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First of all, I read it because one of our sibling posters implied that it would show me how wrong I was about the lack of evidence for Darwinian evolution. "The Selfish Gene" is addressed to believers, it makes very few arguments that Darwin is possible, that must be accepted on faith to then accept the premises of the book. The person who recommended this book either has not read it or deliberately sent me on a wild goose chase. If the latter, congrats to them!
The first sentence of his book is by far the truest. In the preface to the 1976 edition, he says, "This book should be read almost as though it were science fiction." Take out the "almost" and that advice is spot on.
He describes three imaginary readers he wrote for, the layman, the expert and the student, an in-between. His book for skeptics is "The Blind Watchmaker," which I read long ago. If I recall correctly, I found that it had internal logic, but was not especially convincing that he explained how the universe and life on Earth exist without having been designed on some level.
It is in the second preface, that he summarizes the thesis of the book:
The selfish gene theory is Darwin's theory, expressed in a way that Darwin did not choose but whose aptness, I should like to think, he would instantly have recognized and delighted in. It is in fact a logical outgrowth of orthodox neo-Darwinism, but expressed as a novel image. Rather than focus on the individual organism, it takes a gene's-eye view of nature.
Rather than the fundamental principle of Darwinism, the idea that it is the genes that are surviving using the individual organism, seems to me to be the fundamental "duh," of Darwinism. My field is psychology, Dawkins' grand idea is like me saying, "rather than studying the way people behave, we should study the way their minds behave through the body."
Anyway, given all that, it isn't a bad book. If his use of the word "selfish" were intended to be an analogy, it would hold up well. But to him, it is not an analogy, it is very real:
If we were told that a man had lived a long and prosperous life in the world of Chicago gangsters, we would be entitled to make some guesses as to the sort of man he was. We might expect that he would have qualities such as toughness, a quick trigger finger, and the ability to attract loyal friends. These would not be infallible deductions, but you can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered. The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes. Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entities us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour.
Genes cannot be selfish and they certainly cannot be "ruthless." Nor can they be altruistic and merciful. Those are emotions. Actually, by one definition of "ruthless," which would be lacking pity or compassion for others, you could argue that they are ruthless because they lack the emotions of pity or compassion. By that definition, my left shoe is also ruthless.
No, Dawkins seems convinced that genes selfishly and ruthlessly want to survive and replicate. Guess what he calls their effort to do so?
Continued next post.
The first sentence of his book is by far the truest. In the preface to the 1976 edition, he says, "This book should be read almost as though it were science fiction." Take out the "almost" and that advice is spot on.
He describes three imaginary readers he wrote for, the layman, the expert and the student, an in-between. His book for skeptics is "The Blind Watchmaker," which I read long ago. If I recall correctly, I found that it had internal logic, but was not especially convincing that he explained how the universe and life on Earth exist without having been designed on some level.
It is in the second preface, that he summarizes the thesis of the book:
The selfish gene theory is Darwin's theory, expressed in a way that Darwin did not choose but whose aptness, I should like to think, he would instantly have recognized and delighted in. It is in fact a logical outgrowth of orthodox neo-Darwinism, but expressed as a novel image. Rather than focus on the individual organism, it takes a gene's-eye view of nature.
Rather than the fundamental principle of Darwinism, the idea that it is the genes that are surviving using the individual organism, seems to me to be the fundamental "duh," of Darwinism. My field is psychology, Dawkins' grand idea is like me saying, "rather than studying the way people behave, we should study the way their minds behave through the body."
Anyway, given all that, it isn't a bad book. If his use of the word "selfish" were intended to be an analogy, it would hold up well. But to him, it is not an analogy, it is very real:
If we were told that a man had lived a long and prosperous life in the world of Chicago gangsters, we would be entitled to make some guesses as to the sort of man he was. We might expect that he would have qualities such as toughness, a quick trigger finger, and the ability to attract loyal friends. These would not be infallible deductions, but you can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered. The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes. Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entities us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour.
Genes cannot be selfish and they certainly cannot be "ruthless." Nor can they be altruistic and merciful. Those are emotions. Actually, by one definition of "ruthless," which would be lacking pity or compassion for others, you could argue that they are ruthless because they lack the emotions of pity or compassion. By that definition, my left shoe is also ruthless.
No, Dawkins seems convinced that genes selfishly and ruthlessly want to survive and replicate. Guess what he calls their effort to do so?
Continued next post.