Taking the Group Seriously by Dalal Farhad;

Author:Dalal, Farhad; [Dalal Farhad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Hot air and desire

In 1976 Richard Dawkins’ eponymous volume, The Selfish Gene, gave rise to much controversy, not only in the field of biology, but also in other disciplines such as social psychology, anthropology and sociology. The thesis of the book seemed to lead back to a biological determinism, where one’s thoughts and behaviours were said to be determined by one’s genes. This was the new discipline of sociobiology – and it was one in the eye for the notion of nurture.

As it stands, the notion of a selfish gene is used as an anti-group formulation. This is because the polarization individual–group has another mapped onto it, selfish–altruistic. To explain: in folk psychology it is understood that if the motives for some action are self serving, then it is a selfish action. And if the action is for the benefit of the group then it is thought to be altruistic. Sociobiology told us that the selfishness is located not just in the individual, but deep in the individual, the gene. Thus we appear to be getting further and further away from the group, where society and nurture appear to be increasingly irrelevant.

To my mind the term selfish for genes is a misnomer, and it is this which gives rise to a fundamental misunderstanding. Once we deal with the notion of selfishness, what we will find in the world of genetics is not an enemy, but an ally for the notion of the group. This then is what I will take as my first task, to criticize Dawkins’ use of the term ‘selfish’, in order to dispense with it, and then get on to the other more useful things that biology has to offer the notion of the group.

It seems to me that by calling the gene selfish, Dawkins has anthropomorphized a statistical process, and by doing so has undermined his own thesis. To state the issue in as neutral a language as possible: out of a given set of genes, for a variety of reasons, some manage to replicate themselves, and others do not. The first mistake now is to say that some of the genes have ‘survived’. This is an emotive word, as is its antonym, ‘failure to survive’. Dawkins (1996, p.3) says, ‘It is not success that makes good genes. It is good genes that make success… Each generation is a filter, a sieve: good genes tend to fall through the sieve into the next generation; bad genes tend to end up in bodies that die young or without reproducing’. By using the words ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Dawkins embroils himself in a moralistic language that needlessly confuses the issue. This is ironic, as one of the things that Dawkins is constantly seeking to do is to emphasize the statistical nature of ‘survival’. For example he says: ‘DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is’ (1996, p.155). In another book he says: ‘Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view’ (Dawkins 1988, p.

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