Book Review

The Selfish Gene. By Richard Dawkins (1977). Oxford: Oxford University Press. L2.95.

As biology comes on age its explanatory power increases by more basic mechanisms being discovered. On the verge of reductionism, specialized biological subdiiciplines may shed a new light on common phenomena of life as has been done e.g. by biophysics (law of thermodynamics) and biochemistry (double helix). Analogously, in the latter years a sort of gene ethology has been introduced, and it is probably no coincidence that this has mainly been done by ethologists as, in fact, such studies can best be illustrated by the behaviour rather than by the bare morphology of animals.

Based on the classical, mathematical approach of R. A. Fischer, biologists like Hamilton, Maynard Smith and Trivers have laid a firm foundation for this new science. Their publications, however, have hitherto unsufficiently penetrated into the thinking of anthropologists (and probably of many biologists as well). This can be explained by their digestion being hampered by the-necessarily-accompanying mathematics. Dawkins has performed an admirable task by rendering this approach, supplemented by numerous of his own original ideas, in a form that can be understood by everybody having received some training in the life sciences.

In a lucid, narrative style Dawkins develops the point that the basis of animal behaviour (and morpholo,q) is not the group-selectionists’ species survival, nor the individual’s survival, nor even the chromosome’s survival; rather it seems to be the smallest genetical unit, the gene, trying to survive and to spread as many copies of itself as possible. The individual organisms are just “throw-away survival machines” for the selfish genes. Basically, therefore, natural selection takes place at the genes’ level.

The point is well illustrated with a number of examples from ethology, and more specifically with some-largely hypothetical-of Maynard Smith’s “evolutionary stable strategies”. These explain how mutations resulting in a shift of behaviour determine, e.g. the ratio of aggressive/non-aggressive behaviour within a population, the number of young born to a mother, sexual activities, the investment by the parents in their offspring, and even seeming altruism like the suicidal behaviour of social insects.

The book impresses me to be most strong in all these animal examples. Yet, I can imagine that advocates of group selection theory would consider some of Dawkins’ explanations as being somewhat far-fetched and as being replaceable by their’s And group selectionists will find a poor comfort in Dawkins defending his selfish gene theory

Journal of Human EvoZution (1979) 8, 647-648

648 BOOK REVIEW

so enthusiastically that he may have overlooked the possibility that conspecifics share many if not most of their genes (implying that gene, kin and group selection in many species in fact largely coincide). For example, on p. 214 he states: “‘Elisabeth II is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Yet it is quite probable that she bears not a single one of the old king’s genes”. I wonder whether fervent royalists would be greatly relieved learning that, in fact, she does bear many if not most of the old king’s genes but that all other humans do so as well.

I found it regrettable that, for the rest, Dawkins hardly applies his theory to man. Though he dedicates the last chapter to human behaviour the only original view he proposes is-in analogy to the genes-the concept of the so-called memes indicating fruitful human ideas that tend to spread themselves among humans like the genes do in other organisms. However, he thereby restricts himself to rendering human behaviour in the usual phenomenological terms, and thus does not really shed a new light on it. Methodo- logically, Dawkins could quite legitimately have attempted to apply his theory to man. For this, in fact, is a strong concept having a sound (bio)logical basis. Taking the risk of being considered as @us Dawkinsian que Dawkins, I suggest that the selfish gene theory may well appear to be of great use in replacing the phenomenological descriptions of human behaviour by more aetiological and explanatory ones. Accordingly, the behavi- oural sciences may greatly benefit from Dawkins’ approach, which thus offers a challenge to anthropology and sociobiology.

Apart perhaps from the somewhat confusing last chapter and the lack of illustrations this original and thought-provoking book can strongly be recommended to any student of the life sciences.

JAN WIND Departments of Human Genetics and Otorhinolaryngologv,

Free University,

Amsterdam, The Netherlands