Climbing Mount Improbable

by Richard Dawkins

Book Overview

The metaphor of Mount Improbable represents the combination of perfection and improbability that is epitomized in the seemingly "designed" complexity of living things. Dawkins skillfully guides the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393039307
• ISBN13: 9780393039306
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 340 Pages
• Weight: 1.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Evolution of eyes, spiderwebs, wings, and clamshells

Many people find it difficult to understand how complex structures like eyes and wings evolved through random evolution. Dawkins does a thorough job here laying out just how evolution works. He makes it clear that evolution is not random--it is the accumulation of gradual changes, over centuries and millenia. Mutations are random; evolution is not. Dawkins is very good at explaining how each gradual change to a complex structure like an eye or a wing would have been useful enough to the animal possessing it to have contributed to its survival and producing more babies than its rivals. Those babies then become the starting point for the next round of evolution. The key word here is CUMULATIVE. The book does get tedious in a few spots. I am less fascinated than Dawkins is by the details of the computer programs he uses to simulate certain types of evolution. "Climbing Mount Improbable" is more or less a sequel to Dawkins' book "The Blind Watchmaker," with additional detail. Although "Climbing Mount Improbable" is good, if you can read only one of the two books, I would suggest "The Blind Watchmaker." The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

Answering an age-old argument against natural selection

What Dawkins does is take a whole slew of animal characteristics that have led even natural selection's most strident supporters (including Darwin himself) to throw up their hands and say, "This is too complex - it cannot have evolved naturally." Examples include eyes, lungs, spiderwebs (yes, animal behavior counts), and wings. Dawkins then goes through these examples and painstakingly shows, step by step, that not only can each of these things be broken down into a series of *very gradual* changes - but also that each change provides an evolutionary advantage over the state that came before it.In other words, Dawkins shows that it's entirely plausible for, e.g., an eye to evolve because each stage of development enhances the fitness of the organism, yet each individual change (not the creation of the entire eye) is caused by such a small genetic change that it could have occurred randomly. The book effectively answers what has, historically, been one of the strongest arguments, not against evolution as a mechanism for *some* change in the natural world, but against its power to create the most complex facets of life. Along the way, Dawkins explains evolutionary theory in simple, understandable language, showing not only its incredible power, but also its limitations: because natural selection is a series of tiny steps, in which each change must improve the animal's survival fitness, organisms can get "stuck" on a path of improvement that ultimately is not as beneficial to them as another path would have been. The book is a powerful tool for understanding how natural selection works.On a personal note: I read this book early on in high school, and it interested me in biological science in a way no class has done. (And, as an uneducated youngster, I understood it - this is real testament to Dawkins's writing ability.) I highly recommend it.

Can This Man Write a Bad Book?

Though in a broad sense this book covers the same ground as the also-excellent _The Blind Watchmaker_, this one is less stridently argumentative in tone and consequently somewhat more accesible to the non-biologist. It also introduces a new metaphor for the process of evolution towards complexity, the titular Mount Improbable, which I find far superior to either the Blind Watchmaker (derived from and therefore permenantly bound to old Creationist arguments) or the author's much-beloved computer programs. The museum of hypothetical shells is another great addition to the annals of thought-experiment.Another aspect of this book's greatness is the way in which Mr. Dawkin's love for biology, both in the sense of the study of living things and in the sense of the living things themselves, shows on nearly every page. Where in The Blind Watchmaker he often seemed angry (albeit rightfully so), here he is equally often simply enraptured by the sheer beauty of evolution and the products thereof. It's easy to see that this guy is a true naturalist, and his enthusiasm is infectious.Now I move along to _Unweaving the Rainbow_ with high hopes and much anticipation.

Answer to questions about life: natural selection

Of the many fine books Dawkins has given us, this one stands out as possibly the best. Although the importance of The Selfish Gene still transcends it, Climbing Mount Improbable has unique value. Dawkins has an exceptional ability to explain the immense spectrum of life's complexities. He demonstrates that skill admirably here in a volume that's proven timeless. Having bought this book when first published, it was particularly delightful to pick it up again and discover it's lost nothing since then. He begins this collection of essays with a new label: the "designoid". Designoids are those elements in life that seem designed; beyond the caprice of the apparent random natural forces. Dawkins quickly points out that evolution is not "random" nor are any of the complex aspects of living things the result of a designer. Dawkins uses the title of this review, attributed to Henry Bennet-Clark, as the basis for the rest of the book. Natural selection can, and does, explain it all. Using the theme of climbing a mountain, Dawkins shows the true path to the peak is by means of gentle slopes, not attempting a great leap. Too many people accept the steep precipice of divine origins as the explanation of complex phenomena in life. Dawkins explains how gradual steps are required for life to manifest spider webs, wings, and the Christian obstructionist's favourite, the eye. Each of these wonders is examined critically with the best scientific logic, explaining its development with clarity and wit. He frequently reminds us that such complex organs as the elephant's trunk have progressed through numerous stages, each of which was successful within its own environment. As environments changed, the trunk responded with new adaptations. Modern animals, such as the tapir, elephant shrew, proboscis monkey or seals, all exhibit nasal trunks that likely represent the stages the elephant's ancestors passed through to produce today's Computer models have become a favourite analytical tool for tracking likely paths in evolution. Dawkins has written his own and applauds others' successful efforts. The computer has the capacity to accelerate the likely steps life has taken in producing designoids. He's careful to warn us that mathematical models don't duplicate life's processes, but simply provide situations that could have happened under certain conditions. Even with that caution in mind, his relation of the study of possible evolutionary paths of the eye is one of the most captivating accounts in biology. It's not even his own work. Two Swedish researchers programmed the most pessimistic conditions for the evolution of a workable eye and deduced it would take less than half a million years.The essay "A Garden Enclosed" might have brought a tear to the eye of E.O. Wilson, biology's greatest exponent of biodiversity. Dawkins takes us through the life cycles of the figs and their wasp pollinators. The beauty of this ess

Read between the lines.

Along with Richard Dawkins' other works, Climbing Mount Improbable is one of the most important books ever written. That is, if your priority is truth. With unparalled lucidity, Dawkins debunks as easily as he explains, in matters of life, self, biology, psychology, and evolution. But even Dawkins is powerless to open the closed mind. You will find the one-star long-winded reviews, if you do a little research, invariably rate religious books high and science-related books low. As Dawkins states in Climbing Mount Improbable, there is always an explanation if you delve deeply enough. If truth is your goal, discount the dogmatic reviewers, read this book, and learn.