Altruism and the selfish gene

I don't want to spoil the surprise, as it were, so I won't go into excruciating detail here. You should read "Selfish Gene" with the understanding that Dawkins (at the time) was arguing a "gene's eye view" of evolution at a time when one of the dominant paradigms was "group selection". Read the book as an "introduction" to his viewpoint, and understand that it was a book designed primarily for a lay audience. Then read his "The Extended Phenotype" immediately afterwards. TEF expands on his behavior and gene selection ideas, and although still very readable, is written for a more technical audience (and as a way of answering many of the critics of "Selfish Gene"). Don't expect a really good answer to your altruism questions in the first book. The second covers it completely and thoroughly. But by all means read "Selfish Gene", especially the chapters on memetics - IMO the most important part of the book. TEF is the book he SHOULD have written first. On to your quotes: This is part of what I was talking about above. Here Dawkins is arguing against the group selection prevalent at the time (1976) - although in my opinion it was already dying out. What's interesting is that Dawkins, after taking to task the group selectionists, takes to task the individual selectionists next (in TEF, especially, but introduced here). E.O. Wilson, for instance devotes an entire chapter in his superlative "Sociobiology", written the year before "Selfish Gene" to theories of group selection - so obviously this was an important theory at the time. (If you ever get a chance to go to the library and look up Wilson's book, check out chapter 5, Group Selection and Altruism). I'll let it go by saying he's setting you up for his main argument concerning genes. There's some fairly abstruse pop gen mathematics that show why this wouldn't occur, but for an introduction, try googling on "iterated prisoner's dilemna", "tit-for-tat strategies" etc.I don't think you're "missing anything". You're simply encountering the same problem I had with SG. He doesn't write as clearly as he could have - and his style is to take you from a very brief intro in Chap 1 leading you by the hand through the rest of the book explaining what the hell he was talking about. It's worth sticking with even if you don't (as I don't) necessarily agree with him on the gene's eye view of evolution. Enjoy!