Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #567 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Synopsis
Acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution written in the last hundred years, "The Blind Watchmaker" offers an inspiring and accessible introduction to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. 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?

Customer Reviews

Recommended to all Creationists
In The God Delusion, Dawkins notes that The Blind Watchmaker (and possibly The Selfish Gene) hadn't been written to attack religion, but had succeeded in converting many people (notably Douglas Adams) to atheism anyway. Having read The Blind Watchmaker, I can understand why. Dawkins does an excellent job of countering a range of arguments against evolution, explaining how and why natural selection works, and why it's a much simpler - and better - solution than any of the alternatives.

To anyone who doesn't believe in evolution, I recommend this book. I'd be very surprised if anyone who really understands evolution would still disagree with it, and this book is an excellent route to understanding evolution.

What a profound confidence in "Materialism" the author has!
The book has been given so many praises from so many prestigious persons & media; hence may be a good book to read. But from my point of view, the author is as completely hypnotized by "Materialism" as the so-called creationists are so hypnotized by "God" the Father. I wonder why scientists do not try to put every life on a horizontal line instead of putting Mankind on the top of a tree! It is very dangerous for intelligent Mankind to fall from the top
Great Britain is a very interesting country in the point that she is the mother country of both Darwinism and the Society for Psychical Research. We lost Prof. Ian Stevenson last year (in 2007), who was the president of the SPR for 1989. Obvious truth is that: (1) if Prof. Stevenson's compiled data plus the official document of a Japanese boy "Katsugoro (in 1810)" of "reincarnation" is true, then all theories based on materialism surely fail, (2) if only a fraction of those compiled files include the truth, then the same will be concluded, (3) if "the missing 21 grams" of Dr. Duncan MacDougall (in 1907) cannot be refuted scientifically, then the same will be concluded.
That is, all our current scientific theories are sitting on the top of several big bombs, which might shatter all these materialistic ideas.

A life-changing book
As another reviewer has stated, this book is truly life-changing. Before reading it I was open-minded about all sorts of vaguely 'spiritual' ideas, for the (very common) reason that there seemed to be certain Big Questions that could not be fully explained by science. In particular, life itself.
This is in fact poppycock - Darwinism provides that explanation. But sadly, lots of people misunderstand Darwinism; and then look for weaknesses in their WRONG interpretation of it.
Dawkins does an incredibly thorough job of explaining how Natural Selection actually works, using some great metaphors along the way to make the whole thing very enjoyable reading. [NB Dawkins is always very clear not to confuse a metaphor with reality - unlike some of his reviewers!]
This is not just a text book on Darwinism; it is a thorough rebuttal of the religious argument that there must be a God because "there is no other feasible explanation".
There are a few negative reviews on this site. But it is clear they are all written by religious people with a major axe to grind. ALL of their criticisms seem to be based on wilful misinterpretations. In particular, there is actually lots of evidence to support the theory of Natural Selection. And Dawkins explanation of the eye (human or otherwise) makes perfect sense.
Read the book yourself, and form your own judgement.
And one final point - for me life as an atheist is definitely not devoid of meaning!