¶ … River Out of Eden, by Richard Dawkins. The review provides summaries of the main arguments from each chapter, and a discussion, in particular, of the different thresholds mentioned by Dawkins.
The book River Out of Eden is divided into five chapters, entitled The Digital River, All Africa and Her Progenies, Do Good By Stealth, God's Utility Function, and The Replication Bomb.
In the first chapter, The Digital River, Dawkins introduces the idea of evolution by comparing it to a river, metaphorical, and changing over time. The river, he tells us, contains all of the DNA that has survived up until that point, and through the course of time, the river has deviated from its original path, producing different routes for the river, different branches, as he calls them. On each of these different branches of the river, he says, different combinations of DNA have been put together, and different genes have been constructed, giving different forms of life on each of the different pathways.
As Dawkins says, "The river of my title is a river of DNA, and it flows through time, not space. It is a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues: a river of abstract instructions for building bodies, not a river of solid bodies themselves. The information passes through bodies and effects them, but is not affected by them on its way through" (Dawkins, 1995).
Later in the same chapter, Dawkins compares these different genes (or those different sequences of DNA within the different branches of the river) to a computer program. He points out that humans rely on many kinds of signals to carry out our bodily functions, from digital to analog, but he says that the genetic code uses only digital signals: DNA preserves its codes in distinct categories, with only four possible 'categories' (i.e., bases (CGAT)). As he says, "Our genetic system, which is the universal system of all life on the planet, is digital to the core" (Dawkins, 1995). He argues that this digital system is the best system for ensuring error-free replication of the DNA, and goes on to show how the codes made up by the myriad combinations of these bases can produce all of the proteins we need to construct cells, to produce enzymes, basically, all of the elements we...
Such an ascription "both distorts the substance of his thought and grossly exaggerates his actual influence on the politics of his country." He exerted "little influence" on American politics, Trask continues, though Sumner "praised modern capitalism," believed that the doctrine of "laissez faire is just as applicable to society as it is to the economy," for, "the social order," Trask explains, "like the economy, is government by its own laws
Aquinas would likely not have understood how they could overlook all the "evidence" of God's handiwork all around them, and how they could discount the possibility that the knowledge they were acquiring came through their senses, but that the understanding of that knowledge came from the divine abilities given to them by God. Science and religion generally do not mix, although there are some who feel that both have a
Jesus' Teachings, Prayer, & Christian Life "He (Jesus) Took the Bread. Giving Thanks Broke it. And gave it to his Disciples, saying, 'This is my Body, which is given to you.'" At Elevation time, during Catholic Mass, the priest establishes a mandate for Christian Living. Historically, at the Last Supper, Christ used bread and wine as a supreme metaphor for the rest of our lives. Jesus was in turmoil. He was
Knowledge Views on the Nature of Knowledge: Social Scientists vs. Natural Scientists What is knowledge? A simple question, or so most people would think. Knowledge is the accumulation of information on a given subject or subjects. It is a collection of facts, of things known to be true...or is it? The closer one looks, the more one comes to realize that there are many different approaches to obtaining knowledge, and many
Spencer How would Herbert Spencer have viewed post-modern society? Applying the theories of the sociologist Herbert Spencer to modern society may seem, on its surface, a heroically anachronistic effort. After all, Spencer is known for his totalizing attempts to subsume human development into a single overreaching theory of sociological and biological development. Over the course of his writings, Spencer attempted to apply Darwinian biological principles to the evolution of human society. In
In 2005, a Federal Judge in Georgia ruled that any sticker or notice violated the separation of Church and state, "Due to the manner in which the sticker refers to evolution as a theory, the sticker also has the effect of undermining evolution eduction. . . The distinction of evolution as a theory rather than a fact is the distinction that religiously motivated individuals have specifically asked school boards
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