The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene (Popular Science) Read Online Free

their own benefit, the same has not always been true of larger units. The intervening years since Darwin have seen an astonishing retreat from his individual-centred stand, a lapse into sloppily unconscious group-selectionism, ably documented by Williams (1966), Ghiselin (1974a) and others. As Hamilton (1975a) put it, ‘… almost the whole field of biology stampeded in the direction where Darwin had gone circumspectly or not at all’. It is only in recent years, roughly coinciding with the belated rise to fashion of Hamilton’s own ideas (Dawkins 1979b), that the stampede has been halted and turned. We painfully struggled back, harassed by sniping from a Jesuitically sophisticated and dedicated neo-group-selectionist rearguard, until we finally regained Darwin’s ground, the position that I am characterizing by the label ‘the selfish organism’, the position which, in its modern form, is dominated by the concept of inclusive fitness. Yet it is this hard-won fastness that I may seem to be abandoning here, abandoning almost before it is properly secured; and for what? For a flickering Necker Cube, a metaphysical chimera called the extended phenotype?
    No, to renounce those gains is far from my intention. The paradigm of the selfish organism is vastly preferable to what Hamilton (1977) has called ‘the old, departing paradigm of adaptation for the benefit of the species’. ‘Extended phenotype’ is misunderstood if it is taken to have any connection with adaptation at the level of the group. The selfish organism, and the selfish gene with its extended phenotype, are two views of the same Necker Cube. The reader will not experience the conceptual flip-over that I seek to assist unless he begins by looking at the right cube. This book is addressed to those that already accept the currently fashionable selfish-organism view of life, rather than any form of ‘group benefit’ view.
    I am not saying that the selfish organism view is necessarily wrong, but my argument, in its strong form, is that it is looking at the matter the wrong way up. I once overheard an eminent Cambridge ethologist say to an eminent Austrian ethologist (they were arguing about behaviour development): ‘You know, we really agree. It is just that you
say
it wrong.’ Gentle ‘individual selectionist’, we really do almost agree, at least in comparison to the group selectionists. It is just that you
see
it wrong!
    Bonner (1958), discussing single-celled organisms, said ‘… what special use to these organisms are nuclear genes? How did they arise by selection?’ This is a good example of the kind of imaginative, radical question that I think we ought to ask about life. But if the thesis of this book is accepted, the particular question should be turned upside down. Instead of asking of what use nuclear genes are to
organisms
, we should ask why
genes
chose to group themselves together in nuclei, and in organisms. In the opening lines of the same work, Bonner says: ‘I do not propose to say anything new or original in these lectures. But I am a great believer in saying familiar, well-knownthings backwards and inside out, hoping that from some new vantage point the old facts will take on a deeper significance. It is like holding an abstract painting upside down; I do not say that the meaning of the picture will suddenly be clear, but some of the structure of the composition that was hidden may show itself’ (p. 1). I came across this after writing my own Necker Cube passage, and was delighted to find the same views expressed by so respected an author.
    The trouble with my Necker Cubes, and with Bonner’s abstract painting, is that, as analogies, they may be too timid and unambitious. The analogy of the Necker Cube expresses my
minimum
hope for this book. I am pretty confident that to look at life in terms of genetic replicators preserving themselves by means of their extended phenotypes is at least as satisfactory as to look at it in terms of