Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene, originally published in 1976, caused quite a stir in the scientific world and rapidly became an international best seller in 13 languages. Taking Darwin's premise of survival of the fittest one step further, Dawkins proposes that our genes made us, and that animals and other life forms exist for their preservation and are nothing more than their throwaway survival machines (1). This paper will look at Dawkins' hypothesis and reactions to his work.

According to Dawkins (1), the world of the selfish gene is one of savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit. The argument of the book is presented in the first chapter and is that the answers to questions about the meaning of life, what is man, and why is he here can all be simply answered by the fact that man and all other animals are machines created by our genes. Dawkins believes that if we wish to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, then we can expect little help from biological nature. According to Dawkins, the fundamental unit of selection, and therefore self-interest, is not the species, the group, or even the individual, but the gene, the unit of heredity.

In his book, Dawkins puts forth a model for the origins of life on earth (1:12-20). He believes the chemical conditions on earth before the coming of life yielded chemicals known as purines and pyrimidines which are the building blocks of DNA. These o

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one animal wants to remain on the outside and be most vulnerable to predators so there is continuous shifting of positions. The selfish-herd model in itself has no place for cooperative interactions. There is no altruism here, only selfish exploitation by each individual of every other individual (1:168). Despite his major theme of survival machines for the perpetuation of genes, Dawkins supposes that our own species, man, is unique among these machines because of one factor - culture (1:189). He believes cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission in that, although basically conservative, it can give rise to a form of evolution. Cultural transmission is not unique to man; it has been shown in the song patterns of some birds, and in some monkeys (1:190). Language, fashion in dress and diet, ceremonies and customs, art and architecture, engineering and technology, all evolve in historical time in a way that looks like highly speeded up genetic evolution, but really has nothing to do with genetic evolution. As in genetic evolution, though, change may be progressive. Dawkins has coined the term "meme" for the units of cultural evolution (1:192). Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leap

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