Climbing Mount Improbable
by Richard Dawkins
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard DawkinsIllustrator: Lalla Ward
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-09-17
ISBN: 0393316823
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Book Reviews of Climbing Mount Improbable
Book Review: Dawkins' Plethora of Illustrated Examples of Gradual Evolution via Natural Selection
Summary: 5 Stars
Climbing Mount Improbable may be treated as the sequel to The Blind Watchmaker but really reads more like a development of those thoughts. In fact Climbing Mount Improbable is an expanded transcript of Dawkins' Growing Up in the Universe, first broadcast in 1991 in five episodes, which was filmed during a series of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (which have been held in London annually since 1825 first started by Michael Faraday). For those who have seen the series, Climbing Mount Improbable is that whole series plus five years worth of updates (this book was first published in 1996). For those who haven't seen the series, its worth getting because the series compliments this book wonderfully.
Climbing Mount Improbable is a collection of examples of gradual evolution via natural selection with a good load of illustrations and photographs to back it up. In terms of value for money this book is essentially a pinnacle in Dawkins' thoughts on evolutionary biology with the evidence to back it up and so for that reason really does offer a lot more than most books for the price.
Nobody does it better than Dawkins when it comes to presenting biology lessons of a lifetime. The fact that this book is based on the materials for a set of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures says it all about the quality of the information in the pages. If there is a biology book you are going to get then get this at all costs. It's both the foundation and the finishing touch on assembling the facts surrounding living things.
Dawkins covers ten chosen topics. Each topic is about evolutionary biology. The main theme of the book is about the illusion of intelligent design and how natural selection is the right approach to understanding the gradual development of complex organisms from simpler ones. The metaphor of the mountain with many peaks is used throughout the book to describe the process of evolution via natural selection. This mountain is what Dawkins calls Mount Improbable.
Chapter 1 "Facing Mount Rushmore"
This chapter deals with illusions in natural design such as seeing John F. Kennedy in a mountain face and comparisons to actual intelligent designs such as Mount Rushmore. Dawkins then examines mimicry in insects such as ants mimicking beetles and beetles mimicking termites, all explained by natural selection. Dawkins covers several designoid objects such as the pitcher plant and pots made by potter wasps and mason bees. Convergent evolution describes how specific environmental conditions can produce the same evolved characteristics in separate species. Millipedes copulate face to face. The wild cabbage has bred an amazing diversity of cabbage-like plants. The Chihuahua has eventually been bred from the wolf. Dawkins famous blind watchmaker program is then shown to produce a variety of computer generated biomorphs to illustrate how complex organisms form through heredity via natural selection.
Chapter 2 "Silken Fetters"
Dawkins describes in deep detail the evolution of the spider-web before going on to explain adaptive variations and in the web design.
Chapter 3 "The Message From the Mountain"
Dawkins gives a general rundown on how natural selection gradually works including mutation and the error of calling evolution chance. Dawkins gives examples including the evolution of the elephant trunk and the giraffe neck. The topics of macro-mutations and punctuated evolution are covered.
Chapter 4 "Getting Off the Ground"
Dawkins describes the evolution of flight. Magnitude and volume in relation to evolutionary constraints under the laws of physics is extremely interesting. Creatures that glide are illustrated. Dawkins answers why mammals are found in the sea if mammals evolved from fish and then proceeds to give examples of fish that have strange adaptations via natural selection such as the flat-fish.
Chapter 5 "The Forty-fold Path to Enlightenment"
Dawkins describes the evolution of the eye in vast detail. The evolution of the eye is often called impossible by some yet the solution is again found in the gradual process of natural selection. Dawkins then goes on to show how the eye has independently evolved in other species.
Chapter 6 "The Museum of All Shells"
Using just three mathematical variables of the flare, verm and spire Dawkins systematically develops complex shells. Then by adding another dimension of size and change of each possible variable Dawkins surprises the reader with an array of every complex form of life on the planet today. This is a real eye-opener... and an evolved eye at that.
Chapter 7 "Kaleidoscopic Embryos"
If you have ever wondered how those amazing jellyfish look so mechanical Dawkins explains it using the idea of kaleidoscopes and natural selection. This chapter then leads up to another surprise of how body parts evolve into their complexities from less complex designs. This is yet another brain raiser... and an evolved brain at that too.
Chapter 8 "Pollen Grains and Magic Bullets"
Dawkins illustrates and describes the symbiotic relationships between flowers and the insects they need to reproduce them, all developed via natural selection.
Chapter 9 "The Robot Repeater"
All living things are in fact hosts for DNA. DNA for wings is there so that wings can help DNA spread. DNA says copy me to copy me. That's it! This is the meaning of life in a nutshell. Shockingly simple but this is what has been at the heart of all biological questions since humans first asked "why we are the way we are?" using our emergent consciousness.
Chapter 10 "A Garden Inclosed"
Dawkins does the evolution of the fig via natural selection in a way that only very patient readers or professional biologists will appreciate. It's the book's example of tour-de-force natural selection. It is highly complex and requires several readings to even begin to comprehend it.
This book is a world beyond the question of whether evolution is real or not. Not only is this book dealing with the fact of evolution but its business is with the mechanisms of natural selection in all its forms as a real process that is observable, testable and verifiable. For people who are still unsure about evolution this book will not only convince but does so by going into the deep end and presenting what biologists know about this certainty of life.
The style of critical thinking is also something to learn outside of the book's topic. Dawkins writes likes it is the reader who is doing all the work, and they are if they can think through every step of his mountain climb. You will never see life the same way again. Everything, and I mean everything, you see will be subject to analysis. Dawkins has set his standards as high as Everest. You will stand at the summit with a refined critical mind and that is guaranteed.
Summary of Climbing Mount Improbable
A brilliant book celebrating improbability as the engine that drives life, by the acclaimed author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker.
The human eye is so complex and works so precisely that surely, one might believe, its current shape and function must be the product of design. How could such an intricate object have come about by chance? Tackling this subject?in writing that the New York Times called "a masterpiece"?Richard Dawkins builds a carefully reasoned and lovingly illustrated argument for evolutionary adaptation as the mechanism for life on earth.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 reader on a breathtaking journey through the mountain's passes and up its many peaks to demonstrate that following the improbable path to perfection takes time. Evocative illustrations accompany Dawkins's eloquent descriptions of extraordinary adaptations such as the teeming populations of figs, the intricate silken world of spiders, and the evolution of wings on the bodies of flightless animals. And through it all runs the thread of DNA, the molecule of life, responsible for its own destiny on an unending pilgrimage through time.
Climbing Mount Improbable is a book of great impact and skill, written by the most prominent Darwinian of our age.
How do species evolve? Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most eminent zoologists, likens the process to scaling a huge, Himalaya-size peak, the Mount Improbable of his title. An alpinist does not leap from sea level to the summit; neither does a species utterly change forms overnight, but instead follows a course of "slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants"--a course that Charles Darwin, Dawkins's great hero, called natural selection. Illustrating his arguments with case studies from the natural world, such as the evolution of the eye and the lung, and the coevolution of certain kinds of figs and wasps, Dawkins provides a vigorous, entertaining defense of key Darwinian ideas.
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