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Price: $178.84 Prices subject to change.Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
EAN: 9780393022162 ISBN: 0393022161 Label: W W Norton Manufacturer: W W Norton Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 345 Publication Date: 1986 Publisher: W W Norton Studio: W W Norton Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: 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. Product Description: A vigorous and readable defense of Darwinism which leaps effortlessly from the primeval soup to long rows of taxonomy. Deep enough to be valuable to biologists, yet simple and well-written so as to appeal to a mass audience. Illustrated. Average Rating:
 Rating: - Good read, but I want moreI bought "The Blind Watchmaker" because I wanted to read something from the "other side", having read several books with a Christian leaning (that basically just try to trash evolution, without offering anything realistic in return). I wanted information about how evolution explains how we got here (and maybe also why Christianity or other creation-based views have it wrong). I did find some very good stuff, but - as with all other religious books that I've read - whatever the evidence, the author ... Read More Rating:  - The Blind Watchmaker/The Biblical Basis for Modern ScienceThere are two sides to every story and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I believe it's the same with Creation and Evolution and this review takes this approach on both books which I both give five stars. When it comes to Evolution Richard Dawkins' book "The Blind Watchmaker" does an excellent job of putting forward and explaining the case for evolution. Henry Morris in his book "The Biblical Basis for Modern Science" also does an excellent job of putting forward the creationist's argument for ... Read More Rating: - A good introductionThis is a very good introduction to the concepts of evolution for someone who is new to the subject. Rating: - A good Dawkins primerThis is a truly wonderful place to start for anyone interested in Dawkins' series of forays into being human. Dense, but with some jargon and some lovely prose, it will educate even the most seasoned biology student. Rating: - Why Does Blind Produce Design?The whole thesis of "The Blind Watchmaker" is that there is no design in nature. Yet we see design everywhere: Is it merely an illusion? The human body is an amazingly designed machine; The biosphere of the earth is amazingly designed for human and animal life; If natural selection is blind and random (and I concede that it is)how and why does it result in astonishingly designed organisms and environments? I claim that Richard Dawkins ... Read More |
