The Selfish Gene (1976) 10/10/03. Reviewed by Jon Turney Richard Dawkins' classic account of what every gene really wants.

It's hard to believe that this book was published more than 25 years ago. This is the book that made a young Oxford don famous, or notorious according to taste. Like most of the books by the 'Devil's Chaplain', it develops from a single idea - in this case that 'There is really only one entity whose point of view matters in evolution, and that entity is the selfish gene'.

All of Dawkins' writing trademarks are there. The style is combative, but carries through arguments with great care. Re-reading, you feel that one reason he upset some people was that he is so good at explaining why those he disagrees with are wrong. He has a playful way with metaphor, which beguiled some readers and alarmed others. And he is fascinated by how much a simple set of ideas can explain about the living world.

'There is really only one entity whose point of view matters in evolution, and that entity is the selfish gene'.

Not that the book is always simple to read. Some of the ideas he wants to convey get quite technical. So although he leaves out the maths that the kind of evolutionary arguments he is making generally depend on, putting their intricacies in words makes for quite demanding reading at times. But again and again he hammers home the point that what matters from the point of view of natural selection is not the good of the group, or even the species, but changes in gene frequencies. If any creature behaves in a way that appears to benefit another, it invariably turns out to be because there is a good chance the two have genes in common.

This point of view has become more familiar now than it was in 1976, not least through Dawkins' later books and those of a whole slew of other popular writers he influenced. But it is easy to see why it made such an impact. The images are vivid. And, in spite of the repeated cautions that he does not believe genes have motives, the framing metaphors do make it sound as if we are simply the slaves of our DNA – mere robots blindly acting to propagate a set of genes. The popular image of the gene probably owes more to this book, or what are arguably misreadings of it, than to any other recent writing.

It is still controversial whether they are misreadings, of course, though some of the early denunciations of 'The Selfish Gene' as endorsing selfishness as a way of life now seem more products of their time than the book itself. But it is still worth going back to the original to see what all the fuss was about, and to sample the first fruits of Dawkins' effort to write for non-scientists. You will also find the first appearance of the meme – basically an attempt to Darwinise culture under the guise of explaining why humans have a different relationship with their genes from other animals – which was even more annoying to some.

The second edition of 1989 is nearly half as long again, with two additional chapters, and a fascinating new collection of notes collecting updates, afterthoughts, and replies to critics. But it is worth finding the original British paperback for the cover alone.

Book details

Paperback 366 pages (1976, second edition 1989)
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 0 192860 92 5