The Selfish Gene

This book is 45 years old at this point, but it ages well. If you could ignore the handful of references to computers and floppy disks of the era, you could believe it was written relatively recently. We have, of course, learned since it was initially written, and the 30th anniversary edition I read did include some helpful interjections in addition to the extra chapters added to the second edition in 1989.

The Selfish Gene is and continues to be wildly popular for a reason. It provides an extremely accessible explanation of the mechanism of evolution, popularizing the concept that the gene is the fundamental building block that the whole process revolves around. What's a gene? The definition he uses is approximately “any sequence of any length of DNA”, with the understanding that shorter sequences are more likely to survive longer unaltered than longer sequences, but allows him to ignore quibbling over terminology of specific lengths when it's largely not meaningful to the concepts being presented.

The core idea is that genes that are successful are genes that increase the number of copies of themselves in existence. It explains the concept that there is a mechanism for even extreme “altruism”, such as an organism sacrificing itself for others to be selected for, if you recognize that multiple close kin relations each have many of their genes in common with that individual, and that dying saving several siblings increases the number of copies of your genes propagated to future generations than failing to do so.

It goes further into many other elements of how to view evolution from the perspective of individual genes, in specific environments, and how natural selection does and doesn't work to change species over time.

One thing I'm not sure I was aware of, going into this reading of the book, is that Dawkins also coined the term “meme” and gave the first(?) presentation of ideas as replicators subject to very similar selection pressures as genes. This explanation is relatively simple and there are entire books on the concept now, but I did enjoy his short treatment here.

This book mainly discusses the selfish gene hypothesis in parallel to the animal species' reproduction and social behaviour. Most of the book has discussed the basics of reproductory behaviour till chapter 9 then chapter 10 focused on The social and communal construct. Some parts of it were repetitive and purely theoretical. But since the selfish gene is a hypothesis then the absurdity isn't shocking. Some of the concepts and explanations of our evolutionary behaviour were pretty good and it made me think about them more deeply than what we believe on the surface. My favourite was chapter 11 which focused on humankind and how we were set apart in this hypothesis from other animals.
3. 5 stars from me.

Only two complaints with this book. First, the author had a habit of introducing an idea and then saying that it wasn't really relevant to the book, and would drop it. It was weird to hit these dead ends, and made for disjointed reading. Second, the author used “man” in the supposedly universal sense, which doesn't actually exist (All men are mortal; Sarah is a man; therefore Sarah is mortal). Since this book was first written in the 1970s, when apparently logic did not exist (bellbottoms!), I'll let this slide. We are all a product of our times, and back in the author's day this was a reasonable way to write. Aside from these two issues, I loved the book.

I dont really wanna read a work by someone that doesnt think i can exist.

As with every pop science book, this could have been 20 pages. Though for a different reason than usual. Dawkins is a good writer but the bulk of the book is spent arguing with other biologist academics about their various theories, I was bored to tears. Lots of theoretical discussions about how genes could cause us to behave. Cool concept, terribly boring execution

Key takeaways:

- Great job writing about a complex topic and making it accessible. Many excellent metaphors were used throughout the book that nicely demonstrated concepts in a way that was easy to understand not just what was happening, but also why and how.
- I liked the section that talked about faith, but I think for a very different reason than Mr. Dawkins intended. He argues that faith is a handicap causing people to ignore evidence, and have such strong beliefs that they are willing to kill or be killed. Of course I would argue my faith is based on evidence and that the blind faith he describes is not the way that I approach my belief system. The part I found especially compelling was where he described faith as something that causes all kinds of evil in the world. I agree that I have seen that in many people, however my faith has pushed me to be more nice, kind, honest, and selfless than I would otherwise have been. I think my faith has been a net benefit to the world, at least in recent years, as my faith has evolved greatly.

বইটার বয়স আমার চেয়ে অনেক বেশি। খুবই প্রাঞ্জল বই। মাঝেমধ্যে একটু বেশি স্ট্রেচড্ মনে হয়েছে। সম্ভবত, গণমানুষের বোধগম্যতার বিষয়ে নিশ্চিত হতেই এরকম।

I liked it, but I think most of the book has made it into contemporary culture; I found myself not learning as many things from it as I expected to.

You don't really understand evolution until you read this book. Probably the best thing I can say about it is that it makes the thing we call “life” – usually described as this ethereal force or spark – far more concrete than one thought possible. Read this, then read The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner, and then this whole thing we call evolution will make sense on the micro and macro level.