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novabird's review against another edition
4.0
What continues to impress me about Dawkins’ writing is his accessible style, with solid opening paragraphs and good chapter endings. So much so, that I was able to trace backwards his basic ideas presented in, “The Extended Phenotype,” and translate them from the language of phenotypes to epigenetics. Phenotypes are the set of epigenetic features that change a cell.
Dawkins’ openly states his thesis:
Three types of extended phenotype
First there is a capacity of animals to alter their environment using physical constructions or creating animal artefacts, like beaver dams, termite mounds, and possibly beehive site selection and spider webs.
Second, some parasitic organisms have a direct ability be alter their environment to their advantage, through the capacity to benefit from a host organism. Parasites that manipulate host behavior to facilitate its own reproduction can be found in the female Sacculina (a barnacle like parasite) that finds a male crab, penetrates its shell, sterilizes it, widens its abdomen, hormonally changes the male into a female and deposits her eggs.
The third type of extended phenotype refers to an action at a distance. These are found in morphological - markers are often detectable by eye, by simple visual inspection. Many butterflies mimic the color pattern of the Monarch Butterfly, which is brought about by the nectar of milkweed. But only the Monarch is immune to the poison in milkweed and the Monarch is the only one that is poisonous if eaten by a predator. The false Monarchs indirectly benefit from the adaption of the Monarchs color pattern schemata. Or another idea is that of female choice and sexual selection and it is called indirect choice. It is the notion that females are not making active choices of males, but through their actions, they are selecting for sexually selected traits. Many courtship routines entail elaborate and vigorous chasing and the like, and a female may indirectly select the best male by performing such actions. Only the fittest male can keep up with her and she will weed out any stragglers. Selection favors the more vigorous males and any aspects of secondary sexual traits that aid in such pursuit.
Daniel Dennet in the Afterword very succinctly condenses one of Dawkins major theorems that presages the present day enticing examination into epigenetics with;
I admire Dawkins not only for his clear communication style but is ability to speculate with such a reasoned capacity that his theories actually become part of everyday scientific dialogue. I also really like how Dawkins differentiates between the Gaia hypothesis and a genecentric worldview; it really helped to clear this up for me. 4.5
Dawkins’ openly states his thesis:
“The thesis that I shall support is this. It is legitimate to speak of adaptations as being ‘for the benefit of” something, but that something is best not seen as an individual organism. It is a smaller unit, which I call the active germ line replicator. The most important kind of replicator is the gene or small genetic fragment. Replicators are not, of course, selected directly, but by proxy; they are judged by their phenotypic effects. Al though for some purposes it is convenient to think of these phenotypic effects as being packaged together in discrete vehicles such as individual organisms, this is not fundamentally necessary. Rather the replicator should be thought of as having extended phenotypic effects, consisting of all its effects on the world at large, not just its effects on the individual body in which it happens to be sitting.” p.4
Three types of extended phenotype
First there is a capacity of animals to alter their environment using physical constructions or creating animal artefacts, like beaver dams, termite mounds, and possibly beehive site selection and spider webs.
Second, some parasitic organisms have a direct ability be alter their environment to their advantage, through the capacity to benefit from a host organism. Parasites that manipulate host behavior to facilitate its own reproduction can be found in the female Sacculina (a barnacle like parasite) that finds a male crab, penetrates its shell, sterilizes it, widens its abdomen, hormonally changes the male into a female and deposits her eggs.
The third type of extended phenotype refers to an action at a distance. These are found in morphological - markers are often detectable by eye, by simple visual inspection. Many butterflies mimic the color pattern of the Monarch Butterfly, which is brought about by the nectar of milkweed. But only the Monarch is immune to the poison in milkweed and the Monarch is the only one that is poisonous if eaten by a predator. The false Monarchs indirectly benefit from the adaption of the Monarchs color pattern schemata. Or another idea is that of female choice and sexual selection and it is called indirect choice. It is the notion that females are not making active choices of males, but through their actions, they are selecting for sexually selected traits. Many courtship routines entail elaborate and vigorous chasing and the like, and a female may indirectly select the best male by performing such actions. Only the fittest male can keep up with her and she will weed out any stragglers. Selection favors the more vigorous males and any aspects of secondary sexual traits that aid in such pursuit.
Daniel Dennet in the Afterword very succinctly condenses one of Dawkins major theorems that presages the present day enticing examination into epigenetics with;
“Dawkins makes a very important point that a change in the environment may not just change the success rate of a phenotypic effect; it may change the phenotypic effect altogether!”
I admire Dawkins not only for his clear communication style but is ability to speculate with such a reasoned capacity that his theories actually become part of everyday scientific dialogue. I also really like how Dawkins differentiates between the Gaia hypothesis and a genecentric worldview; it really helped to clear this up for me. 4.5
andgineer's review against another edition
2.0
Автор настойчиво рекомендует эту книгу в замечательной книге Selfish gene.
Но я не советую данную книгу читать - практически весь текст книги это дискуссия с критиками автора. Мне очень нравится, как он обстоятельно и убедительно защищает свою позицию.
Но читать это как книгу просто невозможно.
Остановитесь на Selfish gene
Но я не советую данную книгу читать - практически весь текст книги это дискуссия с критиками автора. Мне очень нравится, как он обстоятельно и убедительно защищает свою позицию.
Но читать это как книгу просто невозможно.
Остановитесь на Selfish gene
davemmett's review against another edition
3.0
I read this as a follow-up to [b:The Selfish Gene|61535|The Selfish Gene|Richard Dawkins|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1366758096s/61535.jpg|1746717]. This one was definitely harder to get into - most of it was trying to convince me to take the 'gene-based' perspective (vs individual organism), but I was already bought into that from Selfish Gene, so a lot of it felt like a more technical review than something genuinely new.
By the time the last few chapters rolled around - where he really dives into the concept that genes can exert their phenotypic effects on their environment, and even other living creatures - I was really just trying to finish the book.
My advice for others (who aren't biologist, scientists, zoologists, etc.) would be to start at Chapter 10 - An Agony in Five Fits and just ignore the first 2/3 of the book.
By the time the last few chapters rolled around - where he really dives into the concept that genes can exert their phenotypic effects on their environment, and even other living creatures - I was really just trying to finish the book.
My advice for others (who aren't biologist, scientists, zoologists, etc.) would be to start at Chapter 10 - An Agony in Five Fits and just ignore the first 2/3 of the book.
beecycling's review against another edition
3.0
I was pretty proud of myself for getting through this one. Not because it's boring - Dawkins is never boring! - but I'm definitely a layperson and this one is far more technical than the others I'd read. But I'm glad I stuck with it, because it gives more depth and perspective on the ideas in the more populist books.
krep___'s review
4.75
A follow-on to The Selfish Gene (which I have not yet read). It advocates thinking of the gene as the primary replicator that selection forces operate on in Darwinian evolution, arguing persuasively that this often offers a better explanation than the traditional focus on the individual organism, let alone on groups of organisms. The book is filled with fascinating examples, real world as well as thought experiments, to support his arguments. It is well laid out to lead the reader down his logic path and does a balanced job of presenting counter arguments. Lots of references to the publications of his colleagues and their positions. Members of his academic community are apparently not shy about telling each other how the other guy is wrong (or right, for that matter), and Dawkins has plenty of experience of being on the receiving end of criticism, and he is polite in his responses to that. It felt a little bit on the long side, but his prose style is fun while being clear and informative - a welcome contrast to, say, Mayr's impenetrable opaqueness and Gould's contrived pseudo-eloquence. The intended audience is definitely not the general lay public. It's an intellectually stimulating read for the student of evolutionary biology.
maxt274's review against another edition
4.0
Interesting topic but takes a while to get into the actual meat of the argument. The first 3/4 of the book is set up and background information for discussing the extended phenotype. The hypothesis itself is fascinating and is a useful way to look at biology.
You could read this without a decent amount of biological knowledge but I think it would be quite difficult.
You could read this without a decent amount of biological knowledge but I think it would be quite difficult.
brannigan's review against another edition
3.0
As Dawkins warns at the outset, whereas the Selfish Gene was written for the layman, the Extended Phenotype is written for the professional biologist. This is why I think I'm being terribly unfair with just a three-star rating, but at least I'm being honest. It's not that I couldn't keep up with the level of argument and the abundance of technical terms, no - I just didn't care! I have no interest in the nuances of the evolution wars that were going on at Dawkin's time of writing, and I completely devoured the Selfish Gene, so for me about a third of the book consisted of preaching to the choir, on that it was spent refuting criticisms of Dawkins' earlier theory. I found myself skipping these clarificatory passages.
And yet! The actual core argument (which can be found in the last four chapters) is so elegantly delivered, that I would have given it five stars had it been published on its own. It offers a wonderful new perspective on genetics that, taken together with the Selfish Gene, has certainly revolutionised my outlook on evolutionary biology. I'd gush a bit more but I'd probably end up quoting blocks of text verbatim from Daniel Dennett's afterword verbatim, as he shares my perspective of an 'outsider' whose formal discipline is philosophy, and appreciates the book for its sustained consistent arguments and beautiful thought experiments. Classic early Dawkins.
And yet! The actual core argument (which can be found in the last four chapters) is so elegantly delivered, that I would have given it five stars had it been published on its own. It offers a wonderful new perspective on genetics that, taken together with the Selfish Gene, has certainly revolutionised my outlook on evolutionary biology. I'd gush a bit more but I'd probably end up quoting blocks of text verbatim from Daniel Dennett's afterword verbatim, as he shares my perspective of an 'outsider' whose formal discipline is philosophy, and appreciates the book for its sustained consistent arguments and beautiful thought experiments. Classic early Dawkins.