The Selfish Gene

Opened up a new way of thinking and seeing the world and our tiny place in it... Idea that the DNA inside each cell is evolution.. Not the outward body ... Everything is at a quantum level of energy and beingness.....It's a challenge to comprehend and understand...Helpful in eliminating one's giant ego !!

bought this for a gift.

Book arrived within date range, in right condition (even better than expected), and overall was as ordered. Great experience; thanks!

Book very old and yellowed. Would not have bought Not worth returning. Waste of time.

Chapter 2 allowed me to truly understand evolution and life in general. Great chapter!

Nice

Selfish Genes ≠ Selfish Phenotypes Many people who have never read 'The Selfish Gene' (and strangely a few who apparently have) misunderstand the phrase 'Selfish Gene' to mean a gene that causes people to be selfish. Actually, the 'selfishness' refers, not to a trait a gene encodes in its bearer, but rather to a (metaphoric) quality of genes themselves. In other words, individual genes are themselves conceived of as 'selfish', in that they have evolved by natural selection to selfishly promote their own survival and replication. Ironically, as Dawkins is at pains to emphasise, the selfishness of genes can actually result in altruism at the level of the organism or phenotype. This is because, where altruism is directed towards biological kin, such altruism can facilitate the replication of genes shared among relatives through common descent. This is referred to as 'kin selection' or 'inclusive fitness theory'. Nevertheless, Dawkins still seems to see organisms, humans included, as fundamentally selfish – albeit a selfishness tempered by a large dose of nepotism. Thus, in his opening paragraphs he cautions, “if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from our biological nature” and instead proposes, “let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish” (p3). The Various 'Extended' Editions To some extent Dawkins mitigates this view in more recent editions of the book (i.e. those published since 1989 ten years after the publication of the original) by the addition of a further chapter on reciprocal altruism (Chapter 12: 'Nice Guys Finish First') a subject he had already dealt with less extensively in Chapter 10 ('You Scratch My Back, I'll Ride on Yours'). In this additional chapter, he essentially summarises the work of Axelrod in the latter's book The Evolution of Co-Operation . Post-1989 editions also include a further chapter entitled Chapter 13 ('The Long Reach of the Gene') which summarises Dawkins' own The Extended Phenotype as well as extensive endnotes. In these endnotes, Dawkins clarifies various misunderstandings which arose from how he explained himself in the original version, defends himself against certain criticisms levelled at certain passages and, most importantly, explains how the science progressed in the years since the first publication of the book, including sometimes identifying things he and other biologists got wrong. With more recent editions, the content of 'The Selfish Gene' has burgeoned even further, at an apparently exponential rate. The “30th Anniversary Edition”, published in 2006, boasts only a new introduction; the recent “40th Anniversary Edition", published just last year, boasts a new Epilogue; meanwhile, the latest so-called “Extended Selfish Gene” boasts, in addition to this, two whole new chapters. In fact, these two new chapters are not all that new after all, being lifted wholesale from Dawkins next work, 'The Extended Phenotype', a work whose contents he has already summarised in Chapter 13 ('The Long Reach of the Gene'), itself an earlier addition to the book’s ever expanding contents list. The decision not to entirely rewrite 'The Selfish Gene' was apparently that of Dawkins’ publisher, Oxford University Press. This was probably the right decision. After all, 'The Selfish Gene' is not a mere undergraduate textbook, in need of revision every few years. It was a landmark work of popular science, that introduced a new approach to understanding the evolution of the behaviour and physiology of species (that of the 'gene’s eye view' of evolution) to a wider readership, composed of both biologist and non-biologist alike, and deserves to stand in its original form as a landmark in the scientific history. Moreover, this additional material is often very interesting in its own right. However, while the new introductions and the new epilogue is standard fare when republishing a classic work several years after first publication, the addition of four (or two, depending on the edition) new whole chapters seems more problematic. For one thing, they distort the overall structure of the book, and always read rather as if they have been tagged on at the end as something of an afterthought (as indeed they have). The book probably works best, in a purely literary sense at least, in its original form as it appeared in earlier pre-1989 editions. Moreover, they reek of a marketing gimmick, designed to deceive new readers into paying the full asking price for the latest edition, rather than buying a much cheaper second-hand copy. This is especially blatant in respect of the book’s latest incarnation, 'The Extended Selfish Gene', which according to the information of OUP’s website, seems to have been released just a little over three months after the previous “40th Anniversary Edition” (in June and September of 2016, respectively) yet includes two additional chapters (see above) and is priced at double the recommended retail price of the former. This sort of marketing gimmick is, in my view, beneath both a celebrated biologist such as Dawkins, and a prestigious academic publisher like OUP. Personally, if I were recommending an edition to buy for someone who has never read the book before in any of its incarnations, I would opt for a second-hand copy of one of the post-1989 editions, rather than the very latest, since these can now be picked up very cheap, yet include the additional endnotes which are often very interesting. The 'Gene’s-Eye-View' 'The Selfish Gene' is indeed a seminal work in the history of biology primarily because Dawkins takes the so-called 'gene’s-eye-view' of evolution to its logical conclusion. To this extent, contrary to popular opinion, Dawkins' exposition is not merely a popularisation, but actually breaks new ground theoretically. Thus, John Maynard Smith (1964) famously talked of 'kin selection' by analogy with 'group selection'. Meanwhile, William Hamilton (1964), who formulated the theory underlying these concepts, talked of the 'direct', 'indirect' and 'inclusive fitness' of organisms. However, Dawkins takes this line of thinking to its logical conclusion by looking – not at the fitness or reproductive success of organisms/phenotypes – but rather at the success in self-replication of genes themselves. Thus, although he stridently rejects group-selectionism, Dawkins replaces this, not with the familiar individual-level selection of classical Darwinism, but rather with a new focus on selection at the level of the gene itself. 'Abstract Animals' Much of the interest (and no little of the controversy) arising from the publication of 'The Selfish Gene' concerned its potential application in explaining the behaviour of humans. However, in the book itself, humans (a "rather aberrant species" in which Dawkins professes to be "not really very directly interested in": Dawkins 1981 at p556) are actually mentioned only rarely. Indeed, most of the discussion is purely theoretical. Even animal behaviour is described only for illustrative purposes, and even these illustrative examples often involve simplified hypothetical creatures rather than descriptions of the behaviour of real organisms. Thus, he illustrates his discussion of the relative pros and cons of either fighting or submitting in conflicts over access to resources by reference to 'hawks' and 'doves' – but is quick to acknowledge that these are hypothetical and metaphoric creatures "and have no connection with the habits of the birds from whom the names are derived: doves are in fact rather aggressive birds" (p70). Even Dawkins' titular "selfish genes" are rather abstract and theoretical entities. Certainly the actual chemical composition and structure of DNA is of peripheral interest to him. Often he talks of "replicators" rather than "genes" and is at pains to point out that selection can occur in respect of any entity capable of replication and mutation, not just DNA or RNA (hence his introduction of the concept of 'memes': see below). Moreover, Dawkins uses the word 'gene' in a somewhat different sense to most other biologists, defining a "gene" as "any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection" (p28). This, of course, makes his claim that genes are the principle unit of selection something approaching a tautology or an example of a 'circular argument'. Sexual Selection in Humans? Where Dawkins does mention humans, it is often to point out the extent to which this "rather aberrant species" apparently conspicuously fails to conform to the predictions of selfish-gene theory. For example, at the end of his chapter on sexual selection (Chapter 9: "Battle of the Sexes") he observes that, in contrast to most other species (e.g. peacocks), among humans it seems to be females who are most engaged in using physical appearance as a means of attracting mates (i.e. what Dawkins terms 'sexual advertising': p164-5). Thus, women seem take greater concern over their physical appearance (e.g. clothes and makeup). Of course, unlike the peacock's tail, clothes and makeup are an aspect of behaviour rather than morphology, and thus more directly analogous to the bowers of male bowerbirds than the tail of the peacock. However, behaviour is no less subject to natural (and sexual) selection than morphology, and therefore the paradox remains. Certainly, men possess no obvious equivalent of the peacock's tail – though Geoffrey Miller makes a fascinating (but ultimately unconvincing) case that the human brain may represent a product of sexual selection ). Meanwhile, in an endnote to post-1989 editions of 'The Selfish Gene', Dawkins himself speculates tentatively that the penis itself may represent a sexually selected 'fitness indicator' like the peacock’s tail, since the human penis is large compared to that of other primates, yet lacks a baculum (penis bone) that facilitates erections, which means that the capacity to maintain an erection may represent an honest signal of health (307-8). However, perhaps the strongest cases for a 'peacock's tail' in humans (i.e. a morphological trait designed to attract mates) can be made in respect of a female trait, namely breasts, since, unlike among most other mammals, women's breasts are permanent, from puberty on, not present merely during lactation, and composed primarily of fatty tissues, not milk (Møller 1995; Manning et al 1997; Havlíček et al 2016). How then can we make sense of this apparent paradox, whereby sexual selection seems, at first glance, to have operated more strongly on women than on men? Dawkins himself offers no explanation, merely lamenting "What has happened in modern western man? Has the male really become the sought-after sex, the one that is in demand, the sex that can afford to be choosy? If so, why?" (p165). However, in respect of what evolutionary psychologist David Buss calls 'short-term sexual strategies' (i.e. casual sex), it is certainly not the case that, as Dawkins puts it, "the male [has] become the sought-after sex, the one that is in demand, the sex that can afford to be choosy". On the contrary, patterns of everything from prostitution and rape to erotica and pornography confirm that, for short-term 'commitment'-free casual sex, it remains women who are in demand and men who are the ardent pursuers (see The Evolution of Human Sexuality ). Thus, in a study conducted on a University campus, 72% of male subjects agreed to go to bed with a female stranger who approached them with a request to this effect. In contrast, not a single one of the 96 females approached agreed to the same request from a male questioner (Clark and Hatfield 1989). (What percentage of the women sued the university for sexual harassment was not revealed.) However, humans also form long-term pair-bonds to raise children, and, in contrast to males of most other mammalian species, male parents often invest heavily in their offspring borne of such unions. Men are therefore expected to be relatively choosier in respect of long-term romantic partners (i.e. prospective wives) than they are in respect of casual sex partners. This may explain the relatively high levels of reproductive competition engaged in by human females, including high levels of what Dawkins calls 'sexual advertising'. In particular, in Western societies practising what is sometimes referred to as 'socially-imposed monogamy' (i.e. where there exist large differentials in male resource holdings, but a ban on openly polygynous marriage) competition among women may be particularly intense, as multiple females battle to capture exclusive rights over the paternal investment of resource-abundant alpha males (Gaulin and Boser 1990). This then explains why females use what Dawkins terms 'sexual advertising' to attract (long-term) mates (i.e. husbands). However, it still fails to explain why males don't – or, at least, don't seem to do so to anything like the same degree. The answer here may be that, in contrast to mating patterns in modern western societies, 'female choice' may actually have played a surprisingly limited role in human evolutionary history, given that, in most pre-modern societies, arranged marriages were the norm. Male mating competition may then have taken the form of 'male-male contest competition' rather than displaying to females – in other words, what Darwin called 'intra-sexual selection' rather than inter-sexual selection'. Thus, while men indeed possess no obvious equivalent of the peacock's tail, they do seem to possess traits designed for intra-sexual selection (i.e. fighting) – namely considerably greater levels of upper-body musculature and of violent aggression as compared to women (see Puts 2010). In other words, human males may not have any obvious 'peacock’s tail', but we perhaps we do have, if you like, 'stag's antlers'. From Genes to 'Memes' Chapter 11 ('Memes: The New Replicators') – what was, in the original version of the book (i.e. pre-1989 extended editions), the final chapter – is the only chapter to focus exclusively on humans. To a large extent this focuses again on the extent to which humans are an "aberrant species", being subject to cultural as well as biological evolution to a unique degree. Interestingly, however, Dawkins claims that the principles of natural selection discussed in the remainder of the book can be applied to just as usefully to cultural evolution as to biological evolution. In doing so, he coins the concept of the 'Meme' as the cultural equivalent of a gene, passing between minds analogously to a virus. The analogy of 'memes' to genes is certainly interesting, but, like any analogy, can surely be taken too far. Certainly ideas can be viewed as spreading between people, and as having various levels of 'fitness' depending on the extent to which they 'catch on'. Thus, a religious doctrine commanding that believers 'spread the word of god', proselyte and convert non-believers as well as to 'be fruitful and multiply’ and indoctrinate their offspring with their beliefs is, for obvious reasons, likely to spread faster and have greater longevity than a religious doctrine that insists adherents become celibate hermits and that converting non-believers is a sin. Memes can also be said to mutate, though this occurs not only through random (and not so random) copying errors, but also by deliberate innovation by the human minds they 'infect'. However, whether this way of looking at cultural innovation is a useful and theoretically or empirically productive way of conceptualizing cultural change remains to be seen. Certainly, I doubt whether 'memetics' will ever be a serious science comparable to genetics, as some of the concept's more enthusiastic champions have sometimes envisaged. Neither, I suspect, did Dawkins ever intend or envisage it as such, having seemingly coined the idea as something of an afterthought. At any rate, one of the main factors governing the 'infectiousness' or 'fitness' of a given meme, is the extent to which the human mind is receptive to it and the human mind is itself a product of biological evolution. The key to understanding human behaviour, even cultural behaviour, is therefore how natural selection has shaped the human mind – in other words evolutionary psychology not memetics. For more recent discussion of the status of the concept see The Meme Machine ; Virus of the Mind: The Revolutionary New Science of the Meme and How It Affects You ; The Selfish Meme: A Critical Reassessment ; and Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science . 'Escaping the Tyranny of Selfish Replicators' Finally, Dawkins concludes (in the original non-'extended' editions of the book, that is) with an optimistic literary flourish, emphasising once again the alleged uniqueness of the “rather aberrant” human species, claiming that "we, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators [i.e. genes and memes]" (p201). Unfortunately, however, this ignores the fact that the "we" who are supposed to be rebelling (including our "conscious foresight" in which Dawkins places such faith) are ourselves a product of the same process of natural selection and, indeed, of the same selfish replicators. Even the (alleged) desire to revolt must be a product of the same process. Likewise, when, in the book’s opening paragraphs, he proposes, “let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish”, he ignores, not only that the “us” who are to do the teaching and who ostensibly wish to instil altruism in others are ourselves the product of this same evolutionary process and these same selfish replicators, but also that the subjects whom we are supposed to indoctrinate with altruism are themselves surely programmed by natural selection to be resistant to any indoctrination or manipulation by third-parties to behave in ways that conflict with their own genetic interests. The problem with Dawkins' cop-out 'Hollywood-ending' is therefore, as anthropologist Vincent Sarich is said to have observed, that Dawkins himself has "spent 214 pages telling us why that cannot be true" (Quoted in The Race Gallery : at p176; see also Straw Dogs ). The preceding 214 pages, however, remain an exciting, eye-opening and stimulating intellectual journey, even thirty years after their original publication. ____________ References Clark & Hatfield (1989) 'Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers' Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, 2:39-53 Dawkins (1981) 'In defence of selfish genes' Philosophy 56(218):556-573. Gaulin & Boser (1990) 'Dowry as Female Competition' American Anthropologist 92(4):994-1005 Hamilton (1964). 'The genetical evolution of social behaviour I and II'. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7:1-16,17-52 Havlíček et al (2016) 'Men's preferences for women's breast size and shape in four cultures' Evolution and Human Behavior 38(2): 217–226 Manning et al (1997) 'Breast asymmetry and phenotypic quality in women' Ethology and Sociobiology 18(4): 223–236 Møller et al (1995) 'Breast asymmetry, sexual selection, and human reproductive success' Ethology and Sociobiology 16(3): 207-219 Puts (2010) 'Beauty and the beast: mechanisms of sexual selection in humans' Evolution and Human Behavior 31:157-175 Smith (1964). 'Group Selection and Kin Selection' Nature 201(4924):1145-1147.

So I had to read this for my Moral Development class. And I suppose if you're just reading to find out what a breakthrough evolutionary theory looked like 50 years ago, then it's a good read. Don't get me wrong, this book was brilliant in its time, and it's likely to entertain you. However, nothing is ever as simple as Dawkins tries to make it out to be, evolution least of all. Gene-driven evolution is, to this day, considered to be an umbrella all other evolution research must fall under, and that is the crux of the problem. Some of the more recent research involving gene expression, has to work much harder than it should, in order to fall under this umbrella. Worse, genuine breakthroughs like Masatoshi Nei's "Mutation Driven Evolution" will often get sidelined because Dawkins presented mutation as secondary to natural selection. It's hard to take this book at face value when you discover research that presents locusts and a dozen species of grasshoppers having exactly the same genetic material, expressing itself differently solely based on serotonin levels. It's even harder to take it seriously when he claims that we must teach our children altruism, for it is certainly not to be found in their genetic material. To a scientist, these types of proclamations are ghastly. There is no experiment that has been performed, or can be performed, that would validate such a claim. Just because we haven't discovered an empathy gene, this can't be a proof of its nonexistence. Dawkins builds his work on scientists who came before him, drawing heavily and often on their research when it suits him. When it doesn't, such as Mendel's experiments with manipulating traits of bees and his inadvertent creation of a vicious breed that he had to exterminate, Dawkins conveniently ignores the obvious. He saves himself, more than once, by specifying that his theories are not meant to be applied to human beings, However, his language makes it clear that this is something he'd intended, before validity and reliability of his statements got in the way. All in all, my frustration is mainly with the insistence of treating this book as anything other than what it is. A brilliant work from 50 years ago that is long past its due date, and still being peddled to those who need a simple explanation of evolution, one where little science is needed. And David Dobbs rightly called it out: "The gene-centric model survives because simplicity is a hugely advantageous trait for an idea to possess."

The most thought provoking book I have ever read. This should be taught in all schools. Dawkins arguments are clear and easily understood. It is not an exaggeration to say that it has changed my perception of the world around me. I have now read all Dawkins books. I would also recommend (particularly for people new to popular science) his latest book The Magic of Reality. He is a truly inspirational person who works tirelessly to defeat ignorance and has helped many people to cast the dogma of religious mumbo jumbo.

Book not as described, was a paper back not the hardcover first edition as advertised.