Tim Tyler wrote:

> Paul Gallagher  wrote or quoted:
> 

>>
>>Stating that genes are the beneficiaries of evolution just
>>sounds peculiar, like saying that words are the beneficiaries of the
>>use of language. [...]
> 
> 
> FWIW, I don't see this as a problem.  It's only a metaphor.
> Genes "benefitting" is just another way of saying they are
> more likely to exist.


(from the preface to 1989 edition of The Selfish Gene):

   The selfish gene theory is Darwin's theory, expressed in a way that
   Darwin did not choose but whose aptness, I should like to think, he
   would have instantly recognized and delighted in.  Its in fact
   a logical outgrowth of orthodox neo-Darwinism, but expressed as a
   novel image.  Rather than focus on the individual organism, it
   takes a gene's-eye view of nature.  It is a different way of seeing,
   not a different theory.  In the opening pages of 'The Extended
   Phenotype' I explained this using the metaphor of the Necker cube.

   This is a two-dimensional pattern of ink on paper, but it is
   perceived as a transparent, three-dimensional cube.  Stare at it for
   a few seconds and it will flip back to the original cube.  Both cubes
   are equally compatible with the two-diimensional data on the retina,
   so the brain happily alternates between them.  Neither is more
   correct than the other.  My point was that there are two ways of
   looking at natural selection, the gene's angle and that of the
   individual.  If properly understood they are equivalent; two views
   of the same truth.  You can flip from one to the other and it will
   still be the same neo-Darwinism.

   I now think that this metaphor was too cautious.  Rather than
   propose a new theory or unearth a new fact, often the most important
   contribution a scientist can make is to discover a new way of seeing
   old theories or facts.  The Necker cube model is misleading because
   it suggests that the two ways of seeing are equally good.  To be
   sure, the metaphor gets it partly right: 'angle', unlike theories,
   cannot be judged by experiment; we cannot resort to our familiar
   criteria of verification or falsification.  But a change of vision
   can, at its best, achieve something loftier than a theory.  It can
   usher in a whole climate of thinking, in which many exciting and
   testable theories are born, and unimagined facts laid bare.  The
   Necker cube metaphor misses this completely.  It captures the idea
   of a flip in vision, but fails to do justice to its value.  What
   we are talking about is not a flip to an equivalent view but, in
   extreme cases, a transfiguration.

   I hasten to disclaim any such status for my own modest
   contributions.  Nevertheless, it is for this kind of reason that I
   prefer not to make a clear separation between science and its
   'popularization'.  Expounding ideas that have hitherto appeared
   only in the technical literature is a difficult art.  It requires
   insightful new twists of language and revealing metaphors.  If you
   push the novelty of language and metaphor far enough, you can end
   up with a new way of seeing.  And a new way of seeing, as I have
   just argued, can in its own right make an original contribution to
   science.  Einstein himself was no mean popularizer, and I've often
   suspected that his vivid metaphors did more than just help the rest
   of us.  Didn't they also fuel his creative genius?


PR
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