Climbing Mount Improbable

Summit of the improbable: miracle of evolution is a 1999 German when Random House published popular science fiction book of the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. It appeared in the original English under the title Climbing Mount Improbable in 1996 by Viking, Penguin Group, London. Dawkins is in his work the question of the role of chance and natural selection in the development of life.

Content

Chapter 1-2

Biological forms are not intentionally designed, yet arisen by pure chance. They are the result of natural selection. Dawkins shows which factors might have contributed to the development of the complicated structure of a spider's web.

Chapter 3

To make easier to understand that the theory of evolution is not a theory of chance, Dawkins introduces the parable of the Unwahrscheinlichkeitsgebirge. In these mountains corresponds to a greater height of increasing complexity. Today's viewer looking at the diversity of life, standing at the foot of a vast precipice, and can not imagine how the species could reach the summit of the highest complexity, without an intelligent designer brought them here to there. His superficial glance escapes, however, that the opposite side of the mountain is not steep, but has a strongly flattened increase. The evolution of species corresponds to the rise in Unwahrscheinlichkeitsgebirge. Coincidentally, only the mutations, but the non-random selection ensures a continuous gain in altitude.

Chapter 4

The main focus in this chapter is on the development of flight in insects, mammals and birds. Thus, the latter could have resulted from dinosaurs, which jumped after their prey over increasingly long distances.

Chapter 5

This is about the evolution of the eye. Although it is not possible to detect all transitional forms in the fossil record, enter today living species an idea of ​​the different levels of development of vision. The spectrum ranges from photoreceptors in unicellular to highly complex vertebrate eyes.

Chapter 6

For Dawkins, the selection is the driving force of evolution. Using the example of snail shells, he demonstrates that in nature not all mathematically possible forms actually exist. Some experts believe that not all of these forms can be brought about by mutation. However, Dawkins tends towards the opinion that these forms are not beneficial and are therefore selected against.

Chapter 7

A symmetrical and segmented embryonic development has an accelerating effect on the evolution. Mutations appear not only to one but to several parts of the body simultaneously.

Chapter 8-9

According to Dawkins are creatures solely of copying their DNA. And this, set in the genes statement there only because the creatures did not survive the selection otherwise, and consequently would not exist. The organisms are as Von Neumann probes, such as arbitrarily complex robots that make copies of themselves.

Chapter 10

In the last section Dawkins describes the intricate symbiosis between figs and fig wasps. For him, these are at a very high peak in Unwahrscheinlichkeitsgebirge - but not unattainable high:

" Even the most difficult problems to solve, and the steepest heights can climb if you only find a slow, gradual, step by step practical way. The Unwahrscheinlichkeitsgebirge is not to be taken in the assault. One must not climb more slowly, but always gradually. "

Reviews

" Can Dawkins Creationists and hostile physicist retune? I doubt it. Even Darwin's The Origin of Species was intended for the public, not only for his colleagues, and Darwin wrote clearly. However, in reaching out to a wide audience Dawkins could help eliminate ignorant criticism of evolution in open-minded readers. If so, the book of science and society will be useful. "

"Evolution by natural selection is without question an integral part of modern science, as well as the continental drift in geology. It is the explanatory foundation for a whole area. But Dawkins also believes that all questions about life have the same answer: natural selection. Such fundamentalist faith oversimplifies the biological world and obscures important questions about the driving forces of evolution. "

Book

• Richard Dawkins: Summit of the improbable: miracle of evolution, from the English by Sebastian Vogel, Rowohlt 1999, ISBN 3498013076