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		The Blind Watchmaker Natural selection has no foresight. When feathers first evolved, this was not in order to prepare the way for the evolution of wings. Feathers just happened to evolve for one reason, and it is so happened that this provided the material for the evolution of wings. Natural selection designs wonderful things, but has no plans. For this reason, the British zoologist Richard Dawkins (b 1941) has described it as a "blind watchmaker" "Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparent purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker."  -Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1986). But because Natural selection can be cumulative, the many small changes can eventually add up a wonderful design. Cumulative natural selection is Darwin's answer to Paley's argument from design. Paley was right to demand an explanation for complex designs in nature. But he was wrong to assert that the only such explanation is God! Previous Next

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