Climbing Mount Improbable

Few scientific theories have been as influential or controversial in the past few centuries as Darwin's thoughts on natural selection; even now, laymen and scientists find fault with Darwin's argument. Richard Dawkins, the chair of the communication of science at Oxford University, has delivered a well-researched book supporting and supplementing Darwin's theories. Although not a work of Darwinian proportions, Climbing Mount Improbable is an advancement of those theories for scientists and general readers alike.

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Laborious, boring, and discouraging. - Rated
I abandoned this book as it is utterly boring. It is certainly not a page-turner. Its author has a patronising and discouraging attitude. He underestimates the intellect of his readers. His major fault, however, is over-elaboration and particularly when it is so unnecessary. Anyone taking up the career of biology would be best advised to avoid this book. The author's communication skill is appalling. How anyone could find the book interesting is beyond my comprehension. It almost slayed my interest in biology. On reading it, it became apparent why the used editions are low in price! My copy too will be added to this heap.

Have questions about life? Try natural selection - Rated
Of the many fine books Dawkins has given us, this one stands out as possibly the best. Although the importance of The Selfish Gene still transcends it, Climbing Mount Improbable has unique value. Dawkins has an exceptional ability to explain the immense spectrum of life's complexities. He demonstrates that skill admirably here in a volume that's proven timeless. Having bought this book when first published, it was particularly delightful to pick it up again and discover it's lost nothing since then.

He begins this collection of essays with a new label: the "designoid". Designoids are those elements in life that seem designed; beyond the caprice of the apparent random natural forces. Dawkins quickly points out that evolution is not "random" nor are any of the complex aspects of living things the result of a designer. Dawkins uses the title of this review, attributed to Henry Bennet-Clark, as the basis for the rest of the book. Natural selection can, and does, explain it all.

Using the theme of climbing a mountain, Dawkins shows the true path to the peak is by means of gentle slopes, not attempting a great leap. Too many people accept the steep precipice of divine origins as the explanation of complex phenomena in life. Dawkins explains how gradual steps are required for life to manifest spider webs, wings, and the Christian obstructionist's favourite, the eye. Each of these wonders is examined critically with the best scientific logic, explaining its development with clarity and wit. He frequently reminds us that such complex organs as the elephant's trunk have progressed through numerous stages, each of which was successful within its own environment. As environments changed, the trunk responded with new adaptations. Modern animals, such as the tapir, elephant shrew, proboscis monkey or seals, all exhibit nasal trunks that likely represent the stages the elephant's ancestors passed through to produce today's

Computer models have become a favourite analytical tool for tracking likely paths in evolution. Dawkins has written his own and applauds others' successful efforts. The computer has the capacity to accelerate the likely steps life has taken in producing designoids. He's careful to warn us that mathematical models don't duplicate life's processes, but simply provide situations that could have happened under certain conditions. Even with that caution in mind, his relation of the study of possible evolutionary paths of the eye is one of the most captivating accounts in biology. It's not even his own work. Two Swedish researchers programmed the most pessimistic conditions for the evolution of a workable eye and deduced it would take less than half a million years.

The essay "A Garden Enclosed" might have brought a tear to the eye of E.O. Wilson, biology's greatest exponent of biodiversity. Dawkins takes us through the life cycles of the figs and their wasp pollinators. The beauty of this essay is almost staggering both in his superb presentation and in the implications it raises. Wasps inhabit the interior of figs, drawing on them for nourishment and residence, but pollinating them with almost human dedication. Dawkins' description of the complex interaction between plant and insect raises again the issue of how little we know about life's interactions. And how much we're intruding on them in our ignorance.

Dawkins has never hidden his advocacy role in describing how evolution works and how poorly our culture understands what's going on around us. More than simply anticipating obstructionists such as Michael Behe in Darwin's Black Box, Dawkins aims his criticism at all who adhere to the Judeo-Christian assertion that humanity has some divine mandate to exercise "dominion over the earth". Clearly, that belief will be the undoing of the species and perhaps life itself if it isn't shed and a better understanding of the interaction of life attained. The best place to start attaining that understanding starts with this book. Buy it, loan it, give it to those who need to learn what life's all about - our children. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Not his best - by a long shot. - Rated
With all respect to Prof. Dawkins, this reads like either an early draft of the Blind Watchmaker or a later revision of it. It seems to me that Dawkins came up with the - admittedly brilliant - metaphor of Mount Improbable, and rather than losing it to the obscurity of his notebooks, decided to reinterpret everything he has written up to that point through it. Which is fine, for those who are unfamiliar with his works, but those who are not can expect to find little more than further examples which support the grand theories he, and many neo-Darwinists, are well known for. Climbing Mount Improbable is really a collection of fascinating Zoological tales (such as species mimicry, interactive symbiosis, and a wonderful insight into spider web building) which leave the reader amazed at the intricacies of the natural world, but seeing as evolution as explanation seems understated and undeveloped, the possibility of theistic creation as explanation still remains and the subject matter does not really hang together with the title of the book. The book, to put it in another way, comes across as an anthology of essays, and does not do what it sets out to do: that is, illustrate with examples the irrefutability of evolution through natural selection, natural selection which pressures living beings, inch by inch and generation by generation, up the sloped surface of Mount Improbable.

If you have read his better known books, and like myself find Dawkins style of writing infectious for its clarity and poetic colour, then this could be considered as a summary of all that he has written before, which is thus well worth reading for its consequent accessibility and for the the extra, incredibly fascinating insights into the depths of the natural world it provides. If you have not read Dawkins before, then I suggest you start with his more substantial works: which will not only leave your stunned at the wonder of the world we inhabit, but, unlike this book, will explain where you, the world, and everything that craweth upon it, came from.

Give this to anyone that doubts evolution. - Rated
I've read a number of Dawkins' books as I find his books such a stimulating read given its subject matter and his writing style. Of those I've read (Blind Watchmaker, River out of Eden, Unweaving the Rainbow, and Climbing Mt Improbable), I found this the best. Indeed, I would actually say it was 'exciting' to read as it uncovers details in nature that I would never have thought existed, yet beautifully suggests how all can be explained by Darwin's simple gradual mechanism of random change and non-random (but still natural) selection.
Excellent book. Give it to anyone that doubts evolution.

Illuminating and astonishing - Rated
Those who refuse to believe in evolution hold up examples such as the eye or the flight of birds - peaks of Mount Improbable - and ask how they could possibly have evolved. Dawkins goes a long way towards explaining just how these things could have happened, over a shorter time period than might be expected. He always bears his audience in mind and so the arguments are very easy to follow. And there are some facts presented which are even more surprising than those he sets out to prove. Who would have thought that figs represented one of the peaks?