Richard Dawkins- The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene

The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene by Richard Dawkins


This book is the most scholarly of his books, and is very good.


By suggesting that individual organisms should be viewed as a single coherent unit, working to maximize their own reproductive success, the author explains that as these organisms are "selfish" they have the capacity to effect the body of another animal, so revolutionizing our views of adaptation. Dawkins shows that some such revolution is logically necessary, as genes can be said to have extended phenotypes outside the body in which they sit. Other topics that the book examines include the theory of evolutionary stable strategies, the relationship between Darwinian and Lamarckian theories of general adaptation and the suggestion, first made in "The Selfish Gene", Dawkins controversial first book, and also recently reopened by molecular biologists under the catchphrase "Selfish DNA", that some of the surplus DNA in eukaryotic genomes may be parasitic. In the final chapter the author returns to the individual organism as a phenomenon that needs explaining in its own right. Dawkins has also written "The Blind Watchmaker".




This item contains the following content:

1] The audiobook as 50 MP3 files
2] The Word documents for the 50 MP3 files which correspond to the audiobook files
3] The single PDF and the Word files for The Extended Phenotype
4] A docx version of the book consisting of 60 Microsoft Word files
5] Book cover images


Note: this book is read by a synthesized voice (AT&T Mike); however, I am a very experienced audio book listener and I have created the MP3 files as well as all of the Microsoft Word source files. I used TextSpeaker 3.2, converted the Word files to WAV files and then converted them to MP3. After much testing I have determined that this permits a much better quality than simply allowing textspeaker to convert the files directly to MP3. I have created the Microsoft Word files (and therefore the audio files) with some care by placing periods after all titles and sections for natural pauses, as well as the elimination of the title contents pages and any citations that would not normally be found in an audio book, and I have included footnotes that would generally be included within an audiobook. In case you are interested it took approximately half as long, perhaps more, to create this audiobook as it would have taken to simply read the book, but I was hoping to share my work with a larger community as well as to enable myself to listen to the book again at a later date. Often there are many times I listen to audio books and then wish to search for or relisten to a particular item and the inclusion of the PDF as well as the Word file should enable you to search for content electronically which then makes searching for that portion of the audio book considerably more easy.



About Buoy releases:
1] Releases will generally be totally unavailable commercially (such as Recorded Books limited editions for libraries rental customers) They may also be books on cassette which are now not on CD or not on Audible. Phenomenal releases that are out of print on CD, or are more than 5-7 years old may also be posted.

2] I am a very experienced audio book listener and I sometimes create the MP3 files from electronic text via TextSpeaker 3.2, and details follow:

I currently use TextSpeaker 3.2, which converts Word files to WAV files, and then they are converted to MP3 format. After much testing I have determined that this permits a much better quality than simply allowing TextSpeaker to convert the files directly to MP3. I create the Microsoft Word files (and therefore the audio files) with some care by placing periods after all titles and sections for natural pauses, as well as the elimination of the title contents pages and any citations that would not normally be found in an audio book, and I have included footnotes that would generally be included within an audiobook.

3] Interesting content and popular content and mainstream content intersect, but I will rarely if ever post normal or run-of-the-mill mainstream content. Who has time to waste on such doggerel?