The Selfish Gene Another criticism of the book is its treatment of morality, and more particularly altruism, as existing only as a form of selfishness: The philosopher Mary Midgley has suggested this position is a variant of Hobbes' explanation of altruism as enlightened self-interest, and that Dawkins goes a step further to suggest that our genetic programming can be overcome by what amounts to an extreme version of free will. Part of Mary Midgley's concern is that Richard Dawkins' account of "The Selfish Gene" serves as a moral and ideological justification for selfishness to be adopted by modern human societies as simply following
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection wrote that it was "certain to take rank as one of the major contributions to the theory of evolution." J. B. S. Haldane described it as "brilliant." Reginald Punnett was negative, however. The book was largely overlooked for 40 years, and in particular Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection was misunderstood. The work had a great effect on W. D. Hamilton, who discovered it as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge and noted in these excerpts from the rear cover of the 1999 variorum edition: The publication of the variorum edition in 1999 led to renewed interest in the