Software – DaneCobain.com

Richard Dawkins – The Blind Watchmaker | Review

Title: The Blind Watchmaker

Author: Richard Dawkins

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 350

Rating: 3.5/5

Richard Dawkins – The Blind Watchmaker

This book has been on my TBR pile for a while, but I finally picked it up as my bedside book and quickly got hooked. Even though it’s a non-fiction science book about evolution, and even though it gets kind of dry times, it was a delight.

Of course, it felt a little outdated at times because Dawkins talked about some computer software he’d created which used a 1989 Apple Macintosh, but it was only the technology that was old. The concepts themselves still hold up today, and while it’s hard for me to pinpoint any specific part of the book that stood out to me, I do feel as though my understanding of evolution as a whole has been dramatically improved.

That’s because Dawkins basically takes all of the arguments against evolution and systematically debunks them, in the same way that he railed against religion in The God Delusion. The Blind Watchmaker is used as an analogy for the way that evolution can build complex physical mechanisms without requiring a designer. So in evolutionary terms, if a watch was a living animal then it could evolve piece by piece over time without requiring a watchmaker (such as an omnipotent god) to design it.

Richard Dawkins

For example, some people will point to eyes and say that you can’t have half an eye and therefore they must have been designed. Dawkins points out that that’s not how eyes developed. It’s easy to see how just having the ability to tell the difference between light and darkness, for example, could make a big difference to an animal’s survival rates. And if the animal is more likely to survive then it’s more likely to pass its genes on.

It’s all fascinating stuff, but it’s not necessarily easy reading. It’s the kind of book that forces you to think, but I like books like that and I’m looking forward to continuing to read through Dawkins’ back catalogue. I always learn something new from his books.

Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion

Click here to buy The Blind Watchmaker.

Karel Capek – RUR and War with the Newts | Review

Title: RUR and War with the Newts

Author: Karel Capek

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 358

Rating: 4*/5

Karel Capek – RUR and War With the Newts

This book was on course for a 5/5 but then about a third of the way through it did the same thing that George Orwell did in 1984 where the action suddenly cuts out so there can be pages and pages of background information. In 1984, it was a detailed history of the different nations in the postapocalyptic future. In this book, the equivalent is a lengthy section that reads like an essay on how the newts reproduce and how they act during scientific experiments.

Still, this is a great little read, and there’s something here for everyone – but particularly for fans of classic science fiction. It also has the benefit of basically being two books in one. Let’s take a look at each of them.

RUR is short for ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’ and it’s credited with introducing the word ‘robot‘ to our vocabulary. It’s also a stage play, which makes it easy to absorb and highly entertaining, and I just flew through the pages and loved the whole thing from start to finish. I particularly liked how it posed the question of who’s ultimately responsible for the actions of a piece of software or a machine. Is it the machine itself, or is it the human who designed and created it?

Karel Capek

War With the Newts contains many of the same themes, except this time it’s focusing on a species of intelligent newts that humanity discovers and subsequently takes advantage of until they eventually rise up against them. What’s interesting here is that the war itself doesn’t take up much of the book, but rather it tends to focus on the events that led up to the war and humanity’s role in them. It’s very cleverly done, but like I said – there’s a lengthy bit in the middle that gets kind of tedious, and I found it difficult to pick up momentum again after that.

Still, though, this is definitely worth reading – especially for hardcore sci-fi fans. I’m definitely glad I picked it up.