Richard Dawkins : River Out Of Eden [AudioBook]

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Richard Dawkins : River Out Of Eden  [Audio Book]
Audio Book: : Richard Dawkins : River Out Of Eden
The Landing Force Manual was the guidebook fortransforming sailors into combat soldiers. It was a catalogue oftechniques teaching bivouacking, patrolling, land occupation anddefense. Richard Dawkins has unabashedly given us a similar primeruseful in learning to deal with those still resisting Darwin's conceptof evolution by natural selection. Like The Landing Force Manual, RiverOut of Eden is an arsenal of topics that, once learned, may be appliedin conversational combat with those still resisting the idea thatevolution is the way life works. With thorough knowledge and captivatingstyle, Dawkins gives us illuminating examples of how life has achievedwhat appear to be miracles.
Dawkins re-initiated the debate overevolution's mechanics with The Selfish Gene. For his lucid explanationof the gene as the foundation for life's workings, he was dubbed TheGreat Reductionist by those uncomfortable with the concept that genestend to override the treasured idea of "free will" overriding Nature.With River Out of Eden, Dawkins proves his ability by presenting an evenmore comprehensible account of how DNA is the foundation for life'smechanics.
He begins with the idea that all life had ancestors - allof which succeeded in producing offspring. Their success at reproducingovershadows the fact that most life forms ultimately went extinct overthe vast span of Earth's time. Extinction is due to failure to produceoffspring that survived to further reproduce new generations. Thereasons for this failure are uncountable and obscure, but the issueremains success or failure. Tracing the ancestral line allows us toenvision rivers of life. The rivers aren't composed of water, but ofDNA. DNA over time, acts as a "digital river" with sections turning onor off in the process of making proteins. And proteins are the bricksthat build organisms and all their parts.
From an almost purelydescriptive beginning, Dawkins moves on to demonstrate how many of those"parts" could evolve over the many millennia available to them. Amongthe favourite organs used to oppose natural selection is "the eye". Howcould such a complex part of life work half complete? Well, forstarters, better than 49% complete. A statement that can be applied toall the body parts in various organisms when viewed over the longstretch of years available to change gradually. Wings, finding mates,locating food sources, all the "complex functions" we see in today'slife came from earlier, simpler beginnings. Dawkins' chapter "God'sUtility Function" is a must read and understand for anyone wishing tocomprehend how many of these features came into existence. They didn'tall arrive in a finished state.
Dawkins is adept at illustrating hispoints. Among his more clever tricks is the portrayal of a sentencereading clearly even with different typefaces for each word. You canstill read and understand the meaning. But the appearance differs ineach case. He also gives an excellent account of how genes govern energyexpenditure for various types of creatures. Each has its own variant,but an "audit" of how the genes benefit from the arrangement reveals whyit's a successful strategy.
The key to all these patterns is theidea that somehow, somewhen, a molecule that later became DNA learned toreplicate. He posits Graham Cairns Smith's suggestion that DNA, or morelikely its precursor, RNA, learned the trick from clay crystals. Thisremains the most likely explanation for life's origins, but requires thereader to recognize that the replicating molecule preceded anydiscernible organism. Cairns Smith's concept removes forever the ideathat life's driving force occurred by chance. It was a relatively simplechemical and physical process. It may not appear elegant, but themechanism has the elegance of plausibility.
This whole book carriesthe argument against "creation by design" into the camp of Darwin'senemies. Dawkins lists the contentions of the "creationists", thenadroitly unravels them through pure logic and good science. Those whofeel daunted by arcane biological treatises on life need only take upthis excellent summation of why Darwin was right. Those who quail at theidea DNA drives our existence can take heart. It's all part of what'srequired in achieving a better idea of who we are. A major step in thatunderstanding is in this book.

(mp3 + pdf).rar 39.40 MB

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