The Selfish Gene (Popular Science) 2nd Edition

I recommend this book and learned a great deal from it. Please consider this review in that light.
This book which sets out the gene centric theory of evolution is difficult for a lay reader (me) to review. Dawkins tries to make the subject understandable to just about any non-science but reasonably well -educated reader. Throughout the book, Dawkins attempts to make it more approachable by using snappy colloquial language. Nevertheless, this is a challenging read.
For a lay reader, part of the challenge is sorting through the book’s near endless digressions in which Dawkins “rebuts” the contrary views of some very well-respected evolutionists (e.g. E.O. Wilson, S.J. Gould and others). I was/am uninterested in these quarrels and have no way of evaluating their merits. However, many of these are integrated into the explanatory text so that it is hard to skip over them. The book is listed at 450 pages of which 100 pages are devoted to end- notes which contain even more rebuttals/explanations of other competing thinking in the field. I wish the book were 250 pages and the end-notes 200 pages. I believe the lucidity of the text would be much improved.

My Copy: Oxford Univ. Press: 30th Anniversary Edition (Hardbound)

There is much more to "The Selfish Gene" than is advertised, even in the most glowing of its reviews. In fact, I (not a biologist, but fascinated by evolution ever since "dinosaurs" and the first high school biology course) have been vaguely aware of this book since its initial wave of rave reviews many years ago, but never bothered to read it because as it was advertised its theme(s) always seemed pretty obvious. But something recently piqued my curiosity again, not sure what that was now, and after reading the prefatory material online I finally decided to take a look.

After reading quickly through the first 3 chapters, it became apparent that there was a great deal more underlying the book than was overtly presented, that it was not just an over-extended, over-simplified, over-popularized, metaphorical presentation .... but rather that its metaphorical treatment is painstakingly faithful to an elaborate, closely-reasoned, even rigorous, scientific underpinning. At which point, I stopped reading and began again from the beginning, first the prefatory material, then from page 1, this time more slowly and more carefully, taking care to appreciate and reflect on all the markers of the underlying basis and their implications.

This is a wonderful book, even beautiful in many respects, from its initial beginning (at the "beginning") with the purely chemical/physics "evolution" of the primordial soup (cast suggestively in the form of biological evolution); to the consequent continuity with the creation of "replicators", elementary "survival" cells, genes, and the beginnings of life forms; to the important distinction between genes and individuals, as genes and their "survival vehicles" (the first cells and "us", for example); to the nicely extended notion of "gene" itself, required by underlying scientific reality; to a clear presentation of the conflict between Darwinian and "group" selection and evolution; to the nature of evolution, operating (in distinct ways) in terms of both genes and individuals, aka both genes and "their" survival vehicles, aka both chemical/physics and biological evolution; to genetic kinship and its very special selective and social implications; ... ; to the delicious End Notes to the 1st eleven chapters, which provide much supporting and fascinating material.

"The Selfish Gene" goes on to clarify not only its expressed subject, the nature and genesis of Selfishness and Altruism, but to make clear the error, scope, and source of various (idealistic, and often political) arguments and ideas centered around group selection fallacies, including the genesis of (ill-conceived) "group-beneficial", cooperative "functions" vs. (individual) evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS) and kinship. It also sheds light on many other commonly-posed questions, among them: the fundamental "reason" for the 50:50 sex ratio (despite the number of different breeding strategies observed for male competitors); the driving source of the natural variability upon which (continuing) evolution depends; the variety and shadings of competing "strategies", which can be both conceived and advantageous, clustered around a given regard (partly on account of environmental inconstancy), one incidental, unintended but important, implication of which is that this is itself an evolutionary driving source of the natural variability upon which (continuing) evolution operates; .... and NOT so commonly posed: that "In its long journey down the generations therefore, an [ANY] average gene will spend approximately half its time sitting in male bodies, and the other half sitting in female bodies", and thus genes will generally contribute positively to both sexes, sometimes in very different ways, and that, indeed, many "purely male / purely female" effects pass (unexpressed) through many bodies of the opposite sex; and much, much more.

Beautifully written and packed with wonderful insights, "The Selfish Gene" is not only well-worth the read, but will amply reward the reader in proportion to the thoughtfulness and reflection with which they read it. In fact, there is so much food for thought in the story-lines and examples (e.g., the fig, "lichenization", and organelle endosymbiosis) provided in "The Selfish Gene", that one must often stop and consider, at length and at leisure, the questions which it provokes or which Dawkins rhetorically poses.

I will, however, amend Dawkins' wonderful characterization of "us" (Preface to the First Edition, p. xxi): “We are survival machines --- robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment. Though I have known it for years, I never seem to get fully used to it.” ...... by grafting it to my own previous synopsis, with the result:

"We are Conditioned-Reaction Engines [built on Basic Senses + Unconditioned Reflexes (among them innate Kantian "Categories", instincts, emotions, etc.)] built as Gene-Survival "Machines" [genetically "programmed" to serve the "interests" of our genes] = Pavlo-Kantian Conditioned-Reaction, Darwin-Dawkins Gene-Survival Automatons.

So I had to read this for my Moral Development class. And I suppose if you're just reading to find out what a breakthrough evolutionary theory looked like 50 years ago, then it's a good read. Don't get me wrong, this book was brilliant in its time, and it's likely to entertain you. However, nothing is ever as simple as Dawkins tries to make it out to be, evolution least of all. Gene-driven evolution is, to this day, considered to be an umbrella all other evolution research must fall under, and that is the crux of the problem. Some of the more recent research involving gene expression, has to work much harder than it should, in order to fall under this umbrella. Worse, genuine breakthroughs like Masatoshi Nei's "Mutation Driven Evolution" will often get sidelined because Dawkins presented mutation as secondary to natural selection. It's hard to take this book at face value when you discover research that presents locusts and a dozen species of grasshoppers having exactly the same genetic material, expressing itself differently solely based on serotonin levels. It's even harder to take it seriously when he claims that we must teach our children altruism, for it is certainly not to be found in their genetic material. To a scientist, these types of proclamations are ghastly. There is no experiment that has been performed, or can be performed, that would validate such a claim. Just because we haven't discovered an empathy gene, this can't be a proof of its nonexistence. Dawkins builds his work on scientists who came before him, drawing heavily and often on their research when it suits him. When it doesn't, such as Mendel's experiments with manipulating traits of bees and his inadvertent creation of a vicious breed that he had to exterminate, Dawkins conveniently ignores the obvious. He saves himself, more than once, by specifying that his theories are not meant to be applied to human beings, However, his language makes it clear that this is something he'd intended, before validity and reliability of his statements got in the way.

All in all, my frustration is mainly with the insistence of treating this book as anything other than what it is. A brilliant work from 50 years ago that is long past its due date, and still being peddled to those who need a simple explanation of evolution, one where little science is needed. And David Dobbs rightly called it out: "The gene-centric model survives because simplicity is a hugely advantageous trait for an idea to possess."

This is the first of his books I've read, and I expect to read all his others before I die. A challenging topic to understand, for me anyway. Dawkins writes clearly, with wit.