My essays have been on poets, writers, engineers, not politicians yet -- and here's one on Richard Dawkins, author of "The Selfish Gene" and other books in ethology. (Ethology is a word coming from the Greek word 'ethos' for 'character'.) So although he's an ethologist, it will be simpler to describe him as a biologist.
Born in Kenya, Dawkins did his doctorate under the Nobel prize winning Dutch biologist NikoTinbergen, and in 1967, Dawkins became an assistant professor of Zoology for a while at the Univ. of California at Berkeley.
Today Dawkins is known for his popular writings, and is also an outspoken atheist, which has eclipsed much of his work as a zoologist. He has studied genes in animal life, and besides the famous book referred to above, has also written popular works such as "The God Delusion", "The Blind Watchmaker", "Unweaving the Rainbow" -- to name a few.
A basic thrust of his work is that, after Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' it now appears to many biologists that the thing possessing the strongest force to survive is the gene rather than the animal. He refers to the body as a mere carrier that lives and dies -- a robotic survival machine that is programmed to preserve the selfish genes, which are, after all, just DNA molecules.
His thesis is that our genes have survived for millions of years because genes are ruthlessly selfish, which can also make animals selfish in turn.
Hand-in-hand with the selfishness of an animal is what appears to be altruism. We all see the altruism of parents towards children, and he gives many illustrations. For example, some small birds, when they detect a predator such as a hawk, give off an 'alarm call' which attracts a predator's attention. This will involve danger for a single 'sentry' bird [Ref.1,p.6], while allowing the rest of the flock to escape. Dawkins argues that the effect of this act is to strengthen the survival prospects of the altruist's genes, and those similar genes in the flock. Acts that appear altruistic can thus be deceptive, he says; it's actually the genes that are, as a result of the (perceived) altruism, now more likely to survive.
Another example might be that of a colony of black-headed gulls whose nests are only a few feet apart. When chicks hatch they are small and vulnerable. Commonly, a gull will wait until its neighbor's back is turned, perhaps while away fishing, and then take the opportunity to pounce on the neighbor's chick and swallow it [Ibid,p.5] It thus doesn't have to leave its own nest and bother to catch its own fish, and gets a good easy meal as well. Dawkins claims that this kind of action is again not so much for the good of the species as for the survival of the gene.
He goes on to say that this would be a nasty society to live in, but that of all the world's animals, it is only humans who have tried to counter the selfishness of those unfeeling genes. As we said, genes are unfeeling because they are only molecules, DNA molecules that self-replicate. (Note that crystals are also things in nature that grow or self-replicate.) At conception, there is just a single cell; but DNA molecules can't help making copies of themselves, and the succeeding 2,4,8,16,32... cells, and so on, self replicate into billions by the time of adulthood. It is automatic.
In common with many scientists, Dawkins regards plants, bacteria, viruses, mammals as just survival machines. All genes inside their cells have that same kind of molecule -- the DNA molecule, in each of the millions and millions of cells. [pp.22-23].
He says it's also possible for the effects of a gene to extend beyond the body -- even into the environment. Such effects are described in his later book "The Extended Phenotype" (phenotype is from a Greek word, phainein, meaning to show or to shine, and a phenotype describes any organism's traits.)
Finally, one can think of many excellent science writers -- astronomer Carl Sagan, neurologist Oliver Sacks, the Harvard evolutionary biologist E.O.Wilson for example -- but Dawkins has been singled out with a special endowed professorship, for the "Public Understanding of Science". The monies for this Professorship came from Charles Simonyi, the Hungarian-born billionaire behind the well-known computer program 'MicroSoft Office'.
References:
1. "The Selfish Gene", by Richard Dawkins; Oxford Univ.Press Inc, NY.
2. "Narrow Roads of Gene Land", Vol.1, collected papers of W.D.Hamilton; W.H.Freeman and Company, 41 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10010.
Dr. David Nightingale is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the State University of New York at New Paltz and is the co-author of the text, A Short Course in General Relativity.
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