An Appetite for Wonder by Richard Dawkins: The Making of a Scientist, from Colonial Africa to Oxford Zoology
A book full of the experiences of a boy whose curiosity led him to question the conservative English education system. An Appetite for Wonder is the first volume of Richard Dawkins’s memoirs, following him from childhood to the start of his career as a scientist.
Author: Richard Dawkins (born 1941)
Title: An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist (2013)
Format: English paperback (Black Swan), 352 pages
Scope: Memoir, volume one
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0552779059 (ASIN 0552779059)
A Curious Child
Dawkins spent his early childhood in colonial Africa and was educated in England. A naturalist at heart, and an admirer of the broadcaster David Attenborough, his insatiable hunger to understand the world around him took him to the University of Oxford.
A Critic of Rigid Schools
Coming from a traditional family, he does not set out here to judge religious beliefs; rather, he calls attention to educational institutions whose fixed ideas and rigid ways of understanding life are too narrow for a born scientist, and asks why some people cannot imagine a less intimidating kind of education.
Darwin and Genetics
At university he became fascinated by Darwinism and worked in the zoology department. Genetics clearly caught his attention, and he pursued his studies in that direction. It is a personal journey through a life full of challenges and opportunities, of a young man interested early on in our origins.
An African Childhood
Dawkins was born in Nairobi in 1941, where his father was serving in the colonial agricultural service, and he spent his early years in Kenya and Nyasaland, now Malawi. The memoir describes this childhood with affection and humour: the wildlife, the eccentric relatives, the journeys, and the family’s long tradition of interest in natural history. When he was eight, the family returned to England, to a farm in Oxfordshire.
School and Oxford
He was educated at boarding schools and at Oundle, and then went to Balliol College, Oxford, to read zoology. There he came under the influence of Niko Tinbergen, one of the founders of the study of animal behaviour, who later shared a Nobel Prize. Dawkins describes Tinbergen’s teaching with great admiration, and it was under his supervision that he began research on decision-making in animals.
Towards The Selfish Gene
The volume follows him through his first academic posts, including a period at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1960s, and ends with the publication in 1976 of The Selfish Gene, the book that made his name. In it he argued that evolution is best understood from the point of view of the gene, and he coined the word "meme" for units of cultural transmission. Many readers will enjoy discovering how those ideas took shape.
The Second Volume
Dawkins continued his memoirs in Brief Candle in the Dark (2015), which covers his later career, including his years as Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford and his books on religion.
Who Will Enjoy It
Readers interested in the making of a scientist, the world of Oxford academia and the background to one of the most influential popular-science books of the twentieth century.
Even readers who disagree strongly with Dawkins’s later writings on religion often find this memoir charming: it is witty, self-deprecating and full of affection for the people and places that shaped him.
His descriptions of Tinbergen’s research group, in particular, are a vivid portrait of how science was done in Oxford in the 1960s.
Why Read It
A lover of nature, Dawkins describes his passion for life and animals. Readers who know him only from his public debates will find a gentler, more personal side here.
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