wrote in message
>
> >>>Following Richard Dawkins, we would like to reassert
> >>>that we indeed live as disposable somas, slaves of our germline
> >>>genome, but could soon start rebelling against such slavery.
> >>
>
> Don't you find passages like the above hopelessly jejune and
> infelicitous? Would you write that way?
>
Yes, but not really because of the "slave" metaphor. For instance we talk
about the "master and slave" CPU of a twin-processor computer.
There is an attempt by some people to remove all references to human social
arragements from biology. For instance some feminists complain about the use
of terms like "harem" or "cuckolding", some liberals
complain about
"slave-making ants", "queen bee" seems to be more
accepted but could be
criticised on similar grounds (maybe royalists aren't too interested in
these linguisitic games). Generally I think this says more about the person
making the criticism than the biology. Sometimes however there is a serious
point being made, for instance one writer (I forget who) pointed out that
there is a popular perception that wolves are paramilitary creatures,
reinforced by use of terms such as "patrolling" and
"instilling discipline"
in the young.  Konrad Lorenz's use of the term "marriage" to refer to
pair-bonding does come over as a little eccentric, however I don't think his
work was seriously harmed by that.

I think the problem is that in a published paper the author usually speaks
with great authority about a narrow and difficult area of knowledge which
only he and a few others know much about. However sometimes scientists do
say things which are very simple and obvious. In this case, the observation
is roughly at the level you would expect from two schoolboys having a
lunchtime conversation. Nothing wrong with that, in itself, but it dressed
up as something it is not by use of phrases like "following Richard
Dawkins"
(referencing literature), "soma" (technical jargon), and then over-egging
the slavery metaphor. They don't try to deal with the point "how does the
soul, or centre of consciousness, have interests which diverge from the
intersts of the genes?"
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