The Selfish Gene Chapter Summary

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The Selfish Gene is a book about how scientists viewed the process of natural selection. Natural selection is the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. The author Richard Dawkins suggests many different topics surrounding natural selection and how it came to be. He provides many answers for different categories of science. In the beginning of the book, he explains his views on evolution and what is really considered evolution by definition. He says that creatures evolve for the goodness of their group. It may not help the entire species, but it helps their specific group of organisms. He then explains how these organisms or entire species eventually die and that the genes are almost immortal.…show more content…
Genes are shared between all relatives and are held in some relatives more then others. It then goes on to explain what the difference between child bearing and child caring is. It answers the question of how organisms decide which offsprings they will carry on. Different types of animals have different numbers of offsprings they are allowed to bring with them. It then leads to a following question which is, who is the leader of the generation, the child, or the parent. There is no answers because there are different views like the parent has more time on earth, but the child is more clever then the parent at times. Following this argument, they talk about which gender gets which genes from the parents. It states the gene pool can choose the sex ratio and can choose which genes are placed where. In following chapters, it talks about Dawkins and his two theories he proposes. The theories are called the Cave Theory and the Never breaks rank theory. The cave theory states that animals will tell the group of they sense danger, where as the Never breaks rank theory, states the herd will all flee in sight of danger

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