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
The Selfish Gene gene is the object of selection, usefully completes and extends the explanation of evolution given by Charles Darwin before the basic mechanisms of genetics were understood. According to the ethologist Alan Grafen, acceptance of adaptionist theories is hampered by a lack of a mathematical unifying theory and a belief that anything in words alone must be suspect. According to Grafen, these difficulties along with an initial conflict with population genetics models at the time of its introduction "explains why within biology the considerable scientific contributions it ["The Selfish Gene"] makes are seriously underestimated, and why it is viewed mainly as