The Selfish Genius The Selfish Genius The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy is a 2009 book by Fern Elsdon-Baker about the history of evolutionary theory, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species". The book provides an overview of the historical and philosophical debates that have continued throughout the history of evolutionary theory, and carry on to this day in debates surrounding the merits of gene-centric selection and group selection models. The book is particularly critical of the popular science author Richard Dawkins, claiming that he presents a brand of
Gene-centered view of evolution for the evolution of social characteristics such as selfishness and altruism. The formulation of the central dogma of molecular biology was summarized by Maynard Smith: The rejection of the inheritance of acquired characters, combined with Ronald Fisher the statistician, giving the subject a mathematical footing, and showing how Mendelian genetics was compatible with natural selection in his 1930 book "The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection". J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright, paved the way to the formulation of the selfish-gene theory. For cases where environment can influence heredity, see epigenetics. The view of the gene as the unit of