“The fundamental unit, the prime mover of all life, is the replicator.”
A replicator is anything out there that can make copies of itself; a self-propagating entity. They spring from jostling particles haphazardly. Once a replicator comes into existence, it is capable of generating an indefinite set of copies of itself. No copying process is infinitely accurate however, and ‘mistakes’ are bound to occur at one point or another. These copying infidelities will bring about different types of new replicators. Some may have lost their self-replicating ability. Thus, incapable of propagating themselves, they perish. Others can still replicate but less efficiently. Yet other varieties happen to learn new tricks making them even better self-replicators than their predecessors. It is their descendants that will dominate the population. As time goes by, replicators become efficient and ingenious at what they do.

Genes or chromosomes are certainly what came to your mind first when speaking of the self-replicating entity. And it is certainly what most of Dawkins’ book builds itself around. However, the author introduces a new concept: memes.
A meme is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” So memes are basically cultural analogues to genes: they self-replicate, mutate and are subject to selection. Dawkins dedicates an entire chapter to this theory. Moreover, reading the header of my edition of TSG “The Million Copy International Bestseller”, I can’t help but think of this book becoming a meme itself. Technically speaking, some of the book’s concepts are what can be considered as memes but still. With a crafted style and brilliant similes, the author manages to convey his ideas using whatever data he had up until 1976 (the first publication date of TSG). However, the majority of the chapters have end notes. Nearly forty years since the first publication, new experiences were tested, results were confirmed, theories proven and others refuted. So even if the endnotes became abundant sometimes, and relatively long (covering several pages) digressing from the subject, their presence was often necessary.

In The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins was remarkably trenchant. The book felt like a long essay fighting creationism. I personally felt the author was dissuading me from the oppositions’ theory rather than convincing me in his, albeit I already was. The constant referencing to creationists, a.k.a. the 40 percenters, a.k.a. history deniers made me feel uneasy. I acknowledged the problem residing and the massive misinformed ratio of the population he was targeting, but I didn’t acknowledge his predatory approach to it.

The Selfish Gene is far away from that. Aside from a certain remark on faith which I thoroughly adopt, Dawkins’ tone has a much more scientific sounding.
Anyone tackling the book with the simple intrigue aroused by the title (are we really programmed as selfish beings?) will find his mind settled with the two lines below extracted from chapter one:
“Our genes may instruct us to be selfish, but we are not necessarily compelled to obey them all our lives. It may just be more difficult to learn altruism than it would be if we were genetically programmed to be altruistic.”

Dawkins proceeds:

“Among animals, man is uniquely dominated by culture, by influences learned and handed down. Some would say that culture is irrelevant to the understanding of human nature. Others would disagree. It all depends on where you stand in the debate over ‘nature versus nurture’ as determinants of human nature. This brings me to the second thing in this book is not: it is not an advocacy of one position or another in the nature/nurture controversy.”

Based on how natural selection works, we should expect selfishness in all its products. Any altruistic behavior must urge us into further scrupulous analysis. Selfish examples are over-abundant. However, there are still altruistic - or so it seems – behaviors in nature, such as the suicidal stinging bee. A less extreme example is the ‘alarm call’ given by small birds when they spot a predator. They warn the whole flock which subsequently takes evasive action at the expense of attracting the predator’s attention to them.
More examples are treated by Dawkins in the book. He takes the ‘further scrupulous analysis’ task which I’ve mentioned above. Indeed, there’s more to the story than the altruistic aura it sheds at first sight.
Another important point treated by the author is a ‘misconception’ ‘widely known, and even widely taught in schools’: group-selection. I won’t dwell on this particular point, but let’s just admit that we are all lured by the group-selection theory, the theory that creatures evolve to do things for the ‘good of the species’, the ‘good of the group’.

Nice Guys Finish First is one of my favorite chapters in TSG. The ‘Prisoner Dilemma’ puzzle utterly intrigued me, and not just because engineers, programmers and algorithms were involved; in fact, Dawkins paid little to no attention to them. However, the strategies, results and interpretations were the focal point of the chapter which converged into the conclusion that “even with selfish genes at the helm, nice guys can finish first.”

The Selfish Gene is the kind of books which, upon closing, gives you a new perspective on the world you’re currently part of. An insightful and fascinating read.