Genealogy Books - The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author

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Customer Rating:

Summary: I'm not impressed.
Comment: 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.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Possibly my favorite read of all time
Comment: 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!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Dissecting "The Selfish Gene"
Comment: "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.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Life is a watch too complex to create
Comment: 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.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Un libro indispensable en nuestra biblioteca.
Comment: Dado que mi "review" de este libro no es nada original comparado con las que ya se han escrito, la
escribo en español. Este libro también se ha traducido en Español, aunque la que yo compré es la
edición del trigésimo aniversario en inglés. La edición a la que aquí se hace referencia. El
libro de Dawkings escrito hace ya 30 años, 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
países hispanoparlantes, he visto pocas referencias a él, sin embargo creo que será más conocido
en los próximos años, por sus implicaciones, su lenguaje, su sencillez y la complejidad de sus
ideas. Es un libro que recomiendo ampliamente a estudiantes de biología, biólogos y público en
general. La idea de "memes" creo que también es muy importante sobretodo en el siglo XXI donde la
información se replica a gran velocidad. También es un libro que se lo recomendaría a las
personas que tienen un interés por la filosofía y las ciencias sociales, dos disciplinas que aún
se comportan como si Darwin jamás hubiera existido. Así pueden imaginarse a este libro como una
versión del "Origen de las Especies y la Selección _Natural" (sobre todo de la Selección Natural)
de Darwin RELOADED.

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