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Loading... The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe…by Richard Dawkins
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. An entertaining, witty and easy to understand explanation of Darwin's theory of natural selection that illustrates why Darwinian evolution is the only viable explanation for complex life on Earth. Dawkins makes no bones about his preference for Darwin's theory over all others, but he does give other possibilities a fair chance before clearly and elegantly showing that natural selection is the best (and really only) answer to the question of how complex life came to be. The edition I own is published by the Folio Society, with several sections of full color photographs that help to illustrate Dawkins' argument. (  )FionaCat | Oct 10, 2008 |  1   Crystal-clear explanation of evolution which in no way detracts from the wonder of the natural world. ( )kathymoo | Sep 29, 2008 | Excellent exposition of the main concepts and consequences of the theory of evolution. Although this does in no way detract from the quality of the book, it is a little curious to see how preoccupied Dawkins seems to be with the critics of evolution. In this respect, his book is structured in the grand manner of an Apology. One thing that I would have liked in a book like this (but maybe Dawkins will write another one) is a sense of what are considered to be the open problems in the theory of evolution, i.e. those spots (which exists in every discipline) where even the best informed scientists have to admit that there are things that we don't understand or seem conflicting. (  )stefano | Sep 2, 2008 | Dawkins is one of my favorite science writers and this one is an absolute classic and must-read. ( )yapete | May 31, 2008 | Dawkins does science very well. Love his books on science. ( )ppendharkar | Mar 26, 2008 | 0.056 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0393315703, Paperback)Richard Dawkins is not a shy man. Edward Larson's research shows that most scientists today are not formally religious, but Dawkins is an in-your-face atheist in the witty British style:
I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence. The title of this 1986 work, Dawkins's second book, refers to the Rev. William Paley's 1802 work, Natural Theology, which argued that just as finding a watch would lead you to conclude that a watchmaker must exist, the complexity of living organisms proves that a Creator exists. Not so, says Dawkins: "All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way... it is the blind watchmaker." Dawkins is a hard-core scientist: he doesn't just tell you what is so, he shows you how to find out for yourself. For this book, he wrote Biomorph, one of the first artificial life programs. You can check Dawkins's results on your own Mac or PC. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:10 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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