Richard Dawkins
Jeffrey R. Baylis. "Animal Behavior".
We are created by our genes. We animals exist to preserve them and serve only as machines to ensure their survival, after which we are simply thrown away. The world of the selfish gene is a world of brutal competition, ruthless exploitation and deception. But what about the acts of apparent altruism observed in nature: bees committing suicide when they sting an enemy to protect the hive, or birds risking their lives to warn a flock of the approach of a hawk? Does this contradict the fundamental law of the selfishness of the gene? No way: Dawkins shows that the selfish gene is also a very cunning gene. And he cherishes the hope that the view Homo sapiens- the only one on the entire globe - capable of rebelling against the intentions of a selfish gene. This book is a call to take up arms. It's a guide and a manifesto, and it's as gripping as a suspenseful novel. The Selfish Gene is Richard Dawkins's brilliant first book, and it remains his most famous book, an international bestseller, translated into thirteen languages. Notes have been written for this new edition, which contain very interesting reflections on the text of the first edition, as well as large new chapters.
"...highly scholarly, witty and very well written...intoxicatingly great."
Sir Peter Meadower. Spectator
Richard Dawkins is a lecturer in zoology at Oxford University, a member of the council of New College and the author of The Blind Watchmaker.
“a popular science work of this kind allows the reader to feel almost like a genius.”
New York Times
Preface to the Russian edition
I have the rare pleasure of presenting to the reader a translation of the second edition of the book by the famous English evolutionist R. Dawkins, “The Selfish Gene.” The need for its translation became clear to me from the moment I became acquainted with its first edition. Let's hope that someday we will see other works of this brilliant naturalist-philosopher in Russian - “Extended Phenotype” and especially “The Blind Watchmaker”.
I will not outline the contents of the book so as not to spoil the impression for readers, but I will express a number of my comments, because, despite my admiration for Dawkins, I cannot agree with some of his provisions unconditionally.
Dawkins is a convinced Darwinist. Ultimately, the entirety of The Selfish Gene is strictly derived from two statements by Darwin. Firstly, Darwin wrote that “non-hereditary change is immaterial to us,” and secondly, he realized and clearly indicated that if a character was found in any species that was useful to another species or even - taking into account intraspecific struggle - another individual of the same species, this would be an insoluble problem for the theory of natural selection. Nevertheless, such concepts as group selection, kin selection, reasoning about genes and the evolution of altruism, etc., have become widespread. Dawkins is a staunch opponent of such concepts and throughout the book, with his characteristic wit and ingenuity, challenges them, arguing that no matter how altruistic the behavior of any living creature may seem, it ultimately leads to an increase in the frequency of occurrence in the population of the “selfish gene” that determines this trait.
All this is true, but... what exactly is selfishness at the genetic level?
The author proceeds from the widespread concept of the “primary soup”, in which the primary genes-replicator molecules, capable of creating copies of themselves, arose. Replicating from generation to generation, they become potentially eternal. From the moment replicators emerge, a struggle for resources begins between them, during which they build themselves “survival machines - phenotypes.” First these are cells, and then multicellular formations - complex organisms. Our bodies are temporary, transient structures created by immortal replicator genes for their own needs.
One can argue with such a statement. After all, genes are not eternal; their synthesis during replication is semi-conservative. In divided cells, only 50% of the DNA is inherited from the mother cell, the second strand of DNA is built anew, and after 50 generations the share of the original genes in the population decreases by 2^50 times.
The same is true with phenotypic structures - cytoplasm and cell membrane. Daughter cells inherit 50% of the cytoplasm of the mother cell, their descendants 25%, etc. The only difference between phenes and genes is that their replication is not direct, information about it is contained in genes. But a gene taken separately, without a phenotypic environment, is powerless; it cannot replicate.
The picture of the first replicating genes floating in the warm “primordial soup” is too idyllic to be true. A successful replicator mutation is diluted by the entire volume of the primary ocean. The crown of such evolution could be the thinking ocean of the planet Solaris, described by S. Lem. But just such an evolution cannot take place: the probability of the meeting and joint action of successful replicators, diluted with the entire volume of the Earth’s hydrosphere, is zero.
So it appears that the cell arose before life. Replicators multiplied in primary vesicles bounded by semi-permeable membranes, which are now obtained experimentally (Oparin coacervates, Fax microspheres) or found in sea foam (Egami marigranules). And from the first protocell, which could be considered alive without much of a stretch, the advantage in the struggle for existence was given to the replicator, which replicated not only itself (these “daffodils” were just dying out), but also the structures of the primary cytoplasm and membrane. The best way for genes to survive is to replicate once in a cell, and spend the rest of the time and resources replicating other polymers.
Whether this is selfishness - I don’t know. Rather, such a strategy is similar to the concept of “reasonable egoism” put forward by N. G. Chernyshevsky. Or maybe, when describing biological phenomena, it is generally better to abandon such terms as “altruism”, “egoism”, etc.? After all, the very idea of “altruism genes” arose in the struggle with those who believed that Darwinism boils down to an endless “fight of tooth and claw.” Both points of view are a departure from the straight path.
One of the greats said that the importance and non-triviality of any judgment is easy to determine: the judgment deserves these assessments if the opposite is true. Dawkins writes: “They [genes - B.M.] are replicators, and we are the machines they need to survive.” The opposite statement is: “We are replicator cells, and genes are parts of the memory matrix that we need to survive.” From the point of view of cybernetics, we are all self-replicating von Neumann automata. Copying, matrix replication is not life. Life begins with the genetic code, when the replicator reproduces not only its own structure, but also other structures that have nothing in common with it.
I will conclude my doubts with the statements of the cyberneticist Patti: “Where there is no distinction between genotype and phenotype, or between the description of a trait and the trait itself (in other words, where there is no coding process that connects the description with the described object by reducing many states to one), it cannot be evolution through natural selection."
Dawkins is right: “All life evolves through the differential survival of replicating units.” But replicating units are not just replicator genes, but their discrete unities with phenotypic characteristics. This is what I called at one time the first axiom of biology, or the Weismann-von Neumann axiom. And we’ll leave the terms “egoism” and “altruism” to moralists. Outside human society there is only a greater or lesser probability of successful replication of the replicating unit.
You might think that I was too carried away with criticism. Therefore, I hasten to say what I liked most about Dawkins’ book. This is Ch. 11 - "Memes: the new replicators." More Darwin in ch. The XIV Origin of Species was the first to draw a clear analogy between the evolution of species and the evolution of human languages. Dawkins introduces the concept of “memes” - stable elements of human culture transmitted through the channel of linguistic information. Examples of memes, analogous to genes, are “melodies, ideas, buzzwords and expressions, ways of cooking stew or building arches.” On my own behalf I will add: as well as words and ways of combining them, the theories of Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein, religions with all their prayers and rituals, dialectical materialism, etc., etc. (I will note in parentheses that I would transcribe the word memes in Russian as “memes” by analogy with the words “memoirs, memorial”, however the transcription of “memes” has already entered the literature.) Just as our genes are located on chromosomes, memes are localized in human memory and are passed on from generation to generation with using words - spoken or written.
In his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins explains his very interesting and controversial theory. It is different from Darwin's theory of evolution. The author believes that the main unit of evolution is not an individual (animal, human, plant), but a separate gene.
The book received this title precisely because Dawkins believes that the gene controls the entire process of evolution. His main task is to survive. A living individual is perceived only as a means of transmitting information. By and large, the gene does not care how this individual will live, in what conditions, or how long its existence will last. The most important thing is that the gene is preserved through this individual. Dawkins explains this theory with the help of many examples, which makes you think and look at evolution with different eyes.
The book also mentions the term "meme", which was not used then, but is now used quite often. With its help, the author explains the transmission of cultural heritage, thanks to which we are not soulless robots participating only in the transmission of genes. However, Dawkins is talking not so much about human beings as about animals. For example, he says that birds and animals also have a ritual of passing on their knowledge and experience accumulated during evolution. All this seems very interesting.
The book was written at the end of the 20th century and since then attitudes towards it have changed. At some period, the author’s idea was perceived quite favorably, at other times his thoughts caused a lot of criticism. In the new edition, the author sets out not only what was originally included in the text of the book, but also publishes new chapters, opinions and questions from critics, and then provides his thoughts on the topic under discussion. Sometimes he admits that several years ago he did not take into account certain facts, sometimes he explains this or that situation in other words. This creates a sense of conversation, which pleases readers. Despite the fact that the topic is quite complex, the author manages to present it in an accessible way, giving many examples throughout the narrative.
On our website you can download the book “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy the book in the online store.
A clear indication of how popular this essentially dead dogma still remains is the frantic demand enjoyed by Richard Dawkins's scientifically illiterate book, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins puts forward the theory that genes created us so that we could spread and reproduce them. Using logic to reach completely illogical conclusions, he not only wrote an absurd parody of science fiction, but also left the most severe reductionism far behind, reducing organisms to the position of simple biological machines in the service of genes.
After all, Dawkins points out, genes live for many generations, whereas humans have only one life. Genes are the driver, but man is just a car that needs to be replaced with a new model after it has run 5 million miles or lived for 120 years, whichever comes first. Dawkins's suggestion is akin to the ancient belief that the chicken is simply a device for eggs to produce more eggs.
But why is the gene called selfish? Therefore, Dawkins argues, genes have the same desire to survive as we do, and they ensure their own survival without caring about the survival of the organism or even the species in which they live. According to this theory, the goal of evolutionary adaptation from generation to generation is not to ensure the survival of the organism, but to increase the reproductive capacity of the genes themselves. And even if such an adaptation does not ensure the survival of the organism, the selfish gene does not care about this.
And since the central dogma is that everything in life is determined by genes, it is quite reasonable to reason (however unreasonable this reasoning may be) that, in the words of Dawkins, “we are all born selfish.” And he believes that natural selection favors those who cheat, lie, dodge and exploit others - that genes that encourage children to behave immorally are favored over other genes. Altruism, according to the author of this book, is inherently unproductive, since it goes against the tendencies of natural selection. The same goes for the practice of taking in adopted children; Dawkins believes this is "contrary to our instincts and the interests of our selfish genes."
Fortunately, few people adopt Dawkins's extreme materialistic views. Yet, as we saw with Enron, his ideas provide the scientific basis (or so it seems to some) for the most ruthless manifestations of social, commercial, industrial and governmental Darwinism. Dawkins calls himself an atheist and says he does not believe in a caring Creator or caring people. Unlike many humanists, who also do not believe in a personal God, he simply dismisses anything that is not deterministic, materialistic and downright selfish.
If survival equals success (as Dawkins argues), then metastatic cancer is highly successful. Exactly until, of course, he kills the owner. However, (assuming that our fate is controlled by DNA) at the time of the host's death, the selfish genes that cause cancer have already managed to ensure their survival by introducing themselves into the genetic structure of the host's offspring, in which future copies of this gene will repeat this same gene again and again the same process... until the disastrous situation spreads like a cancerous tumor.
There is a feeling that from the point of view of the biosphere, human activity is like a cancerous tumor, reproducing and copying itself until it destroys its habitat. Now that humanity has entered space, we have taken the first step towards leaving our beloved Earth to die and going to infect new planetary systems ourselves - thereby ensuring our further survival.
The Selfish Gene is a non-fiction work on evolution written by Richard Dawkins in 1976. It reveals Dawkins's view of evolutionary strategies through an analysis of the evolutionary and behavioral processes of the entire animal world, from insects to humans. Dawkins also draws parallels with cultural evolution: the development in society of ideas, technologies, religions, etc., and for the first time introduces the concept of a meme - a unit of cultural information.
Richard Dawkins. Selfish gene. – M.: Corpus, AST, 2017. – 512 p.
Download abstract ( summary) in or format (the outline is about 4% of the volume of the book)
Chapter 1. Why do we live?
My goal is to study the biology of egoism and altruism. I maintain that the predominant quality of a successful gene must be ruthless selfishness. However, under some circumstances a gene is best able to achieve its own selfish goals by promoting a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals. As much as we would like to believe that things are different, universal love and the well-being of the species as a whole are meaningless concepts in evolutionary terms.
If one strives to create a society whose members cooperate generously and selflessly for the common good, one cannot count on the help of human biological nature. Let's try to teach generosity and altruism, for we are born selfish.
Man is the only living creature that is predominantly influenced by culture acquired as a result of learning and transmission to subsequent generations. According to some, the role of culture is so great that genes, whether selfish or not, are essentially irrelevant for understanding human nature. Others disagree with them.
Confusion in ethical ideas about the level at which altruism should end - at the level of family, nation, race, species or all living things - is reflected, as in a mirror, in parallel confusion in biology regarding the level at which manifestations of altruism should be expected according to with evolutionary theory. Even an adherent of group selection will not be surprised to find hostility between members of two warring groups - like members of the same union or soldiers, they help their own group in the struggle for limited resources. But in this case, it is appropriate to ask, on what basis will he decide which level should be considered important?
I will insist that the basic unit of selection, which is therefore of independent interest, is not the species, not the group, and not even, strictly speaking, the individual. The basic unit is the gene, the unit of heredity.
Chapter 2. Replicators
Spontaneous processes should have given rise to the “primordial soup”, from which biologists and chemists believe that the seas consisted of 3-4 billion years ago. At some point, a particularly remarkable molecule was accidentally formed. We'll call her replicator. It was not necessarily the largest or most complex molecule in existence, but it had the extraordinary property of being able to make copies of itself.
Rice. 1. Replicators
A new form of “stability” has arrived in the world. Previously, there was probably no particular abundance of complex molecules of any one type in the soup, because the formation of molecules of each type depended on the random combination of building blocks in one or another specific configuration. With the emergence of the replicator, copies of it probably spread rapidly across the seas.
One important thing to note about any copying process is that it is imperfect. Errors made by biological replicators when copying can lead to real improvements, and for the progressive evolution of life the occurrence of some errors was essential.
Long-lived replicators turned out to be more numerous. Another property of one type of replicator that would play an even more important role in its spread through a population was its replication rate, or “fertility.” The third feature of replicator molecules that must have been preserved by selection is the accuracy of replication.
The next important link in our reasoning, which Darwin himself emphasized (although he had plants and animals in mind), is competition. There was a struggle for existence between different types of replicators. They didn't know they were struggling and didn't care about it.
Replicators began not only to exist, but also to build for themselves certain containers, carriers that ensure their continuous existence. At the same time, the replicators survived, managing to build survival machines for themselves in which they could exist. Machines increased in size and improved, and this process was cumulative and progressive. They've come a long way, these replicators. Now they exist under the name of genes, and we serve as survival machines for them.
Chapter 3. Immortal Spirals
“We” are not only people. This “we” includes all animals, plants, bacteria and viruses. Different types of survival machines vary greatly both externally and internally. Meanwhile, the replicators they have, i.e. genes are represented by molecules that are basically the same in all living beings - DNA molecules.
DNA molecules carry two important functions. Firstly, they are replicated, i.e. create copies of themselves. Secondly, it indirectly controls the production of molecules of another substance - protein. This influence is one-sided: acquired characteristics are not inherited. No matter how much knowledge and wisdom you accumulate during your life, not a single drop of it will be passed on to your children genetically.
Over the past six hundred million years or so, replicators have made remarkable advances in the technology of creating survival machines such as muscles, hearts, and eyes (which have independently evolved several times).
The smaller the genetic unit, the more likely it is that some other individual has it—the more likely it is to be duplicated multiple times. Random association as a result of crossing over of preexisting subunits the usual way the emergence of a new genetic unit.
Another method, which, despite its rarity, has enormous evolutionary significance, is called point mutation. A point mutation is an error corresponding to a letter typo in a book. It happens rarely, but it is clear that the longer the genetic unit, the more likely it can be expected that a change will occur in it as a result of mutation at some point.
Another rare error or mutation that has important long-term consequences is called an inversion. It arises as a result of the fact that a section of the chromosome, having split out of it, rotates 180° and in this rotated position again takes its place.
By "gene" I mean a genetic unit that is small enough to survive for many generations and spread around in large numbers of copies. The more likely it is that a given section of the chromosome will be broken during crossing over or changed as a result of various kinds of mutations, the less it deserves the name of a gene in the sense that I mean by this term.
Some researchers consider the species to be the unit of natural selection, others - the population or group within the species, and still others - the individual. I prefer to regard the individual gene as the basic unit of natural selection, and therefore as a functional unit of independent interest.
Natural selection in its most general form means the differential survival of organisms. Some organisms persist and others go extinct, but for this selective death to have any effect on the world, each organism must exist in large numbers of copies, and at least some organisms must be potentially able to survive - in the form of copies - in over a significant period of evolutionary time. Small genetic units are endowed with these properties, but individuals, groups and species are deprived of such properties.
The gene is passed on from grandfather or grandmother to grandson or granddaughter, remaining unchanged, and passes through the intermediate generation without mixing with other genes. If genes constantly merged with each other, natural selection as we currently understand it would be impossible. Another aspect of the gene's corpuscularity is that it never ages; he is equally likely to die at the age of a million or just a hundred years.
From a genetic point of view, individuals and groups do not remain stable over evolutionary time scales. Evolution is impossible if all you have is a choice between organisms, each of which is available in only one copy! Sexual reproduction is not replication. Just as a given population is “contaminated” by other populations, so the offspring of a given individual is “contaminated” by the offspring of his sexual partner.
What are the properties by which you can immediately recognize a “bad” short-lived gene? There may be several such universal properties, but one of them is especially closely related to the theme of this book: at the genetic level, altruism is a bad trait, and selfishness is a good one.
Genes directly compete for survival with their alleles (the same gene of the sexual partner) contained in the gene pool, as these alleles strive to take their place in the chromosomes of subsequent generations. Any gene whose behavior is aimed at increasing its own chances of survival in the gene pool at the expense of its alleles will, by definition, strive to survive (in essence, this is a tautology). The gene represents the basic unit of egoism.
Chapter 4. Gene machine
Genes regulate the behavior of their survival machines not directly, by pulling strings with their fingers like a puppeteer, but indirectly, like a computer programmer. All they can do is provide their machines with the necessary instructions in advance; then the machines act on their own, and the genes sit passively inside them. Why are they so passive? Why don't they take the reins and lead the process step by step? The fact is that this is impossible due to the problems caused by the time lag.
Genes exert their effect by regulating protein synthesis. This is a very powerful way to influence the world, but it is a slow way. You have to patiently pull the protein strings for months to create an embryo. The main feature of behavior is high speed. Time here is measured not in months, but in seconds and fractions of a second. Something is happening in the world around us; an owl flashed overhead, the rustle of tall grass revealed the presence of the victim, and in a few thousandths of a second nervous system came into action, the muscles tensed - a jump, and someone's life was saved or interrupted. Genes are not capable of such rapid reactions.
In our complex world, making predictions is a very unreliable activity. Any decision made by a survival machine is like gambling, and genes must pre-program the brain so that, on average, it makes decisions that would ensure a win. One way for genes to solve the problem of making predictions when environmental conditions are sufficiently unpredictable is to provide a survival machine learning ability.
Survival machines that can simulate the future are several steps ahead of those that can only learn through trial and error. The evolution of the ability to model apparently led ultimately to subjective awareness.
The traditional view among ethologists is that communication signals evolve for the mutual benefit of both the sender and the receiver.
Chapter 5. Aggression: stability and a selfish machine
Natural selection favors those genes that direct their survival machines to make the best use of their environment. This includes the best use of other survival machines, both of our own and of other species.
Representatives of the same species, being very similar to each other and being machines for preserving genes, who live in the same habitats and lead the same lifestyle, compete in the most direct way for all the necessary resources. The logical course of action for a survival machine would seem to be to kill its rivals and then, best of all, eat them.
Lions don't hunt lions because for them it's Not would be an evolutionarily stable strategy. A cannibal strategy would be unsustainable. The danger of a retaliatory strike is too great. This is less likely in conflicts between members of different species; This is why so many prey animals run away instead of fighting back.
I have a feeling that perhaps, in time, we will look back on the concept of ESS as one of the most important developments in evolutionary theory since Darwin. It is applicable in all cases where a conflict of interests is involved, i.e. almost everywhere.
Each individual selfish gene tries to become more and more numerous in a given gene pool. Basically, it does this by helping to program the bodies it resides in to survive and reproduce. The main idea of this chapter is that any given gene may be able to help replicas of itself in other bodies. In this case, we can talk about a kind of individual altruism, conditioned, however, by the selfishness of the gene. For the evolution of altruistic behavior, the total risk for the altruist must be less than the total gain for the recipient multiplied by the relatedness coefficient.
Chapter 7. Family planning
I distinguish two types of activity: childbearing and caring for young. This individual survival machine has to make two very different types of decisions: the decision to care and the decision to procreate. Depending on the particular ecology of a given species, different combinations of care and procreation strategies may be evolutionarily stable.
According to Wynne-Edwards, instead of producing too many offspring and learning the hard way about the fallacy of this practice, populations use formal competitions for position in the hierarchical structure and territory as a means of keeping their numbers slightly below the level at which starvation itself takes its due. tribute to him.
Ecologist David Lack studied the clutch size of wild birds. For any given natural situation, there appears to be some optimal clutch size. Wynne-Edwards would say: “The important optimum towards which all individuals should strive is that of the group as a whole.” And Lack would say: “Each selfish individual chooses a clutch size at which he can maximize the number of chicks raised.”
According to Lack, individuals regulate the size of their clutches for reasons that have nothing to do with altruism. They do not resort to birth control in order to avoid depleting the resources available to this group. They practice birth control in order to maximize the number of surviving young from the actual number of offspring available.
People who have too many children lose out not because the entire population dies out, but only because they have fewer surviving children. Genes that determine the birth of a large number of children are simply not passed on to the next generation in large quantities, because of the children carrying these genes, only a few reach adulthood. There is no need for altruistic birth control, since universal welfare does not exist in nature.
The use of contraceptives is sometimes criticized as “unnatural.” Yes, this is true - very unnatural. The trouble is that universal welfare is also unnatural. I think that most of us consider general welfare to be highly desirable. It is impossible, however, to achieve unnatural general well-being if one does not also resort to unnatural regulation of the birth rate, since this will lead to even greater misfortunes than those existing in nature. General welfare is perhaps the greatest altruistic system the animal world has ever known. However, any altruistic system is internally unstable, since it is not protected from abuse by selfish individuals who are ready to exploit it.
Individual parents practice family planning in the sense that they optimize fertility rather than limit it for the benefit of all. They try to maximize the number of their surviving young, which means having neither too many nor too few young. Genes that determine too many offspring in one individual are not retained in the gene pool because the offspring carrying such genes usually do not survive to adulthood.
Chapter 8. Battle of generations
Parental investment (PI) is defined as “any investment by a parent in an individual offspring that increases that offspring's chances of survival (and hence reproductive success) through that parent's ability to invest in another offspring. ER is measured in terms of the reduction in life expectancy of other offspring already born or likely to be born in the future.
Each individual adult has, throughout his life, a certain total amount of RF that he can invest in his young (as well as in other relatives and in himself, but for simplicity we consider only the young). RW is made up of all the food he can collect or prepare in his entire life, all the risks he is willing to take, and all the energy and effort he is able to put into caring for the welfare of his young.
Can a mother gain any benefit from an unequal distribution of contributions among her young? There are no genetic reasons why a mother should have favorites. Her relatedness coefficient with all children is the same (1/2). However, some individuals can be bet on more than others. Some weak piglet has exactly the same number of maternal genes as his more prosperous brothers. But his life expectancy is lower. The mother can benefit by refusing to feed such a piglet and distributing its entire share of the RW among its siblings.
The only human moral that could be drawn from this is that we should teach our children altruism, since it cannot be expected to form part of their biological nature.
Chapter 9. Battle of the sexes
Each partner can be seen as an individual who seeks to exploit the other, trying to force him to contribute more to the rearing of offspring. Ideally, each individual would “like” to copulate with as many members of the opposite sex as possible, leaving the rearing of children in each case to his or her partner.
There is one fundamental difference between males and females, which allows us to distinguish males from females in all representatives of animals and plants. It consists in the fact that the sex cells, or “gametes,” of males are much smaller and more numerous than the gametes of females. Sperm and eggs contribute an equal number of genes, but the eggs contribute much more nutrients; in fact, sperm contain no nutrients at all and simply ensure that their genes are transferred to the egg as quickly as possible. Thus, at the moment of conception, the father contributes less resources to the embryo than the 50% that he should have contributed in fairness.
A male has the potential to produce many children in a very short time by mating with different females. This is possible only because the mother provides appropriate nutrition to each new embryo in all cases. This circumstance limits the number of children a female can have, but the number of children a male can have is practically unlimited. From this moment the exploitation of women begins.
The various types of mating systems observed in animals - monogamy, promiscuity, harems and others - can be explained on the basis of the conflict of interests of females and males. Every female and every male “wants” to maximize its lifetime contribution to reproduction. Due to fundamental differences between the size and number of sperm and eggs, males generally tend to be promiscuous and lack the tendency to care for offspring. Females try to counteract this with two tricks that I call the Real Man and Home Comfort strategies. The tendency of females to use one or another of these strategies, as well as the nature of the males’ reaction to them, depend on the ecological characteristics of a given species.
The tendency towards sexually attractive, flashy colors is usually observed in males, while females are often colored in dull gray-brown tones. Both males and females try to avoid predation, and so selection must exert some pressure on both to produce inconspicuous colors in both sexes. There are two opposing selective factors at work: predators, which remove genes for bright colors from the gene pool, and mating partners, which remove genes for inconspicuous colors.
In many civilizations, monogamy is the norm. In our society, the contribution of both parents to their offspring is great and its inequality is not obvious. Undoubtedly, most of the direct care of children falls on the shoulders of the mother, but fathers often have to work hard to earn the money invested in raising and raising children. There are, however, societies in which promiscuity is practiced, and in many polygamy is legalized, i.e. harems. This amazing diversity suggests that the way people live is largely determined by culture rather than genes.
If animals live together in groups, their genes should benefit from the grouping more than they put into it. Many of the purported benefits of group living stem from the fact that it is easier to avoid predators. One such theory was elegantly formulated by W. Hamilton in a work entitled “Geometry for the Selfish Herd.”
I used a farming analogy to describe the relationship of workers to their queens in Hymenoptera. Their farm is a gene farm. The workers use their mother as a more efficient producer of copies of their own genes than they are themselves. Genes come off the assembly line, packaged into containers called reproductive individuals. Social insects, long before humans, discovered that sedentism and “farming” could be more efficient than hunting and gathering.
Chapter 11. Memes are the new replicators
My reasoning must apply to any creature that has arisen through the process of evolution. If a species is to be excluded from consideration, there must be specific and compelling reasons for doing so. Are there good reasons to recognize the exclusivity of the species Homo sapiens? I believe this should be answered in the affirmative. Most of everything that is unusual in a person can be contained in one word: “culture.”
The transmission of cultural heritage is similar to genetic transmission: being fundamentally conservative, it can give rise to some form of evolution. For example, language appears to "evolve" in nongenetic ways and at a rate several orders of magnitude faster than genetic evolution. Fashion for clothing and food, rituals and customs, art and architecture, technology and technology - all this develops in historical time, and this development resembles a highly accelerated genetic evolution, without actually having anything to do with it.
In order to understand the evolution of modern man, we must abandon the gene as the sole basis of our ideas about evolution. What, ultimately, is the main feature of genes? The fact is that they are replicators. It is believed that the laws of physics are valid in all observable points of the Universe. Are there any biological laws that could have the same universal character?
I don't know, but if I had to bet, I would bet on one fundamental law - the law that all living things evolve through the differential survival of replicating units. I think that a new type of replicator has recently emerged on our planet. The new broth is the broth of human culture. And the new replicator is a meme.
Examples of memes include melodies, ideas, buzzwords and expressions, methods of cooking stew or building arches. Just as genes spread through the gene pool, passing from one body to another through sperm or eggs, memes spread in the same sense, passing from one brain to another through a process that can be broadly called imitation.
The survival of a good meme included in the meme pool is determined by its great psychological appeal. For memes, as for genes, fertility is much more important than longevity. If a given meme represents a scientific idea, then its spread will depend on how acceptable this idea is to the population of scientists; A rough estimate of its survival can be obtained by counting references to it in scientific journals over a number of years. If a meme is a popular song, then its prevalence in the meme pool can be judged by the number of people whistling it on the streets.
A “meme-idea” can be defined as a certain unit that can be transmitted from one brain to another. Therefore, the meme of Darwinian theory is that integral basis of the idea that is contained in all brains; who understand this theory. In this case, the differences in different people's ideas about this theory do not, by definition, constitute part of the meme.
Interconnected gene complexes can arise in the gene pool. Does anything similar happen in meme pools? Does, say, a given good meme associate with some other specific memes and does such an association contribute to the survival of the memes involved?
To take a particular example, one aspect of the doctrine that is very effective in strengthening religious foundations is the threat of hellfire. It was linked to the God meme because they both reinforced each other and contributed to each other's survival in the meme pool. Another member of the religious meme complex is called faith. This refers to blind faith in the absence of evidence and even in defiance of evidence.
The meme of blind faith maintains itself through such a simple, conscious ploy as the refusal of rational inquiry. Blind faith can justify anything. If a person worships another deity, or even if he follows a different ritual in his worship of the same deity, blind faith can condemn him to death. Blind faith memes have their own merciless ways of spreading; this applies not only to religion, but also to patriotism and politics.
I propose that interconnected meme complexes evolve in the same way as similar gene complexes. Selection favors memes that exploit the environment for their own benefit. This cultural environment consists of other memes that are also subject to selection. Therefore, the meme pool ultimately acquires the attributes of an evolutionarily stable set, into which it turns out to be difficult for new memes to penetrate.
When we consider the evolution of cultural traits and their survival, we must be clear about whose survival we are talking about. Biologists, as we have seen, are accustomed to looking for advantages at the level of the gene (or, depending on tastes, at the level of the individual, group or species). However, none of us had previously thought that the evolution of a given cultural trait occurred one way and not another, simply because it was beneficial for this trait itself. We do not need to search for the ordinary biological values that determine the survival of such things as religion, music and ritual dances, although they may exist. Once genes have equipped their survival machines with brains capable of rapid imitation, memes automatically take over.
Man has a trait that is unique to him, the development of which could occur through memes or without connection with them: this is his ability to conscious foresight. Even if we assume that the individual is fundamentally selfish, our conscious foresight - our ability to simulate the future - can save us from the worst selfish excesses of blind replicators. Our brains have at least one mechanism that looks after our long-term interests rather than just our immediate selfish interests.
Man has the power to resist the influence of the selfish genes he has from birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes acquired as a result of his upbringing. We are even capable of intentionally cultivating and nourishing pure selfless altruism - something that has no place in nature, which has never existed in the world in its entire history. We are built as gene machines and raised as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We are the only creatures on earth capable of rebelling against the tyranny of selfish replicators.
Chapter 12. Good guys finish first
I agree that many wild animals and plants are engaged in an endless game of Prisoner's Paradox, playing out on evolutionary time scales. Qualities of winning strategies: integrity and forgiveness. An eye for an eye strategy is “respectable”, i.e. never refuses first, and is “forgiving”, i.e. quickly forgets past atrocities. She is also "unenvious." Being envious means trying to win more money than the other player, rather than trying to get as much as possible in absolute terms from the banker's capital.
But, unfortunately, when psychologists play the Iterated Prisoners' Paradox game (several games in a row) between real people, almost all the players succumb to feelings of envy and therefore, in monetary terms, their success is relatively small. It seems that many people, perhaps without even realizing it, would rather sink another player than cooperate with him to ruin the banker.
This bug only affects certain types of games. In game theory, a distinction is made between “zero-sum” and “non-zero-sum” games. In zero-sum games, one player's gain is accompanied by another's loss. Games of this type include, for example, chess. The prisoners' paradox is a non-zero sum game.
In what are called civil "disputes" there is in fact often wide scope for cooperation. Let's take divorce proceedings, for example. Even after a marriage ends, there are all sorts of reasons why a couple could benefit by continuing to cooperate and treating their divorce as a non-zero-sum game as well. Even if they do not consider the well-being of their children a strong enough reason, then they should think about the damage that the fees of two lawyers will cause to the family budget. So, probably a reasonable and civilized couple would start by going to the same lawyer together, right? Alas, no one actually does this. The law or, more importantly, the lawyer's own professional code does not allow them to do this.
Think, for example, of the debate over wages and differential pay. When we negotiate for a raise, are we motivated by envy or are we cooperating to maximize our real income? In real life, as in psychological experiments, do we assume that we are playing a zero-sum game when in fact we are not? I'm just asking these difficult questions. The answers to them are beyond the scope of this book.
It is natural to ask whether these optimistic conclusions - about the success of non-envious, unforgiving integrity - also apply to Nature. Yes, of course we can. The only conditions are that Nature must sometimes play games like the Prisoner's Paradox, that the shadow of the future must be long, and that her games must be non-zero-sum games. These conditions are definitely fulfilled in all kingdoms of living beings.
Chapter 13. “The Long Arm of the Gene”
The term phenotype is used to refer to the external manifestation of a gene - the effect that a given gene, compared to its alleles, has on the body through the process of development. The phenotypic effect of a particular gene may be, for example, green eye color. Almost most genes have more than one phenotypic effect (for example, green eyes and curly hair). Natural selection favors some genes over others not because of the nature of the genes themselves, but because of their consequences—their phenotypic effects.
Meiosis is a special type of cell division in which the number of chromosomes is halved and results in the formation of sperm and eggs. Meiosis is a completely fair lottery. Of each pair of alleles, only one can be the lucky one that ends up in each given sperm or egg. But this lucky one could equally likely be any of a pair of alleles and, as studies of large groups of sperm (or eggs) show, on average, one half of them contains one allele, and the other half contains the other. Meiosis is impartial, like tossing a coin.
The phenotypic effects of a given gene should be considered all the effects it has on the surrounding world. The phenotypic effects of a given gene are the levers by which it carries itself into the next generation. These levers can extend beyond the individual body. The first artifacts that come to mind are beaver dams, bird nests, and caddisfly houses. The cuckoo's adaptations, which allow it to manipulate the behavior of its adoptive parents, can be viewed as extended phenotypic effects exerted by the cuckoo's genes at a distance.
In light of the concept, the selfish gene is an extended phenotype. I believe this approach applies to living beings anywhere in the universe. The basic unit of life, its main engine, is the replicator. A replicator can be called any object in the Universe that copies itself. Replicators arise mainly by chance, as a result of random collisions of small particles. Once established, a replicator is capable of generating an infinite number of copies of itself. However, the copying process is never perfect and variants that differ from each other arise in the population of replicators.
Over time, the world is filled with the most efficient and inventive replicators. Replicators survive not only because of their own qualities, but also because of the influence they have on the world around them. The success of a replicator in our world depends on what this world is like, i.e. from pre-existing conditions. Among the most important of these conditions are other replicators and their influence on the world.
Replicators that have a beneficial influence on each other, once together, begin to dominate. At some point in the evolution of life on our Earth, these mutually compatible replicators, united in groups, begin to take the form of discrete carriers - cells, and later - multicellular bodies. The influence of the gene goes beyond the walls of the individual body and manipulates objects in the surrounding world, among which there are both inanimate objects and other living beings.
Crossing over (from the English crossing over) is the process of exchanging sections of chromosomes during cell division during sexual reproduction.
Promiscuity (from the Latin prōmiscuus “indiscriminately”, “general”) - promiscuous, unrestricted sexual intercourse with many partners.
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The phrase “selfish gene” in the title of the book was chosen by Dawkins as a provocative way of expressing the gene-centric view of evolution, which means that evolution is seen as the evolution of genes, and that selection at the level of individuals or populations almost never prevails over selection at the level of individuals. gene level. In addition, for the English-speaking reader, this name is consonant with the title of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale “The Selfish Giant,” which enhances the provoking effect.
More precisely, it is assumed that an individual evolves to maximize its overall fitness, that is, the number of copies of its genes taken in total (as opposed to the genes of an individual). As a result, the development of populations tends toward evolutionarily stable strategies. The book also introduces the term “meme” for an element of cultural evolution, similar to a gene, with the assumption that such “selfish” replication can also be attributed to elements of culture: ideas, technological techniques, religions, fashion styles, etc. Moreover, culture not only human: using the example of New Zealand songbirds, the transmission of song motifs from generation to generation is considered.
Since the book's publication, memetics has been the subject of much research.
To date, the book has been published three times. In 1976, 1989 and 2006. In the second edition, notes were added and two chapters 12 and 13 were added. They are based on the books “The Evolution of Cooperation” (R. Axelrod) and “The Extended Phenotype” by R. Dawkins himself, respectively: 24.
- Chapter 1. Why do we live?
- Chapter 2. Replicators
- Chapter 3. Immortal Spirals
- Chapter 4. Gene machine
- Chapter 5. Aggression: stability and a selfish machine
- Chapter 6. Gene brotherhood
- Chapter 7. Family planning
- Chapter 8. Battle of generations
- Chapter 9. Battle of the sexes
- Chapter 10. Scratch my back and I'll ride you
- Chapter 11. Memes are the new replicators
- Chapter 12: Good Guys Finish First
- Chapter 13. “The Long Arm of the Gene”
Criticism
The book received mixed reviews, causing intense controversy among both scientists and society at large. Here are some of these reviews:
- «… highly scientific, witty and very well written... intoxicatingly great" Sir Peter Meadower. Spectator
- «… a popular science work of this kind allows the reader to feel almost like a genius" The newspaper "New York Times "
“In the twelve years since the publication of The Selfish Gene, main idea books became generally accepted and included in textbooks. This is paradoxical, although the paradoxicality is not striking. The book is not one of those which at first suffered only vilification, and then gradually gained more and more supporters, until in the end it turned out to be so orthodox that we now only wonder what actually caused the commotion. Just the opposite happened. At first, the reviews were encouraging and the book was not considered controversial. The reputation for nonsense has matured over the years, and only now the book began to be treated as an extremely extremist work. However, it was precisely in those years when the book’s reputation as extremist was increasingly established that its actual content seemed less and less so, approaching generally accepted views.”
Noted biologists such as William Hamilton, George Williams, John Maynard Smith, and Robert Trivers praised Dawkins's book The Selfish Gene and concluded that he did more than just explain their ideas. George Williams said in an interview that Dawkins in his book took some issues much further than he did. According to William Hamilton, in The Selfish Gene, Dawkins "succeeded in the seemingly impossible task of presenting in simple language the difficult to understand topics of the latest thought in evolutionary biology" in a way that “surprised and enlivened even many research biologists”. According to philosopher Daniel Dennett, Dawkins's book is “not only science, but also philosophy at its best”. The ideas about "selfish DNA" raised in this book have motivated some scientists, including the famous chemist Leslie Orgel and Nobel laureate Francis Crick, for a more detailed study of this issue. Dawkins's ideas were thoroughly confirmed after it was discovered that a significant part of the "selfish DNA" consists of transposons. Thus, Dawkins's ideas helped explain what happens inside genomes long before DNA sequencing became commonplace.
According to zoologist, journalist and science communicator Matt Ridley (English) Russian
The famous American geneticist Richard Lewontin characterizes Dawkins' approach as biological reductionism, fraught with ideologization and the spread of prejudice about the predetermination of the level of human intelligence, the existing social order, etc.:
We are, in the words of Richard Dawkins, lumbering robots, created body and soul by DNA. But the idea that we are entirely at the mercy of internal forces predetermined from birth is only part of an ideological platform that can be called reductionism.
Dawkins responded to such criticisms in detail in his next book, The Extended Phenotype (Chapter 2, “Genetic Determinism and Genetic Selectionism”). In this case, Dawkins's views were oversimplified and distorted (see Scarecrow (logical trick)). Dawkins explains that the influence of genes is only statistical in nature, not fatal, and the effects of the influence of genes can easily be changed by influence environment, upbringing, education, etc. And even in The Selfish Gene itself, Dawkins wrote: "We are the only beings on the planet capable of rebelling against the tyranny of selfish replicators". In Chapter 4, “The Gene Machine,” Dawkins explained that genes cannot directly control all the movements of an animal by “pulling the strings,” if only because of the time delay. Genes can only control protein synthesis in a cell. Consequently, during the evolution of genes, a developed brain should have emerged, capable of modeling the surrounding reality and making independent decisions, to which genes give only general instructions for behavior (avoid pain, avoid danger, etc.). Further development in this direction could lead to the fact that some “survival machines” could completely escape the control of genes. In the same book, in the chapter “Memes - New Replicators,” he introduced the concept of a meme, challenging the opinion of some of his fellow biologists that any trait of human behavior is determined by genes and must necessarily have some kind of biological advantage, that is, serve for more successful propagation of an individual’s genes. Dawkins emphasized that certain behavioral traits can exist because they contribute to the success of replicators of some other nature, for example, those same memes. Dawkins notes that with the emergence of culture, non-genetic methods of transmitting information appeared (primarily in humans, although not only in humans), and does not deny that much in humans is determined by culture and upbringing, and not by genetics. However, the idea of memes is not mandatory here.
This is a gene-centric approach to evolution, which has never taken root among Russian biologists, although it has become widespread in the West, and most evolutionists work on the basis of this model.<...>This is a very interesting and useful model for understanding many biological phenomena that are difficult to understand within traditional group selection-oriented concepts. And from this position it is easier to understand them. But the ideas of Dawkins and his teachers are met with sharp rejection, especially among some Russian biologists, due to their apparent reductionism, and many simply cannot understand how everything can be reduced to genes. It seems to them that we are splitting all living things into too small parts and destroying their integral essence. This, in my opinion, is an illusion, because we are not destroying anything: having understood how evolution works at the level of genes, we again move to the level of the entire organism and see that here, too, much has now become clearer.