A Devil鈥檚 Chaplain by Richard Dawkins, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 拢16.99, ISBN 0297829734 Reviewed by Roy Herbert
THE title is a quotation from Charles Darwin. In a letter to a friend, he wrote, 鈥淲hat a book a Devil鈥檚 Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low and horridly cruel works of nature.鈥� At the beginning of his book Dawkins points out that nature is not cruel nor kind, but indifferent. He uses the word 鈥渃allous鈥� to describe it. These are terms that have a human content and this has led critics of Darwinism to lay horrors such as the Holocaust at its door. Dawkins demolishes this argument in a lively introduction to a collection of his published essays interspersed with new ones.
A Devil鈥檚 Chaplain is a rare treat and it comes in seven servings, each with an introduction by the author. It is possible, and even tempting, to go through the lot at one sitting, but readers will find it more rewarding to take it a bite at a time, dipping in as you would at a buffet. The titles of the seven sections don鈥檛 give much of a clue to their themes 鈥� for instance 鈥淟ight will be thrown鈥� and 鈥淓ven the ranks of Tuscany鈥� 鈥� but it doesn鈥檛 matter, because each essay will grip you at once.
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Of course, Dawkins is a controversialist and passionate about evolution, so he gathers antagonists, if not enemies. He is goaded by a confidence trick played on him by an Australian film crew, who asked for an interview which he suddenly realised was aimed at showing he could not answer a question posed by a creationist. His resentment at this resulted in a marvellous explanation of what 鈥渋nformation鈥� means technically and how it applies to genetics.
Here, too, is his hilarious review of the book by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont (Intellectual Impostures, Profile, 1998) about submitting a paper that was deliberate nonsense from start to finish to a postmodern American journal. The paper was treated seriously, but even its title was meaningless. This essay includes a web address for a similar paper, grammatically correct, unique and similarly meaningless.
Dawkins鈥檚 closely argued case for preferring to be tried by a judge sitting alone and not relying on the 鈥�12 good men and true鈥� of a jury is another delight, though his opinion of lawyers seems to be the common one. There are formidable attacks on religion that will reinforce unbelievers and outrage the devout.
What might surprise some readers are a number of tributes to friends who have died: they are graceful, affectionate and grieving. The name of Peter Medawar crops up admiringly throughout. He was a master of clear exposition of science and its liberating power, as is Dawkins.