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Climbing Mount Improbable
by Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is one scientist who is well known for promoting the idea of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Considered 'radical' by some people, Dawkins is probably best known for his books, The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. Those books show how evolution can work to create sophisticated biological structures like eyes as well as saying why Dawkins believes that DNA is the 'unit of selection' in evolution, rather than the individual organism.

In the book, Climbing Mount Improbable, Dawkins develops further on ideas from those two books. He first takes a look at 'Mount Improbable', on whose summit lies such 'perfect' structures as eyes, wings, flowers, etc. At first glance, the summit of such 'mountains' looks unattainable but, as Dawkins shows in the book, there are ways of getting to the summit; not in one or a few giant leaps or by pure chance (as Dawkins points out, some people think so) but by slowly climbing up the many, tiny steps and ledges on the mountains provided by evolution by natural selection.

He also extends the 'biomorphs' (artificial computer generated creatures that can evolve) featured in The Blind Watchmaker and uses them to show the vast 'selection space' available to natural selection. He is also careful to point out that his programs are only models on how natural selection works. He uses spider webs to demonstrates how the program's artificial selection process show how natural selection could have worked for this one case.

The book is full of ideas and demonstrations on how natural selection works. He uses the development of the eye and how flight may have developed among mammals, birds and insects as examples. He also extends his previous books by considering how symmetry can act to 'speed up' evolution by helping to make organisms change in a consistent manner (instead of being lop-sided). Using the shape of shells, he considers whether natural selection is free to select any shape or whether it is limited by the possible ways shells can vary.

Finally, in the most fascinating chapter in the book, he looks at the development of figs and fig wasps and shows the amazing intricate 'battle' that takes places between two species (plant and animal) that are suppose to be living in symbiosis and even shows the battle between the male and female of the same species to breed!

This is truly an amazing book which helps illuminate many ideas about how evolution actually works. More importantly, it is a book that will make you think about how life develops, rather than just accepting the various forms of life for what it is.

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Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins

Climbing Mount Improbable
by Richard Dawkins