The Case Against the Selfish Gene

ne person has done more than any other to put the notion of the gene at the center of our understanding of life on Earth and our being: Richard Dawkins. In 1976, Dawkins published . I still remember the electrifying effect it had on me when, as a student, I first read it. For Dawkins, roses, flies, slime molds, snails, condors, giraffes, humans—we’re all merely devices for gene replication. Our designs and behaviors are created by the genes