The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
(out of 5 stars)
Having read The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, and The God Delusion by Dawkins, I had been collecting the rest of his books to read at some point. The Blind Watchmaker is Dawkins' comprehensive look at the the evidence for evolution and proof that no designer need be posited in order to understand and explain biological diversity. The book itself is outstanding until you get to the last three chapters, which, for me, were not as pleasing an argument for Dawkins' thesis in the book's subtitle: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design.
Dawkins is a master at explaining highly complicated biological ideas in a popular science manner. Watchmaker starts off with excellent arguments for the emergence of complexity from less complex characteristics. Arguing that there indeed are examples of 'good design', Dawkins describes echolocation in bats and other animals to show how the appearance of design is strong. He then goes on to show how this appearance of design is not actually backed by the evidence.
Further chapters describe the nature of DNA, and how it provides an 'archive' of historical instructions. Dawkins emphasizes that evolution works as a cumulative selection process (a significant point often missed or ignored by anti-Darwinian advocates). In the chapter dealing with origins, Dawkins' explanation for one possible description of abiogensis (involving imperfections in the crystalline structure of clay) shows that we don't need to posit supernatural beings to have some notion of how life can form from non-life (and to be clear, as Dawkins is in this chapter, this hypothesis is NOT being advocated as the abiogenic solution, only that it is one reasonable scenario that could potentially lead to life).
Once Dawkins gets to chapter 9, however, the book loses some focus as the author attempts to counter scholaraly arguments of his peers. He tackles the problems of punctuationism, a chapter which largely argues above the reader's head and toward Dawkins' fellow scholars. The next chapter, dealing with competing theories of taxonomy, while interesting, are not needed at all to support the book's thesis. The last chapter follows this trend and again provides no real support for the development of Dawkins' thesis. This chapter also suffers from now being scientifically out of date (written in the mid 1980s). Embryology has made massive progress in developing theories and understanding of development (leading to the term 'evo devo' to describe evolutionary development), leaving this last chapter unfulfilling two decades after it was penned.
Blind Watchmaker is fascinating argument in favor of Darwinian evolution by means of natural selection, and the first eight chapters are especially enjoyable. The last three chapters drag the book down a bit and leave a rather unsatisfied ending to this otherwise fantastic exploration of evolution. Still, Watchmaker is well worth the read. I eagerly await Dawkins' forthcoming book The Greatest Show on Earth, which I expect will be an updated and expanded version of this work. Four stars.
