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The river of Dawkins's title is a river of DNA, flowing through time from the beginning of life on earth to the present - and onwards. Dawkins explains that DNA must be thought of as the most sophisticated information system imaginable: 'Life is just bytes and bytes of information,' he writes. Using this perspective, he describes the mechanisms by which evolution has taken place, gradually but inexorably, over a period of three thousand million years. It is the story of how evolution happens, rather than a narrative of what has actually happened in evolution. He discusses current views on the process of human evolution, including the idea that we all trace back to a comparatively recent African 'Eve', and speculates that the 'information explosion' that was unleashed on Earth when DNA came into being has almost certainly happened in other places in the universe.
| ISBN | 1857994051 | | Pages | 224 | | ISBN13 | 9781857994056
(What's this?) | | Weight (grammes) | 215 | | Publisher | Orion Publishing Co | | Published in | London | | Imprint | Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ) | | Series title | Science Masters | | Format | Paperback | | Height (mm) | 198 | | Publication date | 20 May 1996 | | Width (mm) | 129 | | DEWEY | 576.8 | | Spine width (mm) | 16 | | DEWEY edition | DC21 | | Academic level | Tertiary education, General |
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