By RICHARD DAWKINS
Added: Tue, 09 May 2006 23:00:00 UTC

From wnyc.org

Aired: December 18, 2004

History is full of poets who have extolled the wonders of nature. And in his book Unweaving the Rainbow, the brilliant Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins professes that he is equally amazed at the poetry of the natural world. His latest book on evolution is called The Ancestor's Tale, and is modeled after Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Kurt Andersen spoke with Richard Dawkins about the art of real life.

Transcript:

Kurt Andersen: We're not quite done with biology. I wanted to speak to a scientist who is one of my heroes, the Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins. A few years ago Dawkins wrote a book call Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder . I adored it. Dawkins is a brilliant scientist who is in love with the poetry of the natural world. And he is unique, I think, in how well he conveys that poetry to civilians like me. His magnum opus on evolution, The Ancestor's Tale , a title inspired by Chaucer's A Canterbury Tale, is just out. And I ask Dawkins why he decided to tell the story of evolution working from today backward to the beginning of time.

Richard Dawkins: Ok, well if you do history forwards, then it rather gives people the idea that if you end up with humans, as one's tempted to do because we are humans, it rather gives people the idea that evolution is aimed at humans, and that's such a tempting vanity that I wanted to get rid of that right from the start. If you do your history backwards then where you start, whether you start with humans or bed bugs or earth worms, you always converge eventually on the origin of life. So I decided to do history backwards, it was going to be a pilgrimage to the past. Since we're humans it should be a human pilgrimage. So we start with humans, we walk backwards in time and we meet up with other pilgrims. The first pilgrims we meet up with will be the chimpanzees, about 5 million years into the past. And then about another million years ago, two million years into the past, we meet the gorilla pilgrims, then the orangutans, then the monkeys and so on back to the bacteria at rendezvous 39. There are only 39 rendezvous points back on our long epic pilgrimage to the past. And just like with Chaucer at each rendezvous point -? or rather Chaucer doesn't have rendezvous points -- but at each rendezvous point my pilgrims have the option of telling a tale. And it's those tales, something like the duck-billed platypus's tale, the hippopotamus's tale, the howler monkey's tale, it's these tales which form the main bulk of the book. And they can be read in any order although they do have an order imposed upon them by the pilgrimage to the past.

KA: And you chose Chaucer's Canterbury Tales because?you're English?
RD: (laughs)

KA: Because those pilgrims were looking for a kind of truth as well?

RD: Well, I think it's a little bit of that. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are the best known pilgrimage story, perhaps apart from Bunyon's Pilgrims Progress. But Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are the best known and they do give this sense of journey, this sense of traveling. And I wanted to give this sense of traveling epic journey, traveling over 4 billion years.

KA: In many of your books you mention things like the rise of what is called creationism, especially in America . Christian fundamentalism on that front seems to be winning a battle every month against science. Why do you suppose in this age, 150 years after Charles Darwin, that is happening?

RD: I think it's really weird. I should say, by the way, that the Ancestor's Tale is not really a book advocating evolution against creationism. It simply assumes evolution is true, evolution is a fact. It's a scientific fact. Some of my other books have been aimed at advocating evolutionism this one simply assumes it and looks at the story. I mean its something like 47 percent of Americans, according to a Gallop poll, think that the entire universe began less than a ten thousand years ago. That means the universe began later than the middle stone age.

KA: In your book unweaving the rainbow you find and show us to great effect, all the various wonders of an almost mystical kind that are available to us in a scientific view of the world and I wonder why the title? Why Unweaving The Rainbow ?

RD: The word “unweaving” comes from Keats. Because Keats was, along with several other of the romantic poets, somewhat anti that aspect of science which he saw, well, he called it in another poem “murdering to dissect.” In that particular case he was talking about Newton unweaving the rainbow, explaining why the rainbow has its spectrum of colors and making it seem less beautiful. Keats accused Newton of destroying the beauty of the rainbow and the purpose of my book, Unweaving the Rainbow , was to say quite the contrary. When somebody like Newton comes along and explains it, it actually increases the beauty. There is great beauty in understanding. There is great beauty in comprehending the grandeur of the universe, the complexity of life, the magnitude of geological time and astronomical space. These are all beautiful themes, worthy subjects for great poetry.

KA: I wonder if part of the problem in the last century isn't that modern science, especially modern physics, is so arcane, so beyond the ability of most people to understand that it becomes like some kind of arcane modern poetry, which only other poets understand?

RD: Were there is a risk of that. And I think that's particularly true of modern physics where there are quite a rarified fully understands it, indeed if anybody understands it. But, evolution, natural selection, the history of evolution, the subject of The Ancestor's Tale , anybody can understand that, anybody marvel at it, can wonder at it. That's my mission, to try to bring people to that understanding.

KA: Richard Dawkins thank you very much for joining us today.

RD: Thank you very much indeed.

TAGGED: BOOKS, INTERVIEWS, RICHARD DAWKINS