Climbing Mount Improbable

This work of evolutionary argument uses the metaphor of Mount Improbable: complex organs look like a sheer cliff if imagined as a single leap, but they become climbable if approached by gradual slopes of cumulative selection. Dawkins walks through case studies, including the eye, spider webs, wings, and the fig-wasp partnership, to show how stepwise mutation and selection can build intricate designs without foresight. He contrasts that process with the idea of chance assembly in one bound. The book is popular science and advocacy of Darwinian explanation, illustrated with diagrams of pathways, not a memoir or a history of biologists.

Bound in gold and bronze image blocked black buckram.