{"id":1912,"date":"2006-06-22T17:39:40","date_gmt":"2006-06-22T23:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/id\/thirty-years-of-the-selfish-gene\/"},"modified":"2006-06-22T10:40:02","modified_gmt":"2006-06-22T16:40:02","slug":"thirty-years-of-the-selfish-gene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/id\/thirty-years-of-the-selfish-gene\/","title":{"rendered":"Thirty years of the Selfish Gene"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tls.timesonline.co.uk\/article\/0,,25350-2225739,00.html\">Thirty years of the Selfish Gene<\/a> Jerry A. Coyne<\/p>\n<p>Intelligent life first comes of age when it works out the reasons for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: \u201cHave they discovered evolution yet?\u201d &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>For [Richard Dawkins\u2019s The Selfish Gene (1976)] is no ordinary science book. Yes, it is about evolutionary biology, but its message, that \u201cwe are survival machines \u2013 robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes\u201d, still resonates deeply after thirty years. It is a brilliant exposition of how natural selection works, laying out in clear and compelling detail, for both scientists and lay readers, the process that produced all of life\u2019s diversity. Using the metaphor of genes as selfish entities, whose \u201cmotivation\u201d is simply to copy themselves at the expense of other genes, Dawkins describes a tale of competition \u2013 of nature red in tooth and claw \u2013 but in which genes are the combatants, fighting their battles by co-opting the bodies of their carriers. It is nothing less than the story of what made us who we are.<\/p>\n<p>The Selfish Gene has also been immensely controversial. Understandably, people don\u2019t like to see themselves as marionettes dancing on strings of DNA, however brilliantly described&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Richard Dawkins<br \/>\nTHE SELFISH GENE<br \/>\nThirtieth anniversary edition<br \/>\n384pp. Oxford University Press. \u00a314.99 (US $25).<br \/>\n0 19 929114 4<\/p>\n<p>Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley, editors<br \/>\nRICHARD DAWKINS<br \/>\nHow a scientist changed the way we think<br \/>\n283pp. Oxford University Press. \u00a312.99 (US $25) .<br \/>\n0 19 929116 0<\/p>\n<p>The [separately published] collection [of essays on Dawkins&#8217; impact] includes twenty-four contributions from a variety of writers and scholars, including the novelist Philip Pullman, Richard Harries (Bishop of Oxford), the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the linguist Steven Pinker and the biologist John Krebs. Their essays cover not just exegesis of The Selfish Gene, but also Dawkins\u2019s general contributions to biology and its philosophy. The section on Dawkins and religion, though tangential to The Selfish Gene, is well worth reading given his vehement hostility to theistic belief.<\/p>\n<p>While such festschrifts are usually deadly dull, designed to flatter rather than enlighten, this is a delightful exception, containing a number of thought-provoking essays that go far beyond mere appreciation of Dawkins\u2019s book. They are in fact essential in understanding the book\u2019s influence. The simultaneous publication of both volumes allows us to re-examine the impact of The Selfish Gene. How well has it aged? Is it still important? And did Dawkins really change the way we think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thirty years of the Selfish Gene Jerry A. Coyne Intelligent life first comes of age when it works out the reasons for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: \u201cHave they discovered evolution yet?\u201d &#8230; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/id\/thirty-years-of-the-selfish-gene\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Thirty years of the Selfish Gene<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}