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
Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think Ridley. () The reviews of the book have been mixed, but the controversial title phrase, "How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think" has been explained by considering Dawkins to have worked as an influential educator and concise author, of "The Selfish Gene", who promoted the key ideas of others about evolutionary biology, also including some controversial ideas which are not as widely accepted. As the author of a popular science book, Dawkins had popularized ideas by George Williams about group selection, William Hamilton on the theory of kin selection in evolution, biologist/geneticist John Maynard Smith on evolutionarily stable strategies,