The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

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The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
Author(s)	Richard Dawkins
Illustrator	Dave McKean
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Subject(s)	Science
Publisher	Bantam Press (UK) Free Press (US)
Publication date	15 September 2011 (UK) 4 October 2011 (US)
Media type	Print (Hardcover), Paperback, Audio book, iPad app
Pages	272
ISBN	1-4391-9281-2
OCLC Number	709673132
LC Classification	Q173 .D255 2011
Preceded by	The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True is a 2011 book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, with illustrations by Dave McKean. The book was released on 15 September 2011 in the United Kingdom, and on 4 October 2011 in the United States.^[1][2][3]

It is a graphic science book aimed primarily at children and young adults.^[4][5] Dawkins has stated that the book is intended for those aged around 12 years and upwards, and that when trialling the book prior to publishing, younger readers were able to understand its content with additional adult assistance.^[6]

The book is published in the United Kingdom by Bantam Press, and in the United States by Free Press.

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1 Synopsis
• 2 Reception
• 3 Wyndgate Country Club controversy
• 4 Publication history
• 5 References
• 6 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Most chapters begin with quick retellings of historical creation myths that emerged as attempts to explain the origin of particular observed phenomena. These myths are chosen from all across the world including Babylonian, Judeo-Christian, Aztec, Maori, Ancient Egyptian, Australian Aboriginal, Nordic, Hellenic, Chinese, Japanese, and other traditions. Chapter 9 includes contemporary alien abduction mythology and Chapter 4 omits mythology altogether as Dawkins says that really small phenomena were unknown to primitive peoples prior to the invention of advanced optical magnification equipment, any texts they believed to be divinely inspired having failed to mention such useful knowledge as beyond human experience at the time. Dawkins also revisits his childhood and recalls his initial thoughts on these various phenomena or those thoughts expressed by his young contemporaries. Dawkins gives his critique of many of the myths, such as when he points out that much myth involves some god's symbolic transgressive act performed just once, with Dawkins saying that such one-time acts would be inadequate to explain the mechanism as to why the phenomena continue to happen in unbroken cycles.

In the opening chapter Dawkins explains that although mythic narratives and make-believe are fun parts of growing up, reality with its fundamental capacity for beauty is much more magical than anything impossible. The Fairy Godmother from Cinderella cannot magically turn a pumpkin into a carriage outside the bounds of fiction, the reason being that such objects as pumpkins and carriages in reality possess internal organization that is fundamentally complex. A large pumpkin randomly reassembled at the most minute level would be much more likely to result in a featureless pile of ash or sludge than a complex and intricately organized carriage.

In the subsequent chapters Dawkins addresses topics that range from his most familiar territory, evolutionary biology and speciation, to physical phenomena such as atomic theory, optics, planetary motion, gravitation, stellar evolution, spectroscopy, and plate tectonics, as well as speculation on exobiology. Dawkins admits his understanding of quantum mechanics is foggy and so declines to delve very far into that topic. Dawkins declares that there was no first person, to make the point that in evolutionary biology the term species is used to demark differences in gene composition over often thousands of generations of separation rather than any one generation to the next. To illustrate this he uses the example of family photographs. If, hypothetically, there existed a complete set of photographs of all one's direct male ancestors arranged in order of birth date (or hatch date) from youngest to oldest stretching back millions of generations, from one generation to the next one would not perceive much difference between any two pictures—looking at a picture of one's grandfather or great-grandfather one is looking at a picture of a human—but if one looked at the picture 185 million generations back one would be looking at a picture of some kind of fish. Dawkins stresses this point by saying the offspring of any sexually reproducing life form is in almost all cases the same species as its parents, with the exception of unviable hybrids such as mules.

The last two chapters cover a discussion on chaos and the human psychology behind so-called miracle claims such as the Our Lady of Fátima and Cottingley Fairies examples. Dawkins presents philosopher David Hume's argument that miracle claims should only be seriously accepted if it would be a bigger miracle that the claimant was either lying or mistaken. Dawkins continues, saying miracle claims written down in texts subsequently deemed sacred are not exempt from this standard.

[edit] Reception

Tim Radford, in his Guardian review, calls the presentation of the physical book "prodigiously illustrated and beautifully designed", and regarding the content says "it is a distillation of so much that Dawkins has written and argued since the publication of The Selfish Gene ... The strength is that he knows his ground. The weakness is that – for a 'family audience' – he deliberately constrains his vocabulary along with the exuberant imagery and belligerence that made his reputation from the start."^[7]

Colin Tudge, in his very negative review for The Independent, takes Dawkins to task for defending absolute reality and offending his world view where reality is more malleable; he declares "it's time he was put a stop to". Tudge says he would prefer to return to what he sees as the good old days, saying "the 17th-century founders of modern science – Galileo, Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, Boyle, John Ray – were all devout. For them, to explore the wonders of the world through science was to glorify God." He further states: "How can we not believe in miracles, when stuff like this is presented as a serious contribution to the education of our children?"^[8]

The New Scientist article collates the reviews of Andy Coghlan and those of his 20-year-old daughter Phoebe and his 13-year-old son Callum. Coghlan calls the book "a triumph" but wishes Dawkins had a chapter entitled "Why do people do bad things to others?" saying "The book provides a golden opportunity for Dawkins to ask whether we can evolve to treat one another more civilly. Alas, he doesn't seize it." Coghlan also supports Dawkins "encouraging readers to be bowled over by the stunning beauty of reality - a sentiment I thoroughly support. Too few of us wake up each day and reflect on how amazing it is that we are not only alive, but aware of being alive." Phoebe liked the book, she writes "I was unable to put the book down. I found myself enjoying learning exciting new facts and having old ones reinforced. It was definitely no repeat of the classroom scenario... Perhaps the book's greatest asset is that it manages to bring science to life. The vibrant illustrations reinforce this, as do the fun font styles... His style is colloquial, creating a relaxed, lighter tone." Callum, who is closest to the intended age for the book, doesn't need to be persuaded about the bounds of reality, he writes: "Miracles don't exist. Simple as that. The Magic of Reality hasn't changed my views on anything."^[9]

Neville Hawcock for the Financial Times praises Dawkins' clarity in explanation: "He really is very good at this. The chapter on rainbows has the clearest explanation of how they appear that I’ve ever seen." Of the myths Dawkins uses Hawcock writes: "These, straw gods set up for Dawkins to knock down, are not up to the job of accounting for reality but at least give McKean some great subject matter."^[10] Meghan Cox Gurdon writing for the Wall Street Journal says: "His tone throughout alternates between real delight over how things work and avuncular pity for the people who persist in seeing an author behind the machinery of the universe... There is no plan, winks Mr. Dawkins, nor any divinity. There is just the 'magic' of the universe unfolding. If that is the view you wish your children to have of the cosmos, then The Magic of Reality will suit you very well."^[11]

[edit] Wyndgate Country Club controversy

During Richard Dawkins' October 2011 book tour, its sponsor Center for Inquiry (CFI) signed a contract with Wyndgate Country Club in Rochester Hills, Michigan, as the venue site. After seeing an interview with Dawkins on The O'Reilly Factor, an official at the club cancelled Dawkins' appearance. Dawkins said that the country club official accepted Bill O'Reilly's "twisted" interpretation of the book without having read it personally.^[12][13] Sean Faircloth said that cancelling the reading "really violates the basic principles of America ... The Civil Rights Act ... prohibits discrimination based on race or religious viewpoint. ... [Dawkins has] published numerous books ... to explain science to the public, so it's rather an affront, to reason in general, to shun him as they did."^[14] CFI Michigan executive director Jeff Seaver stated that "This action by The Wyndgate illustrates the kind of bias and bigotry that nonbelievers encounter all the time."^[15] Following the cancellation, protests and legal action by CFI against the Wyndgate Country Club were pursued.^[16]

[edit] Publication history

• 2011, UK, Bantam Press, 15 September 2011, 272 pp, hardcover, ISBN 978-0593066126
• 2011, US, Free Press, 4 October 2011, 272 pp, hardcover, ISBN 978-1439192818
• 2011, Audiobook, narrated by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward, 16 September 2011, ISBN 978-1846572821^[17]
• 2011, iPad application including animations based on artwork by Dave McKean, 23 September 2011^[18]

[edit] References

1. ^ Alison Flood (2009-10-23). "Richard Dawkins targets teenagers with myth-busting illustrated book". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2009-11-02. 
2. ^ "Comment: Richard Dawkins' Missing Link – A Book on the Evolution of Sex". Retrieved 2010 August 11. 
3. ^ "[UPDATE - iPad app]UK & US release info - The Magic of Reality - Richard Dawkins & Dave McKean - Transword Publishing & Simon and Schuster". RichardDawkins.net. 2011-09-01. Retrieved 2011-10-14. 
4. ^ Porten, Jeff (2011-07-18). "TidBITS Opinion: The Amazing Meeting 2011: Richard Dawkins vs. Chuck Norris". Tidbits.com. Retrieved 2011-10-14. 
5. ^ "The American Conservative » Richard Dawkins Schools the Young". Amconmag.com. 2011-07-13. Retrieved 2011-10-14. 
6. ^ Dawkins, Richard (13 September 2011). Newsnight. with Jeremy Paxman. BBC Two. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight. Retrieved 14 September 2011.
7. ^ Radford, Tim (21 September 2011). "The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins - review: A brilliant introduction to science for children". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 September 2011. 
8. ^ Tudge, Colin (23 September 2011). "The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins (illustrated by Dave McKean): Material objections to the miracles of life". The Independent. Retrieved 24 September 2011. 
9. ^ Coghlan, Andy; Phoebe Coghlan & Callum Coghlan (17 September 2011). "A Dawkins family affair: Andy Coghlan and his children review the latest offering from arch-atheist Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion in teen-friendly form". New Scientist 21 (2830). Retrieved 28 September 2011. 
10. ^ Hawcock, Neville (30 September 2011). "The Magic of Reality". Financial Times. Retrieved 1 October 2011. 
11. ^ Cox Gurdon, Meghan (1 October 2011). "Natural Enchantment". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 1 October 2011. 
12. ^ "Rochester Hills Country Club Cancels Richard Dawkins Appearance". Fox News. 2011-10-13. Retrieved 2011-10-15. 
13. ^ "Atheist Richard Dawkins snubbed by Detroit area country club". Detroit Free Press. 2011-10-12. Retrieved 2011-10-15. 
14. ^ "Rochester Hills Country Club Cancels Richard Dawkins Appearance". Fox Television Stations, Inc. Retrieved 2011-10-15. 
15. ^ "Protest tonight against club's decision to cancel atheist's appearance". The Detroit News. 2011-10-12. Retrieved 2011-10-15. 
16. ^ "UPDATE: Dawkins Event Banned - CFI to Pursue Legal Remedies". Center For Inquiry. 2011-10-14. Retrieved 2011-10-15. 
17. ^ Dawkins, Richard; Narrated by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward (2011). The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True (Audiobook|format= requires |url= (help)). Random House Audiobooks. 
18. ^ Dawkins, Richard; illustrated by Dave McKean (2011). The Magic of Reality: How we know what's really true (iPad app). Transworld (Random House UK ). Retrieved 27 September 2011. 

[edit] External links

• The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True by Richard Dawkins

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_of_Reality

Exciting and engaging: Richard Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True

By Christine Schofelt
12 November 2011

For more than a decade we have experienced a veritable explosion in the number of books aimed at young adults and middle schoolers that treat vampires, witches and other supernatural subjects.

Fantasy, of course, has its place, but something else, of sociological and ideological significance, is going on here. There has been a concerted flight from reality on the part of many authors and publishers—complex issues of growing up or making sense of the world are increasingly reduced to good-versus-evil tropes, cloaked in macabre fantasy and packaged in ways that serve only to remove the reader from the world she or he inhabits. The search for the next big monster or magical element is ongoing, and creature after creature is seized upon, trumpeted and offered up as a trifling distraction.

In this climate, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ latest offering, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True, is a welcome book indeed. While most people who are familiar with Dawkins will likely recognize quite a bit of the content from his Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), this is a worthy endeavor, as he shows within its pages why reality offers so much more than fairy tales ever could.

Richard Dawkins

Dawkins sets out in the first chapter—”What is reality? What is magic?”—to define the terms in question. He lays out how we know what is real, through direct sensory perception, as well as by using instruments and methods to test theories using models, arguing that how we know things ultimately comes down to reliance on our senses.

Importantly, he asks, “Does this mean that reality only contains things that can be detected, directly or indirectly, by our senses and by methods of science? What about things like jealousy and joy, happiness and love? Are these not also real?” His answer is firmly materialist; “Yes, they are real. But they depend for their existence on brains … These emotions are intensely real to those who experience them, but they didn’t exist before brains did.” This alone is refreshing.

As for magic, it is as he notes, “a slippery word,” and Dawkins takes pains to define what exactly he means by it in this book. While providing examples of supposedly “supernatural magic” and “stage magic” too (including references to his friends Penn Jillette and James Randi), by far the most intriguing discussion involves what he calls “poetic magic”—the magic of viewing the stars, the magic of being “moved to tears by a beautiful piece of music,” of “something that makes us feel more alive.”

In one of my favorite passages, Dawkins provides a very useful warning against using supernatural magic as an explanation: “To say that something happened supernaturally is not just to say ‘We don’t understand it’ but to say ‘We will never understand it, so don’t even try.’” Science, he says, takes the opposite approach, and “thrives on its inability—so far—to explain everything, and uses that as a spur to go on asking questions.”

Opening the doors to inquiry and discovery, to finding out what is real, and encouraging young people to explore the wonders of reality are Dawkins’ primary aims with The Magic of Reality, and he proves an engaging writer for the vast majority of the book. He writes with an excitement not often seen in nonfiction books aimed at people in this age group. His own love of the complexity of reality is palpable. Where many books on science tend to focus only on the facts, Dawkins’ approach is very personal and warm. His assumption of intelligence on the part of the reader, and that we deserve to know the truth and will enjoy it, is endearing and caring. It matters to him that young people know what’s what.

Each of the chapters poses and answers a question—in the second chapter, for example, “Who was the first person?” Dawkins uses a similar device to his “library” of time in Unweaving the Rainbow—this time using an imaginary three miles of photographs to describe the millennial pace of evolution. Tracing our ancestry back, Dawkins brings us from modern humans through 185 million generations of “great grandparents” to prehistoric fish. Having started the chapter with a couple of examples of creation myths, which Dawkins tells in a surprisingly even-handed tone, he then contrasts the reality and how we know what we know.

The chapter does get complex, describing several sorts of science involved in figuring out the process of evolution. This is better than fine, but could get daunting for some children. The illustrations by Dave McKean, however, provide a good hook to keep the reader on track. McKean, whose own career has ranged over quite a variety of projects, from the Sandman comic books and film direction to book and album illustration, is a perfect match for this project. His use of ink drawings, paintings, photography and collage is not just beautiful, but serves to draw the reader in—the “what is that?” effect of many of the illustrations is itself a spur to deeper attention and thought.

Moving through the subjects of atoms, earthquakes, the sun and (of course) rainbows, Dawkins then tackles such questions as “Are we alone?” “Why do bad things happen?” and “What is a miracle?” It is here that one can expect trouble from certain quarters, because while Dawkins’ tone remains avuncular, his content will not sit well with some.

In “Are we alone?,” Dawkins notes that there are not many ancient legends involving aliens, and therefore discusses more modern phenomena such as the Heaven’s Gate cult. He treats the victims of the cult humanely, with an effort to explain why they took the actions they did. He is very good in this chapter, which covers the gamut of alien abduction stories, and brings in the studies of a number of psychologists on subjects such as how memory works, false memory syndrome, sleep paralysis and such.

His efforts to debunk alien abduction tales are not intended to discontinue the search for knowledge—indeed, it is just a jumping off point. In answer to the question, “Is there really life on other planets?,” he answers flatly, “Nobody knows. If you forced me to give an opinion one way or the other, I’d say yes … But who cares about an opinion? One of the great virtues of science is that scientists know when they don’t know the answer to something. They cheerfully admit that they don’t know. Cheerfully, because not knowing the answer is an exciting challenge to try to find it.”

“Why do bad things happen?” is a very useful chapter in which Dawkins not only sets out to make sense of superstition, but also to show what “luck” really is, and to “depersonalize” the universe. As in the other chapters, Dawkins makes good use of myths and stories of ancient traditions to introduce the chapter and illustrate his points, and we see in this section an especially welcome tendency not to condemn, but to understand why people thought the way they did.

The various myths are treated as past attempts to understand the world around us and dismissed gently. The reality of the situation—concepts such as probability, for example—are introduced. He makes, in every case, a very good argument for science as a better and more intriguing way to find out about the richness of the world than any story that has gone before. Gentle as he is, however, he does firmly place the legends and myths properly to rest, and this is bound to rile the more rabid elements of various religious communities.

All in all, this is a valuable book. Dawkins has said that he intended it for those 12 years old on up—but that he also hoped parents would read it with their kids. One could certainly see curling up with it.

The author also recommends:

The joy of science
A review of Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins
[8 January 1999]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/11/dawk-n12.html

The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins - review

A brilliant introduction to science for children

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• • Tim Radford
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 21 September 2011 09.00 BST
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Dawkins: 'a friendly, conversational and forthright tone'. Photograph: Anne Katrin Purkiss/Rex Features

Myths and fables are the first Just So stories; they tell us what we would like to know. Science tells us what we may know, along with why and how we may know it. Myths endure because, at their best, they are great stories. The narrative of science is always incomplete, continuously under revision, and seldom delivers a neat ending or a consoling moral. Even so, as Richard Dawkins confirm‎s again and again in this book – his first for "a family audience" – science composes stories as thrilling as Homer, as profound as Job, and as entertaining as anything by Kipling.

1. The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
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Consider the epic of creation: in considerably less time than it takes to say "Let there be light", all matter, time and space confected itself either from nothing, or almost nothing, about 13.7bn years ago, and within the first second was already on course to become an unimaginably vast arena for dark matter, light, galaxies, stars, planets, comets, asteroids, 92 elements, countless chemical compounds and finally – as far as we know – on just one little speck of a planet, a world of living things. No less wonderful is that this whole story has been transcribed by collective effort in only 400 years, with the agency of light and some help from telescope, microscope and the light-splitting, rainbow-making spectroscope. "Rainbows are not just beautiful to look at," says Dawkins. "In a way, they tell us when everything began, including time and space. I think that makes the rainbow even more beautiful."

He has, of course, stood up for rainbow research before: specifically in Unweaving the Rainbow (1998) and the strengths, and possible weaknesses, of this book lie in just that: it is a distillation of so much that Dawkins has written and argued since the publication of The Selfish Gene (1976), not excluding his 2006 provocation The God Delusion. The strength is that he knows his ground. The weakness is that – for a "family audience" – he deliberately constrains his vocabulary along with the exuberant imagery and belligerence that made his reputation from the start. The tone is friendly, conversational and forthright: don't ask him to explain how a rainbow tells you that time and space began with the big bang "because, not being a cosmologist, I don't understand it myself".

There is a price to be paid for a disarming manner. The reader may wonder whether you really have the ammunition and firepower needed to hold your ground. There is, conversely, a reward: such asides are a grown-up reminder that science is also about things we don't know, but which we are sure can be addressed.

And – in a relatively short book, prodigiously illustrated and beautifully designed – he covers a lot of ground by addressing a series of pleasingly simple questions. Who was the first person? Why are there so many kinds of animals? Why do we have night and day, winter and summer? What is an earthquake? And so on. The answers take us from DNA to the Doppler effect, from hydrogen to hibernation, from rainbows to redshift, from tsunami to tectonic shifts, from perihelion to parallax, from sod's law to shooting stars. Like many science writers before him, he starts with the myths once composed to explain the sun and the moon, or the animals, or the first humans, or the seasons, or the shaking earth: by the close of the book he has mildly placed the Aboriginal, Nordic, Hopi, Greek, Maori, Hebrew and Christian traditions as equally primitive, equally interesting and equally unsatisfactory explanations of reality.

This fabulous context drives the direction of the text, towards all those old questions that children must always have asked. I cannot think of a better, or simpler, introduction to science as a good idea: simpler, because the starting point is the world's palpable, experienced reality rather than say formal subjects such as genetics, wave mechanics or astrophysics; better, because it could hardly be more up-to-date. At the time of the book's writing (January 2011) "484 planets have been detected … orbiting 408 stars. There will surely be more by the time you read this."

Dave McKean's illustrations play wittily on already half-familiar images from Hollywood biblical epics, Pink Panther movies, film noir, science-fiction covers, cartoons, paintings, icons, hieroglyphs and formal scientific graphics. There is an extended homily for the young would-be rationalist, on probability and how to eval‎uate reports of miracles such as the apparition of the virgin at Fatima. This sustained emphasis on myth and fable is intended to provoke, and does.

I am reminded that my very first introduction to evolutionary theory was a Lamarckian heresy composed to account for the rumpled hide of a rhinoceros. It involved natural selection in the form of a hot day, some stale cake crumbs and a Parsee from whose hat the sun's rays were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. It was, of course, one of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. I loved every word of it, and still do. I don't remember believing, even at the age of four, that a rhino ever took off its skin to bathe, and I absorbed the Darwinian version of evolution as soon as it was presented to me. The intended lesson of Dawkins's book is that science tells a marvellous set of experimentally testable stories. The less direct lesson may be that we cannot stop telling ourselves fables, but at least we should learn to tell the difference.

Tim Radford's The Address Book is published by Fourth Estate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/21/richard-dawkins-magic-reality-review