The Gene’s Eye View of Evolution Theme Analysis

The Selfish Gene offers an account of evolution from the perspective of genes. Darwinian evolution (as defined in Charles Darwin’s 1859 book On the Origin of the Species) claims that life on earth evolved from simpler organisms through natural selection. According to Darwin, natural selection favors organisms that are slightly better adapted to their natural environment, and therefore more likely to survive and reproduce, which results in those organisms passing on their traits to succeeding generations. Richard Dawkins argues that since hereditary traits are passed on through genes, it actually makes more sense to think of genes as the units that evolve. But this view raises a question about why organisms (like humans, cells, plants, and animals) need to exist at all. Dawkins argues that organisms exist and reproduce in the way that they do because this provides an evolutionary advantage for the genes that exist inside of them. 

Dawkins tells the story of the origin of life on Earth from the “gene’s eye view,” to explain that organisms developed out of “simplicity” through the mechanism of gene-based evolution. As Dawkins describes it, at the start of the universe, there were just atoms floating around in energy. Dawkins calls this state a “primordial soup.” Eventually, atoms started clumping together to create molecules. At some point, one of these patterns resulted in molecules that attracted around them to form similar patterns. This process of attraction is a sort of “replication.” The molecule essentially creates a “copy” or “clone” of itself with other atoms that are still floating around. “Replicating” molecules, according to Dawkins, are the ancestors of DNA. Replication must have been an imperfect process, meaning some “copies” would have slightly different arrangements of molecules. In a universe with finite atoms, all the slightly different molecules would have to compete for free atoms in order to replicate. Eventually, one particular arrangement of atoms must have created a molecule that was able to build “protein” around itself, thereby protecting its atoms from being stolen. These were the first cells. Eventually, it must have been the case that cells that clumped together were better at protecting their replicating components. These clumps of cells were the first organisms. This is how cells containing DNA eventually formed into organisms over the course of thousands of million years.

Dawkins then argues that genes (or, DNA)—and not organisms—are the things that are evolving. After all, before organisms could exist, genetic code with the instructions to build organisms had to exist, and genetic code is still around. In fact, it’s genetic code—the “the unit of heredity”—that gets passed on through the processes of reproduction. Organisms, in this view, are simply “machines” that house genes. Organisms exist because they help genes survive. As Dawkins writes “[we] are all survival machines for the same kind of replicator— molecules called DNA—but there are many different ways of making a living in the world, and the replicators have built a vast range of machines to exploit them. A monkey is a machine that preserves genes up trees, a fish is a machine that preserves genes in the water. There is even a small worm that preserves genes in German beer mats. DNA works in mysterious ways.”

The “gene’s eye view” of evolution, thus, argues that life on earth exists in the way it does because genes are competing to survive, and the genes that win out through natural selection must be those that lay out the “blueprints” for creating organisms as we know them. These organisms—including humans—are “survival machines” for the genes they contain.