| Accessories By Manufacturer | |
|
|
Email Newsletter
Get info on Sales, Events, New Products, and More!
|
|
|
|
| | The Selfish Gene (New Edition) |  | Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
Buy New: $49.95
New (2) Used (8) from $6.10
Avg. Customer Rating:  290 reviews
Sales Rank: 397891
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 372
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.2
ISBN: 0192177737
Dewey Decimal Number: 591.5
EAN: 9780192177735
ASIN: 0192177737
Publication Date: November 23, 1989
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business 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
This is a new edition of possibly the most exciting and innovative book on evolution in years. An international bestseller, Dawkins's superb reworking of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much interest outside the scientific community as within it. Fascinating, convincing, and beautiful in the simplicity with which complex ideas are expressed, The Selfish Gene is a classic.
The revised, expanded edition contains two important new chapters. "Nice Guys Finish First" shows how cooperation can evolve even in a basically selfish world, and "The Long Reach of the Gene" advances the startling view that genes may reach outside the bodies in which they sit to manipulate other individuals--and even the world at large. The book concludes with completely new endnotes in which Dawkins replies to previous critics, or elaborates on points in the original text.
Written in characteristically lively and accessible style, this new edition confirms Dawkins's reputation as one of the most brilliant biologists of his generation.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 285 more reviews...
 Neo-Darwinian Genetic Evolution of Altruism and Social Behaviour that shook Group Selectionists November 17, 2008
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 (TEP). You could really drop this chapter and just pick up TEP 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 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 TEP 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 wrong, but it looks like they have to turn to the gene to explain certain instances of altruism. We really need to ask 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.
The first time I wrote this review I asked the rhetorical question of if the selfish gene model included all genetic information and does all behaviour need to invoke the selfish gene? I said this because I couldn't help but remember that even Dawkins shows how Hamilton didn't have to invoke kin selection to explain altruism in terms of the individual as the unit selection. Imagine if all altruism was explained this way with kin selection. I therefore thought that the selfish gene might be relegated to a very small minor role in evolution and said I would reserve judgement on how far reaching the selfish gene model actually is until I looked more at TEP. Of course in hindsight I see problems with this. Kin selection and the selfish gene are two different things. The selfish gene is simply the gene view of natural selection. Kin selection is a type of behaviour that is explained using the selfish gene. It need not follow that if kin selection is wrong, so is the selfish gene. The selfish gene would of course include all genetic information, but more specifically gene's associated with evolutionary adaptation. I was right to reserve judgement on TSG until I get through The Extended Phenotype, but maybe for the wrong initial reasons.
It is vital to add one more note. Because TSG is at length about the gene view of natural selection it doesn't go into a great deal about developmental biology (embryology) where the phenotype is the expressed genotype but the phenotype can be influenced by the environment. This has led many people to incorrectly think that gene-talk will always mean fixed outcome. That is simply wrong. However the book was not heavy on adaptations but explaining the gene view of evolution. It is TEP that goes into detail about how genes are expressed in the phenotype.
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
3 out of 12 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
1 out of 16 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
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!
 Dissecting "The Selfish Gene" September 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
"The Selfish Gene" is Richard Dawkins masterpiece, and admiration for the scope and detail of his exploration of animal life has been world wide. His gift of analysis and synthesis is like a giant microscope givng an entrance into an area of knowledge never revealed before.
He outdistances Charles Darwin in his penetration into animal life, animal behavior, and the biological mechanisms that influence and sometimes determines behavior. As a scientific study and exposition, it has no parallel in contemporary scientific writing.
But that is where its value ends.
Richard Dawkins is an Ethologist, as he indicates in the 1976 edition of his book, an observer and chronicler of animal behavior, following in the footsteps of his master, Niko Tinbergen, and one of the founders of this branch of zoology, Konrad Lorenz. But the leap that Richard Dawkins has made in this new branch of science, is to identify his findings in animal behavior with human behavior, and this is the foundation for his conclusions in ethics, psychology, social science, philosophy and theism.
He is convinced, with no empirical data to back it up, that human beings are animals, not only in the category of genus, which nobody denies, but in the category of specificity as well. And that has been the huge blunder in his scientific research.
The whole tower of atheism, his excursions into philosophy and religion are based upon this methodological mistake. His positing as valid conclusions from his ethological research to human beings are conclusions that are valid only in animal research.
That is why "The Selfish Gene" can be very, very deceiving. Its conclusions do apply to the genetic code, the psychology and the behavior of the animals he has studied. But his application of these conclusions to human pschology and behavior are scientifically invalid.
"The Selfish Gene" is a brilliant book, advancing some facets of evolutionary biology into new and encharted territories. But when, as he does (with images that are fascinating and analogies that are captivating) apply his conclusions to human beings, he is out of his league.
He is a behaviorial scientist for the zoo, the jungle, the forest, the ground beneath our feet and the sea. His personal biases have overtaken his methodological skills and can ultimately cast doubt on the body of his work. That would be a tragedy, for Richard Dawkins is a brilliant scientist and his work lays the foundation for earthshaking advances in a multitude of sciences. His excursions into anthropololgy are based on a catalogue of personal biases from which he seems unable to escape.
|
|
|
Site by: Troy Peterson | |
