Dawkins, Richard (1941–)

The Selfish Gene

His career as a public scientist began in 1976 with the publication of his first book, The Selfish Gene. It remains his seminal work and a classic of popular science writing. It argued that Darwinian natural selection operated at the level of the gene, and organisms have existed chiefly as vehicles for replicating genes. It contended that even seemingly altruistic behavior among animals, such as birds risking their lives to warn the flock of a predator, can be driven by selfish genes to ensure their survival.

The book has been translated into 13 foreign languages and has sold more than 150,000 copies in English alone. It was expanded into a second edition in 1989 and republished as a 30th anniversary edition in 2006, along with a companion volume of essays titled Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think (2007). Critics have uniformly praised his engaging prose, which uses clever analogies and striking metaphors to communicate scientific ideas.

Dawkins made no sharp distinction between popularization and original scientific work. Even though it was primarily aimed at nonspecialist audiences, he viewed The Selfish Gene as a creative contribution to scientific knowledge. It was pioneering in modern popular science writing for its presentation of ideas and arguments that had not been agreed on or accepted within the scientific community. It drew on the work of neo-Darwinian scientists, including William Hamilton, Robert L. Trivers, G. C. Williams, and John Maynard Smith, whose work merged classical Darwinian evolution with population genetics.

Dawkins had been drawn to the philosophical dimensions of zoology since his undergraduate studies. The Selfish Gene's central ideas contributed to philosophical and moral debates that had been occurring in the late 1970s, following the publication of entomologist E. O. Wilson's controversial Sociobiology (1975). Critics objected to Dawkins's anthropomorphizing of genes and tended to take literally his vivid metaphors explaining genetic survival strategies. Critics, including British neurobiologist Steven Rose, argued that Dawkins's views were a form of genetic determinism, written from a neoliberal political perspective, criticisms Dawkins has continually denied. He is politically center left and has said he always voted labor or liberal in U.K. elections. In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins noted that he did not advocate morality based on evolution and argued that humans were not compelled to follow their genes' selfish drives.

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