The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author

The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author | Richard Dawkins | The Gene's Eye View Will Change Your Life

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The Selfish Gene: ...

	The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author Richard Dawkins Oxford University Press, USA, 2006 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 287 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

One of those milestone books

I love the way Richard Dawkins writes. Highly logical, and always covering his tracks to avoid misinterpretation as is so likely to happen in this case. I loved the second chapter. For a long time I had wondered how evolutionary theory could explain the beginning of life. That insurmountable mountain is truly difficult to climb. But this book seemed to have a plausible answer. In his second chapter, "The Replicators", Dawkins gives an account of how life could have evolved in the primordial soup as small chemicals that could self assemble and make copies of themselves. When he says that the purpose of our life is to continue the duplication of these original replicators and that we are but survival machines for these chemicals, I experienced a moment of epiphany.
I will recommend this book to every thinking man and woman. I think it has a life view changing impact in the reader. In the 30 years since the book was written biology has made immense advances. However the beautiful theory of evolution was perhaps never better interpreted than in this book. Perhaps no one really understands evolution just like no one understands Quantum theory, but this book is perhaps the best I ever got to understanding the meme of evolutionary theory.

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The Gene's Eye View Will Change Your Life

Once you read the Selfish Gene, Your world will never be the same. Pardon the purple passage and excuse the apparent hyperbole, but what I assert is true, true, true.

The basic idea of the Selfish Gene is that the unit of selection is the gene, and the gene, by definition, is selfish. To see why, a quick example will do. Suppose there are two seperate genes, let us label them A and B respectively. Gene A resides inside Karen, while gene B resides inside Kim. If gene A causes Karen to develop into a symmetrical, serpentine young woman, while gene B causes Kim to develop in a highly irregular manner, it is not hard to see that gene A, ceteris paribus, will be passed on in greater number than gene B. Over time this means, eo ipso, that gene A will become numerically superior in any gene pool. Of course life is not so simple, and no one gene causes beauty. However, the point is that the gene's eye view of the world explains so many mysteries of life. Altruism, sterile insects, special treatment toward kin, parent-offspring conflict, sex differences, and on and on: All can be explained with a selfish gene view of life.

This may be the most powerfully written popular science book ever. I know that lavishing such praise on any work is problematic. However, I do not know of a book that influenced so many people in such a deep way. Even at 32 years of age, this book is as fresh as ever.

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Why Do People Exist?

In eleven short, tightly written, lively, and easy to understand chapters, Professor Dawkins answers all the questions about Darwin's theory of evolution that we might have always wanted to know the answers to but were afraid to ask. He does this even though strictly speaking, the book is not at all intended to be a book on evolution. It was intended to be about the gene-centered view of evolution: that is to say, about how the gene sits at the center of the control module of all living organisms.

Dawkins belief in evolution is solid, because to him, Darwin's theory is settled science that has not only stood the test of time but also is a "thoroughly-tested" and falsifiable theory. And as existential theories of living matter go, Darwin's theory of Evolution -- with its primary instrumentalities of time and natural selection -- provides the simplest explanation (in the sense of Occam's razor), of all living things: of how we got from inorganic to organic matter; from unordered atoms to complex patterns, from simplicity to complexity more generally, and from a single "live" cell, to the cell's ascendance into more complex living organisms, to higher forms and orders. This of course means that a supernatural being of any kind whatsoever would be superfluous.

At the beginning of the book, the author poses the question "Why Do People Exist?" and proceeds to answer it by saying that: We exist in large part because of the "biology of selfishness," that is, due to the selfishness of the genes. In the process of answering this question, he develops the biology of DNA and along the way demolishes some long-held hypotheses of the "pre-Darwinian" social psychologists and theorists who have long believed falsely that evolution is concerned more with the "survival of the species" rather than with the "survival of the individual." Dawkins claim is a radical and controversial one: that this long-held hypothesis about altruism makes no evolutionary sense; and that if we are concerned about the evolution of altruism, then biology is probably not the right place to look.

The crux of Dawkin's thesis is that "bodies are mere transport vehicles for genes." "We are machines created by and under the control of our genes," the predominant quality of which is "their ruthless selfishness." And although altruism may indeed have survival extending value, we are genetically programmed to be ruthlessly selfish rather than altruistic.

This is a seminal work that set off the fireworks in the sociobiology debates, and 30 years on, a great deal of its substance is still valid and has endured. Five stars.

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Great quality, on time, great purchase!

Book is of great quality and I received it on time. Have yet to read through the book itself, but it looks like everything else was perfect. Thanks!

Very readable for non-scientists

Dawkins takes up where Darwin stopped; his reasoning and logical proofs sweep the last bit of theism from the mind. Especially the notion of memes as a cultural and scientific evolution is right on the dot.

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

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