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The reviews of the book have been mixed, but the controversial title phrase, "How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think" has been explained by considering Dawkins to have worked as an influential educator and concise author, of The Selfish Gene, who promoted the key ideas of others about evolutionary biology, also including some controversial ideas which are not as widely accepted. [1]
The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy is a 2009 book by Fern Elsdon-Baker about the history of evolutionary theory, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
78) But whereas in his earlier work Gould considered variation supply as a brake on evolutionary change, in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory he carefully notes that it can also enhance possibilities for change. "So while both Dawkins and Gould recognise the central role of developmental biology in an explanation of evolutionary change, they ...
The Extended Phenotype is a 1982 book by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in which the author introduced a biological concept of the same name.The book's main idea is that phenotype should not be limited to biological processes such as protein biosynthesis or tissue growth, but extended to include all effects that a gene has on its environment, inside or outside the body of the ...
Richard Dawkins. The view of the gene as the unit of selection was developed mainly in the works of Richard Dawkins, [10] [11] W. D. Hamilton, [12] [13] [14] Colin Pittendrigh [15] and George C. Williams. [16] It was popularized by Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976). [1] According to Williams' 1966 book Adaptation and Natural Selection,
Dawkins builds upon George C. Williams's book Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966), which argued that altruism is not based upon group benefit per se, [4] but results from selection that occurs "at the level of the gene mediated by the phenotype" [5] and that any selection at the group level occurred only under rare circumstances. [6]
Dawkins uses this technique to reverse-engineer the purpose in the mind of the Divine Engineer of Nature, or the Utility Function of God. According to Dawkins, it is a mistake to assume that an ecosystem or a species as a whole exists for a purpose. In fact, it is wrong to suppose that individual organisms lead a meaningful life either.
Dawkins, in contrasting the differences between human design and its potential for planning with the workings of natural selection, therefore dubbed evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. To dispel the idea that complexity cannot arise without the intervention of a "creator", Dawkins uses the example of the eye.