Includes bibliographical references (p. [455]-460) and index.

"The watchmaker belongs to the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley, who made one of the most famous creationist arguments: Just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. It was Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery that put the lie to these arguments. But only Richard Dawkins could have written this eloquent riposte to the creationists. Natural selection - the unconscious, automatic, blind, yet essentially nonrandom process that Darwin discovered - has no purpose in mind. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker." "Acclaimed as perhaps the most influential work on evolution written in this century, The Blind Watchmaker offers an engaging and accessible introduction to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time."--BOOK JACKET.

Ch. 1. Explaining the very improbable -- Ch. 2. Good design -- Ch. 3. Accumulating small change -- Ch. 4. Making tracks through animal space -- Ch. 5. The power and the archives -- Ch. 6. Origins and miracles -- Ch. 7. Constructive evolution -- Ch. 8. Explosions and spirals -- Ch. 9. Puncturing punctuationism -- Ch. 10. The one true tree of life -- Ch. 11. Doomed rivals -- Appendix I. An Application for the Apple Macintosh Computer -- Appendix II [1991]. Computer Programs and 'The Evolution of Evolvability'.