The Blind Watchmaker [Diskette]

Richard Dawkins (Author)

Product Details

• Diskette
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Dskt edition (January 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393993418
• ISBN-13: 978-0393993417
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,793,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A useful (16-year-old!) analogy for selection, July 23, 2006

By 

Christopher Petroni (Bozeman, MT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Blind Watchmaker (Diskette)

It astounds me how often Dawkins' detractors display a fundamental misunderstanding of his ideas. Dawkins never claimed at any point in "The Blind Watchmaker" that his software program of the same name constituted a perfect model of natural selection. It is a model of artifical selection, such as that which produced all the different modern varieties of dogs, and as such it demonstrates how selection acting on variation introduced by mutation can lead to increasing complexity and diversity. This it does admirably, even if there is nothing obviously "biological" about the biomorphs themselves. Dawkins can be forgiven his pride in his creation, I think.

A reviewer accused Dawkins of "never getting past" the arisal of a complete functional cell from nothing (the reviewer's words.) In fact Dawkins never made such a claim. Dawkins holds that life as we know it would have had to arise from a single self-replicating molecule, whose arisal is perhaps not overwhelmingly likely, but much more so than a complete cell.

The more I read into it, the more I believe that Darwinism is the only theory capable of explaining the complexity and diversity of life. I found the neo-Darwinian synthesis seductively easy to understand, staggeringly effective at explaining the way things are, and most of all, beautiful. My thanks to Dawkins for introducing me to it, if more through his books than through this software.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dawkins rich of mental image, October 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Blind Watchmaker (Diskette)

I actually read this book 5 years ago. It's a book full of imagination! Of the numerous scientific books I have ever read, this is the one that I will never forget. It evoked a series of mental images in my mind. Compare with many biology book burdened with citations and experimental data, this tiny book frequently provides fresh insights by using thought experiment in biological reasoning. I am looking forward to reading it again, with new surprse and definetely, enjoyment.

31 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the origin of idiots, April 27, 2000

By 

geoff - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Blind Watchmaker (Diskette)

...Dawkins never claims his "biomorphs" to bebiological, their sole purpose is to show how small changes over aperiod of time can make huge changes in the end product; no more, noless. He turns trees (yes, just the shapes) into grasshoppers, and dragon flies, and satelites (yes, satelites, which are never claimed to be biological). His "quasi-biological forms" (see the forms?) do an excellent job of making his point, and you shall never convince this 'skeptic' otherwise.