Blurb: Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Award under the Heinemann bequest. 'His subject is nothing less than the meaning of life, and he attacks it with the evangelical fervour of a clergyman and the mind of a scientist.' - The Times. A brilliant and controversial book which demonstrates that evolution by natural selection - the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Darwin - is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist? 'This might just be the most important evolution book since Darwin.' - Dr John Gribbin in the Good Book Guide. 'An enchantingly witty and persuasive neo-Darwinist attack on the anti-evolutionists, pleasurably intelligible tot the scientific literate.' - Herminoe Lee in Books of the Year, Observer. 'The secret of good science writing is that one should understand te ideas oneself: good writing comes from clear thinking ... in the Blind Watchmaker I was repeatedly astonished at the clarity with which Dawkins sees the problems ... It is abundantly clear, however, that Dawkins has not lost his sense of wonder at the natural world as he has gained intellectual understanding of it ... I wish I could write like that.' - John Maynard Smith in the New Scientist. 'The Blind Watchmaker is fated to become as much a bestseller as his earlier The Selfish Gene ... Dawkins has explained with passionate clarity how physics has created the watch without relying on blind chance.' - Michael Young in New Society. 'Dawkins's writing is a delight because it is witty and vivid. He treats the story of evoluton as a "spine-chilling mystery" yet at the same time is dispassionate and fair. Accurate detail is fascinating; unifying theories are intoxicating; Dawkins tempers each with the other.' - Lindsay Paterson in the Scotsman.
Samenv.: De biologische evolutie is het onderwerp van dit boek. Dawkins behandelt ondermeer de wijze waarop zeer complexe organen, zoals bijvoorbeeld ogen, ontstaan zijn door een ongericht proces als natuurlijke selectie. De Neo-Darwiniaanse evolutietheorie wordt hierbij geconfronteerd met andere verklaringswijzen. Dawkins heeft al meer de aandacht trekkende boeken over evolutie geschreven, o.a. 'De zelfzuchtige genen'. "De blinde horlogemaker" is een heel bijzonder boek, het geeft een persoonlijke, maar wetenschappelijke benadering van een fundamenteel proces: ontstaan en ontwikkeling van het leven. De auteur is erin geslaagd de stof op een spannende en aantrekkelijke manier te brengen voor een groot publiek. Het boek behoort tot de top op dit gebied: sterk aanbevolen!

A fantastic book! This book was the first one that I have read that really explains how evolution works and why it must be more than just a "theory". Dawkins simply but expertly explains the sheer elegance of evolution and how life evolves at a painstakingly slow pace, how evolution is the most natural of all processes for organic life. Even before reading this book, many years ago I had an interest in evolution. My interest back then was not focused or based on much tangible knowledge or understanding. This book changed all of that and opened up a new world to me. Highly recommended to all Homo Sapiens. ( )

This book sets out to defend the theory of evolution against one especially common criticism: the argument from design. But it achieves far more, by providing a detailed presentation of all the central elements of evolutionary theory.

The argument from design is the claim that there is too much complexity in life to have evolved without a conscious planner. Evolution, the creationists assert, implies that all living organisms were spontaneously generated by sheer chance from inanimate matter. Rightly arguing against the plausibility of such a scenario, they conclude that evolution cannot explain biological intricacy and diversity.

Dawkins takes very seriously the starting point of this argument: the teleologically-ordered complexity of life. He offers a detailed discussion, for example, of the "engineering" of bat echo-location - the sonar-like method by which bats are able to find their way through complete darkness. If a human engineer, armed with today's best knowledge, had designed a sonar system for a bat-like robot, he could not have solved the problem more efficiently than bats have. Without some teleological force ordering the universe, how then, did the genes for bat sonar come into being? And, given that they did, how do they happen to exist in organisms - and *only* in those organisms - that also have genes for night-flying?

In response, Dawkins describes the two mechanisms that explain such phenomena: random genetic mutation and natural selection. Mutation is the change in genetic material resulting from random interaction with external forces. Mutation is the source of all new genes, and thus the cause of biological complexity. Natural selection is the process by which genetic changes inimical to survival are weeded out, and only those that promote the organism's life are continued. (Mutations that leave the organism less adaptable to its environment lead to its dying before it reproduces, thereby preventing its genes from being perpetuated.)

Based on this, he answers such questions as how the eye arose in a world filled with sightless organisms, and why the gene that produces bat sonar is a great boon to the bat's survival only *because* it occurs in an animal that also possesses genes for night-flying.

The crux of Dawkins's argument is that evolution does *not* suggest that a single, spontaneous "accident" created each organism, or even each organ. Rather, the process of evolution entails small, random steps, each of which improves an organism's capacity for survival, ultimately leading to the development of very complex structures.

This is a brilliantly written book. It is impeccably paced - Dawkins always seems to know exactly how much explanation a non-technical reader will need to understand an issue, while never belabouring a point. In contrast to the floating abstractions of most science writing, this book is richly concretized. Dawkins shows how evolution accounts for the whole history of life, from its crude origins to the complexity we see all around us.

This book is a fascinating introduction to evolutionary theory, accessible to any layman. If you wish to understand the fundamentals of biology, this book is a must. ( )

I do not have a lot to add that hasn't already been said in the existing Library Thing reviews. Let me just say this. If you haven't read The Selfish Gene, bypass this one and read it instead. If you've read The Selfish Gene and found it difficult, then try this one. ( )

(posted on my blog: davenichols.net)

Having read The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, and The God Delusion by Dawkins, I had been collecting the rest of his books to read at some point. The Blind Watchmaker is Dawkins' comprehensive look at the the evidence for evolution and proof that no designer need be posited in order to understand and explain biological diversity. The book itself is outstanding until you get to the last three chapters, which, for me, were not as pleasing an argument for Dawkins' thesis in the book's subtitle: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design.

Dawkins is a master at explaining highly complicated biological ideas in a popular science manner. Watchmaker starts off with excellent arguments for the emergence of complexity from less complex characteristics. Arguing that there indeed are examples of 'good design', Dawkins describes echolocation in bats and other animals to show how the appearance of design is strong. He then goes on to show how this appearance of design is not actually backed by the evidence.

Further chapters describe the nature of DNA, and how it provides an 'archive' of historical instructions. Dawkins emphasizes that evolution works as a cumulative selection process (a significant point often missed or ignored by anti-Darwinian advocates). In the chapter dealing with origins, Dawkins' explanation for one possible description of abiogensis (involving imperfections in the crystalline structure of clay) shows that we don't need to posit supernatural beings to have some notion of how life can form from non-life (and to be clear, as Dawkins is in this chapter, this hypothesis is NOT being advocated as the abiogenic solution, only that it is one reasonable scenario that could potentially lead to life).

Once Dawkins gets to chapter 9, however, the book loses some focus as the author attempts to counter scholaraly arguments of his peers. He tackles the problems of punctuationism, a chapter which largely argues above the reader's head and toward Dawkins' fellow scholars. The next chapter, dealing with competing theories of taxonomy, while interesting, are not needed at all to support the book's thesis. The last chapter follows this trend and again provides no real support for the development of Dawkins' thesis. This chapter also suffers from now being scientifically out of date (written in the mid 1980s). Embryology has made massive progress in developing theories and understanding of development (leading to the term 'evo devo' to describe evolutionary development), leaving this last chapter unfulfilling two decades after it was penned.

Blind Watchmaker is fascinating argument in favor of Darwinian evolution by means of natural selection, and the first eight chapters are especially enjoyable. The last three chapters drag the book down a bit and leave a rather unsatisfied ending to this otherwise fantastic exploration of evolution. Still, Watchmaker is well worth the read. I eagerly await Dawkins' forthcoming book The Greatest Show on Earth, which I expect will be an updated and expanded version of this work. Four stars. ( )