It is through memes, Dawkins believes, that mankind can achieve true altruism, the foresight that directs individual behavior toward the good of the group. This is the cultural analogue of the gene-the idea, custom, or belief that spreads through human populations much more rapidly than biological traits. Ultimately Dawkins bails the human race out of the selfish gene concept by postulating yet another metaphor: the meme. The danger, repeatedly acknowledged by the author, is that the 'thinking gene' metaphor may be taken too literally certainly the reader who skims may be misled by the constant reification. Thus some degree of altruism is to be expected, even an occasional suicide. It is in the gene's best interest, for example, to see to it that the genes of near relatives get a better chance to survive, because this increases the chances of the selfish gene's identical replica also surviving. The gene is endowed with sentience to make the idear clear, which explains the book's title. The arguments are sophisticated game-theory ones, and the language largely metaphor. At that level all the arguments about man's true nature fade into the statistics of the probability of selection (and hence survival) in the gene pool. It is the gene (or rather a genetic unit which could comprise several different traits) which is replicated throughout generations. Dawkins' point is that neither the individual entity-man or plant or animal-nor the race is the measure of evolution. Wilsons who see cooperation and altruism as genetic traits, exemplified even at the level of the social insects.

Richard Dawkins is an English zoologist who is determined to refute not only the man-is-nasty ethologists like Lorenz or Ardrey but also the E.

The selfish gene pages