Ghost of a flea: The selfish meme

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March 16, 2006

The selfish meme

No matter how many books Richard Dawkins pens his audiences bring him The Selfish Gene to sign. Dawkins considers the book thirty-years' on and ponders some alternative, approachable titles. Though I think "selfishness" is only the beginning of the problem when it is still the case for rather clever biologists to talk about natural selection "choosing" between species or genes "pursuing (an) agenda", selfish or otherwise. Semantics, not genetics, accounts for what we have got here (a failure to communicate). Ethics and aesthetics are another matter entirely.

A teacher reproachfully wrote that a pupil had come to him in tears after reading the same book, because it had persuaded her that life was empty and purposeless. But if something is true, no amount of wishful thinking can undo it.

Look, people: Dawkins is not Nietzsche. While the man has an editorial hostility to religious belief there is nothing in his impressive popular science writing that contradicts the revelatory or the miraculous. But then my faith has never relied on a "literalist" acceptance of Bronze Age science as its foundation any more than on the Guardian ruminations of Oxford professors even be they so clever as to marry a Who companion. The Selfish Gene is still worth a look thirty years after the fact though Flea-readers with a biology background or a bit of patience would be better advised to pick up a copy of The Extended Phenotype. I expect Dawkins would be delighted if someone brought one along to his next book-signing too.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at March 16, 2006 08:47 AM

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