The “Watchmaker” of the title refers to an 18th century philosophical argument for the existence of God: If you find a watch in the desert, its complexity will cause you to postulate the existence of a watchmaker. Similarly, living beings are very complex, and by the same argument, there must be something that made them. This book is a response to that argument, pointing out how the theory of evolution can explain the complexity and variety of life without invoking any supreme beings, in effect functioning as a blind watchmaker, something that can produce a watch but does not have an actual purpose to produce a watch, just something different.

This book is definitely one of the best popular science books I've ever read. Dawkins has a very engaging writing style and a clear enthusiasm for the material, and the book is very well structured in that it doesn't try to explain too much at a time or rely on the reader knowing too much. I think what was the most impressive thing about the book was that, in spite of it being in a way an anti-creationist book, it's still fundamentally a positive treatment: not attacking the creationist side but showing how evolution works and how that can truly lead to the current state of life.

It's been a long time since I read this book, so I cannot write any specific impressions (time for a re-read?), but looking through the table of contents and browsing a bit, I note that the coverage looks very comprehensive too. There are the basics of evolution, mutation and selection, something on the origins of life (that skirts near the anthropic principle without mentioning it by name), co-evolution of interacting populations, speciation, and even alternate theories, both within and outwith the confines of Darwinian evolution.

And finally, I'm a sucker for simple computer simulations that show really complex and surprising behavior (the Game of Life being a well-known example). Hmmm, that reminds me, I really love Robert Axelrod's stuff too. Maybe I should register them as well.

Registering this since there seems to be some interest in Dawkins around here, but I doubt I'll ever let it go permanently. You'll get my Dawkins when you pry it from my cold dead hands! :-p

Making a Finnish bookring out of this. Four weeks should be enough time to read it, but if you need a bit more time, that's fine. Just don't hog the book, mmmkay?

Participants (order may change based on people's locations):

1. LaPitchoune, Vantaa
2. Ahava, Helsinki
3. RoryG, Helsinki
4. ruzena, Hämeenlinna
5. Perdue, Espoo

The ring has now returned home.

I'm curs.. err.. blessed with another bookring :) I hope there'll be time enough to really focus on this with the intensity it surely deserves. At first glance, it was a surprise to me the watchmaker theory was that old. I had heard it from the mouth of a much more recent scientist. Supposedly all good ideas have already been used by someone, somewhere, a long time ago. I'm really looking forward to reading this. Thanks for the ring!

Ok, since my time in the book ring is running out, I feel compelled to say a few words. A few words seems too little, I know, but fortunately our time & space allows the possibility of successive editing - like nature, wouldn't you say :) So where to begin?

My expectations were positive. I'm not religious, but I've still had the predisposition to think there is a force or a wisdom out there, designing things. Call it Mother Nature, if you will. I used to kind of agree with Paley on the impossibility of a purely accidental birth of camouflage as a natural phenomenon, for instance. Dawkins lists a whole lot of other complex & unlikely inventions, starting from echolocation. Wanting to stubbornly hold on to my beliefs, I was a bit critical at first. It was the visual aids (such as the simple two-branched tree that suddenly 'evolved' into a fox or a lampshade in just a few 'generations') that got me convinced that natural development -or evolution- doesn't necessarily require foresight, however pleasant and comforting an idea it might seem. So that alone must have made me a perfect target for a book like this.

There was a lot of talk about the mystification of nature. Dawkins is asking if the appreciation of nature is setting scales on our eyes, preventing us from seeing how simple everything really is. I'd still say the world is too diverse & detailed for most of us to even understand, but I'm willing to accept the idea of relative simplicity. After all, the only thing we've got is hindsight and a perfect illusion, so what we see are results, not plans.

On a more general level, I love the optimism here! Dawkins is enjoying his walk in the awesome Biomorph Land where given enough time, or infinite opportunities, anything is possible (p.139). A comforting thought, huh! I've got to give him credit for granting us the possibility of unicorns and dragons existing in a nine-dimensional maze of (potential) beings.

Another thing to think about when you're having a bad day: we are but fools in time, led to believe in the present time where there really is nothing but infinity. Think about how far you've come in the game of life! What's there to complain about, anyway?

Some random parts caught my attention. I'm too lazy to elaborate so I'd like to sprinkle them here, in a nutshell.

* When you eat a steak, you are shredding the equivalent of more than 100 billion copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (p.18)
Apparently I wasn't the only reader who thought Dawkins was a vegetarian, but he is not.
Personally, I'm glad I've saved my fair share of information there! But I guess facts & figures like that, or say, the amount of bacteria in your left eye, are only a way of confusing oneself, so why bother.

* Another good point made about the cruelty of people on page 262: Our legal and moral systems are deeply species-bound. The director of a zoo is legally entitled to 'put down' a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might 'put down' a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. I know, this is an old truth but it's still nothing but the truth. This reminded me of some recent news .
Doesn't that sound like a welcome change in our mentality? Go, Spain!

* Dawkins makes several references to The Selfish Gene. I really feel like reading that now, especially after the piece of knowledge he drops on page 116: 99% of a gene seems to be totally useless and empty. Why is it there? For the sole sake of existing? And what about the claim that genes are choosing copies of themselves through sexual selection (p.206)? What a nerve!

* As a woman I couldn't help but smile when Dawkins was talking about fashion-conscious females & their whims that more or less rule the world (~p.200-205)!

* Do note the critical points made against consumerism on page 219! What was the record you last bought? Are you sure you really want to be listening to that sort of thing?

* This goes slightly OT, but I have to mention the X-Files episode 'Leonard Betts' here, because it deals with the concept of punctuationism! LB is the result of a drastic leap in human evolution!

...And finally, the reason why I didn't give this book full 10 stars probably has something to do with me being feverish & sick with the flu while reading this. Still, I think there were some bits that could have been left out. Different taxonomies is an interesting thought alright, but dedicating that many pages to it alone...dunno.

I see my entry turned out a little longer than 'just a few words', but I'll shut up, for now.

Happy reading, Ahava!

Blind Watchmaker made it's way to my bookshelf, thank you LaPitchoune and VariC! I'll take the book with me to a long train trip to the very end of the world (Oulu, that is). A seven-hour-trip needs to be taken seriously. Maybe Dawkins, the fighting atheist, helps me make the time go by.

Oh good heavens, I've this in my bookshelf for ashaming two months! I'm awfully sorry and contact RoryG any minute now.

I got the book from Ahava today. It will be on the top of my pile :)

I was originally very excited to read this. I've heard a couple of interviews of Richard Dawkins and I thought I would like his book as well. But, I tried to get into this couple of times, but I can't seem to get past the beginning of the second chapter. I'm not sure if this is totally the fault of the book, since I've been quite stressed lately and unable to concentrate. Then again I've read some not-so-light feminist books at the same time. In any case I'm just giving up. I've listened to a lot of creationist/evolution stuff from podcasts and at least the beginning of the book didn't bring anything new to that conversation. And for me Dawkins' writing style is a bit annoying. He goes around the same thing in different words so many times that I just get bored - or lose the train of thought.

My thoughts of the book are pretty negative at this point. It might be also that I had too high expectations and when the book wasn't quite what I expected, I couldn't really get past it. Anyway, I want to keep the book moving, since I try to get rid of my stress :)

Thanks VariC for organizing the ring, though. I'm glad I got the chance to try this.

Well, I really need to make an update: I contacted ruzena, but haven't got the answer yet. I was just about to send another pm, but then I picked up the book again and started reading. And it definitely makes more sense now (I think my stress level has really gone down). So, sorry to take awhile, but I decided to read this after all and will contact ruzena again after reading the book :)

Well, this kind of took me a long time... Sorry about that. But I'm glad I decided to read it after all. The book was really interesting and I learned new things about evolution (like that humans and rats have a definite common ancestor). There were things that I would've liked to hear more about, like how the life in different continents developed differently but had basically equal species (but just for example marsupials in Australia and mammals in Eurasia). But I guess it wasn't really the point of this book. Maybe I just wasn't really interested in the point the book was trying to make. I did think it was good, but I found it very slow to read. But I would certainly be interested in reading more Dawkins if the topic was more relevant to me (I just find the intelligent design thing a bit distant in Finland). But definitely a good book that I would recommend.

I will contact ruzena right away and hope to get the book moving this week (I might have a problem with this, though, since I have a course that's right after work and our mail office is closed so I have to the next closest one, but I should be getting it on the road latest on Friday).

Here! But maybe two months to read, please? See above. Egalité...

EDIT. I never got the message mentioned May 12, 2009, by RoryG.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Posted to Perdue on Thursday, Nov 05.

I received the book on Friday, but didn't get around to journaling it before today. Thanks for sending it, ruzena, and thanks for sharing, VariC!

Forgot to journal this last week when I got it back from Perdue. Thanks, everyone! My first actual bookring safely back home.