Any population of entities that produce copies of themselves, and that vary both in their specific features and in their reproductive success, are replicators and are thus candidates for darwinian selection. In the last chapter of the first edition of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins introduced what may be his most popular idea, that of ‘memes’, or cultural replicators. Dawkins shows how this logic can be exploited at the micro-level of ‘replicators’, or genes. The logic is that used by Darwin when he explained the existence in nature of design without a designer as an effect of selection. Of course, genes are not literally agents, let alone selfish ones intent on propagating themselves, but analysing what they would do if they were provides us with a uniquely cogent account of their actual effects on the world.
Fragments of molecules, on the other hand, are unfamiliar objects to which we are not disposed to attribute interests and goals. We spontaneously interpret the behaviour of individuals as that of agents capable of pursuing their interest, and extend this kind of interpretation to social groups. His picture challenges common-sense ontology and expectations, and is indeed astonishing.
Aggression: stability and the selfish machineġ0.What Dawkins did was integrate such findings into a vivid and systematic picture of biological evolution wholly “from the point of view of the gene” and explore the wider implications of this approach. Forty years later, its insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published.ĥ. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought.
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