Climbing Mount Improbable

Climbing Mount Improbable is a 1996 popular science book by Richard Dawkins. The book is about probability and how it applies to the theory of evolution. It is designed to debunk claims by creationists about the probability of naturalistic mechanisms like natural selection.^[1]

Climbing Mount Improbable

Cover of the British first edition
Author	Richard Dawkins
Illustrator	Lalla Ward
Language	English
Subject	Evolutionary biology
Publisher	Norton
Publication date	1996
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print
Pages	340 pp.
ISBN	0-393-03930-7
OCLC	34633422
Dewey Decimal	575.01/62 20
LC Class	QH375 .D376 1996
Preceded by	River out of Eden
Followed by	Unweaving the Rainbow

The main metaphorical treatment is of a geographical landscape upon which evolution can ascend only gradually and cannot climb cliffs (that is known as an adaptive landscape). In the book, Dawkins gives ideas about a seemingly complex mechanism coming about from many gradual steps that were previously unseen.

The book grew out of the annual Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, which Dawkins delivered in 1991 (see Growing Up in the Universe). It is illustrated by Dawkins' wife at the time, Lalla Ward, and is dedicated to Robert Winston, "a good doctor and a good man".^[2]