This is a well-structured
#bookreview by author C. Brandon Ogbunugafor of an equally fascinating book (J. Arvid Ågren and Manus M. Patten (eds.), Harvard University Press (2025)), in which renowned
#evolutionarytheorists and
#philosophers address, in the form of essays, a topic that Richard Dawkins termed the
#organismparadox. Generally speaking, it concerns the fact that single
#components of an
#individual within a
#species #compete with one another. These are
#internalconflicts that are here considered and discussed as a central characteristic, not an unimportant side effect, in
#organismicbiology. It's about
#selfishgenes, which can appear as ‘
#jumpinggenes’, creating
#geneticdiversity, but are also disrupting
#keygenes that, for example, regulate cell growth.
The
#sciencecommunication article nicely and comprehensibly summarizes how, for example, the evolutionary theorist David Haig defines the body as "set up" to
#suppress selfish genes as much as possible, for example through the separation of germ cells and somatic cells. These are connections in which the evolutionary theorist Thomas Scott describes the
#genome as a "parliament" of sequences.
This text by Stefan F. Wirth
Reference:
doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-0…