The Blind Watchmaker

The Blind Watchmaker: A new plea for Darwinism is a 1986 published in German in the original English and 1990 non-fiction book of the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Under the title The Blind Watchmaker, it has been laid in 1996 by the publisher WW Norton & Company in New York again (ISBN 0-393-31570-3 ). In the German translation of it appeared in Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich (ISBN 3-423-11261-1 ). Dawkins explains and argues for the theory of evolution through the process of natural selection and reacts to criticism of his earlier work, The Selfish Gene.

With the title of Dawkins alludes to the watchmaker analogy, a teleological argument that was put forward among others by William Paley in this form, and is now led by representatives of Creationism and Intelligent Design. Paley argued in his Natural Theology in 1802, ie 50 years before Charles Darwin, that a pocket watch found in the field is recognized as an intelligently constructed object, and that, consequently, the living organisms are to be regarded as works of an intelligent designer. Dawkins, however, is given to how the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin plausible the existence of living beings explained without the need for a creator God would be necessary. To this end, he explains the difference between a completely random process and a process with random mutations and subsequent selection. This is a sample program ( the Weasel Program) explained and also by the computer program The Blind Watchmaker is available, which simulates the process of natural selection.

At the end of the book, Dawkins uses the fact that the complexity in nature can be explained by the theory of evolution by Darwin, as an argument against competing theories, noting that there were no alternatives. From this he concludes that the existence of living beings without the assumption of a god could be explained: In order for Paley's analogy, the watchmaker, ie to remain an adding God, Dawkins describes a blind watchmaker, ie by the interaction of random ( "blind " ) and non- random mutation, natural selection is apparent evolutionary creativity ( "watchmaker ").

In 1987, Richard Dawkins, the BBC documentary The Blind Watchmaker, in which he performs the key messages of his book.