Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker - Revision history

BNEditor at 21:35, 25 May 2009

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	I have one other minor complaint about Dawkins, a feeling that I once noted in reading Stephen Jay Gould: that his understanding of mathematics was not adequate for the tasks he would like to assign to it. At times Dawkins makes mathematically related statements that are not quite precise; at other times he could have expressed himself more succinctly with a better mathematical understanding. However, it's a minor issue that doesn't bear on his more-general arguments.		I have one other minor complaint about Dawkins, a feeling that I once noted in reading Stephen Jay Gould: that his understanding of mathematics was not adequate for the tasks he would like to assign to it. At times Dawkins makes mathematically related statements that are not quite precise; at other times he could have expressed himself more succinctly with a better mathematical understanding. However, it's a minor issue that doesn't bear on his more-general arguments.

-	''The Blind Watchmaker'' may not be the book that made Dawkins reputation since it was preceded by the famous – or notorious – ''The Selfish Gene'', but it certainly cemented his reputation, and justifiably so. While at times he might not have been as accurate and thorough as I would have ~~referred~~, his writing is littered with stimulating ideas and valuable observations that deserve their audience.	+	''The Blind Watchmaker'' may not be the book that made Dawkins reputation since it was preceded by the famous – or notorious – ''The Selfish Gene'', but it certainly cemented his reputation, and justifiably so. While at times he might not have been as accurate and thorough as I would have preferred, his writing is littered with stimulating ideas and valuable observations that deserve their audience.

	This excerpt comes from a late chapter called "Doomed Rivals":		This excerpt comes from a late chapter called "Doomed Rivals":

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JNShaumeyer at 00:36, 12 January 2007

JNShaumeyer — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:36:49 GMT

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{{BNR-table|scienticity=4|readability=5|hermeneutics=4|charisma=5|recommendation=5}}
Richard Dawkins, ''The Blind Watchmaker : Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design''. New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 1986. 332 pages.

I read Dawkins' book immediately before reading Daniel C. Dennett's ''[[Dennett: Darwin's Dangerous Idea| Darwin's Dangerous Idea]]''. Both books are strong arguments supporting Darwinism; together they make a powerful effect. The two had such similar goals that much of the following discussion about both is shared between the two book notes.

{{Dawkins-Dennett}}

I have one other minor complaint about Dawkins, a feeling that I once noted in reading Stephen Jay Gould: that his understanding of mathematics was not adequate for the tasks he would like to assign to it. At times Dawkins makes mathematically related statements that are not quite precise; at other times he could have expressed himself more succinctly with a better mathematical understanding. However, it's a minor issue that doesn't bear on his more-general arguments.

''The Blind Watchmaker'' may not be the book that made Dawkins reputation since it was preceded by the famous – or notorious – ''The Selfish Gene'', but it certainly cemented his reputation, and justifiably so. While at times he might not have been as accurate and thorough as I would have referred, his writing is littered with stimulating ideas and valuable observations that deserve their audience.

This excerpt comes from a late chapter called "Doomed Rivals":
<blockquote>
The obvious way to decide between rival theories is to examine the evidence. Lamarckian types of theory, for instance, are traditionally rejected – and rightly so – because no good evidence for them has ever been found (not for want of energetic trying, in some cases by zealots prepared to fake evidence ). In this chapter I shall take a different tack, largely because so many other books have examined the evidence and concluded in favour of Darwinism. Instead of examining the evidence for and against rival theories, I shall adopt a more armchair approach. My argument will be that Darwinism is the only known theory that is in principle ''capable'' of explaining certain aspects of life. If I am right it means that, even if there were no actual evidence in favour of the Darwinian theory (there is, of course) we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.
<br><br>
One way to dramatize this point is to make a prediction . I predict that, if a form of life is ever discovered in another part of the universe, however outlandish and weirdly alien that form of life may be in detail, it will be found to resemble life on Earth in one key respect: it will have evolved by some kind of Darwinian natural selection. Unfortunately , this is a prediction that we shall, in all probability, not be able to test in our lifetimes, but it remains a way of dramatizing an important truth about life on our own planet. The Darwinian theory is in principle capable of explaining life. No other theory that has ever been suggested is in principle capable of explaining life. I shall demonstrate this by discussing all known rival theories, not the evidence for or against them, but their adequacy in principle, as explanations for life.
<br><br>
First, I must specify what it means to 'explain' life. There are of course, many properties of living things that we could list, and some of them might be explicable by rival theories. Many facts about the distribution of protein molecules, as we have seen, may be due to neutral genetic mutations, rather than Darwinian selection. There is one particular property of living things, however, that I want to single out as explicable ''only'' by Darwinian selection. This property is the one that has been the recurring topic of this book: adaptive complexity. Living organisms are well fitted to survive and reproduce in their environments, in ways too numerous and statistically improbable to have come about in a single chance blow. Following Paley, I have used thee example of the eye. Two or three of an eye's well-'designed' features could, conceivably, have come about in a single lucky accident. It is the sheer number of interlocking parts, all well adapted to seeing and well adapted to each other, that demands a special kind of explanation beyond mere chance. The Darwinian explanation, of course, involves chance too, in the form of mutation. But the chance is filtered cumulatively by selection, step by step, over many generations. Other chapters have shown that this theory is capable of providing a satisfying explanation for adaptive complexity. In this chapter I shall argue that all other known theories are ''not'' capable of so doing. [pp. 287—288]
</blockquote>

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[[Category: Book Notes]]