The “selfish gene” metaphor, while a great success, may now be getting in the way of peoples’ understanding of evolution (Image: Andrzeg Krause)

THE notion of the “selfish gene” is the most successful scientific metaphor of the past 30 years, followed not far behind by “the extended phenotype”. Both were coined by Richard Dawkins and are, as it happens, the titles of his first popular science books.

The Selfish Gene‘s message was that evolution is about the natural selection of genes, and genes alone. Dawkins sees them as the best candidates to be evolution’s units of replication. As such, the genes that are passed on …