Product Description

By the best selling author of The Selfish Gene 'This entertaining and thought-provoking book is an excellent illustration of why the study of evolution is in such an exciting ferment these days.' Science 'The Extended Phenotype is a sequel to The Selfish Gene . . . he writes so clearly it could be understood by anyone prepared to make the effort' John Maynard Smith, London Review of Books 'Dawkins is quite incapable of being boring this characteristically brilliant and stimulating book is original and provocative throughout, and immensely enjoyable.' G. A. Parker, Heredity 'The extended phenotype is certainly a big idea and it is pressed hard in dramatic language.' Sydney Brenner, Nature 'Richard Dawkins, our most radical Darwinian thinker, is also our best science writer.' Douglas Adams 'Dawkins is a superb communicator. His books are some of the best books ever written on science.' Megan Tressider, Guardian 'Dawkins is a genius of science popularization.' Mark Ridley, The Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9612 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

John Maynard Smith, LRB
"The Extended Phenotype is a sequel to The Selfish Gene ... he writes so clearly it could be understood by anyone prepared to make the effort"

Review
The Extended Phenotype is a sequel to The Selfish Gene ... he writes so clearly it could be understood by anyone prepared to make the effort (John Maynard Smith, LRB )

This entertaining and thought-provoking book is an excellent illustration of why the study of evolution is in such an exciting ferment these days. (Science )

About the Author
Richard Dawkins is the first holder of Oxford's newly endowed Charles Simonyi Professorship of Public Understanding of Science. Born in Nairobi of British parents, Richard Dawkins was educated at Oxford and did his doctorate under the Nobel-prizewinning ethologist Niko Tinbergen. From 196769 he was an Assistant Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, then he returned to Oxford as University Lecturer (later Reader) and a Fellow of New College, before
taking up his present position in 1995.

Richard Dawkins's bestselling books have played a significant role in the renaissance of science book publishing for a general audience. The Selfish Gene (1976; second edition 1989) was followed by The Extended Phenotype (1982), The Blind Watchmaker (1986), River Out of Eden (1995), Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), and Unweaving the Rainbow (1998). He has won many literary and scientific awards.

Customer Reviews

A scholarly exposition of "the long reach of the gene".
Firstly in reference to another review below, I think it is mean-spirited to give a negative review to a book you confess not to be capable of understanding!

This book was marketed as the sequel to The Selfish Gene, and chronologically it certainly was. However, the book is far more scholarly in its approach and for that reason is different in tone from Dawkins' other major works. Dawkins states at the outset that he is writing primarily for the professional biologist, but that anyone who makes the effort may understand and enjoy the work (I paraphrase).

This is true. With occasional reference to the helpful and educational glossary provided at the back of the book, I found it easy to make progress, to enjoy and to follow the arguments presented. I highly recommend this to all professionals, and to all others who may have read Dawkins' other works and feel ready to go deeper.

An interesting but challenging read
"The Extended Phenotype" is the 4th and most demanding of Richard Dawkins' books that I've read. I hadn't realized that it was aimed mainly at his professional colleagues so was surprised at the amount of concentration, hard thinking and puzzled head scratching required to work through it. But what a glow of satisfaction: to finish such a challenging book, feeling that most of it has made sense to me. Like his other books (the ones I've read: "The Selfish Gene", "The Blind Watchmaker" and "Unweaving The Rainbow"), it's beautifully clearly written, with most of the more esoteric terms defined in the glossary at the back of the book. Not all of the terms could be found there however and nor were many of those to be found in an ordinary dictionary. The book is not so self-contained as those aimed at the more 'popular science' end of the market - the ones that you can read from cover to cover without reaching for a dictionary or other source of clarification. That's why I can only claim to have understood *most* rather than *all* of the book.

This book follows on from "The Selfish Gene" and in it, Dawkins argues that the phonotypic effects of genes do not stop at the limits of the organisms that carry them. He suggests, for example, that the phenotypic expression of beaver genes stretch right to the edges of the lakes formed by their dams and the genes of some parasites are expressed in their hosts. So a snail might behave in a manner that puts itself in harm's way because the fluke living inside it has, somehow, managed to modify the snail's behaviour for its own ends - say to continue its life cycle inside one of the snail's predators. That is to say, the snail's behaviour is maximizing the survival of fluke genes rather than snail genes. He puts it very succinctly: 'an animal's behaviour tends to maximize the survival of the genes "for" that behaviour, whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it.' There are plenty of other fascinating examples of this sort. There are chapters covering such intriguing areas as evolutionary 'arms races', 'outlaw' genes and 'jumping' genes. Good use is made of thought experiments to help to figure out how and why certain adaptations might have evolved. 'Outlaw' genes for instance, might try to cheat the system to get themselves replicated more than their alleles, so how can the rest of the genome fight back? I particularly liked the idea of the 'green-beard effect' whereby genes might make the organism (not necessarily a man) carrying them recognisable to other organisms carrying that gene so that all the organisms carrying the 'green beard' gene would be altruistic towards each other but not to non-green-bearded organisms.

It's not the usual easy read. As the author points out, 'this book ... assumes that the reader has professional knowledge of evolutionary biology and its technical terms'. However, it's well worth the effort of struggling with it if you're interested in evolution and Richard Dawkins ideas about how it all works. If you've read "The Selfish Gene" and found it riveting, you'll probably enjoy this too.

Taking evolution one step further
What happens (evolutionary speaking) after genes surround themselves with enough flesh and bone to support their replication ? Well, Dawkins tries to answer that in this brilliant sequel to Selfish Gene. The arguments are well presented and the whole book is written in clear language. You don't have to be a geneticist to understand the book. So, if you've read Selfish Gene you should add Extended Phenotype to your collection. If not, first buy Selfish Gene, read it until it makes sense and then proceed to this book.