Unweaving the Rainbow
by Richard Dawkins · first published 1998
44% recommend56% neutral
Did Newton "unweave the rainbow" by reducing it to its prismatic colors, as Keats contended? Did he, in other words, diminish beauty? Far from it, says Dawkins - Newton's unweaving is the key to much of modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern cosmology. Mysteries don't lose their poetry because they are solved; the solution is often more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering deeper mystery. Dawkins takes up the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, and combines them in a landmark statement of the
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…though, trying to go into the detail of every single thing is probably beyond what can be read in a single human's life time now. Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything is pretty good start, or Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins, which is a book about how science makes nature even more beautiful by explaining it, not less.
on “Time-lapse of a single cell transforming into a salamander (2019)” ↗…libertarianism and don't really care to relate to the characters. Read We by Yevgheny Zamyatin if you want an interesting allegory that metaphorically compares heaven to a dystopian dictatorship. Read Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins if you're very interested in the sciences. I remember Sebastian Marshall recommending Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa -- I'd recommend it too. It's pretty good, and I was especially interested…
on “Ask HN: Books that change your way of thinking?” ↗Goethe was the king of that sort of irrationality. You might find the essays in Richard Dawkins's book, Unweaving the Rainbow interesting since the thread drawing them together is that understanding something scientifically does not make it less fascinating, if anything it makes everything even more interesting.
on “Steve Jobs, LSD and Drug Freedom” ↗Mind is a myth - UG Krishnamurti Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter Unweaving the rainbow - Richard Dawkins
on “Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?” ↗This reminds me of a passage from Richard Dawkins' "Unweaving the Rainbow." "We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who…
on “Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie” ↗Does it really matter? I remember reading about this in one of Richard Dawkins' book (I think its Unweaving the rainbow). Now you can complain about the Crab Nebula, whether its color correction, or you are lucky enough to view it up close with a naked eye. The colors you observe are just models of the different frequencies…
on “New Horizons: Nasa spacecraft speeds past Pluto” ↗This argument was dealt with by Richard Dawkins in his book Unweaving the Rainbow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unweaving_the_Rainbow
on “What will you do with the stories entrusted to you?” ↗Read that one first in one of Dawkins' books, maybe Unweaving the Rainbow.
on “Butterflies Full of Wasps Full of Microwasps Are a Science Nightmare (2021)” ↗…drew evolution into the mainstream and Dawkins himself being a self-made pro-evolution lightning rod. I also don't happen to think it was a coincidence that the more philosophical angle of things like Unweaving the Rainbow gave way to more aggressive writing (uncharitably I might say "Reddit bait") just as the Internet really hit its stride. Alternatively, and rather more prosaically, some people seem to just get, well,…
on “My Controversial Diatribe Against “Skeptics”” ↗…that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred? (Dawkins - Unweaving the Rainbow).
on “What are you willing to spend 2 hours on?” ↗