The Blind Watchmaker: Uncovering the Evidence of Evolution and How it Points to a Universe without Design

Brooklyn Richie: 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

United States on Nov 23, 2023

Jeff Godley: I bought this book to understand better how natural selection works - and Dawkins absolutely delivers. He is the subject matter expert, talking about his area of expertise.

My criticisms of the book concern the writing. Dawkins writing style is, frankly, a little irritating. He belabours points which have already been made clear to the reader. He takes 5 paragraphs to explain what could have been explained in one. He inserts strange editorials on unrelated and unimportant subjects. And he mixes some informal words and phrases into an otherwise formal persuasive work.

But he does get his point across, however inelegantly. And his point is a good one.

Canada on Nov 13, 2023

Paul R.: 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.

United States on Aug 05, 2023

kushal gokhale: 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.

India on Jul 25, 2023

Vayne77: 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...

United Kingdom on Oct 31, 2021

Igo Hummaan: 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...

United States on Dec 06, 2020

Tyler Durden: This is the third of Dawkins' books that I have read and it is arguably more accessible than the other two (The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype) which were much more concerned with the mechanics of evolution and the biological theories underpinning them. The Blind Watchmaker has a more philosophical tone, although biological examples are used extensively to illustrate the author's points.

This book is an extended explanation of why the appearance of design in the animal world is an illusion and how organised complexity can emerge from a sequence of cumulative, small changes via natural selection. Of course, most rational folk accept that evolution is as proven as a theory ever gets but it is a fascinating subject and one well worth knowing more about, even if only to counter the feeble attempts of the non-rational to contradict it.

Dawkins has an engaging, affable tone in the book, yet is easy to understand. The section on the development of echo-location in bats is one of the books high points, as is the discussion on why the African widow bird has a seemingly impractically long tail . The Blind Watchmaker is not without its faults, however. An entire...

United Kingdom on Aug 24, 2016

Simon: You can sum up the idea at the heart of this book in one sentence: that all life on Earth arose because molecules developed a way of self- replicating, and that life evolved into more sophisticated forms because these replications were subject to random variation and natural selection.

This giant and powerful theory is explained in detail from a number of different angles - mostly attempts to quash rival theories. For the better part, the book is great but I did find some chapters a little tedious. For instance, I now understand that 'taxonomy' is an incredibly important part of the theory but the chapter dedicated to it didn't, for me, lend any weight to the overall argument.

However, there are some brilliant chapters too. The description of how bats 'see' the world using only sound ('echo-location') is fascinating - it underlines the idea that our use of light waves ('vision') is just one of a number of alternative sensory methods that have evolved on Earth. I also liked the parallel Prof. Dawkins draws between DNA and information technology (even going as far as suggesting that since DNA is just a way of passing on information, once machines find a way of...

United Kingdom on Aug 27, 2007

Riccardo Audano: 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...

United States on Oct 21, 2006