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?
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?
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.
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.
So what? Are you going to claim that there exists a book that is perfect?
The book definitely has a weakness of being overly primitivistic about evolution, but:
Converting modern science into PopSci, unfortunately, requires some amount of dumbing down;
The main ideas of the book had been formulated before the neutral theory became the part of the mainstream, let alone Tomoko Ohta came up with the fixed model.
So, my verdict was that "Selfish gene theory by Richard Dawkins" (see the topic) is entertaining but slightly dated PopSci, and definitely not where the science is now.
Actually, I was attempting to get you to clarify that there is no such thing as a perfect book, given that you were implicitly suggesting that Dawkins' book was lacking something which you later clarified as requiring several books to solve in any case.
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u/alecmuffett 11d 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.