The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

The title of this book refers to the gene as the fundamental unit of replication, acted on by natural selection. These genes act “selfishly” in that they become successful by propagating copies of themselves into the future. It’s a clever title, because it could be interpreted as having the alternative meaning that there is a gene for selfish behaviour, the possessors of which behave more selfishly and less altruistically. Maybe the title is too clever, because a lot of the book then tries to correct the obvious misunderstanding that organisms containing these “selfish” genes must therefore act selfishly. I think a lot of people over the years (especially people who haven’t read it) have carried the idea that the book is some kind of manifesto in favour of selfishness, or that it somehow denies the existence of altruism. Richard Dawkins has said, in the introductions to later editions, that better titles might have been ‘The Immortal Gene’ or ‘The Cooperative Gene’. Really, though, it portrays a gene’s eye view of evolution, and makes the case that this is the only perspective that makes any sense, and that allows us to reason coherently about the bodies and behaviours of organisms.

These behavours include cooperation and altruism, as well as selfish behaviours. The author sets out to explain how altruistic behaviour can evolve even when behaviour is controlled (or at least influenced) by genes that are acting only in their self-interest. There are various different explanations, covering kin selection (helping those closely related to you, and so helping copies of your own genes in those other individuals), cooperating and returning favours from individuals who have helped you in the past, and game theory considerations, where a cooperative strategy over the long term can benefit all individuals on average.

Another concept covered by the book is the concept of the evolutionarily stable strategy. This is a behavioural strategy that will tend to proliferate in a population due to two factors: (1) it does well against copies of itself, and (2) once it’s the dominant strategy, it cannot be displaced by other strategies.

One point the book makes repeatedly is to argue against the need for so-called “group selection” explanations to account for altruistic behaviour. In group selection, it’s posited that a group that has cooperative behaviour will out-compete a group (of the same species) that doesn’t. The theory presented here doesn’t require any form of group selection to work, and so it would seem to be unnecessary to invoke group selection to explain altruism. However, not much is said about whether group selection as a concept even makes sense. Are there any cases where group selection has been shown to happen? How would the mixing of genes between groups be prevented over the time periods required for group selection to occur?

The explanation of altruism as being in the interest of selfish genes may not fully satisfy everyone. Risking your life for your own child is one thing, but what about those who sacrifice their lives for unrelated strangers? This isn’t really covered in the book, but I don’t think it breaks the theory. During most of our evolution as humans, we would have been living in small tribes, in which there was a high chance of both relatedness and reciprocity. So a gene for “help everyone nearby” would have been just as effective as “help everyone I’m related to” (or “help everyone who is likely to be in a position to help me reciprocally in future”) and much simpler in operation. Now that we live in large cities, the behaviour just looks like general altruism towards everyone.

The final chapter in the 1976 edition (two subsequent chapters were added to the 1989 edition and later) is about “memes” which are cultural units of replication. This chapter predates the use of the term “meme” as it’s usually used today, to mean a shareable image and caption that gets spread around social media, although that type of meme is still a meme in the book’s sense. The definition here is wider though, and includes any type of thought that is transmissible between people, such as song lyrics, techniques for doing things, or ideas.

I read the 1989 edition (which is the version I had on my bookshelf from when I read it more than 20 years ago). It’s fair to say this book is one of my favourite science books and has influenced my thinking a lot. When I first read about the concept of our bodies being “survival machines” for our genes, I remember feeling a strange sense of vertigo at the idea that it was my genes that were the entity “in control”. But this way of looking at things also made a lot of sense to me. Dawkins keeps coming back to the gene’s eye view of evolution throughout the book, to make sure that his analogies and explanations make sense at this level. This is something that I also try to do when I’m reading about evolution in other books.

I really enjoyed (re-)reading this book. I find the writing style and explanations really clear; complex topics are conveyed carefully, step-by-step, in a way that allow you to really understand them.

There are a few little asides on the subject of religion in this book, and more in the endnotes. Dawkins is well-known as an atheist, and when I first read this book as a younger man I was cheering him on. I don’t disagree with him now, but they do seem quite off-topic for a book about genes, and I can see how the inclusion of these asides could put people off who are more sympathetic to religion and spirituality. This would be a shame, because they would be missing out on a clear and cogent account of how the gene’s eye view of evolution explains so much about the behaviour we see in the natual world, including such things as altruism.