{"id":2757,"date":"2009-07-20T10:24:45","date_gmt":"2009-07-20T08:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/?p=2757"},"modified":"2009-07-21T09:09:33","modified_gmt":"2009-07-21T07:09:33","slug":"selfish-gene-bad-weeds-grow-tall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2009\/07\/selfish-gene-bad-weeds-grow-tall\/","title":{"rendered":"Selfish gene &#8211; bad weeds grow tall"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>None of us, I think, in the mid-&#8217;70s, when &#8220;The Selfish Gene&#8221; was published, would have thought we&#8217;d be devoting so much mental space now to confront religion. We thought that matter had long been closed\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>is a commentary from<a href=\"http:\/\/www.edge.org\/documents\/archive\/edge294.html\"> Edge 294<\/a>.  Although even more British colleagues were dedicating <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.de\/Die-Jagd-nach-den-Genen\/dp\/3527293744\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1247919458&#038;sr=8-1\">chapters<\/a> to that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Selfish_Gene\">Dawkins<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/2009\/07\/17\/meme-tracker\/\">meme<\/a> I always found it <del datetime=\"2009-07-20T13:35:52+00:00\">stupid<\/del> difficult to materialize a DNA regulatory unit by a personality trait &#8211; introducing another &#8220;Darwinian fairytale&#8221; (Stove). <!--more--><br \/>\nFortunately there is now a full book dedicated to the extinction of the selfish gene &#8211; Bauer with his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.de\/Das-kooperative-Gen-Abschied-Darwinismus\/dp\/3455500854\">cooperative gene<\/a>. 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.evolutionsbiologen.de\/rez-bauer.html\">other reviewers<\/a>). So, the selfish gene flourishes &#8211; bad weeds grow tall. But don&#8217;t stop here &#8211; there is a new paper in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ijdb.ehu.es\/web\/paper.php?doi=10.1387\/ijdb.072497kw\">Int J Dev Biol<\/a> that got it right<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nthe 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.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>yea, yea.<\/p>\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"bottom-note\">\n  <span class=\"mod1\">CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 05.04.2026<\/span>\n <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>None of us, I think, in the mid-&#8217;70s, when &#8220;The Selfish Gene&#8221; was published, would have thought we&#8217;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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2009\/07\/selfish-gene-bad-weeds-grow-tall\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Selfish gene &#8211; bad weeds grow tall<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2014],"class_list":["post-2757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genetics-biology","tag-darwinian-evolutionary-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2757"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2817,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions\/2817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}