Perplexed in Peoria  wrote:

> "John Wilkins"  wrote in message
> news:c82urc$2va2$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> > In fact, it is my opinion that the word "gene" does not apply to
> > evolution except as a placeholder for hereditable traits. But that's
> > another oddity for another time...
> 
> Another time is fine.  But before you initiate that discussion, be sure to
> review the first ten pages or so of Fisher [1958] which offers one
> argument that "genes" are not dispensible in evolution, though they
> may be dispensible in NS.

I believe he argues that selection and evolution can occur if
inheritance is blending, so long as "the bulk of the hereditable
variance present at any moment is of extremely recent origin. One half
is new in each generation, and of the remainder one half is only one
generation older, and so on. Less than one-thousandth of the variance
can be ten generations old..." p5 in both 1930 and 1958 editions.

In short, so long as the rate of what he calls "mutation", or
evolutionary novelty, is vastly greater than the "particulate" or gene
theory requires, evolution, and NS can occur.

Fisher, in short, argues the exact opposite of what you say, but puts
extreme restrictions on how it might occur.
-- 
Dr John S. Wilkins, www.wilkins.id.au
"I never meet anyone who is not perplexed what to do with their
 children" --Charles Darwin to Syms Covington, February 22, 1857
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