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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Selfish Gene, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Gene’s Eye View of Evolution
Selfishness, Altruism, and Cooperation
Culture and Memes
The Unit of Evolution
Summary
Analysis
At the start of the universe, there was just simplicity. Dawkins thinks Darwin’s theory is appealing because it explains how the universe could start out as simple and become complex over time. Everything in the world is made of atoms that bumped into each other to form molecules. Some were unstable, and broke apart again, but stable molecules stayed connected. Dawkins thinks this was the earliest form of natural selection. Everything that exists today is made of stable molecules, from soap bubbles to the human body.
Dawkins starts with the early stages of the universe to argue that natural selection started happening before individual organisms (like plants, animals, or people) even existed. He wants to show that before “species” becomes a candidate for the thing that evolves, something else is going to come along first that works better as the unit of evolution.
Themes
Of course, nobody was around to see what happened back then. But it’s likely that before life existed on Earth, there were chemical raw materials like carbon, water, and ammonia (because they exist on other planets too). In experiments, scientists who took these chemicals and exposed them to energy discovered that a weak primeval soup of more complex molecules formed. These were purines and pyramids: the building blocks of DNA.
Dawkins uses the common scientific metaphor of “primeval soup” to describe the universe in its early stages. “Primeval” means “very early in history” and “soup” is a metaphor for basic molecules floating around space like liquid in a soup: they are not quite solid objects (such as rocks and plants) yet.
Themes
At some point, a “remarkable” sort of molecule must have formed by accident. It was remarkable because it had the ability to make copies of itself. By “make copies,” Dawkins means the molecule could attract atoms to attach in the same pattern as its original atoms. Dawkins call this a “replicator.”
Dawkins provides the first example in this book of a replicator, which means something that has the capacity to make copies of itself, or replicate itself. The concept of a replicator is central to Dawkins’s argument: he thinks evolution doesn’t happen without replicators.
Themes
Of course, it’s safe to assume that when things are copied, and those copies are copied, something might get copied a tiny bit wrong once in a while. The primeval soup would then have slightly different replicators competing for free atoms. This sets up the conditions for natural selection. Does this mean that the replicators were alive? Dawkins says that this is unclear, but what is certain is that the replicators are the “founding fathers,” the ancestors of DNA.
Evolution can only happen when there are different entities competing for the same finite resources. Replicators that are good but not perfect at copying themselves create different entities. The number of atoms in primordial soup is finite, just like the amount of soup in a bowl. The bowl contains everything out of which solid entities can be made.
Themes
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At some point, one of the slightly different replicators must have been copied in such a way that it had the capacity to “steal” atoms from others. That probably went on until another miscopy made a replicator with the capacity to build a “wall” of protein around itself, which would have protected its atoms. These were likely the first cells.
Dawkins personifies replicators to show that evolution demands the evolving “units” to be good at protecting themselves from destruction, which is implicitly self-interested (or, selfish).
Themes
As more occasional miscopies were made, it’s likely that one replicator had the capacity to break down protein walls so that it could eat up the most molecules in the primeval soup and become abundant, until another miscopy created a replicator that could make a stronger, more robust protein wall. Dawkins suggests that this protecting shell can be called a “survival machine,” since it keeps the replicators inside it intact, or “alive.”
The name “survival machine” emphasizes the function of a cell: it keeps replicators intact. Once there are no more free-floating molecules in primeval soup, the universe changes from a metaphorically soupy stage to a world of more robust entities, described by their functions: replicators and survival machines.
Themes
This process would have continued for thousands of millions of years, just like that, with the survival machines getting more and more complex. That’s where humans come into the picture: we are very complex survival machines that contain genes. Genes made us, and they “manipulate” us from inside. In effect, we are “lumbering robots” that replicators made to survive.
Dawkins argues that the function of a cell and a human is the same: both are made by replicators, and both are effective at keeping replicators intact. This is a functionalist account of evolution. It divides things up by what they do, rather than by what they’re made of.
Themes
