By INYOURFACENEWYORKER
Added: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 01:42:11 UTC

A bit of a rehash of my thread "This is Your Brain on Dawkins" from the old forum...

What makes Richard's books stand out from other science books is that the style in which he writes really makes you think. Whenever I do something I take for granted, I automatically think of how it relates or may relate to evolution. Anybody have any similar stories? Here are examples of the kind of thing I'm talking about:

When I was getting a kitten the kitten's mother got a little frantic as I packed him into the carrier. I thought, "She's thinking 'What are you doing with my gene copies? Will they survive long enough to reproduce?'" Then, when I was bringing the kitten home, he was yowling the whole time. I thought to myself, "It's because of so many years of evolution by natural selection that this escape instinct is so strong and that is why he's distressed." I jokingly tell him sometimes what a good little gene survival machine he is.

Recently, I was on vacation with my parents. We were crossing a bridge, and my mother commented on how beautiful the water was. Half-jokingly, I said something like, "I find this view of the water beautiful because water is necessary for survival and if I find it beautiful I will be more likely to go to it, drink it, survive, and pass down my genes." My father responded by handing me a bottle of water. ^_^

I was watching Look Who's Talking. When the baby's surrogate father and biological father were in a physical fight regarding the mother, I laughed and said aloud (despite being alone), "They're fighting over who gets to pass down their genes next!"

And I simply look in awe at how all of the living things in the world are vehicles for "duplicate me" programs. I sometimes wonder, for example, where my cat's atoms were hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of years ago. And then I ponder how it is so hard for us humans to conceptualize geological time. And then I think about the odds against my being here (see page 1 of Unweaving the Rainbow)...

Oh, and here's my favorite:

Once when I was at an event at my local library, so many people were rudely talking while the librarian was trying to run the program. I thought to myself, "Yes, I know we're a social species, but this is ridiculous. We're not living in tribal villages anymore, and we don't need to exchange constant information. Being quiet for a half hour won't affect our survival prospects!" And then I thought of a room full of chimpanzees making noises and scratching their armpits. :)

Julie

TAGGED: BOOKS, EVOLUTION, HUMOR, RICHARD DAWKINS