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Title: The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene (Popular Science) by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett ISBN: 0-19-288051-9 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: August, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.95 (22 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Absolutely Fascinating
Comment: This book, while more technical than Dawkins' other works, is still easily accessible to any layperson willing to think long and hard about the concepts (and to use the glossary!). The book's basic premise - essentially, that a beaver's dam should be considered as much a product of beaver genes as a beaver's body - is right on target. Not to mention that seeing this type of old problem in a new light is becoming Dawkins' specialty - in "The Selfish Gene", he popularized and expanded the theory of gene-based natural selection and also developed the concept of memes as the basis of cultural evolution; now he shows that phenotypic effects extend far beyond the boundaries of the body.

Dawkins also takes this opportunity to expand on his theory of the replicator, or replicating entity, and develop its classification further. I'd recommend reading the book after The Selfish Gene just to get the concepts down (unless you're familiar with evolution - and NOT of the punctuationist variety!).

Rating: 5
Summary: For True Believers its not really that surprising...
Comment: If you haven't read "The Selfish Gene", stop, go back and read that book. If you really _get_ the message presented there, that replicators (DNA) have built all of the life on earth, then this book is not as revealing as Dawkins seems to think it is. By this, I mean that there are no knew insights, only explanations of how DNA behaves.

I can only suppose that most readers of TSG are not actually aware of the full implications of the idea he presented in that book. If you understand that DNA builds organisms, and that genes cooperate to the extent necessary for each to insure its own continued existence, then the idea that genes in different organisms, species, etc... can cooperate is not surprising.

The reader will definitely learn a lot about how genes cooperate and compete with one another, and for this alone, the book is worth reading. But, if you understand that genes make organisms (when it suits them), and that organisms do not _use_ genes to reproduce themselves, then you may be disappointed to find that this book lacks something that a groundbreaking book like The Selfish Gene necessarily contains.

Still, highly recommended, a powerful exploration of replicator phenomenology.

(Note: if you have read this book, and think I've missed the point, please email me your interpretation, or where you think I've gone wrong.)

Rating: 1
Summary: Why Will Dawkins not admit he's wrong
Comment: Dawkins refuses to let it go. Astrobiology and microbiology is pushing the final nail in the coffin of this ultra-Darwinist garbage. BUT, Dawkins refuses to let it go, using same flawed reasoninng to back his claims. It is time to abandon the current evolutionary paradigm, and ebrace the more than plausible models that have been pushed away by dogma of ultra-Darwinists.

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