Other best-selling books Dawkins has written include The Extended Phenotype (1982), which discussed the way that phenotypic effects can extend beyond an organism's body and affect the surrounding environment, and The Blind Watchmaker (1986) which explains how natural selection works by small, incremental and cumulative steps, keeping what 'works' (in terms of the usefulness for survival and reproduction of the genes comprising an organism) and discarding what does not. The Selfish Gene also introduced the idea of memes, and the concept went on to become a meme itself. This book made a gene-centric view of evolution popular and that view later became an influential approach to evolutionary theory. The general public came to know Dawkins' name after he published his first book, The Selfish Gene, in 1976.

He held the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008 (after his retirement from this post the Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy succeeded him). Due to his passionate defense of the theory of evolution and his attacks on religion and superstition in general, he has become known as Darwin's Rottweiler and also as one of the 'Four Horsemen' in the New Atheist movement (along with Hitchens, Dennett, and Harris). Were that the case, David Hume would have sufficed.Ĭlinton Richard Dawkins (1941–) is a British evolutionary biologist, ethologist and author, born in Kenya.

“ ”Dawkins still appears to be convinced that religion will be defeated by rationality alone.

Rochard dawkins