The Selfish Gene is a book written by Richard Dawkins, first published in 1976. This book is a really difficult one. As I understand it, the writer's big goal in this book is to explain our (and other organisms') altruistic behaviors in term of our genes' selfish investments. Altruistic consciousness (and consciousness itself), as we traditionally believe, are practically nonexistent. Rather, there are only genes who selfishly try to replicate themselves across generations with the most stable strategies.
The book tries to explain its points by answering interesting questions like:
- Why different species of bird produces a different number of eggs.
- Why parents have a favorite child.
- Why altruism is not a part of our biology.
- Why sperms (male cells) are smaller than eggs (female cells).
- Why there's a dating period in human's relationship before marriage.
- Why culture distinguishes humans from animals and plants.
Naturally, controversies follow this book's existence as it implicates a fundamental change of our understanding of our consciousness, free will, and just every aspect of our body and mind. However, I don't think it's ever a mistake to questions things and tries to answer them.
