The trouble with “The Selfish Gene”

The Selfish Gene (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I do not have any argument with the basic case that Dawkins makes in his book (though why the audio recording for the book has to be so quiet that even at full volume I find it hard to hear in a noisy gym is another matter) but I do find his general anthropomorphising of genesvery annoying.

Genes are ascribed will in his presentation when, really, what he is talking about is a statistical process. It seems he is so desperate to maintain a popular presentation that this has to be forced into the background at all times, lest people are frightened off by a bit of maths.

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