Books like the blind watchmaker

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Designis a 1986 book by Richard Dawkins, in which the author presents an explanation of, and argument for, the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. He also presents arguments to refute certain criticisms made on his first book,The Selfish Gene. (Both books espouse the gene-centric view of evolution.) An unabridged audiobook edition was released in 2011, narrated by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward.

In his choice of the title for this book, Dawkins refers to the watchmaker analogy made famous by William Paley in his 1802 bookNatural Theology. Paley, writing long before Charles Darwin publishedOn the Origin of Speciesin 1859, held that the complexity of living organisms was evidence of the existence of a divine creator by drawing a parallel with the way in which the existence of a watch compels belief in an intelligent watchmaker. Dawkins, in contrasting the differences between human design and its potential for planning with the workings of natural selection, therefore dubbed evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker.