Wirt Atmar wrote:-

> >TT:-
> >As he says, his interpretation is an "absurdity".
> >But Gould is attacking a straw man of his own making.
> >Nobody using the "gene for X" terminology was ever
> >asserting that single genes determined behaviour -
> >and Gould should have been aware of that.

> WA:-
> That's not quite true. Any number of authors have made similar statements.
> Dawkins, for example, wrote quite explicitly the following in
> pages 64-66 of
> his book, "The selfish gene":

JE:-
Yes. PLEASE NOTE: Hamilton's rule (on which
Dawkins Selfish Gene etc is entirely dependent
as is all of Sociobiology and all gene centric
fitness altruism) only allows just a SINGLE allele
to code for organism fitness altruism (OFA),
i.e. this massively complex behavioural genotype
that is supposed to refute Darwinian fitness
(please refer to  A DECLARATION OF MEANING
for a definition of Darwinian fitness) is
assumed to be coded by just one allele.

Dawkins later use
of a "green bead" gene allowing true genetic
epistasis failed because Hamilton's rule
only works (on a relative fitness
basis) when the one allele that codes
for OFA does _not_ seek out organisms
with the same allele to mate with.
When an altruistic genome has more
than just one allele and these genomes
mate with each other (the reason why
the beard is green is to be able to identify
when an altruistic genome exists within another
individual) the rule becomes:

	r^eb > c

where:

e = the number of epistatic alleles.

In this situation inclusive fitness
fails (even on just a relative basis)
because it becomes exponentially harder
to satisfy the rule as epistasis e, increases.
Yet, the myth of altruistic genetic epistasis
persists within misused gene centric models.

Best Wishes,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser{at}tpg.com.au
---
þ RIMEGate(tm)/RGXPost V1.14 at BBSWORLD * Info{at}bbsworld.com

---
 * RIMEGate(tm)V10.2áÿ* RelayNet(tm) NNTP Gateway * MoonDog BBS
 * RgateImp.MoonDog.BBS at 9/7/04 9:39:01 AM