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Terfex.com - The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author
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List Price: $19.99
Our Price: $13.59
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Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 576.5
EAN: 9780199291151
ISBN: 0199291152
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2006-05-25
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editorial Reviews:
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Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands of readers to rethink their beliefs about life.
In his internationally bestselling, now classic volume, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains how the selfish gene can also be a subtle gene. The world of the selfish gene revolves around savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit, and yet, Dawkins argues, acts of apparent altruism do exist in nature. Bees, for example, will commit suicide when they sting to protect the hive, and birds will risk their lives to warn the flock of an approaching hawk.
This 30th anniversary edition of Dawkins' fascinating book retains all original material, including the two enlightening chapters added in the second edition. In a new Introduction the author presents his thoughts thirty years after the publication of his first and most famous book, while the inclusion of the two-page original Foreword by brilliant American scientist Robert Trivers shows the enthusiastic reaction of the scientific community at that time. This edition is a celebration of a remarkable exposition of evolutionary thought, a work that has been widely hailed for its stylistic brilliance and deep scientific insights, and that continues to stimulate whole new areas of research today.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Selfish Gene
Comment: Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene is a great book for people with all levels of knowledge about evolution and genetics. It seems that Dawkin's use of metaphors in the bulk of the book, could make it harder to understand the science behind his logic. However, this is not the case because Dawkins is very careful about which metaphors he uses. These metaphors prevent people with a vast knowledge of genetics from getting board while reading the book, but at the same time teach people about genetics without them realizing it. The science behind this book is very solid. Throughout most of the books he cites papers and other scientists. Dawkins is also an accomplished zoologist and a professor at Oxford. Dawkins is obviously an atheist and he is not afraid to express his opinions at the expense of others beliefs. In the endnotes there is a section spent entirely on proving religions wrong.
In the book Richard Dawkins makes the argument that genes, not humans, are selfish. He says that this is the only way possible because genes are constantly competing for a `spot' in organisms. If genes were altruistic then they would not be as likely to get passed onto future generations as those that are selfish because the selfish ones would reap the benefits while the altruistic genes would suffer. This means that at some point altruistic genes became essentially nonexistent in the gene pool.
His selfish gene logic means that genes that cause selfish phenotypes are the only genes in organisms. This means that all organisms, without conscious thought, will only do things that they gain from (by gaining he means having a higher chance of passing on their genes). He gives examples of seemingly altruistic relationships, like the aphid to ant relationship. Then he shows that they are actually for selfish gain and it just so happens that along with the gain for the individual comes gain for the other.
At the end of the book Dawkins shows that having selfish genes could actually result in a `nice' organism in the chapter "Nice guys finish first." He uses Prisoner's Dilemma, a game, to describe how this could happen. In the end he shows that strategies that play kindly end up getting a higher number of points then those that play meanly. (Strategies are like genes they set up a rule for playing, but do not consciously control the organism/game). This means that to gain selfishly you would actually want to be nice. So niceness could occur in a selfish gene pool.
Dawkins also says that humans have a conscious and are one of the first organisms that can act independently from their selfish genes in thought and action.
In summary, I thoroughly enjoyed this book because of its scientific teachings and sound logic. Therefore, I would recommend it to everyone.
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Summary: The Right Perspective for Biology and Evolution
Comment: This book puts the body of knowledge in evolutionary biology in the right perspective. Because we are macro beings, because we in this society live and deal at organism level, so we tend to believe that everything revolves around this level. What this book does is to encourage you to think form the perspective of molecular level, the gene's level. After all, they came first in the tree of evolutiona nd they also come first in building the organisms...
PLIUS it's a good read.
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Summary: I think Dawkins is wrong in his central argument. Here's why:
Comment: The first thing I want to say is how much respect I have for Richard Dawkins as a scientist, as a teacher, as a writer of fascinating prose, and as a person. He is a brilliant and courageous man who works hard to bring his knowledge and insights to all of us. For the record I have read six of his books and reviewed four of them. They are:
The God Delusion (2006)
The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (2004)
A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love (2003)
The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene (1982; 1999)
The second thing I want to say is that The Selfish Gene is one of the landmark science books of the 20th century, and so I am pleased to see this 30th Anniversary Edition (from 2006) with a new introduction by Dawkins and some new footnotes.
Rather than review the book as a whole, however, as has been done many times, in this review I want to concentrate on the central issue of the book, namely the question of "at what level does natural selection work?"
Dawkins believes that the environment selects certain genes, or more properly speaking, suites of genes and therefore operates primarily at the level of the gene. I disagree and believe this is like saying that the public selects certain letters, or words, or sentences of words when buying a book. The words (or more properly the ideas represented by the words) are the reason the public selects a book, but what the public selects is nonetheless the book. Genes are like ideas in books. Ideas must appear in some medium, even if it is just word of mouth. Genes must appear in organisms, which are the products of both the genetic instructions and the environment in which they develop. Consequently genes help to produce individuals (or in the case of social insects, a group of individuals that can be seen as a single organism). Dawkins calls these individuals "survival machines." In turn the environment selects certain survival machines that contain certain genes.
Another way of expressing this is to say that the environment selects genes by proxy, that is, through the medium of the individual phenotype. The environment cannot directly affect the genes since the genes are safely encapsulated within the survival machine which does not in any Lamackian way communicate with them. The exception is when an electromagnetic particle hits the code and alters it, creating a mutation. The environment does not act on that altered code; instead it acts upon the individual that is born to carry that altered code or lack thereof.
The individual gene itself (if we can speak of such a thing which is just a section of code) doesn't work in isolation. It is always allied for better or for worse with other sections of code. Certain sections of code are reproduced again and again because they are handy or work well with other sections of code in a way that allows the survival machine to reproduce and its offspring to reproduce. But the environment cannot select certain selections of code. It can only select the individual containing that code (and a lot of other code besides). In fact, it cannot just select the individual, it must select its possible mates and even much of its environment as well, such as the plants and animals it uses for food and shelter. To speak of selecting genes or even individual organisms is just a convenient way of talking.
What is really selected is a group of organisms of some kind. Some consider an important group selected by the environment to be the species or the ecology. Giving a large enough perspective, I would go so far as to say (going beyond Lovecock and Gaia) that natural selection operates on the level of life itself.
Another point is that the genes never reproduce themselves by themselves. Nothing in this world that I know of actually reproduces itself by itself, except dividing cells, and they do this only most of the time. As is now known, occasionally bacteria trade genes with other bacteria and thereby reproduce not quite exact copies of themselves. A strand of DNA is replicated with the help of the machinery of the cell. Viruses need cells to replicate themselves. Anything that was one hundred percent effective in making exact copies of itself would not undergo Darwinian evolution and would in fact have died out long ago. The dreaded grey goo of nanobots replicating until they cover the earth is still just a fantasy of science fiction.
The problem with the current understanding of evolution and natural selection is the problem of not seeing that everything is connected. Any place we draw a boundary is artificial or arbitrary. Even at the skin. Franklin M. Harold, in his book, The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Order of Life (2001) writes, "Organisms process matter and energy as well as information; each represents a dynamic node in a whirlpool of several currents, and self-reproduction is a property of the collective, not of genes.... DNA is a peculiar sort of software, that can only be correctly interpreted by its own unique hardware....sending aliens the genome of a cat is no substitute for sending the cat itself--complete with mice." (op cit., p. 221)
For those of you who have read Dawkins' original edition from 1976, this edition is still to be recommended, particularly for the updated bibliography and for the 66 pages of endnotes where Dawkins graciously admits errors and points to new discoveries, most interestingly that of Zahavi's "handicap principle" which goes a long ways toward explaining some "altruistic" behavior. See my Amazon review of The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin's Puzzle (1997) by Amotz and Avishag Zahavi.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read
Comment: Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene is one of the best books I've read. Its subject matter--evolution of life on earth--is important. Its writing is flawless and its points well-argued. Its conclusions are significant, controversial, and seemingly inescapable.
The Selfish Gene is not for the faint of heart. Just look at the review here titled "Fascinating, but at times I wish I could unread it"--the author thinks that Dawkins's book "presents an appallingly pessimistic view of human nature, and makes life seem utterly pointless." I don't share this reviewer's view, but I'll get to that later. Some background is necessary first.
Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University. The Selfish Gene, his first book, was published in 1976. It has since become a classic of popular science literature. I'm not a scientist and I can't critique the scientific accuracy of Dawkins's book, but I don't need to: The Selfish Gene has been scrutinized for decades, and it has emerged mostly unscathed.
Though it does contain background material, The Selfish Gene is not an evolution text. Dawkins's goal with the book is primarily to argue for a gene-based, rather than an organism- or group-based, view of evolution. He sets out to refute the theory of "group selection," which had been popular prior to the 1970s. According to group selection, traits can spread in a population if they benefit groups, even if they are detrimental (evolutionary-fitness-wise) to individuals. So, for example, group selection implies that a trait for disinterested altruism can spread if groups of altruists are better off than groups of non-altruists.
Dawkins argues that genes, not organisms or groups, are the fundamental unit of evolution. He terms genes "selfish," a word he gives a technical meaning. A "selfish" unit of evolution is one that is selected for--that is copied through the generations--in a Darwinian selection process. A "successful" selfish unit produces many copies of itself; an unsuccessful one disappears. Dawkins does not mean, of course, that genes themselves "are" selfish. Rather he means that they affect the organisms containing them as if they are. Their effects suggest a selfish disposition.
Genes are passed on based only on their ability to influence organisms to pass them on. Their benefit to particular organisms or groups is relevant only insofar as it aids their own selfish interest. Genes must be selfish, as only those most effective at replicating themselves stick around. The "unselfish" ones all die out.
Genes are "replicators"--they create identical copies of themselves. Organisms are not--they pass only their genes to the next generation. Dawkins provides a possible story of the origin of life: in it, primitive replicators emerged in the primordial soup that was earth's surface hundreds of millions of years ago. These replicators were stable configurations of molecules that, through the laws of physics and chemistry, caused like configurations to be created around them. The copying process occasionally made mistakes, which led to a diversity of replicators. Because the replicators competed for finite resources (molecules), natural selection favored the ones that were best able to survive and reproduce. More-stable arrangements--and arrangements capable of decreasing rivals' stability--were favored. As time progressed, offensive and defensive strategies became increasingly sophisticated, and the molecular arrangements became increasingly complex.
Eventually the replicators "learned" to build bodies for themselves. Dawkins suggests that a particular strain may have "discovered" (through a mutation) how to build a wall of protein around itself. He terms these bodies "survival machines." Survival machines helped the replicators to move around, to defend themselves, and to reproduce. As the replicators grew more complex, so did their survival machines. The living things we now know--amoebas, worms, trees, racoons, humans--are all survival machines. The DNA contained in every cell is the medium for genes, which are the replicators. We are their survival machines.
So ends chapter two of The Selfish Gene. Dawkins spends most of the rest of the book elaborating on his argument and demonstrating its explanatory power in specific cases. He covers his bases well and responds to the obvious objections to his theory. I couldn't possibly do justice to the finer points of his argument in this review, and I won't try. Instead I will briefly cover a few of the points I found most interesting.
Dawkins's dismissal of group selection, which I mentioned earlier, rests largely on the concept of evolutionary stability. A behavior pattern ("strategy") that is prevalent in a population is evolutionarily stable if it cannot be displaced by an upstart strategy. Strategies for disinterested altruism--which group selection suggests could develop--are not evolutionarily stable. I'll illustrate with an example. Say that a gene "for" sitting on whatever eggs lie around is prevalent in a bird population. As long as all the members of the population possess this gene, all is well: all eggs will get sat on. However, if a mutant bird that sits on no eggs enters the population, its genes will spread rapidly: most of its eggs will get sat on (by the altruists), and it will be free to gather food and lay more. A strategy for sitting on whatever eggs lie around thus is not evolutionarily stable. (A strategy for sitting on no eggs isn't stable either.) As Dawkins shows, a strategy for sitting on only one's own eggs is stable.
Genes are in competition with one another. They "want" to propagate more of their own kind, which means that organisms with similar genes tend to have similar interests and organisms with different genes tend to have different interests. Close relatives, who share many genes in common, tend to have closely-related interests. Because parents pass half of their genes to their children, parental care isn't altruism at the gene level--genes have much to gain from influencing organisms to aid others containing them. Because parents and children do differ genetically, however, their relationship is not purely cooperative. You'd expect children to "exploit" their parents to a degree--for example, by pretending to be more hungry than they actually are--and such behavior is in fact present in nature.
Dawkins has much to say on the relationship between the sexes. He defines "males" as organisms with small and numerous sex cells (i.e., sperm) and "females" as organisms with large and few sex cells (i.e., eggs). Because sperm can be produced cheaply and in great number, male investment in child bearing is low. Female investment, however, is significant: a large egg must be produced, and a long gestation period may be involved. This discrepancy leads to differences in male and female strategies regarding sex. Because males' genes stand to gain (and lose) more from competition, males are more likely to behave like high-stakes gamblers. In polygamous species, they fight, sometimes to the death, for females. The winners' genes are spread to many offspring, and the losers' genes are spread to none. Because females' reproductive rate is fixed by their ability to produce eggs, they stand to gain less from competition. They have more to gain from being picky in their choice of mates, and all sorts of female mate-selection strategies have developed as a result.
Before ending, I want to say a bit about the implications of Dawkins's book. The reviewer I mentioned earlier thinks that The Selfish Gene presents an "appallingly pessimistic view of human nature, and makes life seem utterly pointless." I disagree. First, as Dawkins points out, our behavior is only partially determined by our genes. We are self-aware, rational beings, which means we can question the proclivities our genes give us. We can even "rebel" against them. Dawkins uses contraception as a simple example--non-reproductive sex certainly isn't in our genes' interest. More importantly, we can choose to behave as true altruists. We aren't compelled to obey our genes' selfish dictates.
Life is only pointless if we think it is. We can create meaning as individuals and as a species. How we got here is irrelevant; we now have the power to direct our own destiny. I strongly recommend The Selfish Gene to anyone who wants to better understand their place in the universe.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A classic of evolutionary explication, with speculations
Comment: Richard Dawkins has become famous in the public mind as one of the strongest exponents of contemporary evolutionary theory, as well as an opponent of religion and creationism. THE SELFISH GENE is the book that launched his career as a celebrity scientist.
Ostensibly it is devoted to addressing, and ultimately debunking, the idea of "group selection," or the nearly equivalent "altruism". What does natural selection actually select? The gene. Or more generally, a replicator, of which a gene is the pertinent example, while speculations on the nature of other possible replicators makes for interesting reading at the end of the book. The fact that genes are units of replication and thus selection is the defining principle of "neo-Darwinism," the combination of Darwin's pre-genetic understanding of evolution with Mendelian genetics. Dawkins pursues with logical rigor the implications of this understanding, clearing away a lot of confusions, particularly those centered around explicit or inadvertent assumptions of selection of individual organisms, groups of them, or whole species or ecosystems. Seeming examples of such "altruism"--one organism promoting another's welfare at its own expense--can often be explained as "kin selection," where one organism's genes promote the welfare of the identical genes in closely related organisms. In all cases, though, the gene is doing what is most effective in creating copies of itself.
Though Dawkins is addressing a specific, if widespread, confusion regarding evolutionary theory, his book also serves as a good general introduction to the topic. His language is clear, evocative, and often passionate, and his examples and metaphors are memorable. Mathematical concepts, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma, are explained clearly, without formulas or technical language. Quasi-philosophical speculations provide meaty food for thought. He introduces the now oft-referenced if seldom understood idea of the "meme," a unit of cultural reproduction. Also, in the thirtieth anniversary edition he provides a summary of the idea he develops in THE EXTENDED PHENOTYPE: that genes' actions on the environment do not end at the boundary of their organism's body, but act on other bodies and the physical world.
Some reviewers found this book a depressing read. This, I suspect, results from succumbing to "genetic determinism", which Dawkins avowedly rejects. When talking about humans, he notes that genes exert a strong statistical influence on our behavior, but not a completely irresistible one. For instance, there are the memes, replicators which evolve much more quickly than the gene. Yet our conscious minds can evaluate and choose to ignore even those. We can ignore the programming of genes (and memes), though it is a tough battle. THE SELFISH GENE helps us better understand what we're up against.
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