The Blind Watchmaker
Richard Dawkins is not a shy man.Edward Larson's researchshows that most scientists today are not formally religious, but Dawkins is an in-your-face atheist in the witty British style:I want 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.The title of this 1986 work, Dawkins's second book, refers to the Rev.  William Paley's 1802 work,Natural Theology, which argued that just as finding a watch would lead you to conclude that a watchmaker must exist, the complexity of living organisms proves that a Creator exists. Not so, says Dawkins: "All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way... it is theblindwatchmaker."Dawkins is a hard-core scientist: he doesn't just tell you what is so, he shows you how to find out for yourself. For this book, he wroteBiomorph, one of the first artificial life programs. You can check Dawkins's results on your ownMacorPC.--This text refers to an alternatePaperbackedition.