The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

614 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY

I shall show in this section that, while genes may be appropriately designated
as fundamental replicators (under a defendable but nonexclusive strategy of
research), replicators simply aren't units of selection or, for that matter, causal
agents at all under our usual notions of mechanism in science. The
misidentification of replicators as causal agents of selection—the foundation of the
gene-centered approach—rests upon a logical error best characterized as a
confusion of bookkeeping with causality.
We fall into another serious fault of reasoning when we accept the common
conceptual taxonomy that relegates error itself to a purely negative category of
unfortunate blunder. Some errors do lead only to blind alleys and wasted time. But
others, as thoughtful scientists have always recognized, serve as essential prods
and directors of progress through correction. Darwin's famous words,
distinguishing harmful from salutary error, have frequently been cited in this
context: "False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often
endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for
every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness" (from the Descent of
Man). I prefer the stronger statement of the great Italian economist, Vilfredo
Pareto: "Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own
corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself."

During my career in evolutionary science, no error has proven more fruitful

in Pareto's sense than the gene-centered approach to selection. The central

claim, clearly expressed, forced us to reconceptualize the entire domain of

evolutionary causality. The outrageous character of such an ultimate

reduction compelled us to rethink our subject by explicitly rejecting the

oldest, most traditional and entirely commonsensical notions about our own

bodies as agents. (Yet the reductionistic cast of the theory fit so well with

conventional ideas about the goals of science that many biologists "caught

the spirit" and "followed the program" despite its assault upon ordinary

intuition.) Nevertheless, the theory could not work. However stubborn and

heroic the attempt, explanation inevitably faltered upon the central logical

error—especially when selection had clearly worked upon emergent

properties of higher-level individuals, and no verbal legerdemain could

recast the story in terms of genes as causal agents. If "Pareto errors" contain

the seeds that burst their own boundaries, then such uncommon errors of

fallacious reason (rather than absent fact) qualify best for this status.

Empirical correction usually requires a period of waiting for new

technologies or new discoveries (as the sources of resolution do not lie

within the argument), but logical errors always carry the seeds of correction

within the fruit of their own structure.

HIERARCHICAL VS. GENIC SELECTION

The fallacy of gene selectionism, and the consequent validity of the
alternative (and opposite) hierarchical model of selection, can best be expressed in
a series of seven arguments and vignettes—of different length, but all connected in
a logical order, and all developed for the same import and purpose: