Summary Of Dawkins And The Selfish Gene

Dawkins and the Selfish Gene by Ed Sexton is an analysis of Richard Dawkins’ selfish gene theory. In his analysis, Sexton clarifies the many misinterpreted ideas and values of Richard Dawkins. Sexton introduces his analysis of the selfish gene theory by first telling the readers how sciences such as Darwin and Fundamentalism have impacted social and religious views on how humans operate and how humans should operate, in other words, morals. He continues by showing that to simply define what a gene is, is not an easy task. Sexton proceeds to dive into the science of replicators (the selfish genes) and their vehicles (the organisms). He goes into detail of the importance of the process of replicators replicating from parent to offspring,

He delves deeply into the ideas of selfishness and altruism of genes. He describes to the readers how genes will affect their environment, meaning the organism and others genes around them, in order to proliferate more than its rival genes. Sexton uses the animal kingdom to compare the relationship between genes’ and organisms’ methods of proliferating. Sexton first explains how and why an animal would work with other animals to ensure only that individual animal’s own survival through reproduction. Sexton uses the structures and similarities of a family’s genepool as a way to explain this teamwork. He uses the example of how siblings, because they have similar genes, will go out of their way to ensure one another’s survival. While a distant relative because of differing genes, would not get the same treatment from the siblings, because it would not benefit their (or the genes’) selfish motives. Next, Sexton goes into the other methods of altruism, such as symbiosis and gender differences. Sexton compares how human society affects the male/female relationship, while in nature it is set by the reproductive success of males’ and females’ offspring. Sexton next goes into what exactly the gene does for the organism physically. He tells how without certain aspects from the environment, other genes, and cellular machinery, a gene alone would have no effect on the physical, nor structural appearance of an