Review: The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an updated version (after more than 30 years) of an important work in the science of evolution. Newer revisions and clarifications (footnotes and endnotes, really) are read into this audiobook version of the 30th Anniversary Edition by Dawkins himself while Lalla Ward is the narrator for the main text, so the newer material is always distinct from the original and the interplay of the two voices keeps the lengthy work engaging and interesting.

This still strikes me as engaging, elucidating and important as when I first read it and the updated edition is really critical since so much new science and research and thought is brought in. Also, this is a very matter-of-fact work which I enjoy much more than the "radical atheist" tone of later works from him such as The God Delusion.

Dawkins adopted “replicator” as a more inclusive and general term than “gene”. He defined a replicator as “anything in the universe of which copies are made” and this allowed him to consider the role of evolution in even non-biological spaces. Actually, I like these parts of the book more. Indeed, I find it a bit boring to follow some of the proposed gene developments; tedious. Some I have my doubts about that like the musing on the sad loss of the human

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