The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing by Richard Dawkins (Editor)

Featured Writers and Extracts     xi
Introduction     xvii
What Scientists Study
from The Mysterious Universe   James Jeans     3
from Just Six Numbers   Martin Rees     4
from Creation Revisited   Peter Atkins     11
from The Ant and the Peacock   Helena Cronin     16
from The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection   R. A. Fisher     18
from Mankind Evolving   Theodosius Dobzhansky     22
from Adaptation and Natural Selection   G. C. Williams     27
from Life Itself   Francis Crick     30
from Genome   Matt Ridley     35
'Theoretical Biology in the Third Millennium'   Sydney Brenner     40
from The Language of the Genes   Steve Jones     48
from 'On Being the Right Size'   J. B. S. Haldane     53
from The Explanation of Organic Diversity   Mark Ridley     59
'The Importance of the Nervous System in the Evolution of Animal Flight'   John Maynard Smith     61
from Man in the Universe   Fred Hoyle     66
from On Growth and Form   D'Arcy Thompson     69
fromThe Meaning of Evolution   G. G. Simpson     78
from Trilobite!   Richard Fortey     82
from The Mind Machine   Colin Blakemore     86
from Mirrors in Mind   Richard Gregory     89
'One Self: A Meditation on the Unity of Consciousness'   Nicholas Humphrey     96
from The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works   Steven Pinker     103
from The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee   Jared Diamond     110
from The Life of the Robin   David Lack     114
from Curious Naturalists   Niko Tinbergen     115
from Social Evolution   Robert Trivers     123
from The Open Sea   Alister Hardy     127
from The Sea Around Us   Rachel Carson     130
from 'How Flowers Changed the World'   Loren Eiseley     138
from The Diversity of Life   Edward O. Wilson     143
Who Scientists Are
from The Expanding Universe   Arthur Eddington     151
from the Foreword to G. H. Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology   C. P. Snow     152
from Disturbing the Universe   Freeman Dyson     157
from 'War and the Nations'   J. Robert Oppenheimer     161
'A Passion for Crystals'   Max F. Perutz     168
'Said Ryle to Hoyle'   Barbara   George Gamow     172
'Cancer's a Funny Thing'   J. B. S. Haldane     174
from The Identity of Man   Jacob Bronowski     176
from 'Science and Literature, 'Darwin's Illness', 'The Phenomenon of Man', the postscript to 'Lucky Jim', and 'D' Arcy Thompson and Growth and Form'   Peter Medawar     179
from Self-Made Man   Jonathan Kingdon     188
from Origins Reconsidered   Richard Leakey   Roger Lewin     190
from Lucy   Donald C. Johanson   Maitland A. Edey     195
'Worm for a Century, and All Seasons'   Stephen Jay Gould     200
from Life Cycles   John Tyler Bonner     211
from Uncle Tungsten   Oliver Sacks     214
'Seven Wonders'   Lewis Thomas     219
from Avoid Boring People   James Watson     226
from What Mad Pursuit   Francis Crick     229
from The Unnatural Nature of Science   Lewis Wolpert     232
from Essays of a Biologist   Julian Huxley     234
'Religion and Science'   Albert Einstein     235
from The Demon-Haunted World   Carl Sagan     239
What Scientists Think
from The Character of Physical Law   Richard Feynman     247
from What is Life?   Erwin Schrodinger     249
from Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained   Daniel Dennett     254
from The Growth of Biological Thought   Ernst Mayr     259
from 'The Tragedy of the Commons'   Garrett Hardin     263
from Geometry for the Selfish Herd and Narrow Roads of Geneland   W. D. Hamilton     266
from How Nature Works   Per Bak     273
The Fantastic Combinations of John Conway's New Solitaire Game 'Life'   Martin Gardner     276
from Mathematics for the Million   Lancelot Hogben     284
from The Miraculous Jar   Ian Stewart     289
from The Mathematical Theory of Communication   Claude E. Shannon   Warren Weaver     297
from Computing Machinery and Intelligence   Alan Turing     305
from 'What is the Theory of Relativity?'   Albert Einstein     314
from Mr Tompkins   George Gamow     317
from The Goldilocks Enigma   Paul Davies     323
from The Time and Space of Uncle Albert   Russell Stannard     332
from The Elegant Universe   Brian Greene     336
from A Brief History of Time   Stephen Hawking     342
What Scientists Delight In
from Truth and Beauty   S. Chandrasekhar     349
from A Mathematician's Apology   G. H. Hardy     352
from Dreams of a Final Theory   Steven Weinberg     357
from The Life of the Cosmos   Lee Smolin     362
from The Emperor's New Mind   Roger Penrose     367
from Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid   Douglas Hofstadter     371
from Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam   John Archibald Wheeler   Kenneth Ford     378
from The Fabric of Reality   David Deutsch     381
from The Periodic Table   Primo Levi     383
from Life: An Unauthorized Biography   Richard Fortey     390
from The Meaning of Evolution   George Gaylord Simpson     392
from Little Men and Flying Saucers   Loren Eiseley     393
from Pale Blue Dot    Carl Sagan     394
Acknowledgements     397
Index     401