Books : The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

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The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

by: Richard Dawkins

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Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780393315707
ISBN: 0393315703
Item Dimensions: 12382697556
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Languages: EnglishUnknownEnglishOriginal LanguageEnglishPublished
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: September 17, 1996
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company

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"The best general account of evolution I have read in recent years."--E. O. Wilson. With a new introduction.

Twenty years after its original publication, The Blind Watchmaker, framed with a new introduction by the author, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin’s brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte. Natural selection—the unconscious, automatic, blind, yet essentially nonrandom process Darwin discovered—is the blind watchmaker in nature.

Amazon.com Review:
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.

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