The Selfish Gene

By Richard Dawkins

 Reviewed by Mark McGrath

Background

Dawkins’ memetic forebear, William Hamilton, first uncovered the mathematical proof that altruism or genetically inspired cooperation amongst a species can be part of an evolutionary successful strategy for a set of genes with his 1963 paper, The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour[i]. Hamilton also was first to attribute intelligence to genes. It is these two ideas that form the basis of Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene,[ii] which developed and popularised Hamilton’s and others’ work and sparked heated debate in the scientific community, dividing Darwinians into two warring camps in the process.

The Selfish Gene is a layperson’s explanation and development of the ideas of William Hamilton, John Maynard-Smith and William Price: theoretical biologists who developed mathematical theories that proved that altruism can be part of a genetically successful strategy in the evolution of species.[iii] Hamilton discovered these mathematical theories; Price and Maynard-Smith then refined them and expressed them more elegantly, giving them a wider application that Dawkins has picked up on. But these theories also showed that there is nothing noble in the practice of altruism for a species: in fact it showed that the motivating force behind this strategy was genetic self-interest.

Reason Ruled by Rhetoric

Irrespective of the scientific merit of his ideas, Dawkins a great writer. He has the rare gift of being able to explain complex scientific concepts using easy to understand language as well as the ability to craft illuminating metaphors that grab the reader’s attention and make them want to read further. But this literary skill comes at a price. In simplifying and dramatising ideas with lofty rhetoric about the philosophical importance of evolution, Dawkins overstates his case on the importance of genes in human development and opens himself to the charge of being a genetic determinist, something he has since argued vigorously against.

According to Dawkins, the selfishness of genes can be broken down into two elements: firstly that they have no regard for their hosts other than using them as ‘survival machines’, and secondly that they are in competition with each other to prolong their longevity. Although Dawkins qualifies his use of the term ‘selfish’ to describe the behaviour of genes, arguing that altruism is an integral part of this selfishness, his use of grand narrative often gets him into trouble with sweeping statements like, “the gene is the basic unit of selfishness”.[iv]

Dawkins argues that the altruism of genes is limited and driven ultimately by self-interest: genes will tend to promote cooperative and apparently disinterested behaviour towards their relatives; the genes residing in the brothers, sisters, sons, daughters and cousins of their hosting survival machine, so that their common genetic material may prosper. He makes the point though that whilst this may predispose us humans of wanting to act altruistically towards our kin, it does not compel us to do so. This it seems is Dawkins wisely leaving the door open for the humanist to argue for cultural determination of human behaviour.

But whilst on the one hand, Dawkins qualifies his claims about the determinance of genes on human make-up, on the other hand elsewhere in The Selfish Gene he contradicts himself with unambiguous rhetoric that proclaims genes as sole determinants of human existence:

Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come along way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.[v]

This much maligned statement, appearing in one of the opening chapters that sets the tone for the rest of the book, leaves little room for individuality or cultural influence on human development: the human is reduced to a machine like robot that owes its whole origin and purpose of existence to the function and apparent motivation of genes.

Andrew Brown in his work, The Darwin Wars, makes the telling point that The Selfish Gene was “a book about genes that was read as a book about people”[vi] This insight provides the seed of the controversy over The Selfish Gene: Dawkins was principally concerned with the science of evolution, and in trying to dramatise its importance, offended the philosophical position of many social scientists who argue the humanist line that culture is the prime determinant of human history.

Determined Genes versus Free Will

Following the Dawkins evolutionary deterministic line of Darwinism and applying the scientific method of reductionism leads one to conclude that human innovation, free will and the uncertain unfolding of history is an illusion. If genes determine human behaviour, as Dawkins contends in The Selfish Gene, and molecular physics determines the make-up and functions of these genes, then our whole world is theoretically reducible to a set of mathematical equations, making a mockery of individuality and freedom of choice. It is this line of thinking that led molecular biologist and Director of the Human Genome Project, Professor Jim Watson, to contend, “There is only one science, physics: everything else is social work”.[vii]

But what Dawkins (and his fellow disciples of the reductionist cult) fail to recognise in the The Selfish Gene is that there are serious unanswered questions about the ability of causal processes to produce our current state of the universe and the capacity of reductionism to explain these processes. A sample of the evidence supporting this position:

Wesson highlights the lack of evidence from the geological record to fully explain evolution:

Large evolutionary innovations are not well understood. None has ever been observed, and we have no idea whether any may be in progress. There is no good fossil record of any of this.[viii]

Renowned mathematician Hoyle casts doubt on the statistical likelihood of life evolving from inert matter:

The probability of life originating by chance is about the same as the probability that a typhoon blowing through a junkyard could produce a Boeing 747![ix]

Darwin himself cast doubt on the theory of evolution:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.[x]

Behe, a biochemist, takes up Darwin's challenge. He studies molecular machines, like the mechanism involved in blood-clotting, and argues that there exist in biochemistry irreducibly complex systems, which resemble a mouse trap in that they are composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function. The removal of any one of the parts causes the system effectively to cease functioning. Take away one part of the blood clotting mechanism and the result may be fatal. Behe argues that there can be no Darwinian explanation for an irreducibly complex system, since any preceding stage in its evolution would have been non-functional and therefore eliminated by natural selection.[xi]

Furthermore, recent science has undermined much of the scientific claims in The Selfish Gene. For example, gene sequencing of dozens of species has shown that the Darwinian straight-line descent of species from an original cell is highly suspect, and instead of a 'tree of life' there is a 'web of life'.[xii] This and other advances in chemistry and biology erode the arguments about gene inheritance that Dawkins makes in The Selfish Gene.

All of the above is not to say that Dawkins’ position of life-forms being scientifically explainable by evolutionary processes is invalid. Rather, it’s more to say that the above evidence suggests that our world is not wholly determined by evolutionary forces and that there is room for the social sciences to play a role in explaining the human condition.

Memes as an Explanation of Selfless Altruism

Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene, also develops the concept of a meme: an entity that might play the role of gene in the evolution of ideas. But he stops short of endorsing the memetic concept as the equal of genetic evolution for several good reasons. Memes act more like phenotypes than genes: they are not mutually exclusive and so are not always forced to compete for survival and can successfully co-exist without destroying their counterparts, limiting the prospect of a natural selection process occurring.

Although a memetic theory is still to be fully developed, this concept of memes could provide Dawkins with a way out of the criticisms made against his concept of genetic altruism. The common criticism levelled at Dawkins’ argument of altruism being nothing but self-interest cloaked in apparent selflessness is that there are numerous examples of selfless and disinterested behaviour in humanity that in no way would advance a person’s genes and which would therefore not be naturally selected.

For example, Martin Luther King’s fearless campaigning for black rights in the face of hostile and violent opponents was certainly not in the best interests of prolonging his genetic line. But maybe the concept of memes can explain this phenomenon: such acts of altruism may not further a genetic line, but they may well further the longevity of the altruist’s memes. Whilst Martin Luther King’s campaigning was genetically risky, it was well within the interests of furthering his memes of equality and social justice for black Americans – something that keeps alive his presence just as much as it does the objectives it seeks to realise.

Conclusion

Dawkins the evolutionist and pioneer of memes could take heart over the vigorous debates in the scientific community that The Selfish Gene has sparked. Since the release of this book, his school of thought about Darwinian theory has been subject to strong competition, forcing the theory to be reproduced with modifications that have incorporated valid criticisms of Dawkins’ original thesis. Just like the evolution of natural species, this had made the Dawkinsian school of evolutionary thought more robust.

If you are taking on a subject like Evolution, Innovation and Knowledge then this book should be read. The Selfish Gene represents not only the theoretical foundation stone of one side of an important ongoing debate about the function and significance of evolution, but it is also the seed for the development of the concept of memes; of great relevance to the processes of innovation and knowledge production.

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