* - It should be noted that I wrote this well before I started school and knew half an inkling of what the hell I was talking about. :)
This book focuses on one excellent thesis - that in thinking about evolution, we should focus on the down up perspective as opposed to the up down. Dawkins postulates that evolution began the moment a molecule "learned" to start replicating itself, and any molecule that could ensure its own stability or replicate more reliably than its fellow molecules would "win" and continue on, if only in form, through time. He postulates that the biological organisms that arose around these DNA molecules serve as gene vehicles /survival machines, and that our theories which had at the time of publication (mid 1970s) tended to focus on the survival of biological individuals or as species were misguided. Essentially he claims that the only genes that will survive will be the ones that instill in their "hosts" a better ability to survive and reproduce and pass them on. He terms this facet of evolution the "selfish gene" - not selfish as in consciously concerned with only its own well being, but selfish in that the dominant effects of any gene on its vehicle's phenotype will be those which look as if the gene is behaving selfishly. The term "selfish" actually arises in direct contrast to altruism and is an attempt to resolve the existence of altruism in animals, a seeming paradox when viewed from the top / down organism / species model.
Quickly, any organism that practices pure altruism - that is, self sacrifice for the benefit of other organisms - would be doomed to stopping its own gene line in the favor of others. While it would be nice if organisms would reciprocate to such a pleasant fellow, the reality is that such organisms would quickly be taken advantage of and they (the altruistic ones) would be at a selective disadvantage to the crafty ones, so the altruistic ones would inevitably die off. Dawkins says that in order for any trait to propagate and become viable, it has to demonstrate a survival/reproductive advantage - there is no such thing as "pure altruism" because it is such an obviously disadvantageous stance to take. We do see altruism on occasion, though, so what is going on? Dawkins says we can't see the advantages at the individual / species level because they're not there, but you can see them on the gene v. gene pool scale. The gene that promotes altruism in the host animal is causing it to rescue animals that are likely to be highly related to the host animal and therefore highly like to contain that very gene for altruism. The altruism does not, it turns out, sacrifice one animal for the benefit of many, but sacrifices one copy of the gene for the many copies that exist in those it saves. The move, then, is a "calculated" selfish one, something straight out of game theory or utilitarian ethics.
I've already committed the sin that Dawkins himself is widely accused of committing in this book, that of sloppily throwing out terms like "selfish" that imply a cognisant will on the part of the gene. Dawkins is actually very careful to stratify his language and fully admits within the text that he will write in an informal language that implies willful intent because to use the absolutely correct terminology would render the text clunky. He notes that when he says terms like "selfish" and "tries to" w/r/t genes, he means behaves in a way that seems as though it has a will from the outside much the same way we say a heat-sinking missile "chases" a target even though everyone knows the missile is not consciously chasing but is following a preset program that looks like will to an outside observer.
And this is what makes the world according to Dawkins a little bit terrifying - there is no will and no intended action, there is only this sense that physical actions as an outcry of the genes within the survival machines. In a weird kind of tautology, the things that exist and propagate start to be identified as "the things which came about that are the best at existing and propagating." There's a callous wasteland feel to the book that is psychologically terrifying for some people; that all that is is the quality of "is-ness" - you can break it down and identify individual trends that explain why these things have come about the way they have, but to the objects themselves, the only point worth considering is that you exist because at some point you did what was necessary to exist. The only permanence here is in the genes, and not even really there - they mutate and change, not to mention that "they" are not a "they" at all but really the abstract of the overarching forms they take - e.g., it's not the actual same carbon atoms that move down generation to generation, it's only their arrangement. I felt a harrowing undercurrent in the text of the absolute instantiation of everything only in form and not in content. There are details in survival and reproduction that are interesting to us but meaningless in the grand scheme - "gene still standing" is the only rule that matters, and not even that particular gene but that's particular gene's particular gene-ness.
Still, despite that gigantic dose of scariness, Dawkins makes great arguments for this approach to evolution with example upon example, each time meeting any challenge that could be thought up and dispelling many of the earlier models of species based evolutionary thought. The book is also filled with great "classroom examples" of game theory and other scenario setups that Dawkins used to explain typical animal world phenomena on a gene perspective basis - for one example, explaining on a game theory basis why cannibalism and battles to the death within a species tend to be rare events. It is, no doubt, a very easy-to-read layman's book that uses highly memorable examples to, for better or worse, hammer and hammer and hammer its point home - and yes, one complaint I had was that I had more or less gotten the message by the seventh example in favor of the theory.
The other big complaint is a trend I notice in a lot of these pop-science/religion books I've been reading lately and one that The End of Faith happened to be guilty of as well - that of the "now that I've established my main argument, I will now recklessly speculate on topics which I have no business touching upon." In this case, Dawkins does it twice - first, he throws in some highly miscellaneous comments about how humans are uniquely capable of consciously battling our unconscious, selfish genes. For example, a person can decide not to pass on his genes by not reproducing, an act that serves the "survival machine"'s interests but obviously does some harm to the genes within.
Second, O dios mio and insert other expressions of exasperation here, Dawkins coined the term "memes." A meme is the incorporeal thought-equivalent of a gene, and survives by the same mechanisms - the content of the meme is borderline irrelevant outside of the same abilities that are important to the original replicable molecules - is it a stable idea (good at living) and is it an easily transmittable idea (good at reproducing). VERY IMPORTANTLY, the survivability of a meme DOES NOT have to do with the survivability of its thinker - memes need not bestow reproductive or survival advantages upon their thinkers. They, just like genes, only need properties that help themselves survive and reproduce. Dawkins keeps thing relatively simple - he mentions stories, poems, tunes that stick in people's minds and such. He notes that they battle for the finite resources of people's memory banks as well as billboard signs and paper and everything else. He (rather weakly) claims that memes tend to survive and become replicate best if they are favorable to the psychological environment (though he neglects to mention what that psychological environment exactly is or what properties of a meme make it ideal). So memes are, in a sense, at battle with one another, and just like genes, they mutate and propagate and pass from generation to generation to arrive at the embodiment in which they exist today.
I have (and have had for a while) numerous problems with the concept of memes. One, unlike genes which endow their carriers with sharper claws, hyperactive sperm, or what have you, the characteristics that make memes memorable and persistent within human culture are often left out of discussions and carry a sort of ineffable quality that to me sounds a whole lot like my favorite quote from school this year:
"The movies that are the most memorable are the ones that are unforgettable."
In other words, a lot of meme talk sounds like an exaggerated version of "the ideas that stick around are those which stick around." My second major complaint is that regardless of how abstract you get about these memes, they ALWAYS exist in reference to a physical reality. And when they don't exist in reference to a physical reality, they came from one, i.e., a physical and biological human brain, so the line between the physical gene embodiment and abstract self propagating idea is woefully blurred. Third, I think there is a problem with the idea of replicability of memes. With genes, there is a physical object which, in order to be able to still be categorized as a variation on that which came before it, can only physically vary from its predecessor within certain limits. If a gene were to suddenly enact its exact opposite, it would clearly not be the same gene any more. With a meme, you can never be sure of this - for example, if I hear something incorrectly and the meme that is transferred into my brain is a wildly different version of the intended meme, is this a case of a bad meme that couldn't be replicated well or a good meme that varies so well that it can even propagate itself in brand new forms? Take Reform Judaism, for example - is that a bad-ass meme that has evolved successfully along a process for 5000 years, or is it a new invading meme that is beating up the old Orthodox one? Are the two even related? I don't think you can have it both ways. Fourth, the meme conversation to me *reeks* of the "pointless banter" of which philosophy routinely gets accused (and in this case, as opposed to all the other ones, it's accurate). A term like "meme" seems like it should be a categorical label, but I am hard-pressed to think of anything that isn't a meme - sure, terms like "the marriage meme" get thrown about, and that seems to be some kind of overarching, more permanent meme. But there are so many others - the carnivorous cat meme, the Coca Cola meme, the jazz meme, the what's in my back left pocket mere, etc. After a while, it seems like all you are talking about is IDEAS. And if so, why are you using a different word? The concept that memes constitute our mental embodiments is akin to saying there's a certain quality common to all things in the universe - it's a useless quality, because it distinguishes nothing.
(memes also have the additional complication of being part of their own subset; i.e., there exists something you could call the meme of "memes." And that gets the ball rolling for the meme of the "meme of memes," the meme of the meme of the meme of memes, etc.).
Of course, the main meme beef is that Dawkins brought this up at all. What the hell? In an otherwise great if somewhat repetitive book, there's this toss-off underdeveloped idea about how cultural evolution works. This armchair speculation in such a text is highly unwelcome - leave the meme banter for a book on memes! I'll fully admit that maybe I just don't understand what all the meme buzz is about, but the throw-away chapter in this book certainly didn't win me over. Otherwise, fine work, Mr. Dawkins.
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