It is comparable to bookies at a racecourse accepting bets on any of the horses, except the favourites. But even Dawkins nods sometimes. He cannot resist the opportunity to bang the drum for his genuinely original and exciting ideas about selfish genes and co-operation, which for all their beauty do now seem very familiar from his earlier books. Perhaps the attacks on Stephen Jay Gould are also a little too shrill, although it is hard to be too critical here, since Gould certainly needs taking down a peg or two, in any case, these passages do make the point that, although Gould writes beautifully, beautiful prose can also be plain wrong. This is important, because there is more to the book than the idea that science is built on a sense of wonder and an appreciation of beauty.
Science is also of profound practical importance in modern society.
They could do no better than to start by reading this book.