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What is the unit of natural selection?

Is the gene’s eye view of evolution unacceptably reductionist?

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An Erratum to this article was published on 23 December 2009

Abstract

The gene as the solution to the debate over the level at which natural selection acts has often been termed as too reductionist, but is this a valid criticism? Exploring this question in the context of nonlinearity illuminates not only the debate over the unit of natural selection but also the broader debate on reductionism versus holism in science.

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Suggested Reading

  1. John Brockman (ed.) The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (online edition at http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/d-Contents.html)

  2. B Rosemary Grant and Peter R Grant, What Darwin’s Finches Can Teach Us about the Evolutionary Origin and Regulation of Biodiversity, Bioscience, Vol. 53, No.10, pp.965–975, 2003.

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  3. Richard Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype, Oxford University Press, 1982.

  4. James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, Abacus, 1993.

  5. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1976.

  6. Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life, Flamingo, 1997.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. AC#1097, Keefe Campus Center, Amherst College, Amherst, MA, 01002, USA

    Ambika Karanth

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  1. Ambika Karanth
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Correspondence to Ambika Karanth.

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Ambika Kamath is a third year undergraduate student at Amherst College, USA, majoring in biology. She is interested in understanding how evolutionary forces shape organisms, their behaviour, and their interactions with other organisms. She is currently studying the biogeography and evolution of gender dimorphism in the plant genus Lycium (Solanaceae).

An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12045-009-0118-1.

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Karanth, A. What is the unit of natural selection?. Reson 14, 1047–1059 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-009-0100-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-009-0100-y

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