The Selfish Gene Summary

Richard Dawkins—the author of The Selfish Gene—is the sole voice of its story. He believes that evolution happens to genes, not species. He also thinks there is no gene for altruism (selfless or kind behavior). He thinks this is quite a radical view, because it implies that we humans are “lumbering robots,” programmed by our genes to help them—the genes—survive. He thinks this is as strange as “science fiction” but it’s actually the truth.

In his “Preface to the Second Edition” of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins says he is writing for three kinds of people: the general reader (for whom he has avoided technical language), the scientific expert (who might see something in his story that they perhaps overlooked in their more technical way of looking at things), and the student (who might find the book helpful in breaking down technical theories into everyday language).

Dawkins begins (in “Why Are People?”) by saying that Charles Darwin offered the first coherent account of why we are here—why we exist—when he formulated the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species. Evolutionists claim that the world’s biodiversity exists because the natural world became more complex over time (evolved) through small changes in the way organisms interacted with their environments (adaptations). Since organisms were competing for finite resources (such as food), those individual organisms best suited to their environments won out and survived to reproduce, passing their traits on to succeeding generations. This process is called natural selection. Darwin also calls it “survival of the fittest.” Dawkins, though, thinks that genes (and not species) are evolving through natural selection. He actually thinks if Darwin were alive long enough to know about genes, Darwin would think this too. Dawkins decides to offer an account of life on earth from the “gene’s perspective” to explain his view.

Dawkins starts at the beginning: in the earliest time in history, when our universe was “simplicity.” This is how he opens his second chapter, “Replicators.” He explains that the ancestors of our genes were created by accident when the first atoms latched together into molecules that could make copies of themselves by attracting atoms to connect in the same patterns. These molecules were the first replicators. Sometimes, copies produced by replicators are a little bit off. As a result, different replicators emerged that were competing for atoms. This set up the conditions for evolution to occur.

In the subsequent two chapters (“Immortal Coils and “The Gene Machine”), Dawkins explains that all living organisms, from single cells to humans, are effectively “survival machines” created by genes to protect themselves (or, to protect their atoms from being stolen by other replicators). This means that organisms exist because they keep genes alive, as copies of themselves, from generation to generation. Hypothetically, this process could go on forever, and so genes are technically immortal.

Over the next six chapters, Dawkins addresses selfishness and altruism in nature. First, Dawkins discusses aggression in animals, in a chapter aptly called “Aggression.” He thinks that when animals refrain from being aggressive, they’re not actually being altruistic. Rather, those behaviors increase the animal’s chance of surviving to reproduce and, therefore, to keep the animal’s genes in the gene pool. For example, a small animal is unlikely to win a fight with a large predator, and so its tendency to flee when it sees a large predator will keep it alive, and when that small animal reproduces its tendency to flee instead of fight will get passed on in the gene pool.

Dawkins moves on to discuss cooperation and conflict among family members in his chapters entitled “Genesmanship,” “Family Planning,” and “Battle of the Generations.” He argues that animals are mostly nice (but sometimes nasty) to their relatives because relatives share genes. Cooperation among “kin” makes shared genes more numerous in the gene pool overall. For example, when a bird gives his baby brother a share of his food, he is actually helping to keep his own genes alive. Those genes just happen to live in his brother’s body. Sometimes, it pays off to be “nasty” and preserve the genes in your own body. But sometimes, it pays more to be “nice” to your relatives, because it preserves those same genes in their bodies. Dawkins looks at the work of various researchers to argue that altruism among family members is roughly proportional to the genetic relatedness between two individuals. In this way, all altruistic behavior between relatives actually betrays “selfish” genes working behind the scenes to ensure their own survival.

Dawkins repeatedly stresses that genes aren’t actively choosing to be “selfish,” since genes aren’t conscious. Rather, genes provide instructions for building embryos, like “build an embryo that will have long legs” (this helps organisms run faster and escape from predators), or “build an embryo that will chirp when there’s food nearby” (this benefits a chick’s nearby genetic relatives). These behavioral traits are a blind gamble: they’re the result of genes randomly shuffling in and out of chromosomes in sex cells. If the resulting behavioral traits happen to keep the organism alive long enough to reproduce, the gene for that trait will be passed on.

In the next two chapters, entitled “Battle of the Sexes” and “You Scratch My Back, I’ll Ride on Yours,” Dawkins discusses mating, sex ratios, social insects (such as ants and bees), and cooperation between unrelated individuals. In each case, Dawkins tries to show that behavioral traits exist in nature because they enable genes to pass on from generation to generation. Dawkins uses a hypothetical scenario called The Prisoner’s Dilemma from game theory (which is the mathematics of strategic behavior) to show that when two individuals are interacting, those that survive to reproduce tend to help each other out at first, but won’t help again if the favor is not reciprocated. This means cooperation happens because it increases the individual’s chances of survival, which is a “selfish” motivation.

Group selectionists offer alternative explanations for all the behaviors Dawkins discusses in these six chapters. Group selectionists tend to assume that altruistic behavior in nature—evidenced by birds that pick parasites off each other’s backs, and “kamikaze” bees that die when they sting—exists so that the group as a whole has a better chance of survival. Dawkins’ goal is to dismantle this view, by showing that all seemingly altruistic behavior is really selfish behavior when it’s looked at from the “gene’s eye view.”

Dawkins then switches tracks to talk about human culture in his next chapter, “Memes: The New Replicators.” He thinks that humans are different from most other organisms on earth because there are two kinds of evolution that affect human behavior. The first, as with all other organisms, is genetic evolution. The second is cultural evolution. Dawkins thinks cultural evolution happens through “memes.” Memes are things like ideas, catchy tunes, memorable images, and fashion trends that spread in a culture when they become numerous, by existing in different people’s brains. Memes compete with each other to be remembered and shared. A brain’s capacity for memory is finite, which sets up the conditions for evolution. The replicator in this kind of evolution is the meme. Memes are different from genes because they evolve much, much faster than genes do. This is why an English-speaking person today would have a hard time understanding the writings Geoffrey Chaucer (who wrote in English in the fourteenth century). Dawkins thinks that the concept of altruism comes from a meme, and not from a gene.

In his penultimate chapter, entitled “Nice Guys Finish First,” Dawkins revisits the topic of mutual cooperation to explore it more fully. He believes that all forms of strategic interaction in nature are versions of The Prisoner’s Dilemma in action. He stresses again that reciprocal altruism (or being “nice”) only exists when it increases a gene’s chances of survival.

The final chapter of The Selfish Gene, called “The Long Reach of the Gene” summarizes Dawkins arguments from another book of his called “The Extended Phenotype.” Dawkins thinks that genes bundle together as colonies or “cartels” that live in discrete bodies because this cooperation is more effective at keeping them alive. He also thinks that genes perpetuate themselves through the “bottleneck” process of sexual reproduction because it’s easier for evolution to happen when each generation starts anew from a single cell. If that single cell has a mutated gene in it, it automatically spreads to every cell in that organism. It’s no surprise, he says, that biologists initially got confused. When they started looking around, they saw organisms that reproduce, so they mistakenly assumed that either organisms or species of organisms were the things evolving. Although when you really think about it, Dawkins says, the boundaries of an “individual” are somewhat arbitrary. Some genes affect behaviors in other organism’s bodies (this happens when a parasite’s genes manipulate the body of its host). Some genes affect behaviors in the environment at large. This happens when organisms modify their environment and increase their chances of survival, for instance by building dams or nests. Dawkins thinks all of these examples are phenotypic effects. He thinks we tend to talk about individuals evolving in the context of their environments, but really, we should be talking about genes evolving in the context of their phenotypic effects.

Dawkins ends The Selfish Gene with an “Epilogue to the 40th Anniversary Edition.” In the epilogue, he argues that he hasn’t only been telling a story about genes. He’s also been telling a story about replicators. His story about genes in nature is just one example of a story about a replicator that evolves. His story about memes in a culture is another example of a replicator that evolves. There are likely many more stories to be told. He is certain, however, that every story about evolution—even on other planets—is a story about a replicator. In closing, Dawkins recalls that genes are technically immortal. This means that written in our genetic code is the history of life on earth, waiting to be decoded. He wonders what we could learn about dinosaurs or the origins of the universe if we were to start decoding the information in our genes. Perhaps, Dawkins says, he’ll work on that next, and share his insights when the 50th anniversary edition of The Selfish Gene is published.