The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins
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Dawkins reframes evolution from the organism's perspective to the gene's. Bodies are survival machines built by genes competing to replicate - a view that transformed modern biology.
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In the Conversation
In this collection, The Selfish Gene references 3 other books and is cited by 37 other books.
It draws on The Origin of Species, The Blind Watchmaker and The Extended Phenotype.
It’s picked up by The Gene, The Blind Watchmaker and The Extended Phenotype and 34 others.
Scroll down to read the exact passages where other authors reference this book and what they say about it.
What People Say
Dawkins's gene-centric reframing of evolution has shaped virtually every popular science book on biology and human nature published since. Siddhartha Mukherjee positions it as a pivotal turning point in the intellectual history of the gene, while Daniel Dennett built entire chapters of Darwin's Dangerous Idea around Dawkins's meme concept as a legitimate extension of Darwinian thinking to culture.
The book also serves as a productive foil - David Sloan Wilson challenges its gene-centrism with multilevel selection arguments, and David Quammen argues that horizontal gene transfer complicates the 'selfish' framing. Readers praise Dawkins's clarity and the way the book permanently shifts how you think about evolution, though some find the reductionist gene-level perspective philosophically unsatisfying and the writing occasionally combative.
What The Selfish Gene Draws On
3The books Dawkins references and why each one mattered to the argument.
Darwin's Origin of Species appears in the Selfish Gene bibliography as reference 41 — the foundational work Dawkins's gene-centric view extends and refines. Dawkins treats Darwin's argument as the starting point any modern evolutionary book has to reckon with.
Dawkins's own The Blind Watchmaker is listed in the bibliography as reference 50. The two books function as companions — The Selfish Gene argues the gene is the unit of selection, The Blind Watchmaker argues accumulated selection alone can produce apparent design.
The Extended Phenotype (bibliography reference 47) is Dawkins's own follow-up to The Selfish Gene. Where the first book argues genes are the unit of selection, the second argues gene effects extend beyond the body into the wider world.
What Other Authors Say About It
37The exact passages where other authors bring up “The Selfish Gene” and what they take from it.
Mukherjee traces the intellectual history of the gene, positioning Dawkins's gene-centric view of evolution as a pivotal turning point that reframed our understanding of heredity and natural selection.
The Blind Watchmaker extends Dawkins's Selfish Gene argument into a full defence of Darwinian evolution against creationism, showing how natural selection creates the appearance of design.
The Extended Phenotype is Dawkins's intellectual sequel to The Selfish Gene. He extends the gene-centric view to argue that genes reach beyond the body to influence the wider environment.
Munger references The Selfish Gene as foundational to his understanding of evolutionary psychology, which he considers essential for sound investment thinking.
Wright draws heavily on Dawkins' Selfish Gene framework to explain human social behaviour through gene-level selection
Ridley engages extensively with Dawkins' Selfish Gene and gene-centred view of evolution throughout
Intellectual Lineage
How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.
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Unexpected Connections
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Books with the highest citation overlap within the same categories.
The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin
14 shared citationsThinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
6 shared citationsMan's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl
6 shared citations
The Blind Watchmaker
Richard Dawkins
6 shared citations
The Moral Animal
Robert Wright
4 shared citationsMeditations
Marcus Aurelius
4 shared citationsCitation Network
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