628 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
gene needs several thousands of fellow genes to complete its task, how can we
reconcile this with my picture of indivisible genes, springing like immortal
chamois from body to body down the ages: the free, untrammeled, and self-seeking
agents of life?"
Dawkins attempts a lame resolution by invoking the quintessentially
Oxbridge metaphor of rowing, with the nine men (eight oarsmen and a cox) as
genes, and the boat as a body. Of innumerable candidate rowers, we put together
the best boat "by random shuffling of the candidates for each position"—and then
running large numbers of trials until the finest combination emerges. Of course the
rowers must cooperate in a joint task, but we generate no nonlinearities because
localized optimality prevails, and the winning boat ends up with the best possible
oarsman in each place. Dawkins then transfers this image back to biology and
asserts his view of selection as piecemeal optimization—so that each locus (each
seat in the boat) eventually houses the best candidate: "Many a good gene gets into
bad company, and finds itself sharing a body with a lethal gene, which kills the
body off in childhood. Then the good gene is destroyed along with the rest. But
this is only one body, and replicas of the same good gene live on in other bodies
which lack the lethal gene... Many [good genes] perish through other forms of ill
luck, say when their body is struck by lightning. But by definition luck, good and
bad, strikes at random, and a gene which is consistently on the losing side is not
unlucky; it is a bad gene" (1976, p. 41).
Such a notion of individualized genetic optimality must be rejected as
empirically false; but even if true, this concept still wouldn't support the required
claim for nonexistence of emergent organismic features. Even Dawkins admits (in
the quotation just above) that selection can only optimize "phenotypic
consequences" (1982, p. 237)—and if phenotypes arise (as they do) by complex
nonadditivity among genetic effects, then the genes in your body cannot maintain
the essential property of independence represented by Dawkins's metaphor of
optimal goats, hopping happily and separately across the generations.
In any case, this false view of organisms as additive consequences of
individually optimized genes underlies the familiar metaphorical language
developed by Dawkins over the years: "I am treating a mother as a machine
programmed to do everything in its power to propagate copies of the genes which
reside inside it" (1976, p. 132). Or "A monkey is a machine which preserves genes
up trees; a fish is a machine which preserves genes in the water; there is even a
small worm which preserves genes in German beer mats. DNA works in
mysterious ways" (1976, p. 22). These colorful images misstate actual pathways of
causality. Organisms work in wondrous ways, and they operate via emergent
properties that invalidate Dawkins's concept of genes as primary agents.
THE CETERIS PARIBUS DODGE. When the logic of an argument requires that the
empirical world operate in a certain manner, and nature then refuses to cooperate,
unwavering supporters often try to maintain their advocacy by employing the tactic
of conjectural "as if." That is, you admit the failure of