84 pages • 2 hours read
Richard DawkinsThe Selfish Gene
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1976A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Machinery
Dawkins repeatedly likens animals to robots, efficient machines. Instead of turning to superstition or tradition to explain people’s origins and behaviors, Dawkins invokes mechanical explanations.
A human is viewed as a protective robot for replicating molecules, genes. The replicating molecules themselves are viewed as machines, for making fast and accurate copies of a stable structure. Dawkins invokes comparisons to machines including vehicles, computers, and various industrial machines.
Architecture
Dawkins compares organisms to a large building. Each room (cell) contains the entire blueprint for the organism (DNA). The genetic code constructs large buildings to house itself, protecting the replicators from the environment.
Text
Dawkins compares genetic code to text. Each chromosome represents a large volume. A gene approximately represents a page, however it is not exactly divided as a book page, but rather extends as a lengthy line that can be chopped up and reassembled, like ticker tape. The nucleotides are like single characters.
Investment
Dawkins often compares genetics to investment. Relatives invest in each other, genes invest in their survival machine, and so forth. People having more closely related genes can invest more, for selfish genes to assist themselves in other bodies. Bigger prizes or better chances can also enable investment. Gambling or investment explains numerous behaviors.
Demystification
Dawkins often addresses topics shrouded in mystery or mysticism, and he addresses them from mathematical or scientific perspectives. Animal behaviors that have mystified generations receive logical explanations that treat animals as unconscious machines. Vampire bats regurgitate blood out of economic strategy, not eerie darkness:
As for me, I am sceptical of all myths. If we want to know where the truth lies in particular cases, we have to look. What the Darwinian corpus gives us is not detailed expectations about particular organisms. It gives us something subtler and more valuable: understanding of principle (172).
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