The Extended Phenotype : The long reach of the gene

by Richard Dawkins

Released: August 5, 1999

336 Pages

Published by Oxford University Press,

Available in: Paperback

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Chapter 1: Necker Cubes and Buffaloes

This is a work of unabashed advocacy. I want to argue in favour of a particular way of looking at animals and plants, and a particular way of wondering why they do the things they do. What I am advocating is not a new theory, not a hypothesis which can be verified or falsified, not a model which can be judged by its predictions. If it were any of those things, I agree with Wilson (1975, p. 28) that the 'advocacy method' would be inappropriate and reprehensible. But it is not any of those things. What I am advocating is a point of view, a way of looking at familiar facts and ideas, and a way of asking new questions about them. Any reader who expects a convincing new theory in the conventional sense of the word is bound to be left, therefore, with a disappointed 'so what' feeling. But I am not trying to convince anyone of the truth of any factual proposition. Rather, I am trying to show the reader a way of seeing biological facts.

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