The Blind Watchmaker

This book of popular science argues that the appearance of design in living things can be produced by cumulative natural selection without a designer. Dawkins uses the complexity of the eye, echolocation, and other adaptations to show how small inherited variations, sifted over deep time, yield organs that look planned. He contrasts this with the argument from a watchmaker: a watch implies a maker, but organisms are assembled by a blind process that has no purpose in view. Computer models of evolving biomorphs and discussions of mutation, genes, and arms races illustrate the mechanism. The work is an exposition of Darwinian theory, not a field guide and not a history of biology.

Bound in black cloth, cover printed with an image of DNA. Gold endleaves. Gold slipcase.