The Extended Phenotype (subtitled "The Gene as the Unit of Selection", and later, "The Long Reach of the Gene") is a 1982 book by Richard Dawkins. A revised edition was published in 1999 with an afterword by the philosopher Daniel Dennett. Dawkins considers the concept of the Extended Phenotype to be his principal contribution to evolutionary theory.
Dawkins starts from the ideas of his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which portrayed the organism as ...
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The Extended Phenotype (subtitled "The Gene as the Unit of Selection", and later, "The Long Reach of the Gene") is a 1982 book by Richard Dawkins. A revised edition was published in 1999 with an afterword by the philosopher Daniel Dennett. Dawkins considers the concept of the Extended Phenotype to be his principal contribution to evolutionary theory.
Dawkins starts from the ideas of his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which portrayed the organism as a survival machine constructed by its genes to maximize their chances of replicating. In a much more technical presentation than the earlier book, Dawkins devotes a significant portion of this work to an attempt to rebut criticism of The Selfish Gene.
In the main portion of the book, Dawkins argues that the only thing that genes control directly is the synthesis of proteins. He points to the arbitrariness of restricting the idea of the phenotype to apply only to the phenotypic expression of an organism's genes in its own body.
Dawkins develops...
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