The blindness was a result of an accident that I had in March of 2014. I was struck by a car while riding a bicycle through a crosswalk in Ft. The Blind Watchmaker, Jeremy Taylor and Richard Dawkins, BBC Horizon, 1987, television documentaryĮs:El relojero ciego he:השען העיוור pt:O Relojoeiro Cego sv:Den blinde urmakaren This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia ( view authors).My name is Jim Morgan. I am a former teacher, cabinet maker and home builder.Blind Watchmaker Applet (the "Blind Watchmaker" biomorph program written in Java).In its preface, Dawkins states that he wrote the book "to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence." ![]() " He calls this "postulating organised complexity without offering an explanation." must already have been vastly complex in the first place. He dubbed this insight the evolution of evolvability.Īfter arguing that evolution is capable of explaining the origin of complexity, near the end of the book Dawkins uses this to argue against the existence of God: "a deity capable of engineering all the organised complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution. In particular, he recognised that certain patterns of embryological development could lead to the success of a related group of species in filling varied ecological niches, though he continued to maintain that this should not be confused with the ideas associated with group selection. ![]() In an appendix to a later edition of the book (1991), Dawkins explains how his experiences with computer models led him to a greater appreciation of the role of embryological constraints on natural selection. Dawkins then describes his experiences with a more sophisticated computer model of artificial selection implemented in a program also called The Blind Watchmaker, which was sold separately as a teaching aid. He demonstrates this by the example of the Weasel program. In developing his argument that natural selection can explain the complex adaptations of organisms, Dawkins' first concern is to illustrate the difference between the potential for the development of complexity of pure randomness as opposed to that of randomness coupled with cumulative selection. Dawkins, in contrasting the differences between human design and its potential for planning with the workings of natural selection, therefore dubbed evolutionary processes The Blind Watchmaker. Paley, arguing more than fifty years before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, held that the complexity of living organisms was evidence of the existence of a divine creator by drawing a parallel with the way in which the existence of a watch compels belief in an intelligent watchmaker. In his choice of the title for this book, Dawkins makes reference to the watchmaker analogy made famous by William Paley in his book Natural Theology. (Both books are intended to popularise the gene-centric view of evolution and heavily emphasise microevolution at the expense of macroevolutionary theories.) He also presents arguments to refute certain criticisms made on his previous book The Selfish Gene. The Blind Watchmaker is a 1986 book by Richard Dawkins in which he presents an explanation of, and argument for, the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. ![]() Cover illustration by the zoologist Desmond Morris
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