Climbing Mount Improbable
0-393-03930-7
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. It is designed to debunk claims by creationists about the probability of naturalistic mechanisms like natural selection.[1]
The main metaphorical treatment is of a geographical landscape upon which evolution can ascend only gradually and cannot climb cliffs (that is known as an adaptive landscape). In the book, Dawkins gives ideas about a seemingly complex mechanism coming about from many gradual steps that were previously unseen.
The book grew out of the annual Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, which Dawkins delivered in 1991 (see Growing Up in the Universe). It is illustrated by Dawkins' wife at the time, Lalla Ward, and is dedicated to Robert Winston, "a good doctor and a good man".[2]
References
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- The Selfish Gene (1976)
- The Extended Phenotype (1982)
- The Blind Watchmaker (1986)
- River Out of Eden (1995)
- Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)
- Unweaving the Rainbow (1998)
- A Devil's Chaplain (2003)
- The Ancestor's Tale (2004)
- The God Delusion (2006)
- The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (2009)
- The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True (2011)
- An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist (2013)
- Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science (2015)
- Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist (2017)
- Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide (2019)
- Books Do Furnish a Life: Reading and Writing Science (2021)
- Flights of Fancy: Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution (2021)
- Growing Up in the Universe (1991)
- Dawkins vs. Gould (2001)
- Beyond Belief (2006)
- Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think (2006)
- The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing (2008)
- Nice Guys Finish First (1987)
- The Blind Watchmaker (1987)
- Break the Science Barrier (1996)
- The Atheism Tapes (2004)
- The Root of All Evil? (2006)
- The Enemies of Reason (2007)
- The Genius of Charles Darwin (2008)
- Faith School Menace? (2010)
- Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life (2012)
- The Unbelievers (2013)
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- Marian Dawkins
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- Go God Go
- Go God Go XII
- God's utility function
- Courtier's reply
- Spectrum of theistic probability
- Universal Darwinism
- Endless Forms Most Beautiful
- When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow
- Richard Dawkins Award
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