which we still do whether we want our selfish genes to go and jump in the lake or not and in our primitive ancestors that would have been enough to have a strong sachs drive. children would tend to follow automatically no world without contraception. nowadays in the world with contraception we can all enjoy ourselves and tell her genes to go and jump in the lake. [applause] >> now, one of them perhaps the most innovative and also controversial aspects of your genetic thesis is the concept of the extended phenotype and just reading from the selfish gene, the definition of the extended phenotype is an animal's behavior or their appearance

because it's not limited to how they behave but it's also how they look in their size and so forth tends to maximize the survival of the genes for that behavior or physical characteristic. whether or not those genes happened to be in the body of the particular organism performing it. that may be a little complicated. >> okay, when i said the fate of the gene which is bound up in the vehicle that they write about that is true most of the time. but my second book extended phenotype which was for professional audience generalizes this support and point out that actually the phenotype is the external manifestation of genetic tendencies. mostly phenotypes are parts of the body in which the genes ri ride. so the legs of a, the tale of

the eyes and whiskers of a, the for of late are phenotypic manifestations of genes inside the jeans the genes writing in around the vehicle that is the and their survival is served by the affects that they have on the hair, the tale, the legs, the eyes and the muscle etc. of the beanever. but beavers do other things and the dam of a beaver and this was my contribution to dam up the beaver is part of his phenotype because in exactly the same way as genes survived because of their effects on the body of the vehicle in which they ride in special cases like beaver dams genes survived by virtue of their effects on the dam which is not part of the beaver's body and is not something that they

ride inside that nevertheless is phenotypic effects in the same way as the tale of the beaver or the whiskers of the beaver is phenotypic effects. so any animal artifact, a bird's nest, a spider's web, a beaver dam a termite mound is all regarded as extended phenotypes. that was the first step in the argument of the extended phenotype. then i generalized it to say well in the same way as the beaver dam or that cap this house. canada's flies are fairly nondescript that fly about about. their larvae built for themselves little houses out of stones or out of sticks or little tiny snail shells and a cement them together and they make a beautiful little house in which the larva lives. so it's like a snail shell but

it's built by the behavioral efforts of the lava. it's the most are marketable process to watch, the building of their house. the house in which the cap this lives is an extended phenotype. now compare that to a snail. a snail has a shell which is secreted by the body of the snail and is part of the normal phenotype of the snail. now consider a parasite, a fluke say living inside the snail. and the fluke gains protection from the snail shell just as the snail gains protection from the snail shelled and just as the lava gets protection from the stone house. but the fluke at least in some cases has an influence on the snail shelled.

snails that have a fluke inside of them at least in one case that i studied, snails that have a fluke inside of them have thicker shells and snails without a fluke. it looks as though the fluke, it kind of worm is improving the snail shell for its own good. why would it do that? if the snail shell could be improved why doesn't the snail do it anyway? you see what i'm building toward that the extra thickening of the snail shell is part of the extended phenotype of genes in the fluke. natural selection comes along and favors jeans in the fluke that have phenotypic influence on the snail shell. why doesn't the snail do it anyway? because there is a compromise

between the needs of survival and reproduction. the snail that had a shell that was too thick would be less likely to reproduce because it puts too much work and too much energy into thickening its shell and doesn't have enough left over for reproduction. so the ottoman shell thickness for the fluke, for the parasite inside of the snail is thicker than for the snail itself which is why i'm saying that the thicker shell is an extended phenotype of the fluke. generalizing that again, any time that a parasite has an effect on its host, which many of them do, sometimes quite remarkable effects, you can call that an extended phenotype. there's another kind of worm called the brain worm which infects ants and an infected ant

has its behavior change. the brain worm burrows into the brain of the ant ant and make solution in the brain of the ant just like a physiologist might make a lesion in the brain of an ant and causes the ants to instead of going down into the ground in the heat of the day the ant goes up grass stems to the top where it shouldn't be in the middle of the day and there it becomes vulnerable to being eaten by a sheep which is exactly what the brain worm wants because the brain worm's next host after the ant is a sheep. there are lots and lots of examples of parasites manipulating their hosts for their own advantage. i want to regard every one of those changes in the host behavior as an extended phenotype. finally, a parasite doesn't actually have to live inside its host.

cuckoo's and the american equivalent of cuckoo's parasitize other birds by laying eggs in the other birds nest in the cuckoo hatches out and i talk about cuckoo's, european cuckoos and all kinds of adaptations of the nestling could do influence the host and cause the host bird to defeat it. you see grotesque pictures of gigantic baby cuckoos dwarfing their foster parent in the foster parent is frantically working to stuff food into the gaping more of the cuckoo. the cuckoo somehow manages to exert an influence on the behavior of the house. that again is an extended phenotype even though the cuckoo does not live inside of its host. then you can generalize that to

any influence that animals have on each other. the nightingale song preferably intoxicating by heartaches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense. one minute past. keats was not a bird. he was a mammal but the effect that the drugging of fact as though of him hemlock the drugging effect on john keats is i am conjecturing the same as the male nightingale is having on a female nightingale. so the female nightingale is being drugged by the male nightingale song, manipulated. it's as though a brain physiologist had come along and

injected a drug into the female. the male can do that. he doesn't have a hypodermic but he does have a voice. and the voice has been honed over generations to become an extremely powerful intoxicating influence, very intoxicating that it even intoxicated john keats at whom it was not and since he is not a female nightingale. that is enough for me to phenotype. sorry i went on a bit long. [applause] >> as you know better than any of us there have been a number of questions and challenges and criticisms of the evolutionary biological thesis of the role that genetic mechanisms, to ask you to try and comment, refused a couple of the most obvious.

what is all true some? how do you explain all tourism and you invoke or you describe your belief in the hamilton ru rule, a colleague of yours, a friend and i will allow you to explain that to the audience and then does that apply to one of your oxford mentors mike colin who had such a significant influence in your career? >> yes. the book the selfish gene could have just as well been called the author is taking because much of the book is about all tourism. it's widely misunderstood as being a book about selfishness or even an advocacy of selfishness. it is thought to be that by people who have read the book by title only.

reading the title and omitting the rather large footnote which is the book itself. [laughter] a lot of it is about all true some and discuss his two main ways in which all touristic organisms are favored by selfish genes. selfish genes because they are the immortals, because they are the ones that go through the generations, they achieved this feat of going through the generations partly by programming their bodies, their vehicles into being very good at surviving at the expense of others. that would be selfish. partly by programming them to reproduce obviously contrary to the next generation. if you are a genie don't cause your vehicle to reproduce but also there's another way to do it with collateral kin. you can calculate and it's been done several times. you can calculate the probability that a gene in you will be in inner and a relative

you like like a nephew, a niece, a sister, great-nephew or a grandchild and the probability is a known function. it's easy to calculate. so if you imagine a gene for making an individual be all touristic towards saying nieces that gene has a 25% chance of ending up in the body of a niece helped. so therefore at the cost of the altar altar is, the cost to the altar is is not very great and the benefit to the niece, to the beneficiary is great, and in this case it has to be four times as great, then that gene will survive. there will be a tendency for that gene to survive. bill hamilton whom you have just mentioned my colleague and friend was the one who worked out this theory, work it out

very thoroughly in 1964. he himself was a great expert in social insects and which of course are the supreme altar is to look after ken other than their own offspring. most ofork in an ant colony or a termite colony or a beehive is done by workers who are sterile who have no prospect of reproducing themselves but instead put all their efforts into the reproduction of the queen or males and their rearing of young queens and young males who may be their younger siblings or nephews and nieces. so the social insects are the sort of showcase of this theory of king's vote -- kin selection and the theory of place while animals even if they don't actually show all tourism

towards collateral can nephews and nieces or brothers and sisters. the reason they don't show it is the economics of the situation don't favor it. you only get an actual evolution of sibling all tourism or niece all tourism if the economic circumstances favorite taking into account the spout probability factor of the probability of sharing a gene. happens that the ecological economic circumstances of ants and bees lost in termite's favor extreme can all tourism and there are quite another -- quite a lot of woodpeckers in california and mammals being the most extreme the native rat of australia which are vertebrate equivalents of social insects.

it's powerful and correct one. >> eldritch this is where schizophrenia comes in. how do you understand conditions and diseases such as autism or schizophrenia which their reproductive capacity of individuals is significantly impaired but their population frequency remained stable or increases if you believe the cdc figures of rates of autism? >> yes, the question of why we have any genetic diseases at all of courses easily answered by a mutation. there's a certain rare occurrence of mutations, things like hemophilia, huntington's korea and these terrible if off elections which are genetic. they are explained by mutation. mutation happens, mutation has to happen.

they are accidental. they are just mistakes and we notice the ones that are bad as many of them are. but when you talk about things like schizophrenia which occur at a higher frequency than you would expect by mutation that's a real puzzle. one is kind of tempted to think along the lines of could there be some sort of advantage? it's hard to imagine it in schizophrenia but one could imagine in some cases that autism that autistic individuals might have advantages under some circumstances and it doesn't sound all that plausible but it has been suggested that perhaps there is a milder form a long the spectrum that have an advantage. this is your field more than mind so i am often pontificating

about it. >> maybe if i write a book about it someday you will interview me about it. i can't conclude the interview without asking one question about the god delusion which was one of your books somewhat of a departure. and i gather you were appointed if not friends with christopher hitchens and he spoke at his funeral. so how does your view of religion in this context compare to those of hitchens or sam harris in this country who has written about this? >> well they are pretty similar. christopher hitchens' book, "god is not great," sam harris wrote the end of faith and the other two books which are about atheism for him. i would say that my approach to

atheism is a more scientific one. i'm interested in the academic question of whether there is a supreme intelligence, creative intelligence behind the universe which i regard as a scientific question. it will be a very interesting scientific hypothesis that there is a creative intelligence behind the universe, a universe with a creative intelligence would be a different kind of universe from one without. so i think it's a scientific question and that for me is primary but the book also includes value considerations as well. i think for christopher is rather that the values in the morality of the politics come first. he regarded god, i suppose especially the judeo-christian muslim god as it tyrants, is a dictator, and a solid steel north korea.

[laughter] he said the difference is in north korea you can at least escape by dying. [laughter] [applause] >> there are enough. i wanted to share related to religion as a matter of fact an anecdote that relates to the issue of how your book has impacted individuals, people, our society and i'm not sure to what degree you have informed yourself about that or what your thoughts are but just by coincidence on the way down here today i was talking with a friend who is actually in the audience, mark jackman, a young man recently graduated from college who is a journalist now

from the television networks. and he read the selfish gene when he was a freshman and he was in a parochial school. he said it completely transformed his thinking about all of a sudden what might've been viewed as the delusion or the abrogation that is presented to people in religion and parochial school had a different view is that the curtain had been pulled back and he had a much more enlightened sort of understanding of that and he really did something i can't help but mention. his mother came and took them in one night and said i love you and he said of course you do, i have your genes. [laughter] so he didn't go off the rails and end up doing anything that was disruptive but in the content -- context about your book has impacted society do you

have any fitted or distinct impressions? >> well, i must say is true of a lot of people have said that to change them. a lot of people have said they went into biology because of it which of course is immensely gratifying to me. i think it's probably true and i hasten to say that the ideas in the selfish gene are all in the literature already. i express them. pacom from hamilton and we just mentioned but i think it probably is as a result of the selfish gene that field biologists doing muddy boots research in the woods and fields and serengeti and african places when they look at their animals, whatever their animals are lions or seagulls they see those animals as maximizing their own genetic survival.

i think that probably is a genuine change that has come about. although in a sense i was re-expressing orthodoxy, near darwinian orthodoxy dating from the 1930s i suppose i did put it in a sort of vivid rhetorical language which caused it to catch fire in the minds of field biologists in the way the previews we have been rather sort of academic and perhaps haven't really taken it on board. i think that's the most credit that i can claim. >> we are going to stop in a moment and invite questions for a few minutes but before doing so i just wanted to ask, appetite for wond, your current book takes us through 1976, which is the year of the publication of the selfish gene

which is roughly half of your life. what comes next? >> okay, the autobiography commissioned by the publisher was supposed to b life. when i got halfway through i sort of felt the need for a sense of accomplishment. so i asked the publishers whether they would mind splitting it in half and they were actually quite pleased about the idea. and they suggested that the selfish gene would be a good breakpoint and indeed it was. so i started at the age of 35 in the second volume is one that i have just about finished it now. it's called brief candle in the dark which is instantly recognized as an allusion to shakespeare followed by carl sagan and science as a candle in the dark. and it takes an eight up to my present age.

it is not chronological in the way that an appetite for wonder is. it's thematic and the themes are things like television, lectures, books, that kind of thing. and it will come out in 2015. >> i'm glad that i asked that question. we have something to look forward to. so i want to thank the professor for this discussion and we have the queue that is forming to take as many of the stage manager will allow us so sir. >> my question is this. one of your fellow atheist sam harris has come up with a book where he is focused on marrying rationality with spirituality and i'm kind of interested and you know what your atheistic perspective on that and any

thoughts on the ben affleck bill maher controversy? >> it would be to align sam harris to accuse him of becoming religious. he is an atheist and he is a great believer in meditation techniques as a physiological technique for leading a good life, meditation in meditation techniques have been perfected by buddhists. to that extent some -- sam could be confused with a buddhist but that should not take the form of supernatural beliefs in things like reincarnation. there's nothing new about it. sam has been interested in meditation i think for much of his life. spiritual concerns will i think,

carl sagan who i just quoted science as a candle in the dark also would have had a different kind of spiritual concern as to why. one response in a sort of poetic way which could be called spiritual to the wonders of the universe and of life. the ben affleck who i didn't know but i understand he is. [laughter] what was on bill maher's show with sam harris and he vigorously and vitriolic layout tacked sam accusing him of racism because sam has criticized islam and that's a very easy thing to do but it's a very silly superficial thing to do because of course islam is not a race. it is an enormous way widespread misconception that anybody who criticizes islam is being

religious. i would say that if you can convert to it or are possible with ties of it then it's not a race, okay? [laughter] [applause] >> so it's nonsense to criticize people like sam harris and indeed may hugo after the extremes that islam can deliver as racism. i thought it was a rather disgraceful exhibition of bigotry on ben affleck's part and there's a kind of condescension about it actually as well because the horrific things that are done in the islamic world, but the horrific things that are done to people, two women, stoning women to

death for the crime of being raped, throwing acid in their face for the crime of refusing to marry a cousin, refusing to let them drive cars, refusing to let them leave the house and less in the company of a male relative. these horrific things, misogynistic things it's almost as though one is saying you brown people, we don't hold you to the same standards of nonmisogyny as we hold ourselves. now isn't that a patronizing and condescending thing to do to use a different standard to say we don't criticize you because misogyny is as part of your culture. that i think is what ben affleck

was doing among other things. it was a disagree out -- disagreeable episode and i thought sam handled it quite well today. i think it was unexpected. didn't think ben affleck had read anything that sam had written. i think he was briefed by someone who said sam harris does a racist and go after him to this is what i suspect. >> probably his publicist. [applause] >> a pleasure to meet you mr mr. dawkins panetta question for you. after having read darwin and i've read almost everything you have ever written that has been published one of the questions that always seems to seep through my mind is when we talk about the big bang theory and we talk about evolution, one of the questions that i always have mulling around in my mind is when you think of the first unicellular organism. how's the scientific community figured out where that first cell originated from? >> no it hasn't