From the author of ” The God Delusion”, Richard Dawkins` ” The Blind Watchmaker” has been acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution in the last hundred years. In 1802 the Rev. William Paleys argued in ” Natural Theology” 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 Richard Dawkins, & in this brilliant & controversial book, the acclaimed evolutionary biologist sets out to demonstrate that the theory of evolution by natural selection
- the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Charles Darwin
- is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist? `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`. To Dawkins, ” The Blind Watchmaker” is nature itself, gradually forming order from the very building-blocks of life: DNA. ” This might just be the most important evolution book since Darwin”. (John Gribbin). ” Richard Dawkins has updated evolution.. .his subject is nothing less than the meaning of life”. (” The Times”). ” Enchantingly witty & persusive.. .pleasurably intelligible to the scientifically illiterate”. (” Observer”). Richard Dawkins is a Fellow of both the Royal Society & the Royal Society of Literature, & Vice President of the British Humanist Association. He was first catapulted to fame with The Selfish Gene, which he followed with a string of bestselling books: ” The Extended Phenotype”, ” The Blind Watchmaker”, ” River Out of Eden”, ” Unweaving the Rainbow”, & an impassioned defence of atheism, ” The God Delusion”.