ant wrote:http://aeon.co/magazine/science/why-its ... e-to-rest/
And this comment by physiologist D. Noble:
Quote:
More profound is the complaint that the gene-centric view can't be experimentally verified. According to philosopher Karl Popper, to whom Mr. Dawkins doffs his cap in "An Appetite for Wonder," the criterion that makes a given statement scientific is whether it can be proved wrong—falsified, in Popper's term. Could one conduct an experiment to disprove gene-level selection, as opposed to selection on the level of the individual? Nope, wrote the distinguished Oxford physiologist Denis Noble in 2011: "The selfish gene idea is not even capable of direct empirical falsification." If Mr. Noble is correct, Mr. Dawkins's schema, however interesting, falls into the category of rhetoric or philosophy, not science
That's an illuminating article ant. What's often the key issue and point of contention is the question of design or apparent design.
Richard Dawkins holds that the "blind watchmaker" of natural selection gradually over time sculpts by elimination and selection, entities that look designed. This is an illusion in his view.
He often points to examples of what he considers to be bad design though when examined this is shown by opponents to be false.
The theory predicts that over vast periods of time and mutations there would be a huge swathe of no longer functional dna dubbed junk dna, in the genomes.
This at first glance seemed to be the case. In reality the study of genetics and the functioning of the cell is still a work in progress and there is a tremendous amount still to be understood.
Those who favour actual design predict a very high level of functionality and research seems to be moving in that direction the more that is learned and understood.
Even today there is contention here with some scientists holding out for the accumulated junk d.n.a. thesis.
Here's a recent interesting N.Y.Times article which highlights this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/magaz ... .html?_r=0
It also seems that scientists are having great difficulty even defining what a gene is. What's clear is that the levels of complexity here are huge and multifaceted.
Those who argue for design tend to be critical of the standard neo-Darwinian explanation. Here's one example where Richard Sternberg gives his take on the present state of things.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intellig ... na-part-5/
It's easy to dismiss Sternberg as part of the intelligent design movement.
What is clear is that Richard Dawkins view itself appears ideological, so it really comes down to who is really interpreting the data as it unfolds in the best way.