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Richard Dawkins

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The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design First Thus Edition

by Richard Dawkins (Author)

4.5 2,011 ratings

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Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Winner, 1987 - Current Interest

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"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―has no purpose in mind. If it can be said to play the role of a watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker in nature.

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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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"Dawkins has done more than anyone else now writing to make evolutionary biology comprehensible and acceptable to a general audience."
― John Maynard Smith

"As readable and vigorous a defense of Darwinism as has been published since 1859."
― The Economist

About the Author

Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Understanding of Science at Oxford University, and is the author of The Selfish Gene, Climbing Mount Improbable, and many other books.

ISBN-10

0393315703
ISBN-13

978-0393315707
Edition

First Thus
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

September 17, 1996
Language

English
Dimensions

5.5 x 1.3 x 8.3 inches
Print length

496 pages
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Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; First Thus edition (September 17, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393315703
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393315707
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.01 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #795,291 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,071 in Biology & Life Sciences
- #2,258 in Evolution (Books)
- #3,396 in Biology (Books)

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4.5 2,011 ratings

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Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins taught zoology at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he has held since 1995. Among his previous books are The Ancestor's Tale, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and A Devil's Chaplain. Dawkins lives in Oxford with his wife, the actress and artist Lalla Ward.

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Brooklyn Richie

THE AUTHOR IS NOT BLIND

Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2023

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This author offers some astounding works on various subjects this be one of them. I was so enthralled that I ordered more his books because I like his subjects and his writing levels. Easy to read, follow and track. Life is a mystery, and this book sheds light on it as well as respects it too. If you wonder, ponder and ask questions, include this work in your life journey

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Paul R.

The Watchmaker keeps to his schemes...

Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2023

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I read this when I was about thirty years old and though I enjoyed it I didn't quite get all the various arguments and contrasts with various critiques of evolution and alternate theories. Twenty-five years later it is all very clear and I can't find more than a quibble or two in Dawkins's assertions, logic, opinions, and criticisms. I do agree with other reviewers that this book probably could be 10-20 percent shorter, but because I enjoy reading Dawkins I am not lodging a formal complaint. I definitely would say that insofar as this book is intended to refute a "designer" for the existence of the universe we experience, it could have been just a few pages long, perhaps even just a page, since proposing a designer necessarily raises the eternal regression question of who designed the designer. I would say that this book is better positioned as a strong treatise on why Darwinian evolution is easily the best theory we have today for how complex living organisms arise. Just for that argument alone, this is a fun read.

One person found this helpful

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Igo Hummaan

Appreciate This Book for what it is...

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2020

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With a topic like evolution / intelligent design, you are bound to get some blind 5 star reviews from people who believe the general idea of evolution without really understanding it, and some blind 1-2 star reviews from people who do not actually WANT to understand it but to find ways to discredit it. Ignore both kinds of review. There's another group of reviewers who might give a lower rating on the premise that the work is not empirical enough or rigorous enough; those people have misunderstood the purpose of this book.

WHAT TO EXPECT
The context and tone of this book are conversational in nature, even if the core ideas are derived from an array of scientific inquiry over the last 150 years. Imagine the author sitting in a coffee shop with you during a bad rain storm (so you've got time), hoping to explain why the main tenets of evolution are important and worth understanding, and why many of the opposing theories are lesser theories from a scientific standpoint, and you will understand the purpose of this book.

It's not hard to see why this work is has been deemed a "classic". Dawkins weaves an interesting and detailed account of the basic principles underlying evolution, including dispelling common misunderstandings like the idea that natural selection is a random process (i.e. conflating genetic mutation — random — with natural selection in favor of specific kinds of mutations — not random). No degrees in molecular biology, genetics, or zoology are required to understand the basic principles described in the book, though you may find that afterward you have a desire to find and order books about these topics (I did). There are also some laugh out-loud passages which I did not expect. While he does at various points veer off-course and ramble a bit (who doesn't), the old saw about babies and bathwater clearly applies (and not much bathwater at that).

In short if the average reader approaches with an open mind, you cannot help but end up with a better understanding of evolution than when you started, regardless of whether or not you personally find every argument made compelling (you're not a bad person if you don't, nor virtuous if you do). We need to learn to debate these things without the toxicity applied.

PERSONAL TAKEAWAYS
While most of the key mechanisms of evolution are known and their effects observable with modern technology (e.g. reading and comparing the genome of two suspected but not obviously related species) and/or through our robust understanding of molecular biology, there are parts of the theory that remain unproven. More specifically, formal proofs of concept of the origins of the first self-replicating cells. This is not unexpected given the time scales involved and the very incomplete fossil record that we have (unfortunately many kinds of things that we would need to study fossils OF, don't actually fossilize when they die). This is also where the typical "God of the Gaps" arguments made by many intelligent design (or ID) supporters originate. Which for many of them amounts to "you can't show me definitive proof today of how certain kinds of cells came into being 4 billion years ago, ergo this entire theory is flawed / false." Which is, on its face, absurd.

If I believe at all in the value of scientific inquiry and thinking, then I must admit that two things are true:
1) there is by now a literal mountain of empirical evidence — in several related scientific fields, ranging from physics to physiology — that points directly to the cellular machinery of what we call "evolution" at work, over very long time scales, in every kind of living thing. To deny the validity of the core parts of evolution, is about as foolish as an educated person choosing to believe that an entire political party is filled with devil-worshipping baby-eaters, despite there being no wide-scale reports of satanic altars and missing babies that we know of;

2) In a wide array of scientific fields, we have scenarios where some parts of a theory are definitively known and proven and others not yet proven (i.e. proven in the same way science has proven than atoms can be split and tornadoes are formed when certain kinds of frontal boundaries collide with one another under specific conditions), and evolution is one of these fields. Admitting that something is unknown is NOT tantamount to admitting it is invalid! : ) There remain problems unsolved / proofs unmade; that is OK. It means we have work to do.

Imagine this conversation between two people (two scientists if you like, no need to make it a scientist and a minister, for example):

"You say we can see from countless optical telescope (and other) observations and crunching of data according to the laws of physics that have been proven valid many thousands of times over, that there is evidence of an unseen type of mass in the universe, that effects everything from the appearance of distant objects in optical telescopes (gravitational lensing) to how galaxies interact, but because you can't show me a visible proof this source of mass exists, I must conclude your entire interconnected theory of solar systems and galaxies and galaxy clusters, and how they interact, is false." Absurd right? That's what many (not all) ID proponents do with evolution (the lack of visible evidence in our example is the analog to the lack of a proven, molecular definition of the first self-replicating cell and its surrounding conditions).

And that leads me to the last point, which is over the last 20 years or so, molecular biologists, molecular engineers, and evolutionary biologists have been generating ever-more-compelling test results in controlled lab conditions, of self-contained, self-replicating cells arising from nothing but simple organic compounds, elemental catalysts, and different forms of energy. They're not there yet, but one by one the technical hurdles are falling; the cells we're capable of generating today are much more robust than when we started 20 years ago. It would be great, therefore, to see Dawkins or perhaps his favored understudy, either re-write portions of this book to include these developments (a lot has happened n biology and genetics since the 90s, including things like systems theory), or write a new book with the same general scope and audience.

65 people found this helpful

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Riccardo Audano

Required reading before you meet your watchmaker ...

Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2006

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Great book with a great title. Richard Dawkings is an absolute master in using controversy and philosophical disputes to smuggle fundamental knowledge about evolutionary biology that could otherwise be seen as intimidating or just plain boring by a layman. Just look at some of teh chapters titles: "Explaining the very improbable", "Origins and miracles", "Explosions and spirals", "The one true tree of life", "Doomed rivals". As a minimum, you must concede this guy is a master communicator. How could you not be interested in finding out what this chapters are about...

Anyhow, all the chapters in this book are about giving you a detailed, understandable account of how evolution and natural selection works, and clearing out any doubts you might have conceived or received by others.

It's masterfully written, fascinating and engaging. What surprises me is why all the "religious" fuss abut this book is about. This is not a book defending atheism, or a book trying to demostrate the non existence of God. No real scientist, atheist or not, would ever dream to do such a thing. This is just about explaining reality through rational thinking, something that any sane person should approve of. Even deeply religious people should not be afraid of this book, or of Darvin's theory. What repulsive kind of a plastic God would be the one that literally makes a man out of clay and pops it on earth just like a kid pushes a barbie doll in her little fake house. Or jumping from biology to astronomy what kind of claustrophobic world would have given to us if the enciant view of the universe was a little ball with the "spheres" rotating around it.

I find that those views are the really offensive towards God, so if you believe in God you should be so much more relieved and happy as nature reveals some of her complexities and her beauty, instead of forcing the limited and obtuse human view to God.

Besides, there are far more serious arguments that question the plausibility of God than natural selection and who the first men were..

for example all the sorrow and pain that come to us men from time to time because of wars, accidents, natural disasters..And even if most of these plagues can be traced back more or less directly to men themselves.. how about children born with deformities or terrible illnesses that doom them to death or to a crippled life. Those are way more troubling mysteries to a believer than natural selection theory...Then why Darwin's theory is so adversed by some exponent fo the various churches? Well my idea is that it is one of the few fundamental scientific theories that is at the same time so illuminating and so simple that everyone can appreciate it an fully understand it.And for this reason it leaves you hungry for more truth and more reasoning and promotes love and passion for scientific inquiry and reasoning.. And those who detain the power never like the idea of having to give and account of that power to intelligent, rational, inquisitive minds.

So in the end, in a sense, especially if there actually is a God, you better read this book and use it to enrich your culture and open your mind. If you are an atheist, you will love life better, if you believe in God you will appreciate his ways even more.

23 people found this helpful

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kushal gokhale

A truley remarkable book

Reviewed in India on July 25, 2023

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Richard Dawkins has proved himself one of the finest writers in the world. He truely knows how to write considering what questions will arise in the reader's mind after a certain sentence made. So he writes the further things accordingly. If all writers were like him in all subjects then all subjects would have been very intersting to everyone.

One person found this helpful

Evelyn Camacho

Gran presentación de Kindle

Reviewed in Mexico on March 27, 2021

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Adoro este libro. Y está escrito en un modo que hace la lectura súper agradable

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milena anunciada monteiro

Foi um presente

Reviewed in Brazil on January 21, 2021

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Comprei pra dar de presente ao meu marido. Ele gostou muito, já estava interessado nesse livro a um bom tempo.

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AnD

Great book

Reviewed in Italy on August 12, 2022

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Extremely interesting.

Vayne77

Evolution: very large amount of steps of very small improvements

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2021

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This book is about evolution: it is described as a very large amount of steps of very small improvements. Richard goes into great detail to help us understand how it works. I enjoyed reading it as it takes theory a step further and I regret having not read this book years earlier. Richard follows logic if we accept A then it means the following. He also explores the opposite if A isn't true. He (and Darwin) logically rejects evolution as having anything to do with divine intervention because if that is needed to explain any steps in evolution it means the theory is false.

He makes the reader understand that this process is so complex and played at multiple levels - from genes and cells, to species to planetary conditions - and over a time scale that the human mind cannot comprehend. It may seem magical or divine but it really isn't. When reading the chapters about this I had to think about a conversation at the start of Deep Space Nine about time: "What comes before now is not different than what is now or what is to come. It is one's existence". If we were to meet such a being we would not understand this with our human mind. For a human a decade is quite long, on geological time scale 60,000 years is an instant. We look at the animals and plants today and we should realize they are all the outcome of a billion years long evolutionary process.

The fossil record is extremely limited, so we miss many steps and sometimes we aren't even looking in the right area. In Dawkins' view life does not have a meaning - 42 might be the right answer after all. It's interesting as recently I learned about another theory that looked at life as a way to recirculate nutrition - each animal and plant is part of a system. Dawkins would reject that and the system is there because of life. He spent the last chapter debunking 'alternative theories'. In a way it's quite academic but it does show clearly where Richard stands.

Unfortunately he does not know how life started and he postulates some theories that sound the same as how we explain the universe using terms like dark energy and dark matter - it could be true but for now it's not more than an educated guess. I understand that this is still one of the large mysteries of life. As the book was written a few decades ago, some of the examples that Richard uses sounds dated - it does not take anything away from his message, but I can see my daughter for example not being able to understand what he means with a laser disc or a DC-8. If you are religious and have an open mind I would recommend reading it - Dawkins is not against religion in a way that he condemns religious people, it's more that it is not the right explanation for how life is today. There is no Watchmaker at work.

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