The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins

Way back, oh, about 150 years ago a young man took a trip to the Galapagos islands and spent his time there eyeing up the birds on the beach. Nothing unusual there, you may think. Only this man was Darwin and the birds he was “eyeing up” were a number of species of finches whose main distinguishing features were the sizes and shapes of their beaks. After a while mulling over what he saw, Darwin had a bunch of ideas, decided to write a book and the “Origin of Species” was born. The rest, as they say, is history… Until, that is, Richard Dawkins came along. To give him his full title, Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the ...  Read the complete review

I first saw this book advertised inside another Penguin 'popular science' book, but forgot about it after a while as I was busy working for college and didn't have much time to read. Then, while I was researching maths software for my course, I stumbled across it again, this time on a website that created an evolution-related software program with the same name. I followed the link on the website which lead me to a description of Richard Dawkins' book and I decided that I just HAD to read it. Having studied biology for a while, I was highly interested in genetics and evolution but didn't particularly enjoy reading through dry textbooks. ...  Read the complete review

I read 'The Blind Watchmaker' by Richard Dawkins after I had read 'The God Delusion'. I have to say that 'The Blind Watchmaker' has to be one of the best books I have ever read. The book is filled with fascinating explanations of nature and descriptions of the many facets of evolution. There are many examples which invite the reader into a fantastic world, based on more fact than 'wishy-washy' theories, although the book is filled with theories aswell and one theory which I found fascinating was the idea that dolphins may have a way of communicating images to one-another via their in built sonor communication system. I would love to find out whether or not dolphins do ...  Read the complete review

Richard Dawkins is possibly the greatest writer on evolution. He writes with an evangelical fervour that is infectious, and yet he takes his time to explain his concepts thoroughly. This book is 15 years old, and most of its contents are accepted theory today. When it was written there was not such general acceptance and the book makes a better read because of it. Modern books on the subject will take many issues as fact and will gloss over their justifaction. In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins is at pains to explain thoroughly and slowly, in order to make sure that every one of his readers grasps a concept before he moves on. For ...  Read the complete review