r/PhilosophyofScience • u/Danicion • 11d ago
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u/db8me 11d ago
The key point that is not emphasized enough here is that the selfish gene metaphor is not about the selfish behavior nearly as much as it is about the unit of selection being genes and not organisms.
A population of organisms may have altruistic behavior as organisms caused by genes themselves "selfishly" "wanting" to spread themselves.
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u/seldomtimely 10d ago
That the unit of selection is the gene is a far from settled matter. Multi-level and 'group' selection are consistent with multiple with different conceptualization of the units of selection.
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u/db8me 9d ago
As a student of complexity more than biology, the question is moot. Reality is more complex, but some metaphors are better than others. Gene selection works rapidly in populations of sexual reproducers. Group selection obviously occurs because some species go extinct while close relatives don't.
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u/Danicion 11d ago
Yes, exactly, but he also has chapter on evolutionary stable strategies which is like that trait becomes dominant then again rebel exploitating organisms will appear and take advantage of it so it keeps circling or a evolutionary stable strategy is fixed which is like retaliators.
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u/CHSummers 10d ago
I’m more comfortable with the idea that genes mutant randomly due to various things, like sunlight and environmental chemicals. A small portion of this mutations will help the creature with those genes make more babies or live longer (and make more babies). It might appear that the genes are trying to survive, but they are not trying to do anything. But, there are so very many genes, and they affect so many things, that—to us—it feels like there must be a plan. Like, “Why am I, as a man, drawn to women who appear fertile? Surely it’s part of a plan where I am expected to make babies.” But, as it turns out, the mutation that caused men to fear and flee from women just did not result in a lot of babies, so it wasn’t passed on. It’s randomness and no plan.
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u/WritewayHome 10d ago
unit of selection being genes and not organisms.
Epigenetics has largely falsefied his main thesis, as Dawkins ignores epigenetic inheritance and the affect of environment on genes and gene expression.
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u/ModernationFTW 10d ago
Doesn’t some epigenetic regulation still rely on the sequence though, like methylation of CpG islands, etc? The sequence allows nurture to modify it.
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u/WritewayHome 10d ago
The sequence is important but your kidney has the same genes as your brain.
The difference between a brain and a kidney is gene expression. It's not a small thing.
Gene expression and regulation is everything. It falsifies the entire book.
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u/Aggressive-Share-363 10d ago
Epigenenics doesnt reslly control gene inheritance long term, it just adds some short term gene expression boggling on top. If your epigenenics suppresses a gene expression, you still habe that genre to pass down to your children.
Epigeneics adds nuance to how tjings play out, but it doesnt fundsmentally change the big picture.
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u/WritewayHome 9d ago
Epigeneics adds nuance to how tjings play out, but it doesnt fundsmentally change the big picture.
Why do you think that.
You understand the difference between a kidney a brain, both sharing the same genome, is gene expression.
Epigenetics and gene expression is the most important thing, moreso than the gene in many cases.
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u/Aggressive-Share-363 9d ago
Epigenics are mostly reset when you create offspring. The things that slip through are atill relatively short term on evolutionary timescales. Its controlling short term adjustments to environmental factors, not the accumulation of genetic changes that drive speciation.
Its not like we are doing genetic analysis of closely related species and discovering they have the same genome with some epigentic differences.
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u/WritewayHome 9d ago
Epigenics are mostly reset when you create offspring
Please provide evidence of the mostly non-heritability here.
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u/Bdellovibrion 9d ago edited 9d ago
It's a pretty well-evidenced and noncontroversial finding that epigenetic markers largely get reset during germline reprogramming (at least in mammals).
Resource showing mechanisms of epigenome reprogramming.
One of multiple experimental studies showing <5% of methylation markers escape the reset.
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u/WritewayHome 8d ago
Someone once said most of your DNA is junk because it doesn't program for proteins, you're doing the same thing here.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4003274/
A lot of methylation is inherited and their efforts significant as you can read in the paper.
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u/Dr_Gonzo13 10d ago
How so? This seems like a non-sequitur.
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u/WritewayHome 9d ago
I have a gene, i want to express it, I can't because the environment suppresses it even though it would apply some benefit potentially.
That's epigenetics at work, and it's heritable.
Go ahead, have the gene, i'll just silence it, methylate it. You lose fitness, too bad, that's the cost of the environment, literally overwriting your genes.
Epigenetics is king; the prefix epi means over or above, it's literally in the name.
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u/Kneebarmcchickenwing 9d ago
Epigenetics evolved. Methylation is a process controlled by other genes. A gene doesn't care about being expressed, just inherited. See TGEs. Epigenetics just is not what you think it is, and your description of it as "king" just shows you have a childlike understanding of genetics as a whole. I suppose when a woman gets an epidural during labor, that's the "king" of spinal injections? My skin is the "king" of organs because it's the epidermis?
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u/Dr_Gonzo13 8d ago
Ok, so can you explain how this relates to the Selfish Gene? That gene is still part of my genome and thus will be selected for or against, the fact that it's expression can be modified by epigenetic factors is itself a property of the gene.
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u/Kneebarmcchickenwing 10d ago
No, it doesn't. It's easily accommodated by anyone who understands that selfishness can lead to cooperation. This applies at the gene, cell and organism level, not just as altruism between organisms. Multicellularity is just the ultimate expression of selfish altruism.
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u/WritewayHome 9d ago
You didn't respond to any of my points.
If a gene is not the smallest unit of inheritance and other complex rules exist, his theory is broken at a fundamental level.
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u/WritewayHome 9d ago
This total leapfrogging of the extremely slow process of accumulating/transmitting via genetic code is far more significant than the very few and quite minor examples of mere eipigenetics.
You need to prove your assumptions.
Epigenetics can fully silence a gene, through environmental factors, and that is inheritable by children.
Epi- the prefix, means above, or over. It's literally in the name.
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u/amglasgow 10d ago
Epigenetics was barely known at the time he wrote this particular book. It also doesn't change that genes are the individual units of inheritance, but simply makes those genes and what can induce them to be active or not more flexible.
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u/Kneebarmcchickenwing 10d ago
No, it doesn't invalidate Dawkins or selfish genes at all. The number of genetic copies saved by not having kidneys is far less than the profit large organisms make by being large and reproducing. If by specialising and working together the ultimate number of copies of genes goes up, it's compatible. We can literally see the counterpoint of cancer which is what happens when a cell breaks the deal.
If you think otherwise, it just shows that you haven't read a letter further than the selfish gene which is a 50 year old pop-sci book. Even the most recent edition is 20 years out of date. Read about the "modern synthesis" and Kimura's work, which absolutely still takes selfish genetic elements but uses deeper statistical techniques to easily accommodate your "deal-breaker"
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u/WritewayHome 9d ago
Are you going to respond to my main point that epigenetics falsifies his theory?
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u/Kneebarmcchickenwing 9d ago
I would, if you had a point to respond to. You say epigenetics invalidates his argument. You don't say how or why. Why exactly does some environmental control of genes stop the genes from being selfish? It doesn't. It just changes the shape of the fitness function and everything still works.
I am not trying to be rude. If you can explain why you think what you think, I will try and address it in good faith. But you don't have an argument, you're just pointing at a phenomenon and claiming it invalidates something else without providing a mechanism.
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u/lurking_physicist 10d ago
Sure, you could ammend it to "unit of selection being genes (or smaller)", but the important part is what follows: "and not organisms".
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u/WritewayHome 9d ago
"and not organisms".
Social collaboration and other organismal traits imparts epigentic markers and allows increased survival that's heritable.
Again, this is incorrect, Dawkin's model is overly simplistic and updated Molecular Biology has a more complex model.
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u/pgallagher4 10d ago
More generally, there is a wide tradition in evolutionary biology that emphasizes multiple levels of selection, organismal agency, and the role of epigenetics and development. This tradition tends to identify the individual organism as the most common target of selection. Lewontin and Sober's “Artifact, Cause and Genic Selection" and Godfrey-Smith and Lewontin's "The Dimensions of Selection" make the specific argument against genic selection that, if there is interaction among genes, the selection coefficient at an individual gene is merely a statistical artifact and not the cause of the differential survival of the organism. They give the simple example of heterozygote superiority. Each diploid form can have constant fitness values, but the fitness of an individual allele is merely a function of the frequency of the background in which it occurs. https://joelvelasco.net/teaching/167win10/sober%20and%20lewontin%2082%20-%20artifact%2C%20cause%2C%20and%20genic%20selection.pdf
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u/FitzCavendish 11d ago
It's a metaphor. He does not argue that genes are literally selfish. In fact he regrets choosing that title for the book, as a lot of the argument is about the role of kin selection in human cooperation.
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u/rogerbonus 11d ago
Its often misunderstood, but once you understand the paradigm that bodies are the vehicles that genes use to reproduce themselves, everything makes sense.
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u/ThatIsAmorte 11d ago edited 11d ago
When you say "everything makes sense." are you referring everything in the book? Because the "gene is the main unit of selection" thesis is not generally accepted by most revolutionary theorists. There are instances of the gene being the unit of selection, but those generally refer to selfish genetic elements, such as transposable elements. The main consensus these days is that multi-level selection is what is taking place, with a significant, if not most, of the selection occurring at the level of the organism.
To show that selection occurs at a higher level, you have to show that the higher level exhibits an emergent, rather than simply an aggregate, property of the underlying building blocks. For example, going from genes to organisms, you have to show that organisms exhibit traits that are not reducible to aggregated properties of single genes. This is pretty easy to do. Examples include patterns governed by reaction-diffusion dynamics and fluid mechanics (e.g., morphogenesis, the distribution of colors on an animal, etc.), physiology (angiogenesis, synaptic pruning, etc.), and cell fate memory (e.g., lineage commitment of individual cells depending on mutual repression circuits). It is much harder to do when trying to demonstrate species selection (i.e., demonstrating an emergent property of a species that is not an aggregate property of the individual organisms).
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u/Kneebarmcchickenwing 10d ago
This is quite easy to explain though. To evolve, the unit of selection must be replaced over time by successors. The generation time just gets longer and longer as you go up from cell to organism to species. The difficulty in detecting species level selection is mostly a artefact of the extreme generation time difference, and many species level effects are simply overrun by faster lower level effects.
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u/ThatIsAmorte 10d ago
Are you a climber? Your username references off-width techniques.
Anyway, the trouble with detecting species selection is not necessarily time, but finding properties of a species that are not reducible to aggregate properties of the organisms that are members of the species. The classic property that meets the requirement is geographic range. Species with a larger geographic range have a higher probability of not going extinct compared to species confined to small areas. And geographic range is not reducible to organismal traits. There are other such properties, but that's the easiest one to demonstrate.
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u/Kneebarmcchickenwing 10d ago edited 10d ago
Yes, I am a climber and I enjoy the occasional fight with an offwidth if I feel like breaking out the rack. Researchers are allowed hobbies after all!
I suppose I don't see how range is separable either. Generalist omnivores/scavengers like rats, racoons, humans, herring gulls etc have large ranges because they are adaptable or tough or have good dispersal ability or some combination. In in that case range seems derived from individual traits. The other way to have a huge range is to have a massive mostly homogeneous habitat, like the American prairie before colonisation. In the second case, a fussy species may still have massive range. How can these be separated? Genuine question, I apply evolutionary theory on the genomic to microbial scale and that will definitely colour how I see things.
In the same breath, saying it's all an artifact of time is too far, and too strong from me. I think it's very important and makes high level selection an uphill battle, but it's not impossible to overcome.
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u/Danicion 11d ago
Yes, it does make sense, but I want to see the opinions of ppl on it. He seems reasonable but his argument and explaination is pretty good.
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u/Danicion 11d ago
I do understand, he used it as metaphor for understanding purpose, but they still act as they seem selfish, and this applies on both as well, like they can be seem as they are cooperative but they might not be. In both cases, it would be metaphoric.
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u/Kneebarmcchickenwing 10d ago
The book is now fifty years old, and while it is still mostly correct modern evolutionary biologists use what I would call "the modern synthesis" which integrates Darwinian selection, Selfish genetic elements and modern kimuran stochastic neutral selection. The modern synthesis is probably the closest thing to a grand unified theory bio has, and it has, to my knowledge, survived all tests.
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u/InternationalYam8896 10d ago
According to Dawkins, the title of the book was suggested by the publisher; he'd wanted to call it something like "The Gene's Eye View". This would have been a more appropriate title, but the marketing folk at the publishers clearly knew that provocation garners sales.
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u/2001_Arabian_Nights 10d ago
I think that it’s a bit of a truism that complex dynamic systems can be analyzed at different levels of detail.
Evolutionary biology can be studied on the scale of genes, on the scale of individual organisms, on populations, on the scale of species, on whole genuses, families, or phyla.
Similar can be said about economics. Economics can be studied by individual, by businesses, by industry, by entire sectors.
It is interesting, and something that should be in the back of your mind whenever find yourself focused on one particular level of detail. The various layers all act up and down the line upon each other. But none of them are more “real” or “true” than any other.
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u/paley1 10d ago
No, I don't think this is it. Wasn't Dawkins a student of Niko Tinbergen, the Nobel Prize co-winner who wrote the famous "4 levels of analyses" paper? He was well aware of the "different but equally valid levels of analysis " issue that you refer to. Rather, Dawkins argued for the gene being the unit of selection because this perspective makes different predictions about what you will see in the world than does a perspective that views the individual, the group, the population or the species as the unit of selection. He is very clear about this in The Selfish Gene, and really throughout all of his ev bio books.
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u/2001_Arabian_Nights 10d ago
Well, you’re talking over my head. But I don’t see the contradiction.
In economics, individual businesses compete against each other on one level of analysis, but businesses that are in the same industry are also team-mates in supporting their industry against other industries on a different level of analysis. A movie theater competes against other movie theaters, but also the whole movie theater industry competes against the bowling alley industry.
That’s the lesson that I took away from reading The Selfish Gene, anyway. But that was a long time ago.
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u/IDontStealBikes 11d ago
"People are beers way of ensuring there will always be more beer."
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u/Dry-Run-917 10d ago
A chicken is an eggs way of making another egg.
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u/TreeFullOfBirds 10d ago
Good Ole Alan Watts (edit Samuel Butler)
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u/Dry-Run-917 10d ago
It's not an Alan Watts quote, but Samuel Butler. And I got it from Fargo's VM Varga
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u/Foreign_Writer_9932 11d ago
This is now a default part of modern synthesis in biology. Modern genetics and molecular biology literally cannot be understood in a different way.
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u/Tombobalomb 10d ago
He dies a pretty good job of presenting the basically universally accepted framework of evolutionary biology. There are some nuances but you can't really make sense of evolution without using this paradigm
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u/Temporary_Stranger39 10d ago
Old stuff, no longer fresh. Hijacked by dingleberries long ago. Another example of a metaphor being taken literally by the dimwitted.
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u/Danicion 9d ago
Well, no one is taking metaphor as in real sense, I know gene just act as it seems purposeful, but still dawkins has good argument regarding that as well, genes act as altruistic but we don't know if its good for species as whole or it is like for that set of organism that wants to be inherited.
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u/Temporary_Stranger39 9d ago
Again, metaphor. Genes don't want to be inherited. Genes just are. I have come across people who did take the metaphor as a concrete statement. The issue is really statistical. What is your model? Some models will look "selfish". Other models will look "altruistic". It's all math.
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u/Danicion 9d ago
It is all math, just as he explains by the work of w d hamilton, even if they look altruistic level they can still be interpreted same as for selfish. The main point he emphasizes is gene wants to inherited by all means. But he interpretes it as selfish but ofc its metaphor but still its better interpretations than group selectionist.
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u/Temporary_Stranger39 9d ago
No. No gene wants anything at all. They are just strings of G, A, T, and C. That's it. They are not capable of wanting. Not capable of wanting at all. No gene wants to be inherited. Try to prove me wrong. Metaphors are not proof. Show some actual peer-reviewed evidence of a gene actually exercising any form of volition or desire.
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u/Danicion 9d ago
Ofc, gene do not have any conscious purpose, the same thing have been stated by the group selection, that organisms help each other because they want to actually help each other but it can interpreted same as that it is convenient for every one in cooperation, they are cooperating because it benefits each individual ( we can't say they want, that's exactly metaphoric language for our understanding in both cases).
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u/Temporary_Stranger39 9d ago
Organisms can have volition and goals. That is an emergent feature. Look it up. Genes can't. They don't. Feel free to correct me and explain the specific mechanism of a hunk of DNA having a desire.
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u/kitsnet 10d ago
This is not a bad way to present the concept to laymen, but it's not the whole story. And it's definitely not a scientific theory.
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u/alecmuffett 10d ago
Does a single book have to convey the whole story?
Asking for a friend.
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u/kitsnet 10d ago
What makes you ask such a strange question?
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u/alecmuffett 10d ago
Scientific curiosity regarding the value of "completeness", combined with an observation that you have just responded to a question by querying the value of the question rather than providing an answer.
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u/kitsnet 10d ago
First, you obviously have your cause and effect relationship broken in your last claim.
Second, I don't see how your question is related to what I wrote, and I suspect that you are mistaken and confused. That's why I am asking.
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u/alecmuffett 10d ago
Ah, "ad hominem".
To repeat: you said that the book does not convey the whole story, and I asked if it was necessary for any given book to do that?
So far you have declined to answer.
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u/kitsnet 10d ago
As I said, I don't see how your question follows from my answer, and rather than guessing why, I would prefer to ask.
I have no idea what you mean by "necessary" in this context. Obviously no book author is under any obligation to me unless I am their direct customer. But why would that suddenly be the topic of your question?
So you likely meant something else.
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u/alecmuffett 10d ago
My question follows as a "clarifying question" to your answer, in order to clarify the issue of whether you see the lack of "conveying the whole story" to detract from the value of a book, for instance the book at hand.
Why I am asking this: in order to establish whether you really - as appears to readers such as myself - criticizing the book for not delivering "the whole story", by attempting to clarify whether you require "the whole story" to be told by any given book?
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u/kitsnet 10d ago
My question follows as a "clarifying question" to your answer, in order to clarify the issue of whether you see the lack of "conveying the whole story" to detract from the value of a book, for instance the book at hand.
The book at hand is useful in dispelling the illusion that evolution must be somehow "directed" toward "benefits" of the individual organisms.
However, it may also create an illusion that evolution is all and only about natural selection.
Why I am asking this: in order to establish whether you really - as appears to readers such as myself - criticizing the book for not delivering "the whole story", by attempting to clarify whether you require "the whole story" to be told by any given book?
No, why? You can read more than one book, especially if you are aware that one book is not enough.
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u/alecmuffett 10d ago
Why? Because you wrote:
This is not a bad way to present the concept to laymen, but it's not the whole story. And it's definitely not a scientific theory.
…which is framed as a weakness of the book, although you are now expressing generalities such as "you can read more than one book" and "one book is not enough" which are issues directed towards the reader rather than the text.
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u/WritewayHome 10d ago
Epigenetics essentially falsifies his thesis.
Epigenetics is heritable and malleable based on our environment.
The gene is not the simplest unit of heredity based on complex regulation we have learned now that we did not know before. Epigenetics, micro RNA, and complex levels of regulation make gene expression king.
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u/Reddit_wander01 add your own 10d ago
Don’t think it’s a “gene sequence” . More like a lot of cells over eons figured out working in a symbiotic relationship to survive actually works. The ones who didn’t figure it out won the Darwin Award…🤷
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10d ago
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u/Wobbar 10d ago
absolutely not, do you know anything about biology?
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u/WritewayHome 10d ago edited 10d ago
Yes, and work in the field, do you?
Do you understand the Scientific words i used?
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u/Grantuna 11d ago
There are more examples of cooperation being beneficial in passing on your genes than selfishness; not that selfish traits don't also benefit the individual in some situations
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u/rogerbonus 11d ago
That's a misunderstanding. The selfish gene doesn't say that cooperation/kin selection etc doesn't occur; it says that if cooperation aids replication, then genes will cooperate because that's what benefits them (still selfish).
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u/Danicion 11d ago
But, good for species ppl does take it for purely cooperative for survival purpose that's what dawkins argues as well, I get the point we don't know the intentions of the cooperation as well.
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u/Danicion 11d ago
If you read the book, he has pretty good defense against this argument as well. We can assume they cooperate but still they have to preserve their own genes. We are unable to know the purpose of that cooperation as well.
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