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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 576.5
EAN num: 9780199291151
ISBN number: 0199291152
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: May 25, 2006
Publishing house: Oxford University Press, USA
Sale Popularity Level: 1354
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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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 very 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.
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
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Rated by buyers 
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The very first thing I will say about The Selfish Gene (TSG) is that it is not the very 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 very 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 ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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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.
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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.
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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!
Rated by buyers 
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"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.
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