The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $8.91
You Save: $11.08 (55%)
New (55) Used (19) Collectible (1) from $8.21
Rating:  291 reviews
Sales Rank: 1301
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 0199291152
Dewey Decimal Number: 576.5
EAN: 9780199291151
ASIN: 0199291152
Publication Date: May 25, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new book delivered from the UK in 10-14 days.
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that "our" genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since. Why are there miles and miles of "unused" DNA within each of our bodies? Why should a bee give up its own chance to reproduce to help raise her sisters and brothers? With a prophet's clarity, Dawkins told us the answers from the perspective of molecules competing for limited space and resources to produce more of their own kind. Drawing fascinating examples from every field of biology, he paved the way for a serious re-evaluation of evolution. He also introduced the concept of self-reproducing ideas, or memes, which (seemingly) use humans exclusively for their propagation. If we are puppets, he says, at least we can try to understand our strings. --Rob Lightner
Product Description
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.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 286 more reviews...
 A classic of evolutionary explication, with speculations November 24, 2008
Brian Burtt (Saginaw, MI USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Neo-Darwinian Genetic Evolution of Altruism and Social Behaviour that shook Group Selectionists November 17, 2008
OverTheMoon (overthemoonreview@hotmail.com)
The first thing I will say about The Selfish Gene (TSG) is that it is not the first book on evolution you should read although as a Dawkins book it is not a bad choice but for those unfamiliar with both, then I would suggest Climbing Mount Improbable or The Blind Watchmaker first. Both of those books by Dawkins have a much broader, more generalized, look at natural selection and evolution.
TSG is an entirely different type of book because it is particularly academic and a very complex read on specific lines of reasoning that are even aimed at correcting the misconceptions of big name professional biologists. It assumes that the reader will be somewhat acquainted with Darwinism and evolution. If you are not then I would strongly urge that you pass on TSG until you do. In fact, you will bring much more to TSG and get much more out of it if you spend time on his above mentioned works first. I would also suggest Darwin's own "The Origin of Species" if you can.
The reason for doing this is that during the 1970s TSG entered midway into a battle within evolutionary theory to settle some disputes and to make this version of Darwinism accessible to the general reader. If you don't know much about why TSG was needed in the first place then I don't think it will make that much sense to read it now. If, however, you understand what is going on previous to it and how it is presently used, then TSG becomes mandatory reading but it is not like Dawkins other works except for maybe the sequel to TSG, The Extended Phenotype, that should be treated the same way as TSG and certainly not read before this very progressive book on evolution.
The Selfish Gene is a massive assault on evolutionary biologists who explained behaviour by using phrases like "for the good of the species". Dawkins and most of his English contemporaries from the time of R.A Fisher's "The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection" (1930) and the modern synthesis had difficulties in trying to explain altruism in terms of Darwinism, like why some organisms in the struggle for survival appear not to struggle for themselves but for other organisms. Many biologists aligned with the work of V. C. Wynne-Edwards on a mathematical model for group selection to explain this problem. This was a bold step away from Darwin's view, and the established scientific evolution model of the individual as the unit of selection, not the group. Darwin had speculated on group selection very briefly in The Descent of Man but to actually incorporate it into Darwinian evolution almost seemed contrary to natural selection. Yet the Wynne-Edwards math that groups could be selected was good on paper and so many believed that altruism could be solved this way.
What they didn't know was that an alternative explanation for altruism was emerging around the same time as the Wynne-Edwards model. This alternative explanation for altruism did not require group selection. This alternative was called Kin Selection and was developed by W.D Hamilton in a paper called The genetical evolution of social behaviour (1964). TSG can be best described as a book popularizing an explanation of Hamilton's discoveries. While Hamilton had found a very elegant solution to altruism it came with a price that Dawkins and many of his colleagues are asking us to take and in a way it's not entirely different from the leap that Wynne-Edwards wanted but this jump in evolutionary thought is certainly nowhere near as startling as group selection. The jump is this. We need to develop the concept of the individual as the unit of selection to include the gene.
There is much to favour the view that we should take a gene-centred view of evolution but Dawkins stresses that we are not really moving from the individual as the unit of selection at all, just seeing it in a new way. G. C. Williams in Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966) had already challenged group selection. So had the very influential Maynard Smith who was developing the ESS (evolutionary stable strategy) through game theory and applying it to evolution. E. O Wilson had just finished writing "Sociobiology" and was battling fellow scientists in his own university over whether we should really be subjecting human social behavior to the science of evolution. Dawkins TSG thus emerges in the middle of this poignant moment as a vehicle to see the matter of Hamilton's work firmly through to finish. For anyone interested in evolution, it is not only worth every bit of the effort, but mandatory reading.
It makes it all the more interesting that for such an important read there is very little Dawkins in TSG at all. In fact Dawkins writes significantly about everyone else in evolutionary thought except himself. He is like the Francis Bacon of the 20th century, extolling on so much and unselfishly on the work of others that he has little time to say much about his own thoughts on evolution except for the shortest chapter on the concept of the meme as a cultural example of natural selection at work outside of the gene.
There are two editions of TSG and the 30th anniversary edition with a new forward. It is important to at least get the second edition as there are two fresh new chapters spanning some extra 60 pages plus a fist of new notations at the back to explain his position more clearly, update us on current findings, correct some errors and validates some hypothesis as now theories. It is actually probably due another update. The first edition doesn't have this and the meme chapter was the chapter that closed the first edition of this book. Anyhow the 30th anniversary edition does it all.
Chapter 1 - Why are people?
Dawkins brings up morality in relation to Darwinism and defines altruism along with explaining the Darwinian version of behaviour. There is some basic outlines of natural selection and this books sets up the question of why altruism? Wynne-Edwards/Robert Ardrey/ Konrad Lorenz (although Lorenz gets lots of better press for other discoveries later in TSG) group selection is introduced as the alternative to individual selection (albeit wrongly as Dawkins notes). G. C. Williams's work is used to start countering group selection.
Chapter 2 - The Replicators
Dawkins describes how molecules build up in evolution, DNA replication and ideas of competition between replicators.
Chapter 3 - Immortal Coils
Dawkins looks at the origins of replication, A. G. Cairns-Smith's crystal hypothesis are given as possible candidates, DNA sequences in terms of genes are explained by analogy of books and pages, mutations are brought into the scene along with the unit of selection and the evolution of biological complexity. Peter Medawar's views on gene selection, death and cancer are intriguing.
Chapter 4 - The Gene Machine
Survival, multicellular life, genes and behaviour, communication between genes and behaviour, the emergence of consciousness, the brain as a supercomputer, evolving strategies launches TSG into the heart of its subject matter. Here Dawkins as ethologist gives specific examples of these in action. Insects and colonies are his speciality. Mimicry as a strategy is explained along with predator prey interactions.
Chapter 5: Aggression: Stability and the Selfish Machine
Developing more on predator prey interactions the terminology of `cost-benefit' brings us to Maynard Smith and his Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS) that governs behaviour. The ESS is a mind blowing package of evolutionary development that expands the field considerably. Organisms are pre-programmed biological units that are also pre-programmed to behave and respond to situations. This is all about the chance of pay-offs against losses. Various strategies are explained and given examples in nature. Applied game theory transforms Darwinism into a whole new dynamic. Dawkins talks about his mentor ethologist Niko Tinbergen.
Chapter 6: Genesmanship
Dawkins now moves onto Kin selection. At this stage in the book the reader will have to have their thinking cap on to follow through the strategies that become somewhat mathematical. It also looks at how genes compete or cooperate among themselves. The coefficient of relatedness is explained.
Chapter 7: Family Planning
This is about the evolution of parental care, population sizes, birth-rates and the ecology of David Lack. This is also aimed at dispensing with group selection.
Chapter 8: Battle of the Generations
Dawkins expands on parental care and stratagems related to it. R. L. Trivers gene concepts are brought into the picture and parental investment (P.I) is discussed along with parent-offspring conflicts. Zahavi is made known but plays a more important role later. Deception and deceptive traits are brought up so we can see the evolution of cheating.
Chapter 9: Battle of the Sexes
Now it is time for the evolution of sex and how to define sex, most it based on R.A Fisher's work. The role of the sexes becomes evident in that battle. Trivers is used to enlarge on it and again the gene plays a central role in understanding it. Zahavi's handicap principle will stimulate thoughts on sexual selection.
Chapter 10: You Scratch My Back I'll Ride On Yours
Hamilton's work is able to produce geometries that look like group selection based on selfish gene principles. Altruistic signals may even be selfish without invoking kin selection such as in cave theory and `never break rank'. Next comes what is maybe the hardest part of the book, the evolution of slave-making species with respect to sex ratios. Heads will be left spinning and even Dawkins says his is. The evolution of symbiosis is developed upon this and then the classic puzzle of the Prisoner's Dilemma is played out.
Chapter 11: Memes: The New Replicators
This is about the possibility that natural selection is not just limited to the gene and suggests that culture goes through a very similar selection process that becomes embedded in people's minds and is transmitted from brain to brain. These cultural memes can serve their own purpose and may not be to our benefit. Dawkins looks at religion and invokes memes as a possible explanation. The author is clear though that this is a hypothesis and is using it mostly to show how natural selection is not just limited to the gene. Effectively this chapter ended the first edition and Dawkins maintains that humans can fight against any selfish problems that we have to live a better life.
Chapter 12: Nice Guys Finish First
This is an addition and is part of the second edition. This is mostly about Robert Axelrod's experiments with the Prisoner's Dilemma and how it applies to biology and focuses on the tit-for-tat strategy and how it competes with others. Do you cooperate or do you defect? Great game theory.
Chapter 13: The Long Reach of the Gene
This is a synopsis of his second book The Extended Phenotype (EP). You could really drop this chapter and just pick up EP except that he does recap TSG for the last few pages so at least try to read that if you can. It will also give you a taste of. In a way this is not saying anything scientifically new about what phenotypes are and do except to add how the selfish gene extends outwards to interact with the environment and other organisms. Dawkins might be offering an innovative approach to dealing with biological evolution.
So, to sum it up, group selection is declared dead, Darwin's principles are still alive, the gene is perfectly compatible with evolution and this view brings much more.
TSG is a radically sweeping revolutionary evolutionary thought to see the gene as the unit of selection. Whatever you might think of this, one thing is for certain, the group selectionists didn't see the group rejectionists coming with TSG and even 30 years later haven't manage to displace the selfish gene view. What arguments they have had are as weak as the group selectionist model that they depended on. TSG makes a solid case that the alternative view from the gene strongly infers answers to altruism and may quicken the pursuit for the origins of evolution itself from the view of chemical replicators. For those who can accept it, this is probably the new face of evolution.
At the same time we should mention weaknesses as the argument does challenge the traditional concept of the unit of selection as the individual because in some cases the genes need not be in the individual. Apparently duplicate genes in another individual qualify and the concept even goes further to say genes helping other genes symbiotically as per EP are to be considered as part of individual. That's a very big thing to say. Yet Darwin didn't get the concept of genes when he described natural selection. Any scientist who takes the selfish gene very carefully by conserving the unit of selection as the individual would, quite frankly, be on the right side of Darwinian evolution and even the Neo-Darwinian movement of the modern synthesis... but is probably missing out on much. If someone says that the unit of selection is the individual, you cannot say they are wide of the mark, but it looks like they have to turn to the gene to explain certain instances of altruism. In TSG Dawkins is trying to say that they are the same thing However in his next book, EP, Dawkins clearly works to overthrow overemphasising the unit of selection as the individual. He even goes as far to say that it is wrong and gives reasons (such as meioses). The only true unit of selection is the replicator and in Dawkins view that can only mean the gene. What we really need to ask for now though is what is the evidence for the selfish gene?
In reality the evidence for models outside of the individual as the unit of selection are quite scant, but the gene as unit of selection does have direct evidence to support it. The evidence for group selection is controversial and after 30 years they haven't made much ground. Simply put, there doesn't appear to be much of a debate anymore even if some group selectionists make some noise (it looks like they just don't understand the concept of kin selection). There is evidence for the selfish gene but does this mean we should accept the revaluation of the unit of selection to include the gene? It appears we should. As a note, group selectionists need to do a lot better to try and match this kind of quality science and do not do themselves one bit of justice by trying to discredit it with scare-tactics and ambiguity. Saying things like every other possible unit of selection except for the gene can be the unit of selection doesn't help anything.
We have one other question to ask. Does the selfish gene model include all genetic information and does all behaviour need to invoke the selfish gene? I can't help but remember that even Dawkins shows how Hamilton didn't have to invoke gene selection to explain altruism in terms of the individual as the unit selection. Imagine if all altruism was explained this way. The selfish gene might be relegated to a very small minor role in evolution. You are best to reserve judgement on how far reaching the selfish gene model actually is until you look more at EP. EP really is where the argument is at, but TSG helps set up the basic premise that the gene view of evolution is the answer to many outstanding questions in evolution.
Another thing to note is that creationists have never been able to produce an alternative science to this model. No matter how they may critic it, complain wrongly that it is genetic determinism or dislike his use of metaphors, they cannot refute the math in his cited peer-review nor can they offer a substitute science.
Not to end with a critic I would like to add that TSG is quite possibly the most important book on evolution next to Fisher's "The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection" which is only trumped by Darwin's publications. I don't think I am wrong with that praise.
 Dawkins Drastically Dumbs Down Darwin October 30, 2008
Lawrence Wilcox (Christchurch NZ)
4 out of 14 found this review helpful
Richard Dawkins is a respected scientist, and as a communicator to the public of the marvels and intricacies of evolutionary biology he has no rival but Stephen Jay Gould. "The Blind Watchmaker" and "Climbing Mount Improbable" are enthralling, the best kind of popular science-writing. "The Ancestor's Tale", richer and denser, is equally excellent.
Is this what has given Dawkins the Omniscience Delusion: the belief that he can also write authoritatively about history, sociology, cultural theory, philosophy, theology and other subjects about which he knows nothing whatever? Or is it the routine vanity of scientists, who think that science is "real" and other disciplines are fluffy nonsense?
I read this book years ago and recently re-read it to see if it was as bad as I had remembered. It was. To call this book childish would be an insult to children of the world. It contains more elementary flawed thinking than "The House at Pooh Corner", with the difference that A.A. Milne's examples were Intended to be funny.
That a book like this, based on fallacies that any Philosophy 101 student should be able to see through, can both be taken seriously and become a best-seller, is a dire comment on the erosion of literacy, the decline in critical thinking, the impact of television and the Internet, or some other catastrophe that I'm much too young to start droning on and on about.
I'm not impressed. October 26, 2008
GangstaLawya (TimBuckToo)
2 out of 25 found this review helpful
When a Creationist asked Mr. Dawkins "Can you give an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome?", Dawkins was clearly stumped. If the socalled authority on the topic is unable to answer this simple question, what value is his book? Creationists can answer it. Evolution is a dead dogmatic institution rotting on the dusty book shelves of universities. Only social outcasts and weird beard professors are capable of sustaining belief in this dead institution which blinds itself to the facts in order to maintain faith in the absurd creed of evolution theory against Creation fact.
Possibly my favorite read of all time October 8, 2008
Nicholas Sterling (Austin, TX USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Wow. When I finished this book, I did something I had never done before: I read the same book again. The second time through, I underlined things and scribbled thoughts on the inside covers and in the margins and wrote emails to friends about questions forming in my mind. After that second pass, I bought and read Dawkins's "The Blind Watchmaker" and "The God Delusion" and watched his TED video and several other videos of his on YouTube. "The Ancestor's Tale" and "The Extended Phenotype" are on my to-do list. I am quite impressed with this guy.
"The Selfish Gene" is my clear favorite of his books so far, and quite possibly my favorite read of all time. I thought I already knew a lot about evolution, but this book refined my understanding substantially. And Dawkins has a gift for writing, an ability to take a subject that in the wrong hands could be quite dry and make it very interesting.
Now for some qualifications. First, if you don't already have a reasonable understanding of evolution and the process of natural selection, you should probably get that somewhere else before starting this book. Carl Zimmer's "Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea" and the accompanying PBS video (which I think you can see at pbs.org) are an approachable choice.
Second, this is not light reading. It's readable, but there is a lot going on in these almost 400 pages, and you should expect to spend some time thinking about what he is saying. This is not a book to skim.
Finally, if for whatever reason you have trouble accepting the idea of evolution by natural selection, then there is probably little point in reading this book.
In this 30th anniversary edition, Dawkins has 66 pages of endnotes which make very interesting reading. Rather than change the original text in subsequent editions, he commented on it in the endnotes. At times he explains why he said something the way he did, or shares findings that have emerged since he wrote the book. In some cases he talks about the flak he got for saying what he did. And in a few cases he admits that he didn't say something in the best way. I found the updates and self-reflection in the endnotes quite enjoyable.
If you haven't already read this book (at least once :^), please do!
|
|
|
