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The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins: A book review

The Selfish GeneThe Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book reads like a story therefore making complex concepts simple and interesting. Dawkins establishes very early on that the genes today in all of our bodies are essentially just versions of the earliest replicators. The argument of why the gene is selfish and how every single behavior of every plant and animal is dictated by the genes selfish nature to multiply makes for an interesting read.

Reading it today, more than 40 years after it was written, some of the scientific achievements of mankind that seemed speculative and futuristic at the time are now already in use. For example, he talks about something similar to what became IBM's deep blue (first chess-playing computer to win against the reigning world champion), maps that could give you the best route and today we can't think of going anywhere without Google Maps. Also, one of the chapters is called memes because of its traditional meaning, which is, "an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, especially imitation". But, all I could think of was its current meaning from the Urban dictionary, "a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users". Internet hadn't even been invented at the time that Dawkins wrote this and it just made me chuckle at the hilarious changes in the meanings of old words. :P

But what this book does really well is to explain everything from growth,acclimatization to selection of a partner, reproduction, caring and rearing of young ones and propagation of behavior from the perspective of the selfish gene. There are lots and lots of examples for each of these. And, I found this book interesting precisely for this reason even though I myself am a scientist familiar with most of these theories of evolution. Definitely a highly recommended read for everybody. :)

-RS


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