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| The Blind Watchmaker | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
Buy New: £3.77
You Save: £6.22 (62%)
New (27) from £3.77
Avg. Customer Rating:  77 reviews
Sales Rank: 936
Media: Paperback
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 0141026162
EAN: 9780141026169
ASIN: 0141026162
Publication Date: April 6, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Dawkins at his best March 8, 2007
43 out of 54 found this review helpful
I started reading "The Selfish Gene", "The God Delusion" and then this book. I have not been able to put it down since I have started the 1st page.
This is a fantastic read. Not as complex as some parts of the Selfish Gene, this book reads far easier, it is just as interesting and well articulated.
This is Dawkins at his best.I highly recommend this book as yet another engaging wake up call to those who have been brainwashed into believing that humanity's greatest aspect, our ability to reason, is "sinful". Read and be enlightened.
Substance over style? February 7, 2007
33 out of 41 found this review helpful
If this is you're first foray into Darwinian Theory then Dawkins is a good place to start. Although we all think we know what evolution and natural selection mean this book explains the concepts well and you will certainly get a good handle on the key ideas involved. However, even though I like reading science books, I found Dawkin's style to be disjointed to the point that there is often little coherent flow between chapters making the book feel more like a collection of scientific essays. Another annoying trait is that he often spends more time explaining the alternative theories and shooting them down than expanding on his own ideas. A great deal of time is spent doing this and while I fully appreciate that it is important to discuss alternative theories it is done in such a way as to add dryness to an already slightly arid text. Still, the ideas contained within this book are important and I feel that I have come away from it having learned something valuable. With better style and structure this would be a 5 star.
Shaking January 15, 2007
40 out of 54 found this review helpful
It is one of those few books that - while you are reading - you suddenly think "I will never be able to see the world in the same way again". It doesn't matter your opinion about the author, his intellectual power and writing style are fascinating.
 Amazing, incredible! January 12, 2007
24 out of 175 found this review helpful
As someone who has never understood how the scientific world could accept a theory like Darwin's for so long, I found this book very enlightening. Dawkins agrees that the living world has been designed, but he claims that it was designed by natural selection. In summary,
RANDOM VARIATION + NATURAL SELECTION = EVOLUTION
Whatever your belief as to Who or what designed life on this planet, you will be impressed by some of the examples that Dawkins describes. What is less impressive is the way he seeks to explain the development of complex biological forms by reverse engineering (ex post facto analysis), and/or using enormously large numbers. Apparently the odds of a cell randomly generating a machine that can duplicate DNA, and thus support life, are similar to the odds of a cow jumping over the moon. In other words, just because you haven't seen a cow jumping over the moon in your lifetime, it doesn't mean that it is impossible. Just highly unlikely. Hmmm! You have to admire Dawkins' faith. It takes tremendous faith to accept this theory. My faith just isn't strong enough.
I keep wanting to ask, where did the initial matter come from? And why didn't life start (or the big bang occur) thousands of billions of years earlier than it did?
Methinks it is a beauty January 2, 2007
27 out of 35 found this review helpful
The title of the book is borrowed from the theologian (!) William Paley, who argumented nature must have had a designer, whom he compared to a watchmaker (natural objects being complex objects are compared to watches). Richard Dawkins even expresses his admiration for the work of William Paley, considering the time he lived and worked (his "Natural Theology" was published in 1802). Nevertheless, Paley was wrong, says Richard Dawkins, and in this book "The Blind Watchmaker" he successfully explains why. Looking at nature, it seems as if a conscious designer has been working on it. However, this is merely an illusion. Richard Dawkins teaches us how evolution, by random genetic mutations combined with non-random (!) natural selection, has resulted in nature as we see it today. He uses excellent examples to explain how natural selection speeds up evolution, and makes it a non-random process. Whenever anyone opposes to evolution by asking the tiresome question "How could we have evolved by pure chance?", I'd have him/her read this book. You'd have to be stupid, extremely stubborn or blind not to understand the point. What I can't help noticing, is that most negative book reviews on this book are written by people whose opinion was determined a priori by pro-creationist (non-)reasoning. "The Blind Watchmaker" is a very readable book by a great teacher, and anyone should read it (with an open mind).
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