We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so amssively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. (查看原文)
Unlike Moore's law for computers, there is no obvious reason to think that the human brain will go on swelling. In order for this to happen, large-brained individuals have to have more children than small-brained individuals. It isn't obvious that this is now happening. It must have happened during our ancestral past, otherwise our brains would not have grown as they did. It also must have been true, incidentally, that braininess in our ancestors was under genetic control. If it had not been, natural selection would have had nothing to work on, and the evolutionary growth of the brain would not have occurred. For some reason, many people take grave political offense at the suggestion that some individuals are genetically clearer than others. But this must have been the case when our brains... (查看原文)
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理查德·道金斯 作者
左其盛
中信出版社2017版
见识城邦
中信出版社2017版
0 有用 海之晨曦初现 2019-07-09 16:24:24
科学的简洁和高雅，一次又一次复兴了，诗性与人文精神。 根据【理由性】而假设出来的可能符合自然真理的理论，通过【实验】而实证了的自然原理们，一次又一次改进了原本的艺术形式们，一次又一次催化了新式的艺术产物们。 因而：科学，本就是，哲学与艺术的基础。理由性，乃是，理智与激情的基础。
0 有用 hihitfm 2014-05-05 18:53:39
老道对于虚幻和模拟的描述，让我想起了《大脑可以改变》中的电波的描述以及《黑客帝国》中墨菲斯对尼欧讲解何为Matrix的场景。
0 有用 Aileen Baynton 2020-11-30 11:32:08
从生物学角度给很多刻板印象和逻辑谬误做了矫正。
0 有用 这可咋整 2016-06-23 20:37:41
其实我更喜欢看道金斯的吐槽。当然书本身还是很有趣的。虽说书的前半和后半内容有些脱节，但就传播科学理念方面说，也没什么不好。
0 有用 撄宁 2017-09-30 12:45:25
最后两章最有趣。