Climbing Mount Improbable

Title: Climbing Mount ImprobableEditor: Richard DawkinsPublisher: Penguin Books 2006 (First published 1996)ISBN: 978-0-14-102617-6Pages: 294

Another superb title from Dawkins. A first hand experience of delving deep into the fine nuances of evolution and gaining an insightful flash into the mechanisms and nitty-gritty of how changes take effect in a living system over time can be had from this first-rate work. Being a staunch atheist as well, Dawkins never for an instant looks forward to the supernatural to answer some of the toughest questions on the origins and evolution of plant and animal life. This puts him in a firm foundation of logic and reason which renders his arguments, particularly regarding the probability of mutations and such effects of chance, unassailable by the opponents whose feeble and often rhetorical postulates pale into insignificance. Whatever ideas or hypotheses presented in this book are supported on incontrovertible fact and fossil evidence and the interpretations based on them are mesmerizing because of the clarity and soundness of logic weaved right into them. Every student of science and evolution must have read this book.

Mount Improbable is a fictitious mountain range with sharp cliffs and unclimbable peaks on one side, but having gentle slopes and easily ascendable gradients on the other side. A person looking at this range from the former side simply wonders at the lofty peaks it has and the impossibility of reaching to their summits. Dawkins argues that all the achievements of life forms, even such impressive feats like wings and eyes corresponds to the lofty peaks of this mountain range and the creationists and intelligent designers are the people who waxes eloquent on the unattainability of the peaks in full ignorance of the gentle slopes on the invisible other side through the gradual ascension by which all the modern species emerged. Two enlightening chapters on the origins of flight and development of eyes makes the ideas convincing enough. Wings developed by the gradual appearance of gliding along the tree canopy of dark forests. Eyes developed by the gradual transformation of a group of cells sensitive to light. In fact, even Charles Darwin stumbled on the issue of eyes about which he said, “The eye, to this day, gives me a cold shudder, but when I think of the fine known gradations, my reason tells me I ought to conquer the cold shudder. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned around, the common sense of manking declared the doctrine false: but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from an imperfect and simple eye to one perfect and complex, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist, as is certainly the case: if further, the eye ever slightly varies, and the variations be inherited, as is likewise the case; and if such variations should ever be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, cannot be considered real”.

The origins and reason for the existence of life forms and succinctly presented with reference to genes which try to duplicate themselves and thus create offsprings of them going into the future. Such activity is familiar in the more destructive setting of viruses which also do the same. The most important difference between genes and viruses is that the latter always try to propagate their own genetic code through manipulating already developed organisms whereas the former builds up the organism first. All the genes on the body of a frog develops its host through embryonic, post-natal and adulthood and then only expresse their ultimate aim of making copies of themselves. These genes don’t think in advance and all random mutations will be tested against the criteria of short-term benefit. If a mutation doesn’t confer any immediate benefits on its possessor being, it is rejected in the race for survival and perishes. The most important argument put forward by the proponents of creationism or intelligent design is the sheer improbability of random mutations developing in organisms which makes life forms as complex as the modern species. Dawkins counters this by the counterpoint that the changes did not take effect in a single generation which amounted to reaching the summit of Mount Improbable in one giant leap. The truth is literally on the opposite side. The mutations taking place in the genetic code are ever so slight, conferring a small but definite advantage to the host. Being small, it doesn’t require a vanishing chance to occur. Natural selection then takes over and decides whether the being is suitable for life or isn’t. Natural selection is not at all random. So by the combination of random small mutations and non-random natural selection, the species ascended through the gentle slopes on the other side of Mount Improbable and reached those points which they now occupy and which stupefies some people who are clueless of how the species reached there.

Though not related to the main theme, there is an arresting paragraph about how Dawkins showed the Halley’s comet to his 2-year old daughter when it appeared in 1986. The narration is touching, because I had also witnessed this incident as a 14-year old boy. See this narrative. “On a crisp, starry night in 1986 I woke my two-year old daughter Juliet and carried her, wrapped in blankets, out into the garden where I pointed her sleepy face to the published location of the Halley’s comet. She didn’t take in what I was saying, but I stubbornly whispered into her ear the story of the comet and the certainty that I could never see it again, but that she might, when she was 78. I explained that I had woken her so that she’d be able to tell her grand children in 2062 that she had seen the comet before, and perhaps she’d remember her father for his quixotic whim in carrying her out into the night to show it to her. (I may even have whispered the words quixotic and whim because small children like the sound of words they don’t know, carefully articulated.”.

A very good book which is eminently readable, though not exactly a page-turner. The chapters on various developmental methods of shells and how pollen grains are carried by wasps in fig trees are a bit boring. We hope the author would re-design these in future editions.

Rating: 4 Star