Re: A call for book recommendations, and the old "Selfish Gene" controversy

Tim Tyler wrote:
RAGLANDMYCOOL@xxxxxxx wrote:

FWIW, Dawkins outlines a "gene-centric" view where he describes humans
as survival machines and replicators and then at the end of the book
writes about how we can overcome our "selfish genes". I'm curious what
he proposes. Does anybody have any info?

Dawkins did a documentary in which he (uncharacteristically)
stopped avoiding the question of human future evolution - and
indicated that he thought that humanity had the potential to
dispense with natural selection's rule, take charge of its
own evolution, and pursue its own self-defined goals:

http://digg.com/videos/educational/The_Big_Question_Why_are_we_here

A couple of quotes from Richard in that documentary follow:

``The unrefined world of natural selection is not the
sort of world I want to live in.''

``We can leave behind the ruthlessness, the waste, the
callousness of natural selection. Our brains, our language,
our technology make us capable of forward planning.
We can set up new purposes of our own, and among these new
goals can be a complete understanding of the world in which
we live.''
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