It is a good thing that Dawkins himself takes the trouble to think about which chapters of his books will be of vanishing interest in the near future. Of course, he turned out to be more accurate than he must have wished for. This must be the most boring of all Dawkins’ books, but I do not want to give up on him till I read ‘The Extended Phenotype’ which just might prove to be the best (scientifically) of all his works. With whole chapters devoted to the driest taxonomy problems and to disproving outdated theories, the book was a massive waste of time once I went past the mildly interesting first half. But, it still provides an opportunity to use Dawkins’ own method of caricature-based argument to paint a caricature of his own positions in ‘The God Delusion’ based on his own vitriolic stands in this book. I will try to examine in detail how Dawkins has betrayed his own principles of scientific grounding and rational rigorousness in The God Delusion by using arguments and structures from this book in the review. Hopefully that will happen by tomorrow...

"I don't agree with Dawkins much of the time (I find his atheism as fanatical as the religions he criticises), but find him an intelligent and entertaining read. He posits the other side of the coin to the argument for ""intelligent design"". Some very funny correspondence in the Guardian this month (October 2005), included one query that GWBush might be evidence against intelligent design."

O carte care merită cu siguranță citită - sau măcar răsfoită.

Titlul cărții trimite la un cunoscut argument creaționist, formulat prima dată de William Paley, în Natural Theology (1802). Dacă natura poate fi comparată cu un orologiu (fiindcă vădește ordine, complexitate, finalitate etc.), trebuie să deducem că acest orologiu imens a fost realizat de un artizan (id est de un ceasornicar). În cazul lumii, acest artizan e Dumnezeu.

În Ceasornicarul orb, Richard Dawkins respinge argumentul lui William Paley. Dawkins este un evoluționist care consideră că ipoteza unui Dumnezeu ceasornicar e inutilă, iar argumentul lui Paley lipsit de validitate. Viața și, în genere, formațiunile complicate sînt un rezultat al simplei „selecții naturale”.

The Blind Watchmaker (1986) a provocat, firește, discuții foarte aprinse, polemici care nu s-au stins nici astăzi.

Cîteva fraze:

„Selecția naturală este ceasornicarul orb, orb pentru că nu privește înainte, nu plănuiește consecințele și nu are în vedere nici un scop. Și totuși rezultatele vii ale selecției naturale ne dau impresia copleșitoare că ar fi opera unui maestru ceasornicar, ne dau iluzia că ar fi planificate și proiectate. Scopul cărții de față e lămurirea acestui paradox” (p.35).

„Subiectul principal al cărții de față e evoluția... ca explicație reală a fenomenelor despre care Paley credea că demonstrează existența unui ceasornicar divin” (p.309).

Richard Dawkins scrie foarte bine; argumentele lui sînt convingătoare...

صانع الساعات الأعمى

كتاب جيد، وترجمة جيدة …
كاتب يتكلم كثيراً، مجادل أكثر منه عالم، يرهقك أحيانا من كثرة ما يخلط من أفكار بالفكرة الأساسية، غير أن حجته في النهاية وفي أغلب الأحوال تستحق التأمل.

الذي يريد أن يقوله دوكنز في هذا الكتاب هو أن التطور لا يمكن إلا أن يكون داروينياً. يرى دوكنز أن كل من يريد أن يفسر ظاهرة تطور الأنواع بطريقة أخرى غير الداروينية، إما أن يصل في النهاية إلى حارة مسدودة، أو لا يصل على الإطلاق.

والداروينية هي تفسير للتطور على مبدأ الانتخاب الطبيعي: الطبيعة تنتقي العناصر الأكثر كفاءة، وهذه العناصر هي المجموعة التي تورث صفاتها للأجيال اللاحقة، وحدها دون العناصر الأقل كفاءة التي تموت وتموت معها صفاتها، مما يؤدي إلى تحول تدريجي للمحتوى الوراثي للمجموعة. وهذا هو التطور.

وفي نظر دوكنز الداروينية هي "النظرية الوحيدة المعروفة القادرة من حيث المبدأ على تفسير أوجه معينة من الحياة " ويقول "أنا أتنبأ لو حدث قط أن اكتشف شكل للحياة في جزء آخر من الكون، فمهما كان شكل الحياة هذا غير مألوف وغريب وعجيب في تفاصيله، إلا أنه سيتبين أنه يشبه الحياة على الأرض من وجه رئيسي واحد: أنه قد تطور بنوع من الانتخاب الطبيعي الدارويني". هذه الجزئية هي مهمة جدا في فهمنا للتطور الدارويني، فالأفضلية دوماً محسومة في صالح التطور الدارويني، بغض النظر إلى أي شيء أدت إليه الملاحظة. والسبب؟ السبب يبسطه دوكنز مقعداً في الفصل الأخير، ولكن لب هذا السبب أن الداروينية تفترض في مبدأها أبسط الميكانيزمات، والذي لا يعتمد على أي شيء من خارجه، إنه شيء في بساطته كقانون الجاذبية: تنتقي الطبيعة الأكثر كفاءة كما تجذب الأرض اليها الأجسام اعتماداً على كتلها النوعية. ثم كل شيء بعد ذلك يحدث كنتيجة لذلك الحدث البسيط.


والحقيقة أن الداروينية كانت أقل قبولاً قديماً مقارنة بالآن، أما الآن فصارت، مع قبولها، أقل تأكداً، فالنظرية التي تبدو تصلح أن تكون مناوئة للداروينية ليست هي النظرية التي تفترض ميكانيزم آخر للتطور، ولكن هي النظرية التي تقول إن الانتخاب الطبيعي يصعب أو يندر أن يؤدي إلى تكيف عضوي، وبمعنى آخر فليس له دور في انحدار الأنواع. هذه النظرية تعرف باسم neutralism، وهي لا تفسر كيف حدث التطور كما ترى ولكنها تستطرد على الداروينية لتبين عدم كفايتها (ما بعد الداروينية).

لذلك يصعب على العقلية العلمية "الاختزالية" أن تفرط في الداروينية بسهولة، حتى وإن كانت الداروينية تثير بعض التساؤلات حول مدى كفايتها لتفسير كل ظواهر التطور من حولنا …

My fourth Dawkins, reading this felt like catching up with an old friend. As I’m sure for many others, he definitely had a good deal of influence on my younger and more naive self. It’s a different feeling reading this now than when reading The God Delusion as someone raised Catholic and being nudged a little bit intellectually into facing some hard truths that were problematic and difficult to reconcile with the ‘facts’ that were preached to me growing up. This is an entirely different feeling as I’m now part of the converted being preached to. It’s a bit redundant, and I also have an old edition that I’ve read updated excerpts from in his later works; it does illuminate how many advances have been made in our understanding of natural selection in just the last quarter century. But I could read all day his constant digressions and fascinating animal anecdotes.

Книга цікава, і я погоджуюся (як і раніше) із тезами автора. Але виникає питання, нащо я її читав. Треба перестати читати книгу тільки тому, що вона в мене є. Оскільки я не біолог, зоолог чи генетик, користі від цього навалу інформації буде мало)

wow and double wow. i read this through and turned back to p.1 to read it again.

blind watchmaker has been amazingly influential in the way i think about just about everything- the world, existence, life forms, physics- down to the micro, myself and my craft. it's sent chills down my spine, made me euphoric and angry. the first for finally addressing questions that have long been in my mind (but receive no echo in society as i've known it), the second for the willful repression of information and large-scale institutionalized dumb-down that is the public school system i grew up in.

it makes me want to cry to think that i didn't learn about evolution until i already had a master's degree. i am learning now, though, largely through dawkins, stephen j. gould and others who've been able to bring the complexities of this subject to the laypeople. still angry that whatever my daughter learns about evolution, she'll have to learn from me, a social scientist and by no means an authority. nonetheless, in a college classroom if her professor asks if anyone's heard of darwin, her answer will be a resounding, "yeah!!". small victory, but something.

p.s. there's a great, great BBC documentary on Galapagos- highly worth checking out.

This was the second Richard Dawkins book that I read. I'd read `The selfish gene' a few months prior and it had created much chaos in my otherwise peaceful religious life. I'd never given evolution or atheism too much of thought until then. I followed this up with `The blind watchmaker' just to see if the pattern of rational thought that was so evident in Dawkins' narrative was sustained. And it was. While `The Selfish Gene' will always be my favourite Dawkins (even though I eventually remained a believer despite it), `The Blind watchmaker' comes a close second. This is popular biological science writing at its best. The narrative style is very involving and the arguments are compelling. Using simple language and excellent case studies, Dawkins not only manages to explain complicated concepts of evolution in very simple language markedly devoid of jargon, he draws his reader into the discussion on evolution, presents `evidences',and engages the reader in drawing conclusions and making inferences that support the idea that life EVOLVED and was not CREATED. Dawkins explains how evolution can generate complexity and hence life and diversity, implying that `creation' does not imply the existence of a creator. His argument counters William Paleys famous argument that just as the function and complexity of a watch implies a watch-maker, the function and complexity of the universe implies the existence of a universe-maker.
A must-read for so many reasons that I won't bother to list them here. Just get hold of a copy and read it. You may or may not be convinced by his argument but you'll love his style and the case studies... among so many other things.

I've got reviewers block.

To overcome this, I'm going to write a page of absolute garbage that may only be tangentially related to this book. In other words I'm going to do what I normally do anyway.

Here's the bit where I write about where I got the book and why: I picked this book up at a charity book stall for fifty pence. The cover was dull, but it had 'Dawkins' in big letters and I knew that I'd read a book by him before (The God Delusion) and that I'd almost enjoyed it and that he was famous for being a pain in the posterior regarding religion and evolution and such. It was one of those 'I'll get it just I case I feel like reading it but I'm not going to make an especial effort to read it and it's only fifty pence' kind of purchases. The other thought on my mind was that I'd seen it for full price in Waterstones and the price was therefore bargainous. It kind of takes me back to when I was a kid with no money looking at all the expensive records and books and comics and sweets that I wanted but couldn't have. Then Christmas would come around and I would get some money, but it was never enough to buy everything I wanted so I had to settle for less. And now, when I can afford any book, record or comic my heart desires, I still buy books for fifty pence and listen to free music on the radio and think about all the comics in my attic that I'll never read again because that was something I did back then and the feeling just isn't there anymore. And I think about satiated desires and about how life is empty without an object of desire, yet how frustrating it is to have a desire that cannot be fulfilled due to one lack or another.

Then I step back.

Take a deep breath.

And I look around the room and have a little think.

My biggest problem with evolution is that I don't have children.

This book is all about the survival of genes, and genes don't survive without children.

My genes won't survive and this is one of the most sobering and depressing thoughts I've ever had.

Survival of the fittest = my genes being weak.

I sat - stock still - staring at those words. Silent on the outside, yet twitching on the inside with the shame of having weak genes.

Then I fall into the comforting arms of the thought that these are just thoughts and that this book is just based on thoughts.

These things we call thoughts are of little substance (putting aside their consequences of course).

It's good to see the word 'evidence' in the title of this book and to remember that the word most commonly associated with evolution is 'theory'.

Maybe we'll never know the reality beyond the theories.

Maybe it's up to me to decide my own reality.

Within limits of course.

After all, even those who paint themselves into corners need only wait for the paint to dry.

کتاب با مثال های بسیار زیادی در تلاش برای اثبات احتمال بیشترِ اتفاقی بودن مدل تکامل و به وجود اومدن مرحله ای، به نسبت وجود خالق آگاه و دانا بود.
قبل از این کتاب یه کتاب دیگه از داوکینز خونده بودم(Outgrowing God) و اون کتاب باعث شده بود دلم بخواد همه نوشته هایش رو بخونم؛ اما با توجه به این کتاب گویا نوشتارش و مدل ارگیومنت هاش اوایل خیلی خوب نبوده.
در کنار اینکه یه سری توضیحاتش جالب بودند اما کلیتش رو خیلی دوست نداشتم. حالا اینکه تو اون زمان مجبور بوده چطور بنویسه و چیا بگه و چطور بحث کنه رو شاید باید درنظر بگیرم ولی خب اینجا محل نظرمه و همونطوری که اون یکی کتاب رو خیلی دوست داشتم، این یکی رو دوست نداشتم. ولی بخاطر اینکه یه سری چیز هم گفته بود که قبلش نمی‌دونستم یا توجه نکرده بودم نمیتونم بگم وقت هدر ده بود.
تا آخر کتاب رو ادامه دادم به امید اینکه بهتر بشه. حتا خوندن با صدای خودش باعث نشد اشتیاقم بیشتر بشه. آها یه نکته ای بود که اودیوبوکه متنش یکم فرق داشت با ای‌پابی که داشتم.
خلاصه که باینوشته های جدیدشو بخونم مثل اینکه.

This book was okay, but since I already am convinced evolution occurs by natural selection, I felt like he was not preaching to the choir, but trying to convince the choir. Of course, I got tired of it after a while (but I had to keep going, because I had to read it for a class). He comes up with many different arguments/theories for how evolution/natural selection could occur, many of which are interesting, but I would just rather read a science book rather than a philosophical book on evolution. For instance, I recommend The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner, which shows how scientists study evolution and natural selection in action.

Um excelente livro de divulgação científica, embora um pouco desactualizado, pois foi escrito em 1983.
No entanto, deu-me muito prazer ler este livro, já que me fez lembrar de muitas das coisas que dei no liceu e na faculdade, algumas estavam esquecidas, e foi bom relembrá-las. Aconselho vivamente, a quem se interessa por ciência e sobre a vida, como é que ela surgiu e como têm evoluído. São questões sempre actuais e que nos levam a sentir pequeninos perante a imensidão do Universo.