The Selfish Gene

In the beginning was simplicity.

The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and a rejection of unstable ones.

At some point a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by accident. We will call it the Replicator.

But now we must mention an important property of any copying process: it is not perfect. Mistakes will happen.

The replicators that survived were the ones that built survival machines for themselves to live in.

The total number of survival machines on earth is very difficult to count and even the total number of species is unknown.

The survival of any single gene depends upon the success of the body it inhabits.

The basic unit of natural selection is best regarded not as the species, nor as the population, nor even as the individual, but as some small unit of genetic material which it is convenient to label the gene.

The manufacture of a body is a cooperative venture of such intricacy that it is almost impossible to disentangle the contribution of one gene from that of another.

Sexual reproduction has the effect of mixing and shuffling genes.