The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
Human Existence Explained Through Evolution by Natural Selection
Fifty years before Charles Darwin published The Origin of the Species, William Paley wrote Natural Theology and made use of the watchmaker analogy that Richard Dawkins would use to entitle his own book about evolution.
Paley argued that the complexity of living organisms was evidence of the existence of a divine creator by drawing a parallel with the way in which existence of a watch inspires belief in an intelligent watchmaker. In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins has taken the opposite approach, contrasting the differences between human design and its potential for planning with the workings of natural selection, theorising therefore that evolutionary processes are analogous to a blind watchmaker.
Natural Selection
In The Blind Watchmaker Richard Dawkins succeeds admirably in showing how natural selection enabled scientists to do away with heavily religion based theories such as purpose and design and does so in a way which is informative and accessible for the layman.
Dawkins has taken Darwin’s theory of evolution and explained it in a clearer way than even the original text managed. He demonstrates how the idea of natural selection not only explains conclusively the development of all life on Earth but also does away with the need for further explanations.
Never one to be afraid of an argument, Dawkins restates the objections that have been put forward by opponents of the theory of evolution and explains the fallacy behind each one. The development of those popularly cited examples of organs that supposedly could not have evolved naturally, most notably the brain and the eye, are scientifically explained by Dawkins. The Blind Watchmaker demonstrates how every organ in existence is capable of evolving to its current state through small mutations over long periods of time, with each mutation leaving the organ inherently ‘better’ than it was before.
So while Dawkins doesn’t attack religion in any particularly venomous way, in The Blind Watchmaker he does set out to show that it is, as a concept, unnecessary to the understanding of the development of life on Earth. As such, this book will not be to everyone’s ideological tastes although, as a reading experience, it would be thought provoking for anyone.
Richard Dawkins is a rare author in the scientific field, he is an exceptional thinker but also a great communicator who, with The Blind Watchmaker, makes evolution and its impact on science in general understandable and fascinating to the average interested reader.
The Blind Watchmakerby Richard Dawkins
ISBN 978-0141026169, Penguin, 2006, £9.99, pp 368
The Blind Watchmaker
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