Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T03:27:23.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Gregarious Metaphor Of The Selfish Gene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Colin Grant
Colin Grant
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada EOA 3CO
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Science establishes facts; the arts create imaginary possibilities; theology speculates. Although this characterization might receive wide endorsement, highly creative and literary developments in contemporary science suggest otherwise. The intriguing gene's-eye view of life promoted by sociobiology, and especially in Richard Dawkins' ‘biography’ of the selfish gene, represents a highly literate and imaginative account of reality that not only shatters the science/arts stereotype but even suggests that ultimately science involves views of reality of theological proportions.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 1991 , pp. 431 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene (London: Granada 1978), hereafter cited as SG.Google Scholar

2 Dawkins, SG, p. 1.Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker (Burnt Mill: Longman Scientific and Technical, 1986), ‘Preface’, p. ix, hereafter cited as BW.Google Scholar

5 Dawkins, BW, p. 6.Google Scholar

6 Ibid. p. 5.

7 Dawkins, SG, p. 21.Google Scholar

8 Ibid. p. 36.

9 Dawkins, BW, p. 112.Google Scholar

10 Ibid. p. 126.

11 Dawkins, SG, p. 56.Google Scholar

12 Dawkins, Richard, ‘Replicators and vehicles’, in Current Problems in Sociobiology, ed. by King's College Sociobiology Group, Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 45.Google Scholar

13 Dawkins, SG, p. 48.Google Scholar

14 Ibid.

15 Caplan, Arthur L., ‘A critical examination of current sociobiological theory: adequacy and implications’, in Sociobiology: Beyond Mature / Nurture? AAAS Selected Symposium, ed. by Barlow, George W. and Silverberg, James (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1980), p. 102.Google Scholar

16 Dawkins, SG, p. 25.Google Scholar

17 Ibid. p. 23.

18 Ibid. P. 35.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid. p. 30.

23 Ibid. p. 39.

24 Dawkins, BW, p. 193.Google Scholar

25 Ibid.

26 Stent, G., ‘Preface’, in Morality as a Biological Phenomenon, ed. by Stent, G. S. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).Google Scholar

27 Midgley, Mary, ‘Gene-juggling’, Philosophy, LIV (1979), 451.Google Scholar

28 Dunbar, R. I. M., ‘Adaptation, fitness and the evolutionary tautology’, in Current Problems in Sociobiology, ed. by King's College Sociobiology Group, Cambridge, op. cit. p. 10.Google Scholar

29 Wilson, E. O., Sociobiology, The New Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 362.Google Scholar

30 Ruse, Michael, Sociobiology: Sense or Nonsense? (Dodrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1979), P. 43.Google Scholar

31 Sociobiology Group, Study, ‘Sociobiology — a new biological determinism’, in The Ann Arbor Science for the People Editorial Collective, Biology as a Social Weapon (Minneapolis: Burgers Publishing Co., 1977). P. 145.Google Scholar

32 Dawkins, SG, p. 38.Google Scholar

33 Hefner, Philip, ‘Sociobiology, Ethics, and Theology’, Zygon, 19, 4 (1984), 194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Ghiselin, M. T., The Economy of Nature and the Evolution of Sex (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 247.Google Scholar

35 Wilson, Sociology, op. cit. p. 120.Google Scholar

36 Barash, David, Sociobiology: The Whisperings Within (London: Penguin, 1979), p. 167 f.Google Scholar

37 Wilson, E. O., On Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 165.Google ScholarPubMed

38 Kitcher, Philip, Vaulting Ambition, Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1985), pp. 402 ff.Google Scholar

39 Ruse, Michael, ‘The Morality of the Gene‘, The Monist, 67 (1984), 171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Midgley, Mary, Evolution as a Religion (London, New York: Methuen, 1985), pp. 126 ff.Google Scholar

41 Midgley, Mary, ‘Gene-juggling’, op. cit. p. 447.Google Scholar

42 Reiss, Michael J., ‘Human Sociobiology’, zygon, 19, 4 (1984), 117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Dawkins, SG, p. 104.Google Scholar

46 Ibid. p. 140.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid. p. 41.

49 Ibid. p. 139.

50 Ibid. p. 1

51 Schweber, Silvan S., ‘The Origin of the Origin Revisited, Journal of the History of Biology, 10, 4 (1977), 277.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

52 Gould, Stephen Jay, Ever Since Darwin (New York: Norton, 1977), p. 100.Google Scholar

53 Gould, Stephen Jay, ‘Sociobiology and the theory of natural selection’, in Sociobiology: Beyond Nature / Nurture?, ed. by Barlow, George W. and Silverberg, James, op. cit. p. 260.Google Scholar

54 Peacocke, Arthur, ‘ The new biology and Nature, man and God’, in The Experiment of Life ed. by Hare, E. Kenneth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983), p. 66.Google Scholar

55 Sahlins, The Use and Abuse of Biology, p. 73.Google Scholar

56 Silverberg, James, ‘Sociobiology, the new synthesis? an anthropologist's perspective’, in Sociobiology: Beyond Nature/Nurture?, ed. by Barlow, George W. and Silverberg, James, op. cit., pp. 47 f.Google Scholar

57 Nielsen, Kai, God, Scepticism and Modernity (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1989), p. 75.Google Scholar

58 Shibles, Warran A., Metaphor: An Annotated Bibliography and History (Whitewater, Wis.: Language Press, 1971),Google Scholarcited in McFague, Sallie, Metaphorical Theology, Models of God in Religious Language (London: SCM Press, 1983), p. 201, n. 2.Google Scholar

59 Dawkins, SG, p. 215.Google Scholar

60 Ibid. p. 21.

61 Midgley, Mary, ‘Gene-Juggling’, op. cit. p. 444.Google Scholar

62 Young, Robert A., ‘Darwin's Metaphor: Does Nature Select?’ The Monist, 55 (1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63 Bertalanffy, L. von, ‘Chance or Law’, in Beyond Reduction, ed. by Koestler, A. (London: Hutchinson, 1969), p. 11.Google Scholar

64 Young, Robert M., op. cit.Google Scholar

65 Dawkins, Richard, ‘Replicators and vehicles‘, op. cit. p. 45.Google Scholar

66 Dawkins, BW, p. 141.Google Scholar

67 Ibid.

68 Dawkins, SG, p. 16.Google Scholar

69 Dawkins, BW, p. 145.Google Scholar

70 I wish to record my gratitude to my colleague in Biology, Jean-Guy Godin, for providing books from his own library, to Anne Ward and Ruth Miller of the Ralph Pickard Bell Library for acquiring other books and articles through interlibrary loan with their characteristic efficiency, and to our department secretary, Robin Hamilton.Google Scholar