# Climbing Mount Improbable *By Richard Dawkins, with original drawings by Lalla Ward. London: Viking, 1996 (spring); New York: W. W. Norton, 1996 (1st American edition, September). Viking ISBN 0-670-85018-7; Norton ISBN 0-393-03930-7. Dawkins's answer to the argument from design: living things look designed because they are extremely improbable, but natural selection never has to leap up the sheer cliff of that improbability. It climbs the gentle back slopes of "Mount Improbable" in many small steps. He works through spider webs, wings, eyes, snail shells, arthropod body plans, flowers and pollinators, and self-copying "Duplicate me" programs, and ends with figs and fig wasps. The book grew out of his 1991 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.* > **What I actually read.** The book is in copyright (© Richard Dawkins 1996). There is no legal free full text. The Internet Archive scans of the Viking, Norton and Penguin editions are print-disabled-only, so I could not borrow or read them. What I did read: > - **The full contents list, twice over.** A Romanian university library's scan of the Penguin contents page (Biblioteca Centrală Universitară Cluj) gives the UK pagination. Short text snippets from Open Library's "search inside" give the same pagination for the Viking 1996 and Penguin 1997/2006 scans, and the Norton 1996 contents and running heads give the US pagination. > - **Short verbatim snippets** (one or two lines each) from those scans, through Open Library search inside. They cover chapter openings, running heads and a few key passages: Nilsson and Pelger's 363,992 steps, NetSpinner, flare/verm/spire, arthromorphs, "Duplicate me", fig wasps. > - **Library catalog records**: MARC from Columbia and San Francisco Public Library, with the publisher's blurb, pagination and subject headings. > > For the substance of each chapter I did **not** read the text. Those descriptions come from Wikipedia's chapter-by-chapter synopsis, contemporary reviews (*New Scientist*, 27 April 1996; Valerius Geist in *The New York Times*, 29 September 1996), Dawkins's 1996 PBS *Think Tank* interview (transcript read), and the snippets above. A full-text copy circulates on a pirate e-book site. I neither used nor link it; one web-search summary drew on it, and nothing from that summary is relied on here. Quotations come from the snippets or as the named source quotes them. Page numbers are chapter start pages from the contents pages, plus the one page that Wikipedia cites; I give no others. Related in this vault: the source video note [[Video Summaries/Big Think/The laws of the universe are unable to explain these origin mysteries Paul Davies Full Interview]]. The same interview produced Davies's [[Book Summaries/Davies, Paul/The Demon in the Machine - Paul Davies|The Demon in the Machine]], which cites "Richard Dawkins's Mount Improbable" in its ch. 1 notes, and [[Book Summaries/Davies, Paul/What's Eating the Universe - Paul Davies|What's Eating the Universe?]]. It also produced Schrödinger's [[Book Summaries/Schrödinger, Erwin/What Is Life - Erwin Schrödinger|What Is Life?]]. *Rare Earth* (Ward and Brownlee) and *The Goldilocks Enigma* (Davies) are queued next from the same interview. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *Climbing Mount Improbable*, with no subtitle. The LC title page transcription is "Climbing mount improbable / Richard Dawkins ; original drawings by Lalla Ward" | | Author | Richard Dawkins (b. 1941). He was then the first Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford (1995–2008) | | Illustrator | Lalla Ward, "original drawings"; Dawkins's wife from 1992 to 2016. The book is also illustrated with photographs and computer-program output; the Norton edition has a colour plate section | | First edition (UK) | London: Viking, 1996, £20, ISBN 0-670-85018-7 ([*New Scientist* review, 27 April 1996](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15020274-800-climbing-mount-improbable-by-richard-dawkins/)). xi + 308 pp. ([Open Library edition](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL17034969M); OCLC 35266315). Bookseller listings give the publication date as 25 April 1996 (unverified against the publisher); *The Times* interviewed Dawkins about "his new book" on 29 March 1996 | | US edition | New York: W. W. Norton, 1996, "1st American ed.", ISBN 0-393-03930-7, $25. xii + 340 pp., 1 unnumbered leaf of plates, ill. (some colour), 25 cm. "Includes bibliographical references (p. 327-331) and index." LCCN 96019138; OCLC 34633422; LC class QH375 .D376 1996; Dewey 575.01/62 (Columbia and SFPL MARC records via [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL21577332M)). Amazon gives 1 September 1996 | | Later editions | Penguin paperback 1997 (ISBN 0-14-017918-6, 320 pp.) and 2006 (0-14-102617-0), reissued 26 May 2016 ([Penguin UK](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/16595/climbing-mount-improbable-by-richard-dawkins/9780141026176)). Penguin ebook 6 April 2006 (978-0-141-93632-1). Norton paperback 1997 (0-393-31682-3) and reissue 8 November 2016 (978-0-393-35408-9, 352 pp.) ([Norton](https://wwnorton.com/books/Climbing-Mount-Improbable/)). Norton ebook (Kindle date 1 June 2009). Translations include German (Rowohlt), Spanish (Tusquets), Polish (Prószyński) and Hebrew | | Structure | Ten chapters, then Bibliography and Index; front matter has Acknowledgements, List of Pictures and Picture Acknowledgements (the chapter list is in section 5) | | Origins | Grew out of the 1991 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures *Growing Up in the Universe*, the third of which was titled "Climbing Mount Improbable". Dedicated to Robert Winston, "a good doctor and a good man" ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climbing_Mount_Improbable)) | | Spin-off | *A View from Mount Improbable* (Penguin, 2005), a 70-page extract published as a Penguin pocket book ([Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL26177190M)) | | Audiobook | **None in English.** Audible lists no edition (checked 10 Nov 2026). A Russian-language audiobook exists | | Cover | [Open Library cover](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/247000-L.jpg) | **Where it came up.** - Video: [The laws of the universe are unable to explain these origin mysteries | Paul Davies: Full Interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41IyOlfj7I), Big Think, published 2026-11-06, at [41:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41IyOlfj7I&t=2511s). Davies cites Dawkins's *Climbing Mount Improbable* for the picture of natural selection as a ratchet that builds up biological complexity. He argues that prebiotic chemistry needs the same metaphor, but we cannot measure "elevation" on that mountain, or tell whether the step to life was gradual or a phase transition. (The video's auto-captions render the title "Climbing Mountain Probable".) - Requested by Video Summaries on 2026-11-06. - Vault note: [[Video Summaries/Big Think/The laws of the universe are unable to explain these origin mysteries Paul Davies Full Interview]]. ## 2. Book resources **Reference and catalog pages.** - Publishers: [W. W. Norton](https://wwnorton.com/books/Climbing-Mount-Improbable/) (2016 paperback); [Penguin UK](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/16595/climbing-mount-improbable-by-richard-dawkins/9780141026176) (paperback and ebook); [Penguin Australia ebook](https://www.penguin.com.au/books/climbing-mount-improbable-9780141936321). The author's site has a book page with the Penguin blurb and review quotes ([richarddawkins.com](https://richarddawkins.com/public/books/book/climbing-mount-improbable-)). - Open Library: [OL1966483W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1966483W) (15 editions). - Google Books: [search by ISBN](https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0393039307). I did not check whether a preview exists. - WorldCat: [OCLC 34633422](https://search.worldcat.org/title/34633422) (Norton) and [OCLC 35266315](https://search.worldcat.org/title/35266315) (Viking). - Wikipedia: [Climbing Mount Improbable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climbing_Mount_Improbable). **Free (legal).** - **No legal free full text.** The book is in copyright (1996). Project Gutenberg: not applicable. - **Internet Archive lending / Open Library borrow: not the full book.** The full scans are restricted to print-disabled readers: Viking 1996 `climbingmountimp0000dawk_t5q0`, Norton 1996 `climbingmountimp0000dawk_p7d0`, Penguin 1997 `_l9q6` and `_m2z6`, Penguin 2006 `_o4w1`. Only the 70-page extract *A View from Mount Improbable* (2005) is borrowable ([Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/viewfrommountimp0000dawk)), and that is what Open Library's "borrow" button points to. - **Free related material:** the 1991 Royal Institution Christmas Lecture "Climbing Mount Improbable" on the RI's YouTube channel ([lecture 3/5](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vNPPsieAsI)). It is not the book, but it is the lecture the book grew from. - **Libby/OverDrive: yes, ebook.** OverDrive carries the Penguin ebook ([466148](https://www.overdrive.com/media/466148/climbing-mount-improbable)) and a second ebook listing ([2313040](https://www.overdrive.com/media/2313040/climbing-mount-improbable)), probably the Norton edition (not confirmed). No audiobook. Whether your library has them varies; check in Libby. - **Hoopla: not found.** No Hoopla listing turned up in a web search; check in the app. - **Unauthorized copies:** a pirate e-book site hosts the full text. I neither used nor link it. **Paid.** - **Amazon print.** Norton paperback 2016 [0393354083](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393354083); Norton hardcover 1996 [0393039307](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393039307); Penguin paperback [0141026170](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141026170). - **Kindle.** Yes. Norton illustrated edition [B004DNWMD8](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004DNWMD8); Penguin edition [B002RI9EUU](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9EUU). - **Audible.** **No.** There is no English audiobook; Audible's search lists only Dawkins's other titles. ## 3. Author biography **Clinton Richard Dawkins** was born on 26 March 1941 in Nairobi, Kenya. His father was an agricultural civil servant in the British Colonial Service, and the family came to England from Nyasaland (now Malawi) in 1949, when he was eight. He later dropped "Clinton" by deed poll. He read zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1962, and stayed on for a DPhil (1967, "Selective pecking in the domestic chick") under the Nobel-winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen. From 1967 to 1969 he was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1970 he returned to Oxford as a lecturer and became a fellow of New College; he was made reader in zoology in 1990 ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins)). **His books.** *The Selfish Gene* (1976) made the gene-centred view of evolution famous and coined "meme". He considers *The Extended Phenotype* (1982) his main contribution to biology. *The Blind Watchmaker* (1986) introduced his "biomorph" computer program, which *Climbing Mount Improbable* builds on. *River Out of Eden* (1995) came out less than a year before this book. Later books include *Unweaving the Rainbow* (1998), *The Ancestor's Tale* (2004, with Yan Wong), *The God Delusion* (2006), *The Greatest Show on Earth* (2009), *Flights of Fancy* (2021) and *The Genetic Book of the Dead* (2024). **Career and honours.** In 1995 he became the first Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and he held the chair until he retired in 2008. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1997) and a Fellow of the Royal Society (2001). His awards include the Michael Faraday Prize (1990) and the International Cosmos Prize (1997) ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins); [Royal Society](https://royalsociety.org/people/richard-dawkins-11316/)). In 1991 he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, *Growing Up in the Universe*, which seeded this book. **Public profile.** Since the mid-2000s he has been better known as a leading "New Atheist" critic of religion. That later profile colours many readers' view of his earlier books, but *Climbing Mount Improbable* is mainly a biology book; its anti-creationist argument stays in chs. 1 and 3. He married the actress and illustrator Lalla Ward, who drew this book's illustrations, in 1992; they separated in 2016. He had a minor haemorrhagic stroke in February 2016 ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins)). ## 4. Author interviews and talks - **PBS *Think Tank* with Ben Wattenberg, "Talking about Evolution with Richard Dawkins" (late 1996):** opens on the book's title and the cliff-versus-slope metaphor ([transcript](https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript410.html)). Transcript read. - ***The Times*, "Faith, hope and the Darwin man", Quentin Letts, 29 March 1996:** a pre-publication profile about the new book and a US lecture tour. I read it from an unofficial repost on the ASA Evolution mailing list ([repost](https://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199603/0207.html)). - **Times/Dillons public lecture on the book, London, 1996:** reported by Martin Ince ([*THE*](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/dawkins-lecture/93459.article)). Not read beyond the summary. - **Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 1991, lecture 3, "Climbing Mount Improbable":** the lecture the book grew from ([RI, YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vNPPsieAsI); [Richard Dawkins Foundation upload](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT1vXXMsYak)). Not watched for this dossier. - **Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 1991, lecture 2, "Designed and Designoid Objects", and lecture 4, "The Ultraviolet Garden":** these feed chs. 1 and 8 ([lecture 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93X9HchdkJM); [lecture 4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISprPr7f38Q)). Not watched. - **Big Think, Paul Davies, "The laws of the universe are unable to explain these origin mysteries" (6 November 2026):** not Dawkins himself, but the source of this queue entry; Davies applies the book's metaphor to the origin of life ([YouTube, 41:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41IyOlfj7I&t=2511s)). ## 5. Summary **Thesis.** Living things are "supremely improbable. They look as if they have been designed" (Dawkins on PBS *Think Tank*). Something so improbable cannot arise by chance in one step. That would be like leaping up a sheer cliff in a single bound. Darwinism, he insists, "is not a theory of random chance. It is a theory of random mutation plus non-random cumulative natural selection" (as quoted in *New Scientist*). Natural selection solves the problem, in the book's most quoted line, "by breaking the improbability up into small, manageable parts, smearing out the luck needed, going round the back of Mount Improbable and crawling up the gentle slopes, inch by million-year inch" (quoted on [richarddawkins.com](https://richarddawkins.com/public/books/book/climbing-mount-improbable-) and in *New Scientist*). The peaks of Mount Improbable are complex adaptations such as wings, eyes and the fig–wasp partnership. For each one, the book asks whether a gradual uphill path exists, and argues that it does. **Outline.** Chapter titles are from the contents pages. Start pages are given as UK Viking 1996 / Penguin pagination, then Norton 1996 pagination in brackets. The source of each description is noted. 1. **Facing Mount Rushmore** (p. 1 [p. 3]). - **What the chapter does (Wikipedia, *New Scientist*):** it contrasts chance resemblances, such as rocks that look like faces, with true design, such as the carved presidents of Mount Rushmore. - **Designoid objects:** living things fall in neither group. Dawkins calls them "designoid": they look designed but were shaped by cumulative natural selection. His examples include an ant-mimicking beetle that fools the ants it lives among, and an insect that passes itself off among termites (Wikipedia). - **Opening:** from the snippets, the chapter begins "I have just listened to a lecture in which…". *New Scientist* says this is a literary lecture on the fig, "the fig as metaphor", which provokes Dawkins "to literal-mindedness". The fig returns in ch. 10, the example "with which our book begins and ends" (snippet). 2. **Silken Fetters** (p. 32 [p. 38]). - **Spider webs (Wikipedia):** orb webs and their variants, including bolas spiders and a New Guinea spider's ladder web for catching moths. Spiders that build better webs leave more descendants. - **Computer models (snippets):** the web pictures come from *NetSpinner II*, "mainly the work of Peter Fuchs", which evolves webs against simulated flies. *NetSpinner III* "incorporates sexual reproduction". Dawkins stresses that even NetSpinner "still is not true natural selection". A companion program models real spider behaviour. - **The male spider (*New Scientist*):** a male plucks the female's web "like a jazzman" to court her. *New Scientist* quotes: "The world is well supplied with spiders whose male ancestors died after mating. The world is bereft of spiders whose would-be ancestors never mated in the first place." 3. **The Message from the Mountain** (p. 64 [p. 73]). - **Opening (snippet):** "Mount Improbable rears up from the plain…". Dawkins sets out the central metaphor, with its precipice on one side and gentle slopes on the other. Wikipedia links it to Sewall Wright's adaptive landscape. - **His targets (*New Scientist*, Geist, snippets):** physical scientists who argue that life is too improbable for chance, among them Hoyle and Wickramasinghe and "my anonymously quoted physical scientists" (snippet). He gives the odds against a typical enzyme assembling by chance as about 1 in 20^200 (*New Scientist*). - **The answer:** heredity, carried by DNA, plus selection that accumulates small improvements. On the age of the earth he writes that "it is no discredit to Lord Kelvin that his…" estimate was wrong. He also brings in "R. A. Fisher, the great mathematical…" geneticist, and notes that "the great majority of mutations, however caused, are…" harmful (snippets; the endings are inferred, not read). - **Why this chapter matters (Geist):** Geist says the chapter shows why the book was written, as a reply to "persistent and gross misunderstanding of Darwinian evolution… in particular by physicists in Britain". 4. **Getting off the Ground** (p. 97 [p. 108]). - **Flight (Wikipedia):** flight evolved separately in insects, pterosaurs, birds and bats. Paraphrasing Robert May, Dawkins says that "to a first approximation, all animal species fly", because "to a first approximation, all species are insects" (Norton p. 108, as cited by Wikipedia). - **Gliding as the first step (Wikipedia):** gliding mammals (flying squirrels, sugar and feathertail gliders, colugos) and reptiles and amphibians (*Draco*, the paradise tree snake, Wallace's flying frog). Each small improvement in gliding is useful, so there is a gradual path to powered flight, climbed several times by convergent evolution. 5. **The Forty-fold Path to Enlightenment** (p. 126 [p. 138]). - **Why it is the centrepiece:** this chapter on the evolution of eyes is the book's best-known. Geist calls it "a masterpiece" and notes that, like much of the book, it "was screened by colleagues who had the expertise to insure accuracy". It opens "All animals have to deal with their…" (snippet) and takes Darwin's "perfection and complication" passage as its foil. - **The gradual path:** from a light-sensitive patch, through cup eyes in flatworms, bivalves and limpets and the pinhole eye of *Nautilus*, to lens eyes in squid, octopus and vertebrates. Along the way Dawkins discusses an "economics of photons" (snippet), the vertebrate retina's backwards wiring and blind spot, and convergent camera eyes (Wikipedia). - **Nilsson and Pelger's model (snippets):** their "pessimistic" model is the quantitative core. At 1% change per step, "the same total quantity of change would have taken 363,992 steps of 0.005 per cent". Nilsson and Pelger "didn't pre-program" the outcome, and "deliberately chose a pessimistically" low level of variation. The result is that a camera eye could evolve in a few hundred thousand generations ([Nilsson & Pelger 1994](https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1994.0048)). - **The title:** the "forty-fold path" is the estimate that eyes evolved independently 40 or more times. Dawkins defends it ("wrong to think that eyes have developed forty times independently? I don't think so", snippet), apparently against the then-new evidence of a shared master gene (see the fact-check). 6. **The Museum of All Shells** (p. 180 [p. 198]). - **The museum and the library (Wikipedia):** Dennett's "Library of Mendel", the set of all possible genomes, adapts Borges's Library of Babel. Dawkins imagines a museum of all possible shells and asks why so few are realized. - **Three numbers per shell (snippets):** he renames three shell-coiling parameters "flare, verm and spire" ("be thought too quaint if I rename them"). They correspond to the paleontologist D. M. Raup's 1960s parameters; that identification is mine, and the snippets do not show whether Dawkins names Raup. He plots computer-generated shells in that space, with figures of real shells high in each parameter (a bivalve, *Spirula* and others), and asks which regions of shell-space natural selection has explored and why. 7. **Kaleidoscopic Embryos** (p. 204 [p. 224]). - **Kaleidoscopic embryology (Wikipedia, snippets):** a simple change in development can be "reflected" into symmetrical, segmented, repeated forms. Dawkins asks whether evolution proceeds "with the aid of a friendly, new kaleidoscopic embryology" or against a hostile old one (snippet). - **Arthromorphs:** his *Arthromorphs* program, written with Ted Kaehler, breeds segmented computer animals "like real arthropods", whose embryology has rules "missing from biomorph embryology". The figures cover craneflies, homeotic mutations and arthromorph breeding (snippets). - **Closing argument:** the chapter ends on "the evolution of improved evolvability" (snippet), Dawkins's idea that some kinds of embryology make evolution itself easier. 8. **Pollen Grains and Magic Bullets** (p. 236 [p. 256]). - **Opening (snippet):** "I was driving through the English countryside…". - **Flowers and pollinators (Wikipedia, snippets):** flowers and their pollinators as coevolved partners, with pollen as a "magic bullet" that must be delivered to the right target species. Examples include ultraviolet nectar guides visible to bees, *Ophrys* orchids that mimic female insects (Figure 8.2, "Insect-mimicking orchid"), and bucket orchids that dunk orchid bees and fix pollen sacs to their backs. 9. **The Robot Repeater** (p. 254 [p. 276]). - **Opening (snippet):** "We have just concluded that flowers and elephants…". Wikipedia's synopsis calls the chapter "The Robot Replicator", but the contents page reads "Repeater". - **Duplicate Me programs (snippets):** a thought experiment about a self-copying robot, with an industrial robot from Nissan pictured in Figure 9.1, leads into the logic of "Duplicate Me" programs. The examples include self-copying computer programs ("put it on to that disc") and end with DNA, which "contains the instructions 'Duplicate me'". The chapter returns to the replicator theme of *The Selfish Gene*, with a glance at nanotechnology (Wikipedia). 10. **'A Garden Inclosed'** (p. 272 [p. 299]). - **Opening (snippet):** "We have come a long way and are finally ready…". The title is the Song of Songs phrase (4:12, KJV "A garden inclosed"). - **Figs and fig wasps (snippets, Wikipedia):** a single fig is a closed world. The figures show the fig's interior with male and female wasps (10.1), the "garden gate" by which females enter (10.2) and parasitic wasps (10.6). The snippets show the chapter covers what the males of "many species of fig wasps" do inside the fig and how fig wasps carry pollen differently from bees; I did not read the details. Each fig species has "their own particular fig wasps" (snippet), the hand-in-glove partnership that answers the literary lecturer of ch. 1. - **Reception:** John Horgan called this part "a model of nature writing, at once lyrical and lucid" (*Slate*, 1996, as quoted by Wikipedia). **Back matter.** Bibliography (p. 295 [pp. 327–331]); Index (p. 301 [p. 333]). Front matter: Acknowledgements; List of Pictures; Picture Acknowledgements. **Key ideas.** - **Designoid.** Living things look designed but are the product of cumulative selection. The book's job is to show how. - **Two faces of the mountain.** The single-step improbability of a complex organ, the sheer cliff, is no argument against evolution, because selection takes the cumulative route, the gentle slope. Invoking a designer only moves the problem: "Only God would essay the mad task of leaping up the precipice in a single bound… And if we postulate him as our cosmic designer we are left in exactly the same position as when we started" (as quoted in *New Scientist*). - **Every step must pay.** A gradual path exists only if each intermediate is useful: half a wing for gliding, a light-sensitive patch for detecting light, a slightly better web. - **Quantifying the slope.** Computer models give numbers: biomorphs, NetSpinner, shell-space, arthromorphs, and above all Nilsson and Pelger's eye model. - **Evolvability.** Embryologies differ in how easily they produce useful variation, so evolution can improve its own ability to evolve. - **Replicators.** Beneath it all, DNA's "Duplicate me" instructions are the reason any of this happens. **Reception.** - **Praise.** Reviewers admired the book's storytelling and clarity. Mark Ridley called it "non-stop mental and literary pleasure" (*The Times*) and John Maynard Smith said Dawkins "has done more than anyone else now writing to make evolutionary biology comprehensible" (*Sunday Times*), both as quoted on the author's site. - **New Scientist's reservations.** Its reviewer asked whether it "has anything new to say" beyond *The Selfish Gene* and *The Blind Watchmaker*. The reviewer called its "ultra-reductionist, gene-centred" view one side of a live debate with Gould, Lewontin and others, and doubted that many people actually believe in "north-face-of-the-Eiger type leaps of chance". - **Geist's reservations.** Geist recommended it for introductory courses, with caveats. He found the scope narrow and limited to "efficiency selection", with no account of "luxury organs" such as antlers or of phenotypic plasticity, and judged the time frame "too optimistic". He also disputed what the book says about ice ages and deer. ## 6. Fact-check Claims come from the snippets I read, unless marked as reported by a review, Wikipedia or an interview. | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | The book grew out of Dawkins's 1991 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, whose third lecture was titled "Climbing Mount Improbable" | **Supported** | [RI lecture 3/5 on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vNPPsieAsI); [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climbing_Mount_Improbable); *The Times*, 29 Mar 1996 | | Nilsson and Pelger's model: a flat light-sensitive patch could become a camera eye in about 1,829 steps of 1%, equivalent to 363,992 steps of 0.005% (generations), i.e. under 400,000 years for small animals (ch. 5) | **Supported** as a report of the paper. Nilsson & Pelger, *Proc. R. Soc. B* 256 (1994): 53–58, "A pessimistic estimate of the time required for an eye to evolve". The model covers the optics only and assumes a heritability and selection intensity, not the molecular machinery; it has been both criticized and defended, and is still cited as an order-of-magnitude estimate | [Nilsson & Pelger 1994](https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1994.0048) | | Eyes have evolved independently some 40 or more times (the "forty-fold path"; ch. 5) | **Supported, with a post-1996 nuance.** The figure is Salvini-Plawen & Mayr's 1977 estimate of 40–65 independent origins of eyes and photoreceptor types. In 1995 Halder, Callaerts & Gehring showed that the master gene *Pax6*/*eyeless* can induce eyes across phyla, which suggests a shared genetic toolkit ("deep homology"). The current view is that eye *structures* evolved many times on top of shared ancient photoreceptor genes; the snippet shows Dawkins defending the independent-origins reading | [Salvini-Plawen & Mayr 1977](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6953-4_4); [Halder et al. 1995, *Science*](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.7892602) | | The vertebrate retina is wired "backwards", with the optic nerve passing through it to leave a blind spot, while the convergently evolved cephalopod eye is wired the right way round (ch. 5, per Wikipedia) | **Supported.** Whether the inverted retina is a real "flaw" is debated, but the anatomy is as stated | [Wikipedia: Blind spot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)); [Wikipedia: Cephalopod eye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye) | | Shell form can be captured by three numbers, which Dawkins renames flare, verm and spire (ch. 6) | **Supported in substance.** A three-parameter coiling model of shells is standard theoretical morphology, from D. M. Raup's work in the 1960s (whorl expansion rate, distance from the axis, translation rate). I did not open Raup's papers or confirm which source Dawkins cites | [Wikipedia: David M. Raup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Raup) | | "To a first approximation, all species are insects" (Robert May, ch. 4, per Wikipedia) | **Supported in substance; exact source unverified.** The quip is widely attributed to Robert May. His 1988 *Science* review of global species numbers makes the point that most described species are insects, but I did not confirm the exact wording there | [May 1988, *Science* 241: 1441](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.241.4872.1441) | | Flight evolved independently in insects, pterosaurs, birds and bats, and gliding is a plausible first step (ch. 4) | **Supported, but the bird story changed after 1996.** Feathered non-avian dinosaurs began to be described that year (*Sinosauropteryx*, 1996; full description Chen et al. 1998), followed by four-winged *Microraptor* (2003). Dial's "wing-assisted incline running" (2003) offers a ground-up alternative to the purely tree-down gliding route for birds. The origin of bat flight remains unresolved for lack of fossils | [Chen, Dong & Zhen 1998, *Nature*](https://doi.org/10.1038/34356); [Dial 2003, *Science*](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1078237) | | Each fig species is pollinated by "their own particular fig wasps", a one-to-one partnership (ch. 10) | **Disputed by post-1996 research.** One-to-one specificity was the textbook rule in 1996. Molbo et al. (2003) found cryptic pairs of pollinator species in four of eight Panamanian figs, and a 2005 review found frequent exceptions, host switching and hybridization. The partnership is still highly specific, but it is not strictly one fig, one wasp | [Molbo et al. 2003, *PNAS*](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0930903100); [Machado et al. 2005, *PNAS*](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0501840102) | | Bees see ultraviolet, and many flowers carry UV nectar guides invisible to humans (ch. 8) | **Supported** | [Wikipedia: Nectar guide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nectar_guide); [RI lecture 4/5, "The Ultraviolet Garden"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISprPr7f38Q) | | *Ophrys* orchids attract male insects by mimicking females (pseudocopulation) (ch. 8) | **Supported** | [Wikipedia: Pouyannian mimicry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pouyannian_mimicry) | | The chance of a typical enzyme assembling at random is about 1 in 20^200 (ch. 3, per *New Scientist*) | **Supported as arithmetic.** There are 20 amino acids, so a specific 200-residue chain has odds of 20^-200. That is roughly 10^-260, far more than the ~10^80 particles in the observable universe | Elementary combinatorics; *New Scientist* review | | Lord Kelvin's estimate of the earth's age was far too short (ch. 3) | **Supported.** Kelvin's estimates ran from about 20 to 400 million years, against the modern 4.54 billion; radioactive heating, unknown to him, explains much of the error | [Wikipedia: Age of Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Earth) | | Wikipedia names ch. 9 "The Robot Replicator" | **Disputed (a Wikipedia slip).** The contents pages of the Viking, Penguin and Norton editions all read "The Robot Repeater" | Open Library search-inside snippets; [BCU Cluj contents scan](https://www.bcucluj.ro/synfilebibdigit/cuprins/filo/cuprins000036823.pdf) | | The book is a "Penguin" first edition (richarddawkins.com lists "Publisher: Penguin") | **Partly disputed.** The UK first edition was Viking, a Penguin imprint; Penguin proper published the paperback from 1997 | [*New Scientist*](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15020274-800-climbing-mount-improbable-by-richard-dawkins/); [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL17034969M) | **Since 1996.** The core argument, cumulative selection versus single-step chance, is standard biology and has not been overturned. Four later developments matter: - **Evo-devo.** Hox and *Pax6* research has grown hugely and reframes the "forty times" eye count as many origins of eye structure on a shared ancient genetic toolkit. - **Fig–wasp partnerships** turn out to be messier than one-to-one. - **Feathered dinosaurs** have transformed the story of how birds got off the ground. - **Evolvability**, which Dawkins helped to name in 1989, is now an active research field. Geist's 1996 criticisms (no phenotypic plasticity, no "luxury" selection) prefigure the later "extended evolutionary synthesis" debate, which is still unresolved. ## 7. Citations and references **The book's own apparatus.** Bibliography (Viking pp. 295–300; Norton pp. 327–331) and Index; a List of Pictures with figure numbers by chapter (e.g. Figure 2.12 NetSpinner, 8.2 insect-mimicking orchid, 9.1 Nissan robot, 10.1–10.7 figs and fig wasps). Sources and people named in the snippets and reviews: - Spiders and webs: Peter Fuchs (NetSpinner). - Eyes: Dan-Eric Nilsson and Susanne Pelger (1994); Michael Land. - Shells and the Library of Mendel: Daniel Dennett (per Wikipedia). - Arthromorphs: Ted Kaehler. - Population genetics and the origin of life: R. A. Fisher; Sewall Wright; Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe. - History: Lord Kelvin; William Paley; Charles Darwin. **Links used in this dossier.** - Wikipedia, *Climbing Mount Improbable*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climbing_Mount_Improbable - Wikipedia, Richard Dawkins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins - Royal Society, Richard Dawkins: https://royalsociety.org/people/richard-dawkins-11316/ - Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1966483W ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL17034969M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL21577332M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL26177190M ; cover https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/247000-L.jpg - Open Library search inside (snippets): https://openlibrary.org/search/inside?q=%22Robot+Repeater%22 - Internet Archive (print-disabled scans; extract borrowable): https://archive.org/details/climbingmountimp0000dawk_t5q0 ; https://archive.org/details/climbingmountimp0000dawk_p7d0 ; https://archive.org/details/viewfrommountimp0000dawk - Columbia MARC record (bulk MARC on IA): https://archive.org/download/marc_columbia/Columbia-extract-20221130-004.mrc - BCU Cluj contents scan (Penguin edition): https://www.bcucluj.ro/synfilebibdigit/cuprins/filo/cuprins000036823.pdf - Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0393039307 - WorldCat: https://search.worldcat.org/title/34633422 ; https://search.worldcat.org/title/35266315 - W. W. Norton: https://wwnorton.com/books/Climbing-Mount-Improbable/ - Penguin UK: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/16595/climbing-mount-improbable-by-richard-dawkins/9780141026176 - Penguin Australia ebook: https://www.penguin.com.au/books/climbing-mount-improbable-9780141936321 - richarddawkins.com book page: https://richarddawkins.com/public/books/book/climbing-mount-improbable- - OverDrive: https://www.overdrive.com/media/466148/climbing-mount-improbable ; https://www.overdrive.com/media/2313040/climbing-mount-improbable - Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393354083 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393039307 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141026170 ; Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004DNWMD8 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9EUU - Audible (author page; no edition of this title): https://www.audible.com/author/Richard-Dawkins/B000AQ3RBI - *New Scientist* review, 27 April 1996: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15020274-800-climbing-mount-improbable-by-richard-dawkins/ - Valerius Geist, *New York Times*, 29 September 1996: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/23/nnp/20076.html - PBS *Think Tank* transcript: https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript410.html - *The Times* (Letts, 29 Mar 1996), unofficial repost: https://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199603/0207.html - *THE*, Dawkins lecture: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/dawkins-lecture/93459.article - Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 1991: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vNPPsieAsI ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT1vXXMsYak ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93X9HchdkJM ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISprPr7f38Q - Source video (Big Think, Paul Davies): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41IyOlfj7I&t=2511s - Nilsson & Pelger 1994: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1994.0048 - Salvini-Plawen & Mayr 1977: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6953-4_4 - Halder, Callaerts & Gehring 1995: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.7892602 - Wikipedia, David M. Raup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Raup - May 1988: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.241.4872.1441 - Chen, Dong & Zhen 1998: https://doi.org/10.1038/34356 - Dial 2003: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1078237 - Molbo et al. 2003: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0930903100 - Machado et al. 2005: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0501840102 - Wikipedia: Blind spot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision) ; Cephalopod eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye ; Nectar guide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nectar_guide ; Pouyannian mimicry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pouyannian_mimicry ; Age of Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Earth