None of us, I think, in the mid-’70s, when “The Selfish Gene” was published, would have thought we’d be devoting so much mental space now to confront religion. We thought that matter had long been closed
is a commentary from Edge 294. Although even more British colleagues were dedicating chapters to that Dawkins meme I always found it stupid difficult to materialize a DNA regulatory unit by a personality trait – introducing another “Darwinian fairytale” (Stove).
Fortunately there is now a full book dedicated to the extinction of the selfish gene – Bauer with his cooperative gene. Unfortunately, the author is not a geneticist; many of his claims like actively promoted mutations in duplicated human genes do not have an experimental backup (as noticed also by other reviewers). So, the selfish gene flourishes – bad weeds grow tall. But don’t stop here – there is a new paper in Int J Dev Biol that got it right
the organizing principles by which organisms are made are thoroughly based on complex hierarchies of molecular interactions that require multiple factors to be relentlessly cooperating with each other. Reconciling these two points of view involves changing the scale of observation, and a different understanding of evolution, in which cooperation and tolerance are more important than competition and intolerance.
yea, yea.