The Selfish Gene
A gene-centred account of selection explains how competition and cooperation can both emerge without conscious evolutionary intention.
Dawkins presents genes as replicating units whose persistence is influenced by the effects they have through organisms. Selfish describes an evolutionary accounting perspective, not a gene's conscious motive.
The word selfish can mislead if we hear it as a moral accusation. Dawkins is describing replication and selection, not a tiny conscious agent telling an organism to behave badly.
Organisms develop through interacting genes and environments. Successful replication can produce cooperative behaviour when the conditions favour it, rather than requiring every organism to act selfishly.
Kin selection, reciprocal relationships, conflict, and evolutionary strategies explain apparently altruistic conduct and tensions within biological relationships.
The book also introduces memes as an analogy for cultural replication. Its gene-centred perspective is influential but not the only level of evolutionary explanation, and biological descriptions do not prescribe human ethics.
Relatedness changes how cooperative behaviour affects replicating genetic variants.
Cooperation is not an embarrassing exception to that account. Under suitable relationships, helping others can contribute to evolutionary persistence. None of this supplies a moral instruction for human society.
Repeated interactions can support reciprocal strategies under suitable conditions.
A strategy's success depends on the other strategies present.
Organisms are not conscious instruments following evolutionary instructions.
Cultural transmission requires more than a simple biological analogy.
The perspective explains selection without supplying a moral ideal.