The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition
Mar 2006 · OUP Oxford
4.6star
289 reviews
Ebook
384
Pages
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About this ebook
The million copy international bestseller, critically acclaimed and translated into over 25 languages. This 30th anniversary edition includes a new introduction from the author as well as the original prefaces and foreword, and extracts from early reviews. As relevant and influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research.
Ratings and reviews
4.6
289 reviews
Matt McGoldrick
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August 16, 2016
Survival of the "Stable". ESS. Purposiveness evolving into Conciousness. Meme as replicator for human culture. Human brain as a computer doing "weighted sum" calculations. Human behavior as "rapid movement". "Simulation" as vicarious trial and error. All tying back into the big ideas of altruism vs selfishness and understanding ourselves better in a biological context. Will be returning to this book constantly.
10 people found this review helpful
Nav Qateel
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May 17, 2013
This was the second book I had read by Dawkins (The God Delusion being the first) and was amazed at how intuitive he really is to have even come up with the idea for this book. To get us to 'think' about Evolution in a different way but also making it accessible to the average layperson. Even in my middle age, Dawkins got me wanting to study Evolutionary Biology which I now do, but for pleasure than serious academic pursuit. Utterly brilliant book.
26 people found this review helpful
Andy G
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September 2, 2014
It's well worth the read. The chapter "Nice guys finish first" Felt like someone telling me something I already knew, yet had never stopped to think about. This book didn't just give me a better understanding of evolution it made me appreciate exceptional writing.
7 people found this review helpful
About the author
Richard Dawkins is the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His bestselling books include The Extended Phenotype (1982) and its sequel The Blind Watchmaker (1986), River Out of Eden (1995), Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), A Devil's Chaplain (2004) and The Ancestor's Tale (2004). He has won many literary and scientific awards, including the 1987 Royal Society of Literature Award, the 1990 Michael Faraday Award of the Royal Society, the 1994 Nakayama Prize for Human Science, the 1997 International Cosmos Prize, and the Shakespeare Prize in 2005.
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