Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

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 organic substances became locally concentrated, possibly formed into tiny droplets, and eventually larger molecules. At some point, a molecule was formed which was capable of creating copies of itself - a replicator (1:15). As soon as the replicator was born, it must have spread its copies rapidly throughout the seas until the smaller building block molecules became a scarce resource and other larger molecules were formed more and more rarely.

Dawkins post...

Page 1 of 14 Next >

More on Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 17:29, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1709060.html