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| The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design | 
| List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $7.28
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 343 reviews)
Sales Rank: 3196
Category: Book
Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Studio: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Label: W. W. Norton
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0393315703
Dewey Decimal Number: 576.82
EAN: 9780393315707
ASIN: 0393315703
Publication Date: September 19, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
"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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| Customer Reviews: Read 338 more reviews...
 A good introduction November 19, 2008
This is a very good introduction to the concepts of evolution for someone who is new to the subject.
A good Dawkins primer November 12, 2008
This is a truly wonderful place to start for anyone interested in Dawkins' series of forays into being human. Dense, but with some jargon and some lovely prose, it will educate even the most seasoned biology student.
Why Does Blind Produce Design? October 13, 2008
The whole thesis of "The Blind Watchmaker" is that there is no design in nature.
Yet we see design everywhere: Is it merely an illusion?
The human body is an amazingly designed machine;
The biosphere of the earth is amazingly designed for human and animal life;
If natural selection is blind and random (and I concede that it is)how and why does it result in astonishingly designed organisms and environments?
I claim that Richard Dawkins has overlooked Factor X which fashions design from random selection or does he deny what his very eyes reveal?
His empirical data is persuasive in identifying Natural Selection as the mechanism behind the variety and complexity of living things, but how can
he deny that the result is not only design but rational order and purpose?
I claim that with all of his powers of observation, his instruments of investigation and his gift of deduction he has overlooked the factor, power or mechanism which brings order out of randomness and purpose out of blind change. I call it Factor X and claim it is to biology what Einstein's Relativity is to Physics.
Excellent book September 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Dawkins says evolution consists of two things: variation and selection. Variation (in the form of mutation) is indeed the result of random chance. Selection, however, is not at all random, and (when acting on variations) eventually results in the things we recognize as "life".
Most people are unaware that science is now starting to focus in earnest on prebiotic evolution, or what Dawkins has called "universal evolution". Just this week the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published an article on this.
Dawkins does an excellent job of describing the difference between biotic evolution and prebiotic evolution (biotic evolution replicates; prebiotic "evolution" is more like a sieve that "sorts" things and passes no or little information forward. Prebiotic evolution explains stellar evolution and the transformation of our solar system from a cloud of gas and dust to the clockwork-like machinery we see in the night sky. I found this book to be quite readable and engaging.
The Blind Watchmaker August 2, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Not an easy book to read, but well worth the effort. Understanding the evidence and arguments for evolution requires effort and thought, whereas believing in invisible and untestable gods is easy, which is why most people choose the latter. Dawkins explains clearly why evolution is the best, indeed the only rational explanation for life as it exists on Earth (other than the FSM, of course. Arrrr!)
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