Items related to Climbing Mount Improbable
***20th Anniversary Edition - With a New Introduction*** Cover note: Each copy of the anniversary edition of Climbing Mount Improbable features a unique shell. No two covers are exactly alike.How could such an intricate object as the human eye - so complex and so precise - have come about by chance? In this masterful piece of popular science, Richard Dawkins builds a powerful and carefully reasoned argument for evolutionary adaptation as the force behind all life on earth. The metaphor of 'Mount Improbable' represents the combination of perfection and improbability that we find in the seemingly 'designed' complexity of living things. And through it all runs the thread of DNA, the molecule of life, responsible for its own destiny on an unending pilgrimage through time. Evocative illustrations accompany Dawkins' eloquent descriptions of astonishing adaptations in the living world.
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Review:
How do species evolve? Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most eminent zoologists, likens the process to scaling a huge, Himalaya-size peak, the Mount Improbable of his title. An alpinist does not leap from sea level to the summit; neither does a species utterly change forms overnight, but instead follows a course of "slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants"--a course that Charles Darwin, Dawkins's great hero, called natural selection. Illustrating his arguments with case studies from the natural world, such as the evolution of the eye and the lung, and the coevolution of certain kinds of figs and wasps, Dawkins provides a vigorous, entertaining defense of key Darwinian ideas.
About the Author:
In 1995 Richard Dawkins became the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the bestselling author of THE SELFISH GENE, THE BLIND WATCHMAKER (Penguin, 1988) and UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW (Penguin, 1998).
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- PublisherPenguin
- Publication date1996
- ISBN 10 0140263020
- ISBN 13 9780140263022
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Rating
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Climbing Mount Improbable.
Published by
Viking / Penguin Books, London
(1996)
ISBN 10: 0140263020
ISBN 13: 9780140263022
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Softcover
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Book Description Paperback, very good condition, figures (text-photos & drawings), spine little faded, minor edgewear. 308 pp. An elegant series of lectures on Darwinian selection, demonstrating that organisms are merely vehicles for genes. Seller Inventory # 20119
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