Climbing Mount Improbable cover

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. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (495x766, 51 KB) Summary I scanned this book cover myself. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (495x766, 51 KB) Summary I scanned this book cover myself. ... 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... This article is not about the magazine, Popular Science Popular science is interpretation of science intended for a general audience, rather than for other scientists or students. ... Look up book in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Richard Dawkins Clinton Richard Dawkins DSc, FRS, FRSL (known as Richard Dawkins; born March 26, 1941) is an eminent British ethologist, evolutionary theorist, and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. ... This article is about probability. ... A hypothetical phylogenetic tree of all extant organisms, based on 16S rRNA gene sequence data, showing the evolutionary history of the three domains of life, bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. ... The Creation of Light by Gustave Doré. In the Abrahamic religions, creationism is the belief that humans, life, the Earth, and the universe have a miraculous origin in a deity or supreme beings supernatural intervention. ... Natural selection is the process by which individual organisms with favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce. ... In biology and ecology, an organism (in Greek organon = instrument) is a living complex adaptive system of organs that influence each other in such a way that they function as a more or less stable whole. ...

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 British Royal Institution Christmas Lectures have been held annually since 1825. ... Lalla Ward (publicity portrait from 1990). ...

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"

External links

• Critical review from Answers in Genesis
• Acritical reviews from Amazon.com