Saturday, November 01, 2008

The Extended Phenotype



The Extended Phenotype --- The Gene as the Unit of Selection ---
Richard Dawkins
ISBN 4-314-00485-1

This is the second book of Richard Dawkins, and it says basically the same thing with his first book: the primary unit of natural selection is the gene. The essential new point of Dawkins in this book is that a phenotype of a gene can appear in other individuals which actually do not carry the gene. In other word, genes can cause effects remotely.

At first, I thought that this could relate genes and memes, but it was a hasty conclusion.
Meme does not follow even the central dogma of biology. Here I mean that in case of Meme acquired characteristic can be inherited against the case of Gene. Thus, there must be different theories from the ones of Gene. Anyway, I need to read some literature on Meme, for example, ones by Susan Blackmore.

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