Page 53 - The Peorian Vol 3 Issue 1 Winter
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In his memoir you will find
very little about Dr. Dawkins’s
atheistic ways because, as I said,
he is a scientist first and foremost.
He grew up in what many would
call a typical manner of someone
whose father was employed in
the British colonial service. He
was born in Kenya where his
father was working, and spent his
early youth tromping the African
jungles with his younger sister
and mother.
At the age of 13, he was
shipped off to school in England,
while his father inherited an
English country estate, which he
turned into a commercial farm.
Dawkins toyed with the idea
of becoming a farmer and was
always very interested in animal
behavior – not surprising for a
childhood in the jungles and on
the Cotswolds – which led to his
lifelong dedication to ethology
and evolutionary biology.
Dawkins has been widely
credited with being able to
make science interesting for the
non-scientific reader – and this
memoir underscores that mas-
tery. He knows when to dive in
deeply into a scientific subject as
well as when to skim the surface
so as not to confuse the common
reader.
While I heartily stand in
Dawkins’s corner in terms of
freethinking, I was very glad to
see the good doctor avoid the
subject in his memoir. It would
undoubtedly have taken the
focus away from all the ground-
breaking scientific work in both
animal behavior and evolution-
ary biology.
Case in point: In a recent
interview with Bill Maher pro-
moting the memoir, the primary
topic Maher was interested in
discussing was Dawkins’s life in
the Anglican Church before he
became an atheist – all of which
occurred by the time Dawkins
was a teenager.
Trust me, there’s a lot more to
Richard Dawkins than just his
youth spent as a believer – what
Dawkins himself calls a “typi-
cal Anglican upbringing.” And
page after page of this memoir
provides evidence of just that.
“An Appetite for Wonder: The
Making of a Scientist: A Memoir”
By Richard Dawkins
Ecco/Harper Collins
