num_pages: 272
description: Are selfishness and individualityrather than kindness and cooperationbasic to biological nature? Does a selfish gene create universal sexual conflict? In The Genial Gene Joan Roughgarden forcefully rejects these and other ideas that have come to dominate the study of animal evolution. Building on her brilliant and innovative book Evolution's Rainbow in which she challenged accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation Roughgarden upends the notion of the selfish gene and the theory of sexual selection and develops a compelling and controversial alternative theory called social selection. This scientifically rigorous model-based challenge to an important tenet of neo-Darwinian theory emphasizes cooperation elucidates the factors that contribute to evolutionary success in a gene pool or animal social system and vigorously demonstrates that to identify Darwinism with selfishness and individuality misrepresents the facts of life as we now know them.
language: English
title: The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness
publisher: University of California Press