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The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design is a 1986 book by Richard Dawkins, in which the author presents an explanation of, and argument for, the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. He also presents arguments to refute certain criticisms made on his first book, The Selfish Gene.
The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument, an argument for the existence of God. In broad terms, the watchmaker analogy states that just as it is readily observed that a watch (e.g.: a pocket watch) did not come to be accidentally or on its own but rather through the intentional handiwork of a skilled watchmaker ...
The Blind Watchmaker is a documentary where Richard Dawkins challenges William Paley's theories on creationism and takes on Paley's descendants. [1] It was produced in 1987 by Jeremy Taylor and Richard Dawkins for BBC Horizon series and won the Sci-Tech Award for Best Science Documentary of the year. [2]
Dawkins wrote The Blind Watchmaker in 1986, arguing against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker, in that reproduction , mutation , and selection are unguided by any sentient ...
In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins goes on to provide a graphical model of gene selection involving entities he calls biomorphs. These are two-dimensional sets of line segments which bear relationships to each other, drawn under the control of "genes" that determine the appearance of the biomorph. By selecting entities from sequential generations ...
— Richard Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker, p. 111. Thompson objects that the gene cannot operate by itself, since it requires an environment such as a cell, and life is "the creative outcome of highly structured contingencies". Thompson quotes Sarkar: [49] "there is no clear technical notion of "information" in molecular biology.
River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life is a 1995 popular science book by Richard Dawkins. The book is about Darwinian evolution and summarizes the topics covered in his earlier books, The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype and The Blind Watchmaker. It is part of the Science Masters series and is Dawkins's shortest book
Today, adaptationism is associated with the "reverse engineering" approach. Richard Dawkins noted in The Blind Watchmaker that evolution, an impersonal process, produces organisms that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. [12] This observation justifies looking for the function of traits observed in biological organisms.