since life is all about coincidences waiting to happen. He speaks about a true incident happened to his wife about how she got a watch and that had the inscription which was similar to the inscription of her grandmother or mother! Although that seemed amazing at first he by ways of calculating and by approximating and by prediction made the whole amazing incident quite possible albeit still rare!
The reason why this review is so short and simple is that I have simply lost track of which particular fact I read in this novel or work or the one before but then you would not miss anything much because it is literally the same thing stalled over and over again with different examples thats all!
The only thing which I noticed as an Otolaryngologist is that the author has an extreme case of laryngitis! In fact I had wondered about this in the previous books since the author had to speak non-stop for 10 to 15 hours and finally in this book it shows! The author’s voice is hoarse and not very clear in parts and he actually tries to put too much strain in his voice and as a speech specialist that was difficult for me to listen! For once I was happy when Lala took over once in a while!
Of course is no easy task to write books and to read about them and then read the whole book for 10 to 15 hours but I guess his first 4-5 books have already done the job so let us leave it at that Richard!
Of course the book talks about technology about computers about evolution about scientific facts and everything else which makes Richard Dawkins books quite readable so that’s there!
Read it (or listen to!) completion and just hope that there are no similar books! Since you don’t have to write a test about which particular fact you read in a particular book you are in safe territory!
Have fun and unweaving the rainbow! And then have fun trying to unweave which information was told in which book!
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