PDF Summary:The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins
Book Summary: Learn the key points in minutes.
Below is a preview of the Shortform book summary of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Read the full comprehensive summary at Shortform.
1-Page PDF Summary of The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and author, Dawkins argues that biology’s focus on organisms is misguided, and that life should instead be considered from the point of view of individual genes trying to perpetuate themselves through countless generations.
Though the book begins with the premise that biologists think too large (organisms instead of genes), it ends with the surprising idea that they think too small—that genes have much greater impacts on the world than simply creating bodies to inhabit. Dawkins offers compelling arguments for why we should think about biology as ranging from the microscopic to the wider world.
(continued)...
Scientists have simulated this process using computers and game theory. By assigning arbitrary point and penalty values to different outcomes such as winning a confrontation, being injured, or wasting time on a lengthy contest, and programming in various strategies for the virtual “animals” to use, the simulation can run until the population stops shifting in any significant way. These simulations help scientists to find and understand the ESS.
Limited Resources May Cause Conflicts of Interest
Because Earth is a finite world with finite resources, there’s a natural struggle between the creatures who inhabit it to get those resources. This competition extends to family members, including the struggle between parents and their children for exactly what proportion of the resources each child should get. The parent will want to distribute resources for the best possible genetic payoff—in other words, the maximum number of surviving offspring. However, each child will be interested in getting more for itself. Therefore, the child will often try to trick its parents into believing it needs more resources than it’s getting.
Also, if there can be conflicts of interest between parents and children—who share 50% of the same genes—then there should be severe conflicts of interest between mates, who have no relation to each other at all. Genetically speaking, each is only valuable to the other in terms of their shared offspring. Each wants as many surviving children as possible, but they will naturally disagree on who should have to invest the resources to raise those children.
There are benefits to each of two conflicting situations: staying with your partner for as long as possible, and abandoning them with the child before being abandoned yourself. A mated pair that stays together can split the resource cost of raising their offspring. However, a parent who abandons their mate and offspring gains a significant advantage—if they can be reasonably sure that the remaining mate will successfully raise the child or children.
Worth noting in this situation is that the female will naturally be more invested in the offspring. This is because she contributes the larger and more resource-intensive egg cell and, in many species, because she takes on the cost and risk of pregnancy and birth. It will be much more difficult for the female to produce another offspring than the male, who could easily find another mate and impregnate her.
These two situations, parent vs. offspring and male vs. female mates, have led to a huge array of evolutionary tools and strategies. A child may use various tactics to try to get more than its fair share of the resources. For example, a common tactic among young birds is to cry more loudly than the others in the nest. Since the volume of a cry normally corresponds to how hungry the bird is, a louder hatchling can trick its parents into thinking it’s hungrier than the others, causing them to give it more food at its siblings’ expense.
For mates, many species of animals have long, intricate courtships to get both the male and female heavily involved before they actually reproduce. We mentioned before that, in theory, a male could simply leave and impregnate another female right away. However, if he knows he’ll have to go through the entire courtship again, it’ll be more worth his time to stay with the mate he already has.
Group Altruism and the Evolution of Culture
Many types of animals move, or even live, together in groups. Some advantages of this are obvious. For example, prey animals gain some protection from predators by living in groups. Meanwhile, predators like hyenas can bring down much larger prey by working together, so it benefits them all even though they have to share the food.
Another example is birds, many of which fly in formation and switch leaders frequently to reduce turbulence and make travel less tiring. However, birds have also been observed giving alarm calls to warn of predators, at some risk to themselves. This apparent act of altruism may ultimately be an act of selfishness—in fact, considering the selfish gene theory, it must be.
By the simple truth of natural selection, we can infer that giving that alarm call is more beneficial to the individual’s genes than not giving it would be. There are any number of possible reasons for this.
For instance, if a bird simply flew away upon spotting a predator, it would lose the advantages of living in a flock. If it froze and hid, but the rest of the flock kept moving around and making noise, that would draw the predator closer to the individual anyway. Therefore, it would be best to call a quick warning so the entire flock can hide. Also, there’s the simple likelihood that by taking a small risk to itself, the individual giving the call can protect many of its relatives. Finally, we can infer that if one of these birds calls to warn the others, that kindness will be repaid later by the others.
This is one form of reciprocal altruism: Two or more animals showing each other mutual altruism. Another common example is communal grooming. This example is especially interesting because there is a delay between one act of altruism and the act being repaid—pulling a harmful parasite off another individual doesn’t help you until you have a parasite to be pulled yourself.
The cost of grooming another member of the population is minuscule, but it’s still greater than zero. Therefore, among species that participate in communal grooming, there must be greater benefit than cost for doing so. One possible explanation is that members of the population evolved the ability to hold a “grudge”; that is, they refuse to groom selfish individuals who don’t groom others. This would naturally drive down the number of selfish individuals as they fall victim to parasites.
Ideas Spread Like Genes
Interestingly, ideas and behaviors can be observed to spread through populations and evolve much like genes do. Certain songbirds, for example, are known to learn their songs by imitating birds around them, rather than having them coded in by genes. However, sometimes birds will make a mistake and give rise to a new song. That song, in turn, is picked up by others and spreads throughout the population. If the replicator unit of biology is the gene, then the replicator unit of ideas could be called the meme—from the Greek mimema, meaning “that which is imitated.”
Among humans, the spread of ideas is more pronounced and much easier to recognize. A catchy song is a type of meme, as is a popular slogan or a political stance. God is one of the most successful memes in all of history—while it’s not clear how the idea of God originated in the “meme pool,” so to speak, it has been spread by stories, songs, art, and rituals to nearly every part of the world for thousands of years.
Culture and memes don’t seem to have any inherent survival value. It’s more likely that they’re side effects of group-focused evolutionary traits such as those discussed at the beginning of this section.
Extending the Phenotype
We began with the premise that biologists think too large (organisms instead of genes), but it’s also possible that they think too small—that genes have much greater impacts on the world than simply creating bodies to inhabit.
To look at biology in a new way requires that we consider what might be called the extended phenotype. Phenotype typically means the physical effects that genes have on the body they inhabit—for example, blue eyes or long legs. However, it’s not much of a stretch to extend the definition of phenotype beyond the individual, to include the impact on the world. This could be called an extended phenotype.
While phenotype typically refers to a creature’s physical body, genes don’t directly affect such things; rather, they change the internal workings of cells, which eventually leads to different traits in the body. Therefore, saying that the organism’s body—but not its impact on the wider world—is a result of those genes is fairly arbitrary.
Some examples of this extended phenotype could be bird nests and beaver dams. Though it sounds strange to say, there are genes “for” certain building materials and construction styles—phrased another way, there are genes that cause the animals to build structures in those specific ways. Even a lake that was formed by beavers damming a river could be considered part of those beavers’ phenotypes.
It’s easy to see the obvious ways that organisms interact with each other: competing for resources, predation, mating, symbiosis, and so forth. However, with an extended phenotype, it becomes clear that there are countless different ways that organisms—or, more accurately, genes—impact each other and the world around them. The problems and opportunities that arise from this gene-centric view of the world are explored in much greater detail in Dawkins’s book The Extended Phenotype.
Biologists Often Ask the Wrong Questions
Many biologists make the mistake of focusing their questions and their studies on the organismal level: They ask why an organism does something, or behaves a certain way. In fact, it’s quite common for biologists to say that DNA and RNA are tools organisms use to replicate themselves—which, in light of what we’ve discussed so far, is the exact opposite of the truth.
Organisms don’t replicate themselves at all (except in the relatively rare case of asexual reproduction). Given that the “purpose” of life is replication, it seems clear that organisms are tools that genes use to replicate themselves.
Starting from the genetic level, then, one might ask why organisms as we know them should exist at all. The simple truth is that organisms don’t have to exist. They exist on Earth because that’s what evolution happened to favor in this particular environment.
It’s helpful to remember that, at the most basic level, we’re dealing with replicators that aren’t so different from those found in the primordial soup eons ago. The only thing that must exist in order for there to be life is some form of replicator molecule. Replication is both the beginning and the purpose of life.
Want to learn the rest of The Selfish Gene in 21 minutes?
Unlock the full book summary of The Selfish Gene by signing up for Shortform .
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being 100% comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you don't spend your time wondering what the author's point is.
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Here's a preview of the rest of Shortform's The Selfish Gene PDF summary: