Authors: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Daniel Dennett
ISBN-13: 9780192880512, ISBN-10: 0192880519
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: August 1999
Edition: REVISED
Richard Dawkins taught zoology at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he has held since 1995. Among his previous books are The Ancestor’s Tale, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and A Devil’s Chaplain. Dawkins lives in Oxford with his wife, the actress and artist Lalla Ward.
People commonly view evolution as a process of competition between individualsknown as "survival of the fittest"with the individual representing the "unit of selection." Richard Dawkins offers a controversial reinterpretation of that idea in The Extended Phenotype, now being reissued to coincide with the publication of the second edition of his highly-acclaimed The Selfish Gene. He proposes that we look at evolution as a battle between genes instead of between whole organisms. We can then view Nanges in phenotypesthe end products of genes, like eye color or leaf shape, which are usually considered to increase the fitness of an individualas serving the evolutionary interests of genes.
Dawkins makes a convincing case that considering one's body, personality, and environment as a field of combat in a kind of "arms race" between genes fighting to express themselves on a strand of DNA can clarify and extend the idea of survival of the fittest. This influential and controversial book illuminates the complex world of genetics in an engaging, lively manner.
Acknowledgements | ||
1 | Necker Cubes and Buffaloes | 1 |
2 | Genetic Determinism and Gene Selectionism | 9 |
3 | Constraints on Perfection | 30 |
4 | Arms Races and Manipulation | 55 |
5 | The Active Germ-Line Replicator | 81 |
6 | Organisms, Groups and Memes: Replicators or Vehicles? | 97 |
7 | Selfish Wasp or Selfish Strategy? | 118 |
8 | Outlaws and Modifiers | 133 |
9 | Selfish DNA, Jumping Genes, and a Lamarckian Scare | 156 |
10 | An Agony in Five Fits | 179 |
11 | The Genetical Evolution of Animal Artefacts | 195 |
12 | Host Phenotypes of Parasite Genes | 209 |
13 | Action at a Distance | 228 |
14 | Rediscovering the Organism | 250 |
Afterword | 265 | |
References | 269 | |
Further Reading | 286 | |
Glossary | 290 | |
Author Index | 303 | |
Subject Index | 307 |