HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025150.jpg

SCIENCE IN THE SOUL Selected Shorter Writings By Richard Dawkins, Edited by Gillian Somerscales [UK — Transworld; Manuscript; Pub Date: June 2017; 110,000 words] A new book from Richard Dawkins, internationally bestselling author and one of the greatest scientists of our age. As much as his full length books such as The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The God Delusion, have changed our perceptions of both science and the world it opens, his essays and articles are potent, pithy, thought provoking and revealing windows into the world as he, himself, perceives it. Science in the Soul is a collection of some of Dawkins' best writing: articles and lectures, reflections and polemics, reviews, forewords, tributes or eulogies, both published and unpublished. From the introduction, by Gillian Somerscales: "Richard Dawkins has always defied categorization. One eminent biologist of mathematical bent reviewing The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype was startled to find a scientific work apparently free of logical errors and yet containing not a single line of mathematics; he could come to no other conclusion than that, incomprehensible as it seemed to him, “Dawkins . . . apparently thinks in prose.’ "If readers of what follows here come to appreciate not only the writer’s clarity of thought and facility of expression, the fearlessness with which he confronts very large elephants in very small rooms, the energy with which he devotes himself to explication of the complex and the beautiful in science, but also some of the generosity, kindness and courtesy that have characterized all my dealings with Richard over the years since that first collaboration, then the present volume will have achieved one of its aims. "It will have achieved another if it embodies a condition felicitously described in one of the essays reproduced here, where ‘harmonious parts flourish in the presence of each other, and the illusion of a harmonious whole emerges.’ Indeed, it is my belief that the harmony resounding from this collection is no illusion, but the echo of one of the most vibrant, and vital, voices of our times." RICHARD DAWKINS 1s the former Charles Simonyi Professor For The Understanding Of Science at Oxford University; Fellow of New College; author of The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, River out of Eden (ScienceMasters Series), Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Devil's Chaplain, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, The Greatest Show on Earth and The Magic of Reality. He 1s founder of The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. -o FROM BACTERIA TO BACH AND BACK The Evolution of Minds By Daniel C. Dennett [US — W. W. Norton, UK — Penguin UK, Italy — Raffaello Cortina Editore, Holland — Atlas Contact, China — Cheers, Audio — Recorded Books; Manuscript; Pub Date: February 2017; 448 pages] One of the world’s foremost philosophers offers a major new account of the origins of the conscious mind. What is human consciousness and how is it possible? This question fascinates people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Daniel C. Dennett’s brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture. Part philosophical whodunit, part bold scientific conjecture, this landmark work enlarges themes that have sustained Dennett’s legendary career at the forefront of philosophical thought. In his mimitable style—laced Brockman, Inc. Frankfurt 2016 Hotlist -4 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025150