The Blind Watch Maker

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Science Documentary hosted by Richard Dawkins and published by BBC broadcasted as part of BBC Horizon series in 1987 - English narration

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Image: The-Blind-Watch-Maker-Cover.jpg

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Another Richard Dawkins presentation based on one of his books (which won the Royal Society of Literature Award). In the programme, he refutes the claims of creationists that Darwinism cannot be credible because blind chance alone would not produce the complexity of organisms as they exist. "The Blind Watchmaker" creationist argument was coined by Rev. William Paley (1743-1805) 50 years before Darwin's theory of evolution.

Dawkins demonstrates how the eye could have evolved in stages, each simple and a result of random variation, but connected by a natural selection of those organisms which become more successful. In the early stages even with an incomplete eye, the benefit of even partial vision discriminating only between light and dark would be more useful than no vision.

The structure of the surface of the "new" (in 1987) optical storage disc is related to the structure of the eye of the moth. A computer program produces generations of biomorphs using incremental random variation.

See http://www.rennard.org/alife/english/biomintrgb.html for an applet Engineers apply the principles of evolutionary variation, for example in a windmill that uses stationary vanes of suitable design to concentration even gentle wind onto a smaller central rotor that turns more powerfully as a result.


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Image: The-Blind-Watch-Maker-Screen0.jpg

[edit] Technical Specs

  • Video Codec: Xvid
  • Video Bitrate: 895 kb/s
  • Video Resolution: 480x352
  • Video Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  • Audio Codec: PCM Audio
  • Audio BitRate: 1024 kb/s (512/ch) 32000 Hz
  • RunTime Per Part: 47m 35s
  • Part Size: 655mb
  • Ripped by ripped by knonymouse at UKNova

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