The Blind Watchmaker
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| Penguin |
Richard Dawkins
1986
1986
“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”
I am not a science person, though I'd like to be. I smoothly passed my various science GCSE exams at the base level C without much trouble, but any real exposure to actual scientific things since then typically led to me frantically waving my arms around to make myself look big and scare the science away. I like to think of myself of one of those people who displays the right amount of restrained amazement and sense of awe when beholden to science. I guess I'm pretty awe-some.
Recent brushes with the harsh finger of mortality prompted me to try to understand the world around me a little bit more, at least enough to convince me of the absence of evil magicks. My first, rather fatherly tour guide was the reassuringly British gentlemen scholar who made quite the name for himself a few years back with a little book you may of heard of named The God Delusion. I first read that book about four years ago, approaching it with a great deal of enthusiasm in the knowledge that it was preaching to the converted, so to speak. Years spent in the dying remnants of the Church of England sponsored educational system quickly sent me down the atheist route, and so The God Delusion amused me in such a way as a book full of pictures of dead cats might appeal to someone who really hates cats.
After that I read The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, which was essentially the follow up to God Delusion excepted routed in more scientific fact rather than theological debate. Unfortunately I was not ready for such heady scientific analysis and terminology, and I ran from the genre of popular science for some time, until one day I came across a second hand copy of The Blind Watchmaker. Like all of Richard Dawkins' books, Watchmaker is about evolution and/or Darwinism (that's not a criticism on repetition by the way, Dawkins himself confidently assures that, as a topic, it encompasses every living thing on this planet and potential others), though it was first published back in 1986, a while before Dawkins' fame became mainstream.
Though the topic is too complex to be easily narrowed down and rigidly adhered to by the author, the prime focus of this book surrounds the theory of evolution verses that of intelligent design (and its variations). The title of the book is a particular reference to an argument presented by anti-evolutionist and overall god bothering theologian William Paley, roughly stating that if you found a gold watch in the middle of the desert you would know that, because of its complexity, someone had built this watch, therefore life must have been created by God. To be fair, Paley wrote this before Darwin in the 17th century, where English life was somewhat entrenched in religious dogma. Nowadays, for a modern scientist like Dawkins to take this on is rather like shooting at fish in a barrel. In fact, my enjoyment of this book is in direct opposition to any attempt to analyse this as a scientific argument. I am the converted, I believe in evolution already.
Dawkins was able to stifle those possible complaints for me by going into far greater detail about things than I could've possibly hoped to imagine with my limited knowledge. Though admittedly certain aspects discussed went completely over my head, that's not the book's fault, and for the majority of it Dawkins does a splendid job of talking down to the average reader not possessing a education costing tens and tens of thousands (this is a total guess, it's probably more) of pounds. As a result this book is a resounding success in its goal of educating the ignorant in an entertaining way, and though this might be understating his actual credentials, pushes Dawkins into the public figure stratosphere of only Sir David Attenborough as teachers to an entire nation, or even globe.
My criticisms are limited to the occasional dryness of the source material. I don't mean to insult the majesty and complexity of science, but much of it is inevitably boring, and this does sometimes seep through. Really though, I took more valuable information from this book than I have from any in a good while, making any tedium clearly worth it. Hopefully reading this book has cracked the glass of ignorance blocking my understanding of science (strained analogy alert) and the next science book I eventually read will be that much clearer through the magical touch of context. Big opposable thumbs-up.
Recent brushes with the harsh finger of mortality prompted me to try to understand the world around me a little bit more, at least enough to convince me of the absence of evil magicks. My first, rather fatherly tour guide was the reassuringly British gentlemen scholar who made quite the name for himself a few years back with a little book you may of heard of named The God Delusion. I first read that book about four years ago, approaching it with a great deal of enthusiasm in the knowledge that it was preaching to the converted, so to speak. Years spent in the dying remnants of the Church of England sponsored educational system quickly sent me down the atheist route, and so The God Delusion amused me in such a way as a book full of pictures of dead cats might appeal to someone who really hates cats.
After that I read The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, which was essentially the follow up to God Delusion excepted routed in more scientific fact rather than theological debate. Unfortunately I was not ready for such heady scientific analysis and terminology, and I ran from the genre of popular science for some time, until one day I came across a second hand copy of The Blind Watchmaker. Like all of Richard Dawkins' books, Watchmaker is about evolution and/or Darwinism (that's not a criticism on repetition by the way, Dawkins himself confidently assures that, as a topic, it encompasses every living thing on this planet and potential others), though it was first published back in 1986, a while before Dawkins' fame became mainstream.
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| Author's photo. |
Dawkins was able to stifle those possible complaints for me by going into far greater detail about things than I could've possibly hoped to imagine with my limited knowledge. Though admittedly certain aspects discussed went completely over my head, that's not the book's fault, and for the majority of it Dawkins does a splendid job of talking down to the average reader not possessing a education costing tens and tens of thousands (this is a total guess, it's probably more) of pounds. As a result this book is a resounding success in its goal of educating the ignorant in an entertaining way, and though this might be understating his actual credentials, pushes Dawkins into the public figure stratosphere of only Sir David Attenborough as teachers to an entire nation, or even globe.
My criticisms are limited to the occasional dryness of the source material. I don't mean to insult the majesty and complexity of science, but much of it is inevitably boring, and this does sometimes seep through. Really though, I took more valuable information from this book than I have from any in a good while, making any tedium clearly worth it. Hopefully reading this book has cracked the glass of ignorance blocking my understanding of science (strained analogy alert) and the next science book I eventually read will be that much clearer through the magical touch of context. Big opposable thumbs-up.
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