The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
01/06/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Oxford University Press. 360 page enlarged paperback. Price: £ 8.99 (UK), $15.95 (US). ISBN: 978-0-19-929115-1. Buy The Selfish Gene in the USA - or Buy The Selfish Gene in the UK  check out website: www.oup.com
This is the 30th anniversary edition of this book, 'The Selfish Gene', originally released in 1989. One of my reviewers (Hi Rod) suggested I ought to have a read of it when I asked him if there's any significant books that might have slipped past me in my research. I've known about Dawkins but gleaned most of the theory from articles already. Essentially, the passage of genetic information from generation to generation requires the domination and self-preservation to ensure propagation. Objectively, it's a pity Dawkins doesn't look in so much detail as to why some members of species, including humans, forego this desire to create a new generation but maybe that might be deemed too selfish. Nor does Dawkins really dwell that much that only half the genee go forward to the next generation and gets progressively smaller the further this goes on. If genes were that selfish, surely it would make sense to keep as complete a copy as possible.
Much of this book is used to provide examples of this action in motion and the various means it's carried out. If anything, it's more a case of Darwin's Survival Of The Fittest in action. As such, Dawkins is just bringing forward an observation that would have to work or evolution wouldn't work. I can appreciate why this was seen as revolutionary at the time of first publication but in many respects it's more an accepted thing that just needed to be put into words.
As a scientific topic it has much a chance of changing as Darwin's theory of evolution. If you want to show you're conversant with Dawkins' theory then this is the book to read.
Considering that this book's material has been re-trans-scripted, it's a shame that the publishers didn't do anything with the asterisks floating through the text. It wasn't until I got to the back of the book where the footnotes were referenced and I can't see anyone wanting to match them all up. Surely it would have made more sense to switch asterisks to numbers and use the traditional note connotation in an anniversary release than the messy way this is presented. Given a choice and saw them in the shops, I might have been inclined to go for an earlier edition.
GF Willmetts |
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