Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder by Richard Dawkins

Author:Richard Dawkins
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Science, History, Philosophy, Religion, Non-fiction
ISBN: 9780618056736
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 1998-01-01T10:00:00+00:00

True pattern Reason difficult to detect

Sexual intercourse is statistically followed by birth about 266 days later The exact interval varies around the average of 266 days. Intercourse more often than not fails to result in conception. Intercourse is often frequent anyway, so it is not obvious that conception results from that rather than from, say, eating, which is also frequent.

Conception is relatively probable in the middle of a woman's cycle, and relatively improbable near menstruation See above. In addition, women who don't menstruate don't conceive. This is a spurious correlation which gets in the way and even, to a naive mind, suggests the opposite of the truth.

Smoking causes lung cancer Plenty of people who smoke don't get lung cancer. Many people get lung cancer who never smoked.

In a time of bubonic plague, proximity to rats, and especially their fleas, tends to lead to infection Lots of rats and fleas around anyway. Rats and fleas are associated with so many other things, such as dirt and 'bad air', that it is hard to know which of the many correlated factors is the important one. I.e. again, there are spurious correlations that get in the way.

Now here are some false patterns which humans have mistakenly thought they detected.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.