Yesterday’s New York Times has an interview with Richard Dawkins in the “By the Book” section. He mentions his favorite books and writers, the book that had the greatest impact on him (guess which one), and says that Price and Prejudice is overrated. Professor Ceiling Cat even gets a shout out in on place!
There’s also this:
If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? And the British prime minister?
I’d take the following two books, hand one to each of them, then ask them to swap books so they end up reading both: Carl Sagan’s “Demon-Haunted World” is the best antidote I know to superstition and pseudoscience. Not that either Obama or Cameron are superstitious or supernaturalists, but they need to develop a less obsequious attitude to their constituents who are. Robert Axelrod’s “Evolution of Cooperation” is salutary for anybody involved in settling disputes and trying to foster cooperation. Indeed I wrote in my foreword to the revised edition: “The world’s leaders should all be locked up with this book and not released until they have read it. This would be a pleasure to them and might save the rest of us. ‘The Evolution of Cooperation’ deserves to replace the Gideon Bible.”
I concur with Demon-Haunted World, but haven’t read Axelrod’s book.
In the middle of rereading Demon Haunted World – will have to acquire the other.
Is this one of Austen’s minor works? 🙂
I wasn’t aware Austen was an economist. 🙂
Wasn’t Price and Prejudice one of the books Austen co-authored with Adam Smith? The other was Cents and Sensibility.
Ha, ha, good one!
I’m not a huge fan of Austen, but I have read all her novels and thoroughly enjoyed them.
The fact that it is all about money and who gets to marry whom is a feature, not a bug – so to speak. The books are very much a comment on the precarious situation so many people of her particular class – and particularly women – found themselves in: too “posh” to work, too poor to survive for much longer in the right circles of society.
Their situation is in some ways inconceivable to us today, because those who view working for a salary as socially unacceptable have dwindled to an almost invisible minority. As a result in some ways one does feel impatience and contempt for those who seem so trapped in their artificial cages. But they were trapped none the less.
In the one novel where the heroine is wealthy and has no such concerns for her future, she gets a lesson to this very point when she is less than sensitive to the fate of women around her:
/watch?v=LDjfYXJ3yRo
P&P is the only novel of hers with a flat-out fantasy wish-fulfillment ending, although there’s a lot of delightful wit and wisdom along the way. I enjoyed it, but I like the others a bit more, especially “Sense & Sensibility”.
It’s about time I re-read The Demon-Haunted World. Got to get through Niall Shanks’ God, The Devil, and Darwin first though.
I’ve read Axelrod’s book. To be honest, I preferred Dawkins’s own summary of it in the revised edition of The Selfish Gene.
Modesty probably dictates that his choice be someone else’s book.
“Pride and Prejudice” over-rated? I’d say that was pretty hard to do,even though it’s only my second-equal favourite Austen novel. I suppose it’s a case of “de gustibus non disputandum”- Richard’s taste ,as perceived through his writings, seems pretty good,if not entirely congruent with my own.
Thanks for posting this! Hadn’t heard of Axelrod’s book and its on the Kindle app for $10.
I love how he describes fantasy (I don’t like that genre either & like many sci-fi fans, get annoyed when it is lumped in with sci-fi):
I wonder what he’d think of Saberhagen’s Beserker books?
For my tastses Saberhagen’s Berserker short stories are very good. But all of the Berserker novels I have read seemed rather dull. Berserker Man is one exception for his novels. I think he excels with the short story format.
I’m okay with fantasy, though much of it is certainly boring. I haven’t been inspired to read any in many years until recently reading some, that I liked when I was younger, with my children.
But I have no problems enjoying good fantasy, and certainly don’t require that a story give particular respect to the constraints of science in order for me to enjoy it. That sounds a bit rigid to me, but wherever a persons tastes lead them.
There’s certainly plenty of science fiction where the writer heedlessly makes stuff up without respecting the decent constraints of science.
Conversely, there’s a fair amount of compelling fantasy set in rigorously worked-out worlds with clear constraints. Game of Thrones is an obvious current example, but Lois Bujold’s Sharing Knife series also comes to mind.
So I think Dawkins cheats a bit here by judging SF by its best examples and fantasy by its worst.
As for lumping SF and fantasy together, that doesn’t annoy me half as much as when people call it sci-fi. To SF people of my generation, “sci-fi” carries the same sort of pejorative connotation as “artsy-fartsy”.
I can’t see sci-fi as a perjorative. There is even a channel called that (though they spell it stupidly: syfy). It is certainly not as pejorative as “artsy-fartsy” or the shortened version, “artsy”; for one there is a “y” which makes it appear puerile and the “fartsy” as the word “fart” in it.
sci-fi sci-fi sci-fi sci-fi sci-fi 😀 Gen X FTW!
BTW a good example of sucky science fiction that does not respect the constrains of science is Ballard’s The Drowned World. I had to read it in an honours seminar and it was at that point that I consciously decided I hated my classmates because they thought it was good and didn’t recognize it’s preposterous science.
To me, Game of Thrones does not belong in Fantasy. It’s a work of fiction. I guess because there are magic and dragons in it, it’s fantasy. Sigh, I actually find those elements annoying.
Muphrys!
Legend: paragraph 1: as the word = has the word, 3rd paragraph it’s preposterous science = its preposterous science
I tried to get into GOT (the books), but it just didn’t click (and I’m a guy who’s read the Ring trilogy 3 times.) Maybe I’ll give it a try again some time. (After all, Sam Harris has read them and that was why I picked it up in the first place.)
The fantasy side of it really put me off. IMO, no one has done that as well as Tolkien and the imitators come off as lame to me.
How far do you think I need to read into the first book to ensure I “get” it?
(And the name: Really? G.R.R. Martin —> J.R.R. Tolkien … the added R … 🙁 )
George R.R. Martin is his actual name, and he was writing excellent SF under that name long before he started the GoT series, which by the way has no elves, orcs, dwarves, or wizards and is really about as far from Tolkien as you can get in a medieval setting.
Martin also scripted the old Beauty and the Beast TV series starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman, which again had nothing to do with Tolkien.
Whether you see “sci-fi” as pejorative isn’t really the point. The fact is that many people do see it that way (for good historical reasons), and by heedlessly using that term you risk annoying those people for no good reason. If that doesn’t matter to you, feel free to keep on using it.
Yeah, I really don’t care that some take offence to a word that identifies a genre of books. I care more about if people take offence to a word that demeans their ethnic background, education level, physical appearance or the like.
I suspect most of us use it because we have no idea the elite few object. Jeez, minefields everywhere for the unsuspecting.
I wouldn’t characterize SF writers who object to being called sci-fi writers as “the elite few”. Historically the literary elites have been among the ones calling them that, and that’s why they object to it.
Ha, ha, now that you mention it… 😀
Just so long as they know that we hoi polloi mean nothing disparaging when we unknowing use the term…
Yes sometimes the hoi polloi come off as the hoi phalloi.
Huh. Fart is a word? I always thought it was a technical acronym for Flatus Advanced by Rectal Transport.
Ha! I’ll have to remember that one!
4 1/2 years until retirement. Until then, barely enough time to eat and sleep. But, when I get there, one of my projects is an essay “science fiction for people who don’t like science fiction.”
One sentence now: To judge the entire genre of science fiction by the pulp novels of the 1940s and 1950s is grotesquely unfair, and evinces a lack of understanding of historical development.
My favourite SF author, Larry “Ringworld” Niven espouses a “White Queen’s rule : ask your audience to believe only 6 impossible things, and then stick within those limits. E.g. FTL (faster than light travel), energy sources of high capacity (but not infinite), artificial gravity (or else you have to spin yout FTL ships and run into gyroscopic forces) … and you can already see that your universe is getting fairly constrained before you introduce your plot-defining McGuffin.
Incidentally, if you like that sort of thing, there’s a habit developing in his franchised “Man-Kzin Wars” corner of his universe for re-telling classic Humphrey Bogart movies but “in space.” Fun, if you like that sort of thing.
The Humphrey Bogart in space does sound fun! I still find I can’t top Asimov especially his robot short stories. I have a couple anthologies with (I hope) all of them. These releases seemed to pair the content well with the cover art as I love looking at it.
It’s not Obama that needs to read these books; it’s members of Congress.
They’d all benefit. Obama seems to be taking a leaf out of Dubya’s book (i.e. getting in to unjustified wars.)
Yeah, just when you thought he couldn’t get any more disappointing. But I digress…
I don’t mind adding more titles to my unread books list, and I expect to see a few more good ones appear on this thread. Yeah, I’ll go ahead and
sub.
Prof. Dawkins raised a good point:
“Why is the Nobel Prize in Literature almost always given to a novelist, never a scientist? Why should we prefer our literature to be about things that didn’t happen? Wouldn’t, say, Steven Pinker be a good candidate for the literature prize?”
According to Wikipedia, “Nobel’s choice of emphasis on idealism in his criteria for the Nobel Prize in Literature has led to recurrent controversy. In the original Swedish, the word idealisk translates as either “idealistic” or “ideal”.[2] In the early twentieth century, the Nobel Committee interpreted the intent of the will strictly. For this reason, they did not award certain world-renowned authors of the time such as James Joyce, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Marcel Proust, Henrik Ibsen, and Henry James.[4] More recently, the wording has been more liberally interpreted. Thus, the prize is now awarded both for lasting literary merit and for evidence of consistent idealism on some significant level. In recent years, this means a kind of idealism championing human rights on a broad scale. Hence the award is now arguably more political.[2][5] ”
So, I think Dawkins has raised an interesting point.
You have all the problems of translation as well so I am sure vast non-European literatures will never have winners.
Mo Yan, Mario Vargas Llosa, Orhan Pamuk, John Coetzee, V.S. Naipaul, Gao Xingjian, Kenzaburo Oe, Octavio Paz, Naguib Mahfouz, Wole Soyinka, Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo Neruda, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Yasunari Kawabata, Miguel Angel Asturias, Mikhail Sholokhov, Giorgos Seferis, and Boris Pasternak all beg to differ.
On the other hand, it has been awarded to a philosopher several times – though in two cases to a philosopher who was also a fiction writer. (Russell and then in the second case to Sartre [who declined to accept!] and Camus.)
Ah Satre! You go Satre! 🙂
Still trying to figure out how Tolstoy and Ibsen would be considered insufficiently ‘idealistic’!
Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World” is truly a great choice. Really, everyone ought to read that book. It should be on every college freshman’s first-year reading list. But, Richard, please, it’s “not that either Obama or Cameron IS superstitious or a supernaturalist,” not “are.”
I couldn’t agree more if I tried with both hands. I have often thought that “The Demon-Haunted World,” should be required reading for anyone who wishes to be granted full “sapiens” status.
I also applaud your comment regarding the all-too-frequent British mixup in verb tenses, which is committed even by highly intelligent and literate individuals. It’s a pet peeve of mine, especially since I generally much prefer British grammar to the American lack thereof. Unfortunately, even such luminary literati as the members of Monty Python commit this error. Whenever I hear Graham Chapman discussing the elephant, Mr. George Humphries, by saying, “His family were wonderful,” I want to yank out each and every hair on my head.
I think the dosage of my meds needs to be increased…
Such a fine book–noble, persuasive, and crafted in Sagan’s energetic, enthusiastic prose.
And, yes, “either/or” and “neither” require a singular verb–in BrE as well as AmE.
Wouldn’t that depend instead on the noun(s)?
“Neither the Americans nor the Canadians are present.”
Yes, indeed. Thanks.
How is this a mix-up? It’s simply different usage.
Manchester United is the greatest team ever.
Manchester United are the greatest team ever.
Both sentences are correct; they’re just different ways of looking at a collective.
(And not only correct, but true.)
Treating collective nouns as singular can lead to problems. “His family is wonderful; it always treats me well.” Most people would start by treating it as singular and then switch to treating it as plural, “His family is wonderful; they always treat me well.”
TDHW is excellent; but I actually like The Varieties of Scientific Experience better and recommend it most highly.
Geez, I hope no one in the Tea Party begrudges Dawkins’ advice to Obama since RD was born in Kenya. 🙂
From one native Kenyan to another 😛
Second, third, and fourth the selection of “The Demon-Haunted World”. It is always the first book I recommend if anyone asks about science books, even before my “Big Four” of books on evolution (WEIT, Greatest Show, Prothero on fossils, and Carroll on DNA). Sagan’s book cannot be recommended too highly; I agree with those who have opined that it should be required reading for every member of the species Homo sapiens.
Bravo, Richard! I’ll be adding Axelrod to my “to read” list.
I’ve read three worldview changing books in my life. “The Demon Haunted World” was the first, and probably had the greatest impact. (The other two were The God Delusion and The Better Angels of Our Nature) My copy of DHW is weather beaten beyond belief, barely hanging together, and is one of my most prized possessions.
I suspect one’s list of worldview changing books is dependent on what one happened to read at a some critical intellectual point in life. For me the single greatest “changer” was The Selfish Gene which I read when it came out. That book realigned the universe for me. Much later The End of Faith was momentous for me. It made me realize the importance of being “out of the closet”.
But there are many other great books, too.
QFT.
For me it was reading On Human Nature when it first came out. Disregarding some of the conclusions he drew, Wilson’s popular treatment of what was to become known as evo-psych seemed at that point in my intellectual development both blatantly obvious and mind-blowingly explanatory. (Often in ways I’d prefer it didn’t.)
All the famous books on evolution, be they Dawkins’s (my favorite–The Blind Watchmaker), Gould’s, whomever’s–were much-enjoyed, enriching reads, but as someone already firmly in the evolution camp I did not find them game-changers so much as fascinating treatises on the ‘new synthesis’ as it continued to evolve (ahem).
(Add to that that “Island Biogeography” revolutionized evolutionary field studies–it seems that Wilson, however controversial he’s become, was singularly game-changing in that era. [Well, mustn’t leave out MacArthur, of course!])
Yes, I understand that worldview changing books are totally subjective. I was merely trying to illustrate how important DHW was to me personally. On the other hand, I think the book is important in a more general sense, in that it is the best cure for believing bullshit I know (again, a personal opinion). And it was written by my greatest hero. I wish I had even a tenth of Carl Sagan’s intellect, eloquence and compassion.
I simply can’t believe Dawkins did not mention “The Happy Atheist”!!! This is an OUTRAGE!!!
That interview was a delightful read–I’m such a sucker for that sly British drollery! Of all RD’s impressive faculties, my favorite may be his wit.
I too loved reading all the Dr. Dolittle books as a child, original editions from my Dad’s boyhood. I let my children read them sans caveats too; we later had the discussions about how sensibilities have changed since that era.
Got a laugh from the speculation about how an Oxbridge experience may have improved Shakespeare. 😉
To my current, but probably not lasting, shame, I’ve never read ‘Demon-Haunted World’, though from it’s frequent references elsewhere and here, I doubt that it would actually bring much new to me. Different generations and societies, I guess. I never experienced any significant (i.e. effective) pressure towards religion. Quite what I was doing being sent to Sunday School before I got thrown out for asking awkward questions, I don’t know ; I would guess it was Mum trying to influence me, but I’ll not waste breath asking her next time I see her.
I’m a bit more prompted towards getting Pinker’s ‘Better Angels’ book, though I’ve still nearly a metre of paper on the “to be read” shelf.
Do not be ashamed. I read Demon Haunted World well after having read many other books in a similar vein. I found it worthwhile but not a world-view shifter. My worldview had already been shifted, so it had no chance of moving me there again.