Renaissance

The Renaissance marks the beginning of the modern scientific improvement described in The Selfish Gene: after European scientific culture had stagnated at the level achieved by the Greeks, understanding of the universe began to change and improve. The period also supplies a point of comparison for the book’s account of evolutionary change, which can advance through bursts separated by stable plateaux.

Scientific Change After Stagnation

The Renaissance is presented as the threshold between two contrasting conditions in European scientific culture. Before it, the culture had endured what the book calls a dismal period of stagnation, remaining frozen at the level reached by the Greeks. The current burst of scientific improvement dates back only to the Renaissance; the claim is not that earlier knowledge was absent, but that the sustained improvement described here is comparatively recent.

That improvement concerns both change and direction: understanding of the universe alters over the centuries, and, in the author’s account, it also gets better. The Renaissance therefore denotes more than a date on a historical timeline. It names the start of a progressive phase in which knowledge can accumulate and advance.

Comparison with Evolution

The discussion uses scientific history to clarify a pattern in genetic evolution. Evolution, too, may proceed not as an even, uninterrupted ascent, but as a series of brief spurts between stable plateaux. The parallel does not make scientific development a form of genetic evolution: the book explicitly distinguishes cultural and historical change from genetic evolution. Instead, the comparison concerns the shape of change over time—periods of relative stability interrupted by bursts of development.

In this argument, the Renaissance is the historical marker for the modern scientific burst, while the evolutionary analogy makes room for uneven progress rather than constant change. Its significance lies in that limited but illuminating correspondence: scientific improvement has a discernible beginning after stagnation, and evolutionary change can likewise be understood as episodic rather than uniformly gradual.