Imagine you’re on a hike and you find a watch on the ground. You would rightly assume the existence of a watchmaker. Dawkins adapts this creationist argument to describe how evolution by natural selection can “design” complex structures and new species, without any “supervision.” Throughout this very readable book, Dawkins draws on fascinating examples from nature, adaptations such as bat sonar and electrolocation, as well as things like sight, flight, and sexual displays, to make his points about how these things develop incrementally. All the while he presents these things from a sort of engineering perspective, even using analogies such as a “stretched DC8” to counter Hey the strawman of a tornado ripping through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747. The pinnacle of this is his own computer program, which he uses to demonstrate how a mutation of a small number of “genes” combined with some sort of selection can generate an immensely diverse collection of forms. Also of interest is his speculation that the earliest naturally selected replicating entity could have been clay crystals.

While he can be ranty and/or rambly at times, and I felt the book ended abruptly, on the whole I found this to be a very enjoyable book, and a worthy read after Darwin.