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That wasn't it's main thesis at all. I don't remember his discussion on "junk DNA" specifically (perhaps I should reread as it has been many years), but the mai

That wasn't it's main thesis at all. I don't remember his discussion on "junk DNA" specifically (perhaps I should reread as it has been many years), but the main thesis (to put it in my own words) is that a mental model of evolution as acting upon genes leads to more accurate predictions and better understanding than a mental model where evolution acts upon whole organisms. (There's also the discussion of memes and their roles in comparison/contrast to genes). When he talks about science and not rah-rah atheism I never found Dawkins to be fundamentalist in thinking, and I recall he would generally qualify when his thoughts were more speculative. (The author of TFA on the other hand, does give me that impression particularly with sentences like "Psychiatric drugs help some people in the short term, but over time, in the aggregate, they make people sicker")

photochemsyn 4y ago
There are a ton of errors and misconceptions in that view as well. Dawkins claimed genes were discrete entities only concerned with their own replication and kept on with that view despite the discovery of introns, gene shuffling, and about a dozen other major discoveries in the field, like epigenetic modification and others. This criticism of the hyper-reductionist approach of Dawkins is nothing new, either. See this from 1995: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1995/07/16/the-rules-of-the-game/8771dfd5-da70-43db-aacc-0e0cfbd4eea0/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1... > "The intervening two decades between that volume and this have seen a major technological revolution in the science of genetics. Just how do these breakthroughs affect Dawkins's ideas about the origin of diversity? The answer, apparently, is not at all. Dawkins's descriptions of genetic processes are facile and outdated. According to him, the power of natural selection is still "almost limitless" genes are still discrete entities with "a flintlike integrity" that remains unaffected by their environment from generation to generation." Similarly, the relationship between Charles Darwin and modern evolutionary theory is about as distant as that between Isaac Newton and modern physics, which is another concept that the Dawkins crowd (in which I'd include Charles Murray, Sam Harris, etc.) seems uncomfortable with.
- epups 4y ago
  Sorry but you're just grasping at straws here. There are valid criticisms of the gene-centric perspective but things like introns and epigenetics have nothing to do with it. A few hours ago you were saying something completely wrong about the book and now you incorrectly act as an expert critic. I recommend you give it a reread (or a read) instead.

photochemsyn 4y ago

There are a ton of errors and misconceptions in that view as well. Dawkins claimed genes were discrete entities only concerned with their own replication and kept on with that view despite the discovery of introns, gene shuffling, and about a dozen other major discoveries in the field, like epigenetic modification and others. This criticism of the hyper-reductionist approach of Dawkins is nothing new, either. See this from 1995: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1995/07/16/the-rules-of-the-game/8771dfd5-da70-43db-aacc-0e0cfbd4eea0/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1... > "The intervening two decades between that volume and this have seen a major technological revolution in the science of genetics. Just how do these breakthroughs affect Dawkins's ideas about the origin of diversity? The answer, apparently, is not at all. Dawkins's descriptions of genetic processes are facile and outdated. According to him, the power of natural selection is still "almost limitless" genes are still discrete entities with "a flintlike integrity" that remains unaffected by their environment from generation to generation." Similarly, the relationship between Charles Darwin and modern evolutionary theory is about as distant as that between Isaac Newton and modern physics, which is another concept that the Dawkins crowd (in which I'd include Charles Murray, Sam Harris, etc.) seems uncomfortable with.

epups 4y ago
Sorry but you're just grasping at straws here. There are valid criticisms of the gene-centric perspective but things like introns and epigenetics have nothing to do with it. A few hours ago you were saying something completely wrong about the book and now you incorrectly act as an expert critic. I recommend you give it a reread (or a read) instead.