Misunderstanding Richard Dawkins
Introduction
Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene is the kind of book that changes the way that people look at the world. Its importance is that it articulates a gene’s-eye view of evolution. According to this view, all organisms, including human beings, are ‘survival machines’ that have been ‘blindly programmed’ to preserve their genes (see The Selfish Gene, p. v). Of course, extant survival machines take a myriad of different forms – for example, it is estimated that there are some three million different species of insect alone – but they all have in common that they have been built according to the instructions of successful genes; that is, genes whose replicas in previous generations managed to get themselves copied.
At the level of genes, things are competitive. Genes that contribute to making good bodies – bodies that stay alive and reproduce – come to dominate a gene pool (the whole set of genes in a breeding population). So, for example, if a gene emerges which has the effect of improving the camouflage of stick-insects, it will in time likely achieve a preponderance over alternative genes (alleles) which produce less effective camouflage. There are no such things as long-lived, altruistic genes. If a gene has the effect of increasing the welfare of its alleles to its own detriment, it will in the end perish. In this sense, then, all long-lived genes are ‘selfish’, concerned only with their own survival – and the world is necessarily full of genes which have successfully looked after their own interests.