[Megan]

I haven't read Dawkins' book--have any of you?

Unweaving the Rainbow is as lucid, beguiling and serious as Dawkins's readers now expect.

Some of them may be surprised by his literary range, but then his starting point is to take on a poet and Dawkins, apart from having a lifelong affection for poetry, has always got to know his enemy.

John Keats, whose lines Dawkins quotes with open affection, is the hinge which opens the door of this book. It is reported by the painter and critic, Benjamin Haydon that Keats, at a dinner, with Wordsworth toasted 'confusion to the memory of Newton'.

When Wordsworth asked for an explanation before he drank the toast, Keats replied 'because he destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism'.

There is poetry in science. It's just that most poets are deaf to its rhythm | By genre | Guardian Unlimited Books