When an individual dies, its genes die with it. Individual organisms can be seen as survival machines for the genes that ride inside them. It’s a masterpiece of concise summary:įreethinker: In a nutshell, how would you sum up the book’s thesis?ĭawkins: Natural selection is the differential survival of genes in gene pools. More later Here are a few parts of the interview that struck me.įirst, and I love this, Dawkins explains what The Selfish Gene is about. The interview does a creditable job, but concentrates too much on social media and on memes-an idea I still consider clever but unfruitful, as it hasn’t explained much. Well, the job of the interviewer isn’t to call attention to Twitter scandals, but to illuminate a person. We leave readers to judge for themselves. ‘Please focus on the science in your write-up rather than the politics,’ he said as I was leaving, ‘it’s more interesting.’ But that is the risk of being a public intellectual with a Twitter account: humans are an odd species, and with all the scientific insight in the world, it is hard to predict which ideas will do best in the meme pool. You’ll recognize the painting to the right: (from the article): RICHARD DAWKINS IN HIS HOME IN OXFORD, WITH WEAVER BIRD NEST, TORTOISE SKULL, AND DESMOND MORRIS’ THE EXPECTANT VALLEY. Dawkins later acquired them from the artist. They turned out to be by Desmond Morris, the zoologist and surrealist painter the larger one was The Expectant Valley, which served as the cover for the first edition of The Selfish Gene (1976). On his sitting room wall, I spotted two paintings that seemed somehow familiar. The Q&As in the piece are indented, and click on the following to read: Much of the interview you may already know about, as a lot of people here follow Richard, but I’ll highlight just a few intriguing questions and answers. Nor is the interviewer named it’s just “Freethinker.” But I haven’t investigated it in any detail as I really don’t care about its politics given that the article at hand is an interview with Richard Dawkins. I’m not sure about the nature of this website, The Freethinker, but it appears to be a rationalist and humanistic venue.
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