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The Extended Phenotype
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February 2014: The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene
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Kristoffer
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Feb 01, 2014 01:51AM
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Two chapters in and I'm getting a little tired of his dismissal of people like Lewontin as either cranks or people who Don't realise they 'actually agree' with Dawkins. That said I am enjoying it but can see how this isn't as popular as his other books but that is not a bad thing.
Only halfway in and although it's more technical than his other works I am enjoying it. It isn't convincing me on the 'gene's eye' view of evolution though.
I haven't had a chance to read this one yet, but am eager to as he touted it proudly as his "greatest achievement yet" in the 30th anniversary edition of the prequel. Conor, have you read The Selfish Gene? Theres a fair bit of (not entirely unjustified) defensiveness early in that book, too. (Or in the notes?) I'm wondering what other work of his you're comparing to. Also, if you haven't, it might explain why you're not convinced that genes are the primary units of evolutionary change (if that's what you're referring to?) as that's the book that'd do it. Still, there was obviously some coverage here, so it's interesting if to an unprimed reader it didn't suffice.
Yes I read selfish gene twice. Quite disingenuous to imply it was all sorted after 'selfish gene'. There's quite a long literature on multi level selection you might benefit from.
Oof! Didn't see that coming.(Though I wouldn't characterize it as disingenuous) I did seem to to imply that it was all sorted, which I regret. I chose not to clarify "that's the book that'd do it" at the time, but will do so now. I read into your comments that you were expecting this to convince you on it, and only meant to say that the argument is covered more fully elsewhere and it was perhaps not the main focus of this book. It was about perceived aims, not definitive conclusions.
I am open to reading suggestions, where offered genuinely.
Plenty have taken issue with the 'genes eye' view. From Mayr, through EO Wilson, Gould, Lewontin, Sober, Rose, DS Wilson. The first half of this book is essentially Dawkins advocating the gene as not only the unit of inheritance (with which I have no issue), but more importantly as the unit of selection, which conceptually I just don't find compelling. Dawkins had a very cordial discussion with Rose about this. Http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=HjpUL7...
Mayr never resolved this argument with Dawkins, even a few years before he died he was saying "An individual either survives or doesn't, an individual either reproduces or doesn't, an individual either reproduces very successfully or it doesn't. The idea that a few people have about the gene being the target of selection is completely impractical; a gene is never visible to natural selection, and in the genotype, it is always in the context with other genes, and the interaction with those other genes make a particular gene either more favorable or less favorable. In fact, Dobzhanksy, for instance, worked quite a bit on so-called lethal chromosomes which are highly successful in one combination, and lethal in another. Therefore people like Dawkins in England who still think the gene is the target of selection are evidently wrong. In the 30's and 40's, it was widely accepted that genes were the target of selection, because that was the only way they could be made accessible to mathematics, but now we know that it is really the whole genotype of the individual, not the gene. Except for that slight revision, the basic Darwinian theory hasn't changed in the last 50 years. "
