Cosmos - Carl Sagan

Review by Roger McEvilly

I first saw the series COSMOS on TV in about 1980 when I was about 12, and have been searching for similar material ever since. Carl Sagan is able to capture the mystery and the beauty of astronomy, science, art and religion in a way that most poeple can follow, and in a way that is interesting and invigorating. He is a very clear thinker and presenter. And this book, based on that very popular TV series of the same name, I found in an old book store, which I immediately grabbed. Here was something of my childhood, and something very special. The book did not disappoint. It is filled with stunning images, photographs, illustrations, diagrams and so on. And the text is fun, enlightening, clear, visionary, and precise. Not surprising, since it is written by an atronomer at heart. It is also advisable to search around and buy the illustrated edition-the illustrations add much to the text.

Carl places the earth on the shores of the cosmic ocean-the title of the first chapter. He traces religious, artistic and scientific investigations into the 'cosmos' throughout the millenia, and the amount of useful historical information he brings up is quite extraordinary. He draws together the thoughts of ancient cultures like the Greeks, Babylonians, Stone Age man, Renaissance thinkers, poets, artists, and famous scientists, and ties these in with many modern discoveries concerning the nature of the universe. One can see his strong leanings on the likelihood of extraterrestial life and the SETI project between the lines, as well as his views on religion and its place in the human psyche. One particularly interesting peice describes the downfall of the old greek science and the destruction of the library at Alexandria, and how these tie in with his views on history, science and religion in general. (click for full review)

http://rapidshare.com/files/118961443/kitap12.rar (1098 KB, şifre: 12kitap89)

Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Daniel C. Dennett

Review by Danny Yee

Dennett begins by explaining why he thinks Darwin deserves the prize for the "single best idea anyone has ever had" and why his idea was (and is) so revolutionary, so dangerous. He illustrates this with a brief account of pre-Darwinian ideas — with Locke as an exponent of the traditional viewpoint and Hume as someone who came very close to Darwin's insight. The key elements of Darwin's "dangerous idea" are a denial of essentialism and an understanding of natural selection as a substrate neutral, algorithmic process, applicable to an extremely wide range of phenomena and capable of achieving immense feats by slow accumulation over large extents of time and space.

Darwin's original application of natural selection was, of course, to the origin of species. Dennett explores different ways of visualising the "tree of life" and explains the problems involved in defining species (decisions about species status are necessarily retrospective). This is illustrated with an explanation of the often misunderstood "Mitochondrial Eve" phenomena.

At this point Dennett introduces a metaphor which is used throughout the book: "cranes" are devices or "good tricks" that allow design to proceed faster, but which build on existing foundations; "skyhooks" are entirely mysterious, pre-existing hooks in the sky which enable some problem to be solved or some complexity to be created entirely independently of ordinary processes of design. Dennett argues that there is no place at all for skyhooks and that the only bad reductionism is a "greedy" reductionism that tries to do without cranes. (click for full review)

http://rapidshare.com/files/118961017/kitap11.rar (2858 KB, şifre: 11kitap55)

Breaking the Spell - Daniel C. Dennett

Review by complete review

Daniel Dennett tries to present Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (as the subtitle has it) in this book. One of his central arguments is that the existence of religion (and the belief in god(s)) can be explained by (Darwinian) evolutionary theory, a meme that's really caught (and held) on.

Dennett's approach is emphatically scientific, as he considers religion as a 'natural phenomenon' and not as the divinely inspired super-natural institution that is so widely held to be beyond scientific inquiry. Much of the book is, in fact, devoted to merely justifying the approach, as Dennett worries that his audience may find it inappropriate, irrelevant, or even dangerous. (Dennett's first words are the warning that he is: "an American author, and this book is addressed in the first place to American readers" -- readers who apparently require special care and handling on the subject (something many of those who read drafts of the book apparently complained about).) (click for full review)

http://rapidshare.com/files/118960734/kitap10.rar (2100 KB, şifre: 10kitap34)

A Brief History Of Time - Stephen Hawking

Review by Nick Donaldson

This book was the first of Hawking's that I read, and still my favourite. If you haven't read it yet, I heartily recommend it. Below is the flap cover text from the hardback:Stephen W. Hawking has achieved international prominence as one of the great minds of the twentieth century. Now, for the first time, he has written a popular work exploring the outer limits of our knowledge of astrophysics and the nature of time and the universe.

The result is a truly enlightening book: a classic introduction to today's most important scientific ideas about the cosmos, and a unique opportunity to experience the intellect of one of the most imaginative, influential thinkers of our age. From the vantage point of the wheelchair where he has spent the last twenty years trapped by Lou Gehrig's disease, Professor Hawking himself has transformed our view of the universe. His groundbreaking research into black holes offers clues to that elusive moment when the universe was born. Now, in the incisive style which is his trademark, Professor Hawking shows us how mankind's "world picture" has evolved from the time of Aristotle through the 1915 breakthrough of Albert Einstein, to the exciting ideas of today's prominent young physicists. (click for full review)

http://rapidshare.com/files/118960307/kitap9.rar (1390 KB, şifre: 9kitap21)

Atheist Universe - David Mills

Review by Leland Waldrip

Author David Mills quotes Thomas Jefferson, who, in a letter to John Adams, wrote "I apologize to you for the lengthiness of this letter; but I had no time for shortening it." This book lives up to author Mills’ promise in the introduction to challenge conventional wisdom and use extreme conciseness and clarity for his message. He describes his writing style as slow and deliberate, requiring years to complete the book. He wrote it after coming to question his reasoning for becoming a "born-again Christian evangelist."

With this book David Mills has delivered a coup d’etat to any thought of reconciling religion and science. Post-modernist apologies and attempts to bridge the gap between religion and science he gives no quarter. He very carefully and methodically attacks every religious argument outside the realm of human invention for the existence of a god. His favorite target is the irrationality of Christian belief and the Bible's contention of a young earth, Noah’s flood, Genesis genealogies, etc. One rather interesting point he made in an almost casual manner was an observation that the genealogies in Matthew and Luke of the New Testament describe (contradictory) detailed male lineages of Jesus back to King David, and thereby create a trap for the writers of those books: The virgin birth would preclude any blood relationship through Joseph, so how could there be a lineage between Jesus and David? In debunking the prophesy of the Bible, Mills describes an absence of accuracy, noting that as far as accuracy is concerned, the Bible is a non-prophet organization. (click for full review)

http://rapidshare.com/files/118959811/kitap8.rar (1504 KB, şifre: 8kitap13)

The Ancestor's Tale - Richard Dawkins

Review by Jim Walker

The title derives from an allusion to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, where the characters tell tales on their way backward to ancient Canterbury picking up pilgrims along with way at various rendezvous points. Dawkins Canterbury represents the origin of life, the oldest ancestor to our unbroken heritage. The pilgrims in Dawkins story describe our cousins the chimpanzees, gorillas, primates, mammals, animals, etc. The 'beginning' starts with us, the human beings, and the story goes backward in time, following the long branching tree of evolution from the outermost twig, the branches, the trunk, and finally to the root of all life.

Dawkins has a very good reason for describing the evolutionary path backwards rather than forward. Many laymen evolutionists (and religionists) have incorrectly concluded that evolution progresses linearly and has a purpose where we humans act as the target for a 'higher' form of evolution. If one looks at evolution in the direction of forward time, it can lead one to this false sense of progress. Because of Dawkins disavowal of aimed evolution, he chose to do history backwards to avoid this misconception. And it works. Looking at evolution backwards gives us a novel and new appreciation for the diverse and branching aspect of evolution. At each branch point (rendezvous point) we meet our ancestors (Dawkins invents the term concestors). The first rendezvous point, for example, examines our first cousins the chimpanzees, our closest relatives on the DNA chain. This backward way of looking at evolution shows us that humans did not evolve from chimpanzees but rather we evolved out of a shared concestor which gave rise to chimps and humans. A major rendezvous occurs with rendezvous 26 (about 590 million years ago), when all the insects, molluscs, and the worms join. Then we go on to meet the fungi, the plants and eventually the bacteria at some indeterminate time in the ancient past, where all life shares the same ancestor. It takes only 40 rendezvous points to travel back to the beginning of life on earth itself. This appears breathtaking when one considers that all living things trace their lineage back to a single ancestor, a bacterium that lived more than three billion years ago. All life as we know it consists of DNA and all living things, including bacteria, share common genes. (click for full review)

http://rapidshare.com/files/118957659/kitap7.rar (30191 KB, şifre: 7kitap8)

A Devil's Chaplain - Richard Dawkins

Review by Jim Walker

Reading such intelligent thoughts, put so simply and clearly, and with profound originality, this book can't help but to elevate the reader to some inspired mental plane, unless the reader happens to possess that viral disease called Faith. Anyone who harbors that ugly mental disorder will find themselves vomiting objections to the very thing that just might cure them. Richard Dawkins serves as the doctor who has a cure; a treatment that the infected mind, by its very nature, will at first want to reject. However, if the brave believers can get past their infirmity's power of denial, they will have the inoculative tools to help rid themselves of unnecessary (and dangerous) beliefs.

A Devil's Chaplain, written by one of the most renowned evolutionary biologists, comes from his personal selections from past articles, lectures, book reviews, forewords, tributes and eulogies that he had published over 25 years. A few of you may notice that many of the chapters from Dawkins book had previously appeared on John Catalano's wonderful web site, The World of Richard Dawkins.

No doubt some of the Religious Right will believe that the title of this book describes Dawkins as a disciple of Satan, but actually the phrase comes from a letter by Darwin where he jokingly refers to a book by a Devil's Chaplain explaining the cruel works of nature (an idea that a religious mind who thinks their god has created perfect designs in 'His' image, might want to reconsider after reading this book).

The subjects in this book range from the latest views of evolutionary biology, Darwin, the methodology of science, memes (a lot on memes), ethics, religion (a lot on religion), and heros. Of his heros, Dawkins writes lovingly about the lives of Douglas Adams (of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame), W. D. Hamilton, John Diamond, Richard Leakey, and Stephen Jay Gould. (click for full review)

http://rapidshare.com/files/118957559/kitap6.rar (7240 KB, şifre: 6kitap5)

Unweaving The Rainbow - Richard Dawkins

Review by Kendrick Frazier

The central challenge addressed in Richard Dawkins's Unweaving the Rainbow is the perception among many that science somehow diminishes our appreciation of the world. It is a problem all who attempt to explain science to the wider public must sometime face, and noted thinkers like Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, and Martin Gardner all have written about it. In 1995, Dawkins, the noted Oxford zoologist and evolutionist (and CSICOP Fellow), became the first Charles Simonyi professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford. In this book he faces these wider issues, which go far beyond evolutionary biology but are still enriched and informed by Dawkins's intimate familiarity with that subject. His title is from Keats, who believed that Newton had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to its prismatic colors.

Dawkins quickly lays that particular complaint to rest by showing how Newton's optics led to spectroscopy which led to measurement of emission and absorption line spectra and thereby to direct understanding of the nature and characteristics of stars-their size, luminosity, history, and future ("Barcodes of the Stars")-and then to our wider understanding of the cosmos.

"Newton's dissection of the rainbow into light of different wavelengths led onto Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism and thence to Einstein's theory of special relativity," notes Dawkins, adding: "If you think the rainbow has poetic mystery, you should try relativity." All from a little "unweaving of the rainbow." And nothing about it need diminish our astonishment and appreciation of the beauty of a rainbow arcing across the rain-darkened sky. (click for full review)

http://rapidshare.com/files/118957346/kitap5.rar (539 KB, şifre: 5kitap3)

The Selfish Gene (30th Anniversary Ed) - Richard Dawkins

Review by Christine Tong
The Selfish Gene presents a brilliant collage of ideas pertaining to biological evolution. Dawkins argues that evolution occurs for the good of the gene (and indirectly the carrier) and not for the good of the species--an idea still contradictory to many social biologists. Specifically, he argues that "the predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness". Much discussion is devoted to unraveling apparent acts of social altruism as fundamental genetic selfishness.

The beauty of this book lies in its simplicity and clarity. Dawkins writes in a non-technical, jargon-free language anyone can understand. The emergence of DNA and genes is explained clearly in terms of probability in molecular survival. His writing style is comprehensible yet gripping. He portrays nature as a savage battleground where genes stop at nothing to survive. Animals, plants, and even ourselves, are merely their disposable "survival machines". Vivid examples of exploitation and violence make natural selection come alive. Think of this book as a hybrid between science fiction and thriller. It is suitable for any student from grade nine and up. Used as a supplementary text or for leisure reading, The Selfish Gene raises some controversial ideas about humanity and our place in the universe. (click for full review)

http://rapidshare.com/files/118956993/kitap4.rar (1944 KB, şifre: 4kitap2)

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

Review by PZ Myers

Science writers like Gould, Goodenough, Sagan, or Dawkins often aspire to communicate the wonder they feel at the beauty, complexity, and diversity of nature. It's a natural consequence of a career in science—perhaps even a prerequisite for one—to marvel at stars in the sky or strange creatures of the deep, or even the miracle of our own flesh. Great science writing tries to transmit that same sense of amazement to the reader. In return, all too often these writers are paid the backhanded compliment that they, who do not believe in spirits, are "spiritual;" that the joy they take in the universe is their "religion."

"But is religion the right word?" asks eminent Oxford scholar Richard Dawkins in his newest book, The God Delusion. Though the appropriation of the term may seem innocuous, in Dawkins's view it's part of a larger and more dangerous trend. His reply—"I don't think so"—sets the tone for the book. (click for full review)

http://rapidshare.com/files/118956439/kitap3.rar (1794 KB, şifre: 3kitap1)

The Extended Phenotype - Richard Dawkins

Review by Deron Stewart

Richard Dawkins has a keen mind and an engaging writing style as is well known. Science has become so large that no one can understand in detail more than a small fraction of any one field. This means that there is a virtue in being able to sift through the barrage of detail for the essential unifying truths about how things are and how they have to be. In a world of splintered specialization the expository talents of Richard Dawkins are deservedly respected. Biological evolution is an intellectual mine field where lack of rigor in making arguments can easily lead to misleading conclusions and Dawkins is not shy about pointing out his colleagues' logical blunders. His own ideas are well thought out and well presented including the Extended Phenotype concept itself.

A more comprehensive Glossary would be useful for non-biologists but for the most part even the difficult passages are comprehensible if an effort is made, and it's well worth the effort. He fears that if it is too easily understood it will not be taken seriously by professional biologists -- he is apologetic about including a Glossary at all. Perhaps if clarity were more revered within academic circles his fear would be unjustified. (Bertrand Russell's reluctant advice to academics was to write in obscure and difficult language in order to get credibility, explaining that the only reason he could get away with writing simple English was that everyone knew he could write things in the arcane language of mathematical logic if he chose.)

http://rapidshare.com/files/118956303/kitap2.rar ( 15415 KB, şifre: 2kitap1)

The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins

Review by John Catalano

One of the most famous arguments of the creationist theory of the universe is the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley's: Just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. But as Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University, demonstrates in this brilliant and eloquent riposte to the Argument from Design, the analogy is false. Natural selection, the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process that Darwin discovered, has no purpose in mind. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

Patiently and lucidly, Dr. Dawkins - in this book which has been acclaimed as perhaps the most influential work on evolution written in this century - identifies those aspects of the theory which people find hard to believe and removes the barrier to credibility one by one.

http://rapidshare.com/files/118956183/kitap1.rar (4525 KB, şifre: 1kitap0)

User Agreement / Kullanıcı Anlaşması

The creater of this page and ISP hosting it take no responsibility for the way you use information provided on the site. We just index ebooks links collected by legal search techniques. If you download any of ebooks from external links given you agree to use it for educational pupose only.

All the objects on this site are PRIVATE property and are meant for previewing only. If you enter this site without following these agreements you are not agreeing to these terms and you are violating code 431.322.12 of the Internet Privacy Act signed by Bill Clinton in 1995 and that means that you CANNOT threaten our ISP(s) or any person(s) or company storing these files, cannot prosecute any person(s) affiliated with this page which includes family, friends or individuals who run or enter this web site. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THESE TERMS THEN LEAVE THIS SITE!

All files were collected by search techniques and we dont support illegal activities, If you realize a url belongs to you and if it is not open to public please inform the blogmaster by sending comment under the related post. The links will be removed (Proof of URL ownership is required).