BLIND WATCHMK PA

R DAWKINS

ISBN 10: 0393304485 / ISBN 13: 9780393304480

Published by WW Norton & Co, 1987

About this Item

R DAWKINS, WW Norton & Co. The book titled BLIND WATCHMK PA by the author R DAWKINS. This is a secondhand book. Please contact us for more information about this title.

Seller Inventory # 9780393304480-SECONDHAND

Bibliographic Details

• Title: BLIND WATCHMK PA
• Publisher: WW Norton & Co
• Publication Date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0393304485
• ISBN 13: 9780393304480
• Binding: Paperback
• Book Type: Paperback

About this title

Synopsis

A vigorous and readable defense of Darwinism which leaps effortlessly from the primeval soup to long rows of taxonomy. Deep enough to be valuable to biologists, yet simple and well-written so as to appeal to a mass audience. Illustrated.

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.