For example, when a predator approaches a herd of Thomson’s gazelle, some individual gazelle perform apparently provocative displays in front of the predator. Specifically, about whether perceived examples of animal altruism are exactly that or whether there might be a better alternative explanation. So what is this book about? This is a book about ethology animal behaviour. You can certainly understand Dawkins’ frustration. The opposition may seem slow-witted and easily shot down, but they more than make up for it in repetition and determination and can easily overwhelm those who lack the will or the ammunition to keep up the fight. Taking on the various objections is like facing the zombie apocalypse.

It certainly can’t explain those who wilfully refuse to understand a books contents. But there is a short leash as to how much a title is to blame. In hindsight, Dawkins has expressed some regret over the title and its potential to mislead the easily misled. Additional material has been added to each new edition addressing some of the issues people have taken with the book – some reasonably, some less so. A significant portion of this otherwise short and excellent book (excluding introductions and end notes, the text is only 266 pages) is devoted to reiterating what this book is and what it is not – not a moral law, not a guide for human activity – as well as the limitations of the models, examples and analogies used. The unfounded assumption that, ‘if it is natural, it must be good’, is the basis of many a false and dangerous worldview.ĭawkins had some idea of what would come. It is not simply a religious complaint either. No one seems to insist that the laws of physics must be immoral for their ability to explain car crashes or better aim artillery. The charge that evolution is ‘immoral’ has existed for at least as long as Darwin’s Origin of Species. People sometimes struggle with the distinction between an explanation for the way nature works and an advocacy for how humans should conduct themselves.

No one who has actually read and understood this book would possibly conclude that. This is best exemplified by those who suggest this book is advocating selfish behaviour in a Libertarian or laissez-faire fashion. So many liberties and misunderstandings are taken from this book that you suspect many are deliberate and come from those who never got beyond the title.

It is disappointing, but appropriate, that we must begin by discussing what this book is not. That is, if you already possess a mind open enough to face the challenge. Unashamedly confident, yet modest of its own genius while marvelling at the wonders of nature it will force you to stretch your neurons with its intellectual rigor, bend to the weight of its logic and accept its alternative perspective. The Selfish Gene is rightfully a science classic.

The selfish gene author