Richard Dawkins is an eminent British ethologist, evolutionary theorist, and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene which popularised the gene-centric view of evolution, and introduced the terms meme and memetics into the lexicon. In 1982, he made a major original contribution to the science of evolution with the theory, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene, that phenotypic effects are not limited to an organism's body but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms. He has since written several best-selling popular books on evolution including The Blind Watchmaker: Why Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, The God Delusion, A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgriate to the Dawn of Life, and The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Dawkins appeared in a number of television programmes on evolutionary biology, creationism, and religion. He is an atheist, humanist, skeptic, "bright," and – as a commentator on science, religion and politics – is among the English-speaking world's best known public intellectuals.
Related Links
- The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
- Richard Dawkins' Wikipedia Page
- Articles by Richard Dawkins
- Richard Dawkins Salon interview
- Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, by Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins Quotes
It may be that brain hardware has co-evolved with the internal virtual worlds that it creates. This can be called hardware-software co-evolution.
You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world. You also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.
For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.
