Richard Dawkins

Clinton Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL (born 26 March 1941) is an Englishethologist, evolutionary biologist, and writer. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.

Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he introduced into evolutionary biology the influential concept that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment. This concept is presented in his book The Extended Phenotype. In 2006, he founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

Dawkins is a noted atheist, and is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argues against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. In his most popular book, his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion. He is an opponent of creationism being taught in schools. He makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing his books, his atheism and his ideas and opinions as a public intellectual.

Climbing Mount Improbable

Climbing Mount Improbable is a 1996 popular science book by Richard Dawkins. The book is about probability and how it applies to the theory of evolution, and is designed to debunk claims by creationists about the probability of naturalistic mechanisms like natural selection.

The main metaphorical treatment is of a geographical landscape, upon which evolution can only ascend in a gradual way, not being able to climb cliffs (this is known as an adaptive landscape). In the book Dawkins gives ideas about a seemingly complex mechanism coming about from many gradual steps that were previously unseen.

The book grew out of the annual Royal Institution Christmas Lectures which Dawkins delivered in 1991 (see Growing Up in the Universe). It is illustrated by Dawkins' wife Lalla Ward; and is dedicated to Robert Winston, "a good doctor and a good man".

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Royal Society

The President, Council, and Fellows of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, commonly known as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science and is possibly the oldest such society still in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as "The Royal Society". The society today acts as a scientific advisor to the British government, receiving a parliamentary grant-in-aid. The society acts as the UK's Academy of Sciences and funds research fellowships and scientific start-up companies.

The society is governed by its council, which is chaired by the society's president, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The members of council and the president are elected from and by its fellows, the basic members of the society, who are themselves elected by existing fellows. There are currently about 1,450 fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society), with up to 52 new fellows appointed each year. There are also royal fellows, honorary fellows and foreign members, the last of which are allowed to use the postnominal title ForMemRS (Foreign Member of the Royal Society). The current Royal Society President is Sir Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who took up the post on November 30, 2015.

The Blind Watchmaker

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design is a 1986 book by Richard Dawkins in which he presents an explanation of, and argument for, the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. He also presents arguments to refute certain criticisms made on his previous book, The Selfish Gene. (Both books espouse the gene-centric view of evolution.) An unabridged audiobook edition was released in 2011, narrated by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward.

Overview

In his choice of the title for this book, Dawkins refers to the watchmaker analogy made famous by William Paley in his book Natural Theology. Paley, arguing more than fifty years before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, held that the complexity of living organisms was evidence of the existence of a divine creator by drawing a parallel with the way in which the existence of a watch compels belief in an intelligent watchmaker. Dawkins, in contrasting the differences between human design and its potential for planning with the workings of natural selection, therefore dubbed evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker.

The God Delusion

The God Delusion is a 2006 best-sellingnon-fiction book by English biologist Richard Dawkins, professorial fellow of New College, Oxford, and former holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's statement in Lila (1991) that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion." With many examples, he explains that one does not need religion to be moral and that the roots of religion and of morality can be explained in non-religious terms.

In early December 2006, it reached number four in the New York Times Hardcover Non-fiction Best Seller list after nine weeks on the list. More than three million copies were sold.