Scan barcode
A review by saroz162
An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist by Richard Dawkins
3.0
I had no idea this book was coming out. I stumbled on it, quite by accident, in a pre-Christmas sale display at a local bookstore. My father has both an avid interest in science and a lifelong philosophy of skepticism, and I recalled that he had read and enjoyed (well, been intrigued by - that's about as good as you can ever get with my dad) a couple of Dawkins books in the past. Personally, I'm at least passingly familiar with Dawkins' fame/notoriety, though I admit I got there largely through following the career of his wife (the actress Lalla Ward). Dad doesn't read many books each year, but I thought this might be one we could read "alone together" and use as the basis for conversation. It gets hard, you know, when you and your parents get older and you realize your interests have diverged. It makes the telephone conversations hard.
So with that in mind, I gave the book to my dad for Christmas, and he is, I think, working his way through it slowly. I decided to get a copy from my university library and read it so I would be prepared. To be honest, I found the initial chapters hard going. Although I was intrigued by Dawkins' descriptions of growing up in 1940s colonial Africa, much of the writing seems derived from study of his mother's journals and his own...well, shall we say, postulations. That lends a detached and sometimes even condescending air to his prose, and there are times in those childhood sequences when he digresses as firmly and didactically as any Christian evangelist. While my own philosophy is broadly atheistic, I found Dawkins' musings on the potential harm of fairy stories and the need to foster skeptical thinking in children more than a little self-righteous. Yeah, we get it, Richard. We get that you think the belief in the "power of prayer" is misguided. Staring down your nose at those who do believe in it doesn't add any credence - or, indeed, interest to your argument. And again, I say this as a non-religious person who broadly agrees with his point of view.
Fortunately, once Dawkins moves out of childhood and into his living memory, the book greatly improves. His early exploits at Oxford are quite interesting, if a little foreign to a reader who works in the American university system, and I really enjoyed his reflective journey through his early experiments with behavioral predispositions in animals and the development of his "selfish gene" theory. I blazed through the second half of the book, frankly, and it leaves me wanting to pick up the second volume when it comes out in (he predicts) two years' time. I'm also quite interested to read The Selfish Gene - and as I do not have my father's natural scientific inclination, that comes as quite a surprise.
An Appetite for Wonder, then, is a game of two halves. Once we set into the young Dawkins' wonder at science, yes, the book is excellent reading. Getting to that point is occasionally a little awkward, at least to this reader, but thankfully, the eventual goal is well worth attaining.
So with that in mind, I gave the book to my dad for Christmas, and he is, I think, working his way through it slowly. I decided to get a copy from my university library and read it so I would be prepared. To be honest, I found the initial chapters hard going. Although I was intrigued by Dawkins' descriptions of growing up in 1940s colonial Africa, much of the writing seems derived from study of his mother's journals and his own...well, shall we say, postulations. That lends a detached and sometimes even condescending air to his prose, and there are times in those childhood sequences when he digresses as firmly and didactically as any Christian evangelist. While my own philosophy is broadly atheistic, I found Dawkins' musings on the potential harm of fairy stories and the need to foster skeptical thinking in children more than a little self-righteous. Yeah, we get it, Richard. We get that you think the belief in the "power of prayer" is misguided. Staring down your nose at those who do believe in it doesn't add any credence - or, indeed, interest to your argument. And again, I say this as a non-religious person who broadly agrees with his point of view.
Fortunately, once Dawkins moves out of childhood and into his living memory, the book greatly improves. His early exploits at Oxford are quite interesting, if a little foreign to a reader who works in the American university system, and I really enjoyed his reflective journey through his early experiments with behavioral predispositions in animals and the development of his "selfish gene" theory. I blazed through the second half of the book, frankly, and it leaves me wanting to pick up the second volume when it comes out in (he predicts) two years' time. I'm also quite interested to read The Selfish Gene - and as I do not have my father's natural scientific inclination, that comes as quite a surprise.
An Appetite for Wonder, then, is a game of two halves. Once we set into the young Dawkins' wonder at science, yes, the book is excellent reading. Getting to that point is occasionally a little awkward, at least to this reader, but thankfully, the eventual goal is well worth attaining.