The Human Question

When Dawkins clarifies what he means by the term "gene" in the title of his work, he states that it refers not an to individual but to a whole population of genes of a certain type.  He then proposes that we apply a metaphor as a kind of shortcut for understanding the conclusions of mathematical genetics: imagine that the gene is an individual trying perpetuate itself by competing with its allele and cooperating with other genes in producing a vehicle that will behave in such a way as to enable the genes to survive to the next generation. According to this heuristic, those genes that are most ingenious at producing effective survival machinesl will tend to become predominant in a population. This metaphor is, in my opinion, a great device for giving a basic idea about population genetics. But Dawkins also uses it to make a philosophical point, and in doing so seems to change the subject in a manner that is misleading. He talks of individual genes using an individual organis...

Richard Dawkins'  The Selfish Gene  proposes a new way of looking at biology, one that reverses the relationship between genes and organisms.  Whereas biologists have tended to look at the organism as central and genes as interesting inasmuch as they affect the lives of organisms, Dawkins proposes that we look at genes as central and at organisms inasmuch as they contribute to the perpetuation of genes. He initially proposes this shift in the form of a mere metaphor: what would a gene think and do if it could deliberate about ways in which it might perpetuate its form?  Well, it would look at the organism as a vehicle that it, alongside with other genes with whom it is cooperating, could use to make it to the next generation.  A survival vehicle.  It would look at the organism as a "lumbering" robot that it could use to manipulate its environment so that opportunities and dangers to self-perpetuation could be dealt with.  The book begins by employing t...