The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author
Richard Dawkins
Language: English
Pages: 384
ISBN: 0199291152
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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.
any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word meme. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'. Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be
shaped by natural selection of genes in gene-pools. They want to find some way in which having a brain like that improves gene survival. I have a lot of sympathy with this attitude, and I do not doubt that there are genetic advantages in our having brains of the kind that we have. But nevertheless I think that these colleagues, if they look carefully at the fundamentals of their own assumptions, will find that they are begging just as many questions as I am. Fundamentally, the reason why it is
the situation was a true prisoner's dilemma. Something like Tit for Tat could be expected to grow up, and it did. The locally stable strategy in any particular part of the trench lines was not necessarily Tit for Tat itself. Tit for Tat is one of a family of nice, retaliatory but forgiving strategies, all of which are, if not technically stable, at least difficult to invade once they arise. Three Tits for a Tat, for instance, grew up in one local area according to a contemporary account. We
genes. Our own genes cooperate with one another, not because they are our own but because they share the same outlet- sperm or egg-into the future. If any genes of an organism, such as a human, could discover a way of spreading themselves that did not depend on the conventional sperm or egg route, they would take it and be less cooperative. This is because they would stand to gain by a different set of future outcomes from the other genes in the body. We've already seen examples of genes that
conflict of interest between mates, we postpone until Chapter 9. 8. Battle of the generations. Let us begin by tackling the first of the questions posed at the end of the last chapter. Should a mother have favourites, or should she be equally altruistic towards all her children? At the risk of being boring, I must yet again throw in my customary warning. The word 'favourite' carries no subjective connotations, and the word 'should' no moral ones. I am treating a mother as a machine programmed
