River out of eden

R$ 64,90

Sinopse

The river of Dawkins's title is a river of DNA, flowing through time from the beginning of life on earth to the present - and onwards. Dawkins explains that DNA must be thought of as the most sophisticated information system imaginable: 'Life is just bytes and bytes of information,' he writes. Using this perspective, he describes the mechanisms by which evolution has taken place, gradually but inexorably, over a period of three thousand million years. It is the story of how evolution happens, rather than a narrative of what has actually happened in evolution. He discusses current views on the process of human evolution, including the idea that we all trace back to a comparatively recent African 'Eve', and speculates that the 'information explosion' that was unleashed on Earth when DNA came into being has almost certainly happened in other places in the universe.

Participantes

Autor: Richard Dawkins

Autor

RICHARD DAWKINS

O biólogo inglês Richard Dawkins (1941, Nairóbi, Quênia) não é próximo de Charles Darwin apenas no sobrenome. É considerado o principal evolucionista em atividade e tem como grande contribuição o esforço contínuo para tornar a teoria de Darwin compreensível ao grande público. Enérgico defensor do ceticismo e do ateísmo, costuma travar polêmicos debates com representantes da comunidade religiosa. Dawkins escreveu O gene egoísta (1976) e O fenótipo estendido (1982), o best-seller Deus, um delírio (2006), entre outros.