Mt. Improbable? [EvolutionBlog]

Category: Evolution Posted on: July 23, 2008 6:00 PM, by Jason Rosenhouse There's an interesting discussion going on between Larry Moran and Richard Dawkins. The subject is the title of Dawkins' 1996 book Climbing Mt. Improbable. It started with this post over at Larry's blog. He included Dawkins in his list of good science writers who were nonetheless excluded from Dawkins' recent anthology of science writing. Along the way, Moran offered this thought: Dawkins is also a master of metaphor but, sometimes the metaphors are misleading and can give an incorrect view of evolution (e.g. Climbing Mt. Improbable). Personally, I loved the metaphor of Mt. Improbable. We shall return to this point momentarily. Dawkins' website reposted Larry's blog entry. Dawkins himself turned up in the comments to offer this thought: I am interested... [read full story]