The Selfish Gene

Welcome home!  Glad to be back, though really learned a great deal about Trinidad and the challenges the country faces.  So I stayed home and read a classic, educational book, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.  This was clearly a classroom read for one of the RAs for a philosophy or pre-med course on the evolution of man.  Dawkins presents his view of the evolution of man from the point of view of the “gene” and how populations (whether bird or man) will tend towards an ESS, evolutionarily stable strategy.  Dawkins uses Darwin’s work as an underpinning for his arguments and takes them to a new level, the “quality of the gene” which explains a great deal as to the “outcome” of a species or individual animal/other species.  How we got this way and how are other species the way they currently exist are investigated.  Dawkins provides examples from bats, bees, dogs, and other animals alive today and not.  His view on “family planning” for man and the battle of the generations uses a mathematical formula in explaining why we are as we are, and how other groups have become extinct because of the “gene pool.”  I hadn’t read the background on the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” previously, though have used in leadership training sessions, so it was well orchestrated to prove his point.  Science as a means of explaining our evolution and continued existence intrigues me so I found this a good read for me.  I will admit the DNA sections of the book and other hyper-science discussions didn’t really excite me, but happy to gain some insight I wouldn’t have otherwise.  Clearly a review of a book of this nature can’t be captured in a paragraph, so if so inclined, grab the highly popular book and have a read.  I know I probably lost some of the text’s highlights but I’ll leave them for better minds to pull out for their inquiry into "Why Man?"