Climbing Mount Improbable

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Climbing Mount Improbable is a 1996 popular science book by Richard Dawkins. The book is about probability and how it applies to the theory of evolution, and specifically is designed to debunk claims by creationists about the probability of naturalistic mechanisms like natural selection producing complex organisms.

The main metaphorical treatment is of a geographical landscape, upon which evolution can only ascend in a gradual way, not being able to climb cliffs. In the book he gives various ideas about a seemingly complex mechanism coming about from many different gradual steps, that were previously unseen.

The book grew out of the annual Royal Institution Christmas Lectures which Dawkins delivered in 1991. It is illustrated by Dawkins' wife, Lalla Ward.

The book is divided into ten chapters as follows:

1. Facing Mount Rushmore
2. Silken Fetters
3. The Message From the Mountain
4. Getting Off the Ground
5. The Forty-fold Path to Enlightenment
6. The Museum of All Shells
7. Kaleidoscopic Embryos
8. Pollen Grains and Magic Bullets
9. The Robot Repeater
10. "A Garden Inclosed"

[edit] External links

• "Climbing Mount Improbable (book reviews), Frank Graham Jr.
• "Book review: Climbing Mount Improbable", Jonathan Sarfati, Creation Ministries International, April 1998.
• Book review "The Mystery Of Life", John Horgan, Slate, September 1996.

Richard Dawkins

The Selfish Gene • The Extended Phenotype • The Blind Watchmaker • River out of Eden • Climbing Mount Improbable • Unweaving the Rainbow • A Devil's Chaplain • The Ancestor's Tale • The Root of All Evil? • How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think • The God Delusion • The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science See also: Evolution • Gene-centric view of evolution • Memetics • Atheism • Humanism • W. D. Hamilton • Lalla Ward • Richard Dawkins in popular culture