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In his book, The Selfish Gene, author Richard Dawkins expands upon American biologist George C. Williams’s 1966 critique of Adaptation and Natural Selection. In the text, he describes how genes are at the center of evolution. He also explores numerous examples of natural selection through animal behaviors. Like Williams, Dawkins shares a gene-centric view of evolution.
Richard Dawkins also builds on the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin. He investigates how genes evolve over time and looks at it from a gene’s perspective, which is different than looking at evolution from an organism’s point of view. Biologists have been investigating this since the 20th century, but Dawkins makes it more explicit to put it into focus for evolutionary biology.
Richard Dawkins says that genes developed as self-replicating molecules in Earth’s oceans. These molecules replicated at an accelerated rate, which allowed them to spread across the ocean environment. Due to competition for resources in their environment, these replicators built increasingly complex machines that protected them from the elements and other life forms. This process eventually led to plants and animals, including humans.
When a species evolves, the genes that are contained in it change over time. The organisms themselves die out every generation and are replaced by new ones with different combinations of those genes. In this way, surviving varieties become more prevalent with each generation. Genes first arose from a primeval soup into which they were mixed together before forming various barriers to protect them from the environment. From these simple beginnings, survival machines have evolved into complex forms like plants and animals.
Animals need brains to survive in their environment, so organs and muscles are there to keep them going. However, the brain is also another part of the physical side that acts as a communicator between the body and the mind. It helps move animals through life by coordinating thoughts with actions, thereby replacing some function of genes (which control all other parts of animal cells). As time goes on and evolution continues to occur within these machines (i.e., fish or primates for example), they will become more strategic thinkers; however, this requires stable instincts from within themselves — which limit their aggression levels against other living beings in similar environments.
The closer two beings are, the more genes they share. This is because of “selfish genes” which make sure their survival by producing offspring that will defend them. For example, mothers have many copies of their genes in their children and therefore care for them a lot with investments (e.g., nursing). Parents face a trade-off between having more babies and caring for them or investing less time in fewer children and spending it on other things like playing or working hard to earn money. The right mix of baby-making vs investment will result in the most surviving offspring with both altruistic traits (caring) and selfish traits (having lots of kids).
Group selection has been used as a theory to explain why animals might limit their population for the “common good”. However, Dawkins argues that this can be explained through selfish genes. Genes are in charge of survival machines (organisms); these survival machines have to decide how many offspring they should have based on the amount of food and resources available. Parents must invest not only in enough children but also in each child’s development. Because parents share half their genetic material with each child, they will act altruistically towards their own children instead of strangers if it is more beneficial for them than acting selfishly.
