The selfish gene book review6/28/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() He demonstrates that many apparently paradoxical behaviors make perfect sense when looked at in the light of individual genes’ struggle to maximize their chances of perpetuation. And so, as Copernicus reoriented the solar system such that we are not at its center, and Darwin demoted humans to evolved great apes, Dawkins dealt the final blow to anthropocentrism: even we as individuals are not at the center of natural selection.ĭawkins wrote his book from the viewpoint of a zoologist, and he focused most of his attention on animal behavior. To bring this point home, he memorably defines bodies as survival machines: “robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” These survival machines - us - are discarded as our genes move on to another transient individual. Most importantly, Dawkins demonstrated with the utmost lucidity that we had biology upside down: evolution - and hence biology - is not concerned with the organism, but with the genes that survive unscathed through the eons by jumping from body to body. ![]()
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