It may be a misunderstanding on my part, but I think the person who first coined the
phrase "The selfish gene" which I associate with Richard Dawkins, made a semantic
mistake, as it brings into the picture a quality we commonly associate with human
personality/character; that is, muddies the water. I picture the selfishness of the
gene as a tendancy to act so that the gene can be transmitted, a determination to
survive. I would prefer to call it a "persistent gene" (not a persistence gene).
On page 225 of Capra's "Web of Life" he states "The great achievements of
molecular biology ...have resulted in the tendency to picture the genome as a linear
array of independent genes, each corresponding to a biological trait.
"Research has shown, however, that a single gene may affect a wide range of
traits, and that, conversely many separate genes combine to produce a single trait. It
is thus quite mysterious how complex structures, like an eye or a flower, could have
evolved through successive mutations of individual genes. Evidently the study of the
coordinating and integrating activities of the whole genome is of paramount importance
...Only very recently have biologists begun to understand the genome of an organism as
a highly interwoven network and to study its activities from a systemic perspective."
He mentions punctuated equilibrium, referred to by Saul, and discusses it in
terms of complexity theory."Accordingly, systems biologists have begun to portray the
genome as a self-organizing network capable of spontaneously producing new forms of
order. "
The whole thing is so complex that I can't hope to understand it without a
real grounding in the subject, but so fascinating that I can't leave it alone.
However, I am ready to be enlightened by Jay, who really does know about this stuff,
as he is a genetic biologist.
