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| The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (293 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1171
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0199291152
Dewey Decimal Number: 576.5
EAN: 9780199291151
ASIN: 0199291152
Publication Date: May 25, 2006
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| Customer Reviews:
 I'm not impressed. October 26, 2008
2 out of 37 found this review helpful
When a Creationist asked Mr. Dawkins "Can you give an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome?", Dawkins was clearly stumped. If the socalled authority on the topic is unable to answer this simple question, what value is his book? Creationists can answer it. Evolution is a dead dogmatic institution rotting on the dusty book shelves of universities. Only social outcasts and weird beard professors are capable of sustaining belief in this dead institution which blinds itself to the facts in order to maintain faith in the absurd creed of evolution theory against Creation fact.
 Possibly my favorite read of all time October 8, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Wow. When I finished this book, I did something I had never done before: I read the same book again. The second time through, I underlined things and scribbled thoughts on the inside covers and in the margins and wrote emails to friends about questions forming in my mind. After that second pass, I bought and read Dawkins's "The Blind Watchmaker" and "The God Delusion" and watched his TED video and several other videos of his on YouTube. "The Ancestor's Tale" and "The Extended Phenotype" are on my to-do list. I am quite impressed with this guy.
"The Selfish Gene" is my clear favorite of his books so far, and quite possibly my favorite read of all time. I thought I already knew a lot about evolution, but this book refined my understanding substantially. And Dawkins has a gift for writing, an ability to take a subject that in the wrong hands could be quite dry and make it very interesting.
Now for some qualifications. First, if you don't already have a reasonable understanding of evolution and the process of natural selection, you should probably get that somewhere else before starting this book. Carl Zimmer's "Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea" and the accompanying PBS video (which I think you can see at pbs.org) are an approachable choice.
Second, this is not light reading. It's readable, but there is a lot going on in these almost 400 pages, and you should expect to spend some time thinking about what he is saying. This is not a book to skim.
Finally, if for whatever reason you have trouble accepting the idea of evolution by natural selection, then there is probably little point in reading this book.
In this 30th anniversary edition, Dawkins has 66 pages of endnotes which make very interesting reading. Rather than change the original text in subsequent editions, he commented on it in the endnotes. At times he explains why he said something the way he did, or shares findings that have emerged since he wrote the book. In some cases he talks about the flak he got for saying what he did. And in a few cases he admits that he didn't say something in the best way. I found the updates and self-reflection in the endnotes quite enjoyable.
If you haven't already read this book (at least once :^), please do!
 Dissecting "The Selfish Gene" September 25, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
"The Selfish Gene" is Richard Dawkins masterpiece, and admiration for the scope and detail of his exploration of animal life has been world wide. His gift of analysis and synthesis is like a giant microscope givng an entrance into an area of knowledge never revealed before.
He outdistances Charles Darwin in his penetration into animal life, animal behavior, and the biological mechanisms that influence and sometimes determines behavior. As a scientific study and exposition, it has no parallel in contemporary scientific writing.
But that is where its value ends.
Richard Dawkins is an Ethologist, as he indicates in the 1976 edition of his book, an observer and chronicler of animal behavior, following in the footsteps of his master, Niko Tinbergen, and one of the founders of this branch of zoology, Konrad Lorenz. But the leap that Richard Dawkins has made in this new branch of science, is to identify his findings in animal behavior with human behavior, and this is the foundation for his conclusions in ethics, psychology, social science, philosophy and theism.
He is convinced, with no empirical data to back it up, that human beings are animals, not only in the category of genus, which nobody denies, but in the category of specificity as well. And that has been the huge blunder in his scientific research.
The whole tower of atheism, his excursions into philosophy and religion are based upon this methodological mistake. His positing as valid conclusions from his ethological research to human beings are conclusions that are valid only in animal research.
That is why "The Selfish Gene" can be very, very deceiving. Its conclusions do apply to the genetic code, the psychology and the behavior of the animals he has studied. But his application of these conclusions to human pschology and behavior are scientifically invalid.
"The Selfish Gene" is a brilliant book, advancing some facets of evolutionary biology into new and encharted territories. But when, as he does (with images that are fascinating and analogies that are captivating) apply his conclusions to human beings, he is out of his league.
He is a behaviorial scientist for the zoo, the jungle, the forest, the ground beneath our feet and the sea. His personal biases have overtaken his methodological skills and can ultimately cast doubt on the body of his work. That would be a tragedy, for Richard Dawkins is a brilliant scientist and his work lays the foundation for earthshaking advances in a multitude of sciences. His excursions into anthropololgy are based on a catalogue of personal biases from which he seems unable to escape.
Life is a watch too complex to create September 22, 2008
No, this isn't an Ayn Rand book urging you to be more selfish.
I consider The Selfish Gene to still be one of the cornerstones of Evolutionary Dynamics theory, particularly in its extension of biological dynamics into the non-biological world. Memetics really took general evolutionary theory past a threshold for information and soft sciences. I found its concepts to be invaluable for one of my grad papers on international systems where I made further extrapolations from both biology and memetics, formulating more specific characteristic traits shared by all extreme complexity nonlinear evolutionary systems.
Just as Darwin was not perfect, though, Dawkins himself oversimplifies at times. The scales at which these "games" transpire outside a vacuum include multi-gene traits, male-female trait-complimenting within speciation, role hierarchy, inter-species symbiotic relationships, larger populations, and even whole ecosystems. Furthermore, non-zero sum outcomes are more prevalent than winner-takes-all. Thus accounting for the multitude of levels at which competition occurs and adding, for example, Nash Equilibriums, one can only begin to explore the infinite complexity of how systems evolve.
On the religion aspect of this book, I think Dawkins does a fine job showing how biology and the workings of the universe do not necessarily "bare witness" to a god with the way life works, the planets revolve around the sun, or the rain falls from the sky. Biological evolution is a very specific example of this and case studies in transitional fossils, the newer computer experiments, and showing the prevalence of evolution everywhere help bare it out quite well here. At times, however, he seems to get a little preachy unconstructively to people who will likely just attribute their rationale to faith, anyway.
For a more recent and legally interesting exploration of the creationism v. evolution debate, I recommend the Nova documentary "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" for its timeliness and brevity. While I think this discussion is essentially long past over, even for an agnostic like myself I'm not going to dismiss all spiritualism or interest into the nature of consciousness or existence itself. The twisting of science using half-truths and ignorance in support of specific institutional dogmas is fair game for attack, though. And I have to admit The Selfish Gene was as successful as I think one can be in long-form.
Un libro indispensable en nuestra biblioteca. September 6, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Dado que mi "review" de este libro no es nada original comparado con las que ya se han escrito, la escribo en espanol. Este libro tambien se ha traducido en Espanol, aunque la que yo compre es la edicion del trigesimo aniversario en ingles. La edicion a la que aqui se hace referencia. El libro de Dawkings escrito hace ya 30 anos, es vigente y creo que es un libro indispensable en la biblioteca personal. Un best seller en su lenguaje de origen me parece que es poco conocido en paises hispanoparlantes, he visto pocas referencias a el, sin embargo creo que sera mas conocido en los proximos anos, por sus implicaciones, su lenguaje, su sencillez y la complejidad de sus ideas. Es un libro que recomiendo ampliamente a estudiantes de biologia, biologos y publico en general. La idea de "memes" creo que tambien es muy importante sobretodo en el siglo XXI donde la informacion se replica a gran velocidad. Tambien es un libro que se lo recomendaria a las personas que tienen un interes por la filosofia y las ciencias sociales, dos disciplinas que aun se comportan como si Darwin jamas hubiera existido. Asi pueden imaginarse a este libro como una version del "Origen de las Especies y la Seleccion _Natural" (sobre todo de la Seleccion Natural) de Darwin RELOADED.
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